The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez Read Free Book Online Page B

281, N. 1, R. 3. Guzmán was not the only owner to argue that slaves deserved no wages. In a very similar case, Catalina de Olvera, owner of an Indian slave named Ynés, claimed that she did not profit from Ynés, but rather Ynés profited from her. Olvera’s attorney noted that she had to spend a great deal of money on Ynés “because after Ynés gave birth many illnesses afflicted her, and her legs became swollen each year, and Olvera had to seek medical help [for her].” “Pleito fiscal: Catalina de Olvera.”
    22. Esteban Mira Caballos, “De esclavos a siervos: Amerindios en España tras las Leyes Nuevas de 1542,” Revista de Historia de América 140 (January–June 2009), 95–110.

    23. Silvio Zavala has more than enough sources to document the scope of Indian slavery in central Mexico during the first half of the sixteenth century. See Zavala, Los es-clavos indios en Nueva España (Mexico City: El Colegio Nacional, 1968). Virtually all early chronicles also contain relevant passages. The quotes are from ibid., 1.
    24. The quote is from Fray Diego Durán, History of the Indies of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 561. The earliest encomienda in Mexico often involved “personal services” furnished to the encomendero in addition to products. The crown had some success in limiting this practice in central Mexico but not in other parts, as we will see in chapter 3 . Two classic works on the functioning of encomiendas in early Mexico are Lesley Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); and Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under the Spanish: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976).
    25. The quote is from Bernal Díaz, Historia verdadera, cited in Zavala, Los esclavos indios en Nueva España, 78.
    26. Toribio de Benavente, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1973), 92. For Indian slave estimates based on royal accounts, see the excellent work by Jean-Pierre Berthe, “Aspectos de la esclavitud de los indios en la Nueva España durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI,” in Estudios de Historia de la Nueva España de Sevilla a Manila (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1994), 67.
    27. On pre-contact slavery, see Toribio de Motolinía, Memoriales de Fray Toribio de Motolinía (Mexico City: Casa del Editor, 1903), especially part 2, chap. 20, “Que trata el modo y manera que estos naturales tenían de hacer esclavos, y de la servidumbre a que los esclavos eran obligados,” and chap. 21, “En el cual acaba la materia de los esclavos y se declara las condiciones de su servidumbre y cúales se podían vender y cuáles no”; Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1956), passim; and Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance, passim. For an excellent discussion of why captivity practices among early Native American societies were tantamount to slavery, see Santos-Granero, Vital Enemies, conclusion. On the practice of Indian slavery and slave prices after contact, see Zavala, Los esclavos indios en Nueva España, chaps. 1 and 2.
    28. These two diverging estimates are well known to scholars, including Berthe, “Aspectos de la esclavitud de los indios,” 66–67, and Livi Bacci, Conquest, chap. 2. One can get a sense of the number of Indian slaves by the fact that the town of Tlaxcala alone manumitted some twenty thousand Indian slaves just in 1537. See Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1952), 144.
    29. Agreement to form a company between Fernando Alonso and Nicolás López de Palacios Rubio, Mexico City, February 27, 1528, Acervo Histórico del Archivo General de Notarias del Distrito Federal (hereafter cited as AHAGNDF), Notary No. 1, escribano público Juan Fernández del Castillo, vol. 54, file 372, fols. 297–298; sale by Pedro González