JOWH Final PDF Van Deusen-Libre

2012
The Intimacies of Bondage

Female Indigenous Servants and Slaves and Their Spanish
Masters, 1492–1555
Nancy van Deusen
In early colonial Latin America many of the women who had been
distributed as war booty, taken in village raids, or illegally branded as
slaves became the partners of Spanish men. This article privileges these
severely compromised historical subjects to consider how relations of
violence and intimacy formed an integral part of their lives. An analysis
of notarial and parish records reveals that deracinated women in bondage
maintained intimate family ties—sometimes over great distances—de-
spite continual vulnerabilities and legal restrictions. Intimacies involved
sexual and other forms of bodily, material, and emotional expression and
knowledge. This article questions the usefulness of deinitions of “fam-
ily” based largely on Spanish genealogical models and it also exposes the
historiographic gender gap in Latin American colonial history between
the “invasion” (Part One) and “early colonial settlement” (Part Two)
periods which has stigmatized non-elite indigenous women for so long.
I ntimate partnerships between indigenous women and Spanish men

were part of the status quo during the half-century following Spain’s
irst voyages to America. Although some women were of noble status, it is
inaccurate to say that the majority of indigenous partners who produced
the “sons of the conquerors” were elites.1 In fact, many were commoditized
as slaves during the period when indigenous bondage formed a central
aspect of the Spanish early colonial economy. Until 1555, when indigenous
slavery was eradicated except in speciically authorized instances of just
war, hundreds of thousands of native women and men (many under the
age of fourteen) were enslaved or placed into permanent bondage as
naborías (life-long servants) removed from their homelands and shipped
to sundry ports throughout Latin America and Iberia.2 Puerile girls were
distributed to males in the early labor allotments of Santo Domingo, or
they were taken from the designated “useless” islands of the Bahamas or
the ethnically Carib-speaking areas of northern South America harboring
so-called cannibals. Women were given as rewards to soldiers in the vil-
lage raids that regularly occurred during exploratory expeditions called
entradas, or sold into slavery by caciques (indigenous overlords) bartering
for peace or goods. 3 After being exchanged, they often traveled thousands
of miles with merchants, sailors, or soldiers, only to be sold to inance a
© 2012 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 24 No. 1, 13–43.

14 Journal of Women’s History Spring
man’s next venture into Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, or Peru.4 They marched
behind the conquerors; they became sexual objects and partners, laborers,
and caretakers for men at sea; and they supported humble artisans as they
established their trades. Indigenous servants and slaves were just as much
a part of the mobile early modern Atlantic world economy as Spaniards.5
In this article I focus on female indigenous servants and slaves, the
majority non-elite, who became the partners of Spanish men and the moth-
ers of mestizo children.6 Very little has been written about them and they
remain obscured in the historiography of the conquest and early colonial
periods.7 Deep archival forays reveal that although the relations between
indigenous women and Spanish men were constrained and embedded in
patriarchal and imperial regimes of power, many women transcended bond-
age to become free servants (criadas). Despite the constraints of family law,
bondage, and movement and upheaval, they developed and maintained
affective ties, family afiliations, and economic and social networks over a
broad expanse of land and sea.8 On the whole, it was the day-to-day violent
and intimate interactions between indigenous women and their Spanish
masters that animated the “cold spaces of empire”—those vast geographi-
cal expanses and blank psychic domains of cultural loss that deracinated
women had to navigate.9
We know so little about these women, in part, because several “ca-
nonical discourses”—both racist and sexist—have rendered the socially
mobile landscape of these women invisible.10 Scholars continue to argue
that the absence of Spanish women in America propelled Spanish men to
look elsewhere to satisfy their libidinal drive.11 The literature also ignores
a long-standing pattern in Castile (and later in America) of non-elite Span-
ish women who chose to share a bed with their partners, but who did not
marry them.12 In addition, the argument that Spanish men succumbed to
their carnal appetites not only naturalizes masculine behavior toward in-
digenous women, it also obscures the violent nature by which these women
were physically and psychically violated.13 While denigrating indigenous
women as unworthy partners, studies also fault Spanish women for not be-
ing present to satisfy male sexual desires. It was their absence which drove
men to seek indigenous women, by whatever means possible.14
Another problem lies in the historiographic divide between the con-
quest and early colonial periods. We are told that “Part One” of the conquest
involved extreme violence, abduction, and ceremonial acts of possession.
Indigenous women were acquired, then raped and dragged by their hair
to a foreign location to serve their new masters.15 In “Part Two,” as colonial
rule became a de facto reality, indigenous women became accommodat-
ing, active agents and cultural brokers who worked the system and were
2012 Nancy van Deusen 15
participants in the cultural and biological process of mestizaje (mixture or

fusion).16 This ictive periodization is document driven (due to the paucity
of sources for the pre-1550 period) and partially the result of an over reli-
ance on oficial reports and chronicles produced after 1540 by ecclesiastical
and secular reformers who were eager to rewrite the history of the previous
half-century. As they saw it, unruly and power-grabbing Spanish conquerors
preferred concubinage to Christian marriages.17 When the Crown intervened
by requiring that Spanish men bring their wives to America, and making
inheritance laws more restrictive toward illegitimate children, Spanish men
repented their sinful ways. The Church, in turn, condemned the immorality
of cohabitation outside the sacrament of marriage, and discouraged “un-
equal” Spanish-indigenous marriages.18 As a result, the 30 to 40 percent of
illegitimate and legitimate conjugal unions with indigenous women were
relegated to a period dominated by “unstable” and “disorderly” relations.19
The male-generated notarial documents that comprise 95 percent of
our sources continue to be a major obstacle in understanding the nuances
of female intimacy during the conquest and early colonial periods. In
those documents female indigenous servants and slaves appear as name
fragments, shadow elements, and factual smatterings, evidence that does
not lend itself to good, narrative history. Quite often the names of servant-
mothers were entered into the records as an afterthought: as opaque refer-
ences to a residual moment of “youth’s folly” that did not contribute to the
legitimate story line of the man’s life.20 Sometimes they were named—Elena
from Nicaragua or Juana from Cubagua—but were shrouded behind or
within the life trajectories of others, as part of a bygone or unruly era. In
the legitimating petitions of the 1540s, whereby Spanish fathers recognized
their illegitimate offspring for inheritance and occupational purposes, an
indigenous mother was often identiied as an unmarried single woman
(muger soltera), an Indian woman (una india), or objectiied as the person
from whom the child had originated (que ovo en or avida en).21
The paucity or biased nature of sources does not, however, completely
explain the gap between “Part One” (violence) and “Part Two” (social
stability) of the early colonial period. I argue that historians are generally
uncomfortable placing violence and intimacy side-by-side in discussions
of master-servant relations.22 In our assessments we see it as a contradic-
tion that a Spanish carpenter could buy a bewildered Guatemalan girl in
the public square, sexually violate her, and have children with her, and
then later, in a will or donation to his illegitimate children, only cursively
mention her as their mother.23 Another problem is how we deine intimacy.
Studies on cross-cultural or hybrid colonial unions tend to focus on the
coerced or consensual sexual dimensions of master-slave relations.24 But
as I shall argue in this article, intimacy also involved other forms of bodily,
material, and emotional attachments which were varied and complex. Most
importantly, the very bedrock of these attachments was predicated upon
violence: including deracination, the control over female bodies, unequal
relations of power, and ongoing expressions of loss. A nuanced consideration
of intimacy and violence during the early colonial period needs to probe the
variety of Spanish male and indigenous female relations, without explaining
them away by statistics or arguments of sexism, racism, or lasciviousness.25
This article attempts to unite the apparent contradictions of “Part One”
and “Part Two” without subscribing too much power or agency to these
“severely compromised individuals.”26 Some scholars working on different
time periods, slave systems, and contexts have argued convincingly that
despite the constraints facing female slaves, consensual sexuality between
masters and female slaves gave the latter a form of agency in their short- and
long-term dealings with masters.27 Others have argued that sexual viola-
tion was an inherent aspect of female enslavement, indeed a right exercised
by masters, and that we are ascribing too much agency to these women.28
Although documents such as baptismal records, contracts, and wills do not
reveal the complexities of such power dynamics, I can only surmise based
upon the evidence of Spanish-indigenous household formation and end-
of-life decisions seen in wills, that in some cases, continual sexual liaisons
resulted in other forms of intimacy-affective ties, deep kinship bonds, and
resource sharing.
There is no question that Spanish men used both the reproductive and
productive capacities of the indigenous women writ large. 29 Masters could
control the work environment and create circumstances where physical
violation might occur. Although relationships may have been consensual,
slave owners had the capacity to determine the boundaries of that consent.30
In addition, although indigenous slaves openly gave birth to and baptized
children with their owners, they were considered property, without the
basic rights to draw up legal documents, establish bequests for their chil-
dren, or move freely from one place to another. They were uprooted time
and again, and sold more than once. They labored day in and day out.
Many indigenous women became second-tier partners, and were replaced
by other indigenous women or arranged marriages with Spanish brides.
They frequently lost their mestizo children forever to guardians living in
distant locales, and watched their young children board ships for Castile.
Even free or freed women were considered legal minors—as indigenous
and as women.
Yet even with these legal, psychic, and cultural constraints, indigenous
women had a range of options in how they cultivated family relations:
some returned with their partners to Spain; others raised their children.
Some who lived far from their place of origin picked up the pieces when
their Spanish master left and became servants in other households. Then
there were those women who sought legitimate marriages or long-term
partnerships with other Spanish, mestizo, African, or indigenous men.31 In
the 1540s, as indigenous women were declared free from bondage, they
used the legal system to demand remuneration, draw up contracts, and
leave bequests to protect themselves, their kin, and their children, whether
nearby or at a distance.
Most of the archival documents cited in this article were generated in
Lima, Peru, even though they mention indigenous women from disparate
parts of Latin America who either had migrated temporarily or permanently
to Lima or a former Spanish master or lover who now resided there. In
hundreds of baptismal records, wills, legal contracts, and litigation suits the
fragmented voices of non-elite indigenous women can be heard, although it
is I, the feminist historian, who must give them an audible, narrative weight.
In these records I long to ind traces of intimacies and violence where only
formulaic but power-laden words like una india remain. I continually search
for the “contours of afirmation,” trying to circumnavigate what has been
lost by peeling away the absences, or decoding the opaque male-generated
references to violated female bodies.32 In this article I will ponder how an
event—a violent uprooting, being trapped in a desolate location for eight
months, watching a child leave forever, or receiving a mattress as a bequest
from a now-deceased partner—“attache[d] itself with its tentacles into
everyday life and fold[ed] itself into the recesses of the ordinary.”33 I will
trace the linkages between violence and intimacy in the linear trajectories
of women’s lives: from the moment of deracination from a far away village,
to the birth of their children, to the gathering of family members as they
lay mortally ill. I will put my ear to the beating heart of early colonialism.
I begin with a reconstruction of two life trajectories which elucidate
the themes of violence and intimacy, and of loss and reconstruction over
a long duration. The stories of Beatríz and Juana exemplify a striving to
belong in spite of being uprooted; the dependency upon Spaniards mak-
ing life-altering choices for them; and the resolve to live a life carved out
of loss. Their refashioned narratives delineate their deracination as girls,
their experiences of servitude and motherhood (in the case of Beatríz), and
the formation of new family ties in distant locations. Their tales help bridge
the historiographic gap between the ravages of conquest, upheaval, and
captivity (Part One) and their cultural placement as partners in bondage or
as servants (Part Two), both integral aspects of early colonialism.
Beatríz once lived in Venezuela, probably close enough to the coast
that her people were vulnerable to the slave-raiding forays inanced by
the established residents of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Cubagua. Her place of
origin, according to one witness, was Morro de la Hamaca, a hamlet located

upstream along one of the many rivers that emptied into the Gulf of Paria
or the Gulf of Cumaná (popular sites for slave raiding in the 1530s).34 She
may have been a member of the larger Cumanagoto ethnic group near the
Manzanares River (located in Cumaná). All we know is that Beatríz was
around seven when she was captured, ransomed, or sold. Most likely she
made the short trip irst to Nueva Cádiz in Cubagua where merchants
gathered provisions for the longer voyage to Puerto Rico. By the time she
was sold to the ship captain, Juan Cataño, on the dock of San Juan, her chin
bore the royal brand. After residing with two other masters, she was sold
yet again, and entered the household of Alonso Ponce, no longer a moza
(girl). She lived and worked in his house, and sometimes shared his bed.
It was not long before she became pregnant, and when she gave birth to
a daughter, Ponce and Beatríz named her Juana. At some point, Ponce
became anxious to return to Spain, but faced the dilemma of leaving his
partner/slave and young daughter in the care of a trustworthy business
partner or family member, or taking them to Spain. Ponce was not married
and had no properties or estates that a legitimate child might inherit. He
came from a family of laborers; his day-to-day contacts were carpenters,
farmers, and those who worked with their hands. His brothers and sister
had remained in Alcalá de Guadaíra, ten kilometers from Seville, although
his parents were dead. Perhaps it was the deep attachment he had formed
with Beatríz and his daughter that made him decide to take them back to
his village in 1539.
It may have been the intense heat of the summer months, or a disease
against which she had no immunity that sickened Beatríz. In any case, she
weakened and died within two years of moving to Alcalá. Her body was
buried in the Church of San Agustín and a mass said on behalf of her soul.
For the time being the daughter, Juana, remained in the care of her father
and aunt. But after a few years, when Ponce decided to return to the soft
breezes and green-blue water of Puerto Rico alone, Juana moved to Seville
and took a position as a maid in a wealthy household. It might be tempting
to read Ponce’s action as abandonment, but many Castilian parents with
limited resources placed their daughters into domestic service because it
guaranteed economic independence and preparation for adulthood and
marriage.35
The second example takes us across the Atlantic and Paciic when, in
1573, another Juana (de Espinosa) drew up her will. She identiied herself
as the daughter of now deceased indigenous parents from Panama, whom
she said had never become Christians. She had lived in Lima for many
years (perhaps since the late 1530s), and was working in the household of
Francisco de Castrillejo, her señor (lord). By identifying herself with a Span-

ish surname and as a ladina (someone familiar with the Spanish language
and customs), Juana distinguished herself from other servants. She did not
mention her parents’ names, any children, or a Spanish partner; although
her surname indicates some relation with a male or female Espinosa at some
point in her life (possible matches include Gaspar de Espinosa of Panama).
Nor did she reveal the pathway she had followed to reach Lima. She most
likely arrived on one of the private vessels illed with merchandise that
came regularly to the port of Callao from Panama after 1540. Because of
the close relationship she had developed with the Castrillejo family, now
her family and her lords (señores), she left a large amount of clothing and
several slaves—one identiied as a mulata (a female of Spanish and African
parentage), and another identiied as Bran (from the West Upper Guinea
coast) with two daughters—to the different family members.36 Any traces
of once being considered merchandise, maintaining contact with her inidel
parents or avoiding the advances of a former Spanish master, were absent
from a will which might have alluded to her past. Instead, her testament
focused on the new social relations she had established. Not only had
Juana inserted herself irmly into “the ordinary” in a foreign location, she
had prospered.37
For indigenous women like Beatríz and Juana, their lives and rela-
tionships with partners and children involved mobility, radical transitions
into and out of captivity, an erasure of the past, and changes of heart—all
dimensions of intimacy that are often dificult to pinpoint in the snapshot
portrayals of notarial records and male-generated documents that speak
for others like them. Piecing together biographical narratives—like those
of Beatríz and Juana—that show the transition from freedom to bondage
and explain how intimate family bonds were established is easier said than
done. Because of the spotty nature of the archival record, it is very dificult
to show how these women insinuated themselves into a larger temporal-
spatial landscape which was just as much about disruption and mobility
as it was rootedness. But in order to integrate them into colonial narratives
it is imperative to gaze through that fragmented lens and recreate a logical
continuum of disruption and cultural placement. To do this we must return
to the beginning and to a discussion of the radical transition from freedom
into bondage, and then explain how that led to household formation where
indigenous women were objectiied for their reproductive-productive skills,
and then how indigenous women formed affective and economic ties with
their masters-cum-partners, as well as others. From this long-term vantage
we can then see how—despite time and distance—women navigated the
intimacies of motherhood, partnerships, and other kinship afiliations. Even
the material objects still present during the later years of their lives disclose
the vestiges of past intimacies with former partners or the yearnings for
children now far away.
Into Captivity
For some young women, the irst disruption came when they were
distributed or sold. Some would not have understood that the Spaniards
now saw them as piezas (pieces of merchandise), naborías, or slaves. Ac-
counts which might detail their transitional experiences from freedom to
bondage, of sickening journeys while at sea, or of navigating harsh terrain
on exploratory missions, are unfortunately missing in the historical records.
We have no irst-person accounts of slaves detailing the horror they felt
at being branded or when they realized they would never again see their
mothers. In one instance, the archived words of a cacica (indigenous female
ruler) named Catalina from the Gulf of Cariaco enslaved in Cubagua to pay
off a debt are twice removed from the original utterance: irst through the
iltered testimony of a Spanish witness named Cristóbal who reported see-
ing Catalina on the street screaming to those who recognized her: “Am I a
slave?”; and then later by the scribe who recorded and foliated Cristóbal’s
deposition into the ledger containing other depositions detailing the sundry
misdeeds of one colonial authority.38 Although unearthing an utterance
within the strata of other voices is a common endeavor for scholars who
work on slavery, we can still ind the names of women in the lists of chained
slaves, in ship registries, or in a notarial thick description of recorded sale
transactions registered by a scribe over a six-month period in 1531, while
Francisco Pizarro and his men set up camp at Coaque, on the north coast
of Ecuador (currently the province of Manabí).39 This occurred during what
is considered to be an empty interval in this history of conquest, before
the momentous capture of the Inca Atahualpa in November of 1532. At
Coaque, everyone endured hunger, disease, and threats from “unfriendly”
natives, while they eagerly awaited reinforcements of provisions, slaves,
and horses.40 Among the men were (at least) seventeen unnamed women
from Central America who, over a two-month period became the objects of
intense barter.41 During that time, a notary recorded a furious exchange of
women being used as collateral for debts or to pool economic resources.42
Less than a year earlier these same women were still walking their natal soil;
now they prepared biscuits, foraged for edible vegetation, located potable
well water, cooked ish, and tended to those unfortunate Spaniards who died
with horrible “walnut-sized growths” on their faces.43 They made survival
in this unwelcome environment possible.44 They also accommodated the
local (de la tierra) indigenous women taken as captive slaves or exchanged

for goods by “friendly” caciques into the group as it made its way southward
toward the fateful location of Cajamarca.45
At that point in their day-to-day intimate contact, the vulnerable Span-
iards and indigenous women probably saw each other as vital resources.
The men may have viewed the women as laboring and sexual bodies, while
the women saw the men who terrorized them as their only source of protec-
tion and survival. Resisting the overtures of their new masters might have
elicited outrage, a renewed sense of physical entitlement and, ultimately, a
violent act of penetration to prove the man’s dominance. On the other hand,
establishing a sexual relationship with a master might mean that he would
be less inclined to barter her away.46 Of the dozens of enslaved women who
were at Coaque and later at Cajamarca, some survived to form families and
affective ties, although here I am imagining a future for them.47 Although
the documents do not connect the dots between incidents at Coaque and
later stability, how could their early history of captivity and uncertainty in
a harsh environment not inluence future decisions being made for them
or that they made?48 For females held in bondage lived in a space between
the two relational possibilities of an uncontrolled or calculated outburst and
measured and inconsistent restraint.49 Perhaps those servants and slaves
who huddled in the briny slosh of a ship or led the mules through dificult
terrain were perceived to be violable—always sexually vulnerable—by their
fate or histories. For the master could still control the environment, whether
unforgiving or luxury-laden; he knew her work regimen—where she went
to feed the animals, when she made the beds, and which darkened corners
or loors might serve as a space for a violent tryst.50 This was the innermost
and unstated nexus between violence and intimacy.
Of course the possibilities of manipulative coercion, or of gaining
physical mastery, would have varied with each woman’s circumstances.
Still, slaves and servants needed to maintain a “productive rapport” with
a master and disobedience and subjugation were part and parcel of the in-
timacies of servitude.51 In places like Coaque, a master might, in principal,
protect her from another man violating or even kidnapping and selling her
in another town or port.52 I see this particular kind of vulnerability in the
fragmented story of Margarida, who had lived in a cabin “as a thing of his”
(como cosa suya) of Venetian explorer, Sebastian Cabot, for the four years
since he had irst moored his vessel in a Brazilian port in 1526. When the
group of ships he commanded returned to Seville in 1530, Juan de Junco,
a disgruntled crew member who decided to seek revenge on Cabot for
“stealing one of his slaves,” broke open the lock of the captain’s quarters
while he was ashore registering a slave in the House of Trade in Seville,
and in front of other indigenous slaves, “had carnal access to Margarida.”

This event illustrates Margarida’s extreme susceptibility in two ways. Not
only do we see the limits of Cabot’s ability to protect her, but we also see
that Margarita, like many female slaves, became an object of violent sexual
retribution in one man’s attempt to discredit an adversary.53
Su India
At some point an itinerant master and his partner in bondage settled
together in a Spanish town or city—for a brief interlude or for several years.
Baptismal records for the recently-founded city of Lima (1537–48) show
no traces of any previous upheaval, vulnerability, or loss; instead, we skip
ahead to the moment when a child was baptized and the scribe registered
the parents’ names in the parish record. By then indigenous women usu-
ally had Christian names, but they were also identiied as su india, someone
possessed, held in bondage, and under the legal dominion of patria potestad,
the right to control the members of his household, including the children,
wife, servants, and slaves.54 The “his” (su—translated by the scribe from the
“mi” in the father’s statement) evoked a spatial proximity in the household,
and perhaps in a shared bed. It was a term of both reproductive and pro-
ductive possession—she is his woman, or girl-mother-servant (su moza).55
She was his laborer, sexual partner, domestic servant, and female head of
household. Su india was a term employed by Spaniards in the documents
that blurred the lines (if there ever were clearly demarcated social arenas)
of contact between laboring and sexual bodies.56
Indigenous women never self-identiied as “su india.” They instead
referred to their partners and masters as my lord (mi señor), or my master
(mi amo); terms that evoke a sense of deference, attachment, and perhaps
expectations of protection. For them, the descriptor, su india used by others
to describe them may have given linguistic credence to a collateral family
bond, since marriage between a slave and freeman was prohibited by Castil-
ian law.57 These women knew that they were a part of a family, which, “in
its perfect form,” consisted of enslaved and free servants (criados) under the
legal authority of a male head of household.58 Yet although they received
protection, they lived with the triple bind of being indigenous, female, and
servile; legal minors for life unless they were widowed, obtained their free-
dom, or a man with legal power over them was nowhere to be found. As
slaves and permanent servants they could be deposited for safekeeping like
any other property in the home of a trustworthy Spaniard. For these indias,
the legal dominion the master had over their bodies and lives was very real,
and the tentacles of that control limited the choices women had even after
they had been granted conditional freedom.59 In 1547, when Teresa’s master
and partner, Juan Ramos Zargraño, agreed to serve in the royal army, to
counter the rebellious forces led by Gonzalo Pizarro, he exerted his right
of patria potestad to state that Teresa was to be freed; but until he returned,
she should serve María Gutiérrez de Pereda, a widow and beata (lay pious
woman) in Lima.60 Their children were also subject to the father’s will, and
could, at the stroke of a pen, be placed in the custody of a trusted friend or
relative, or dispatched to a relative’s care in Spain.61
The descriptor su india was to become anachronistic by the early 1550s,
at least in oficial documents. That shift can be explained by the 1542 New
Laws, when the Spanish Crown declared deinitively that indigenous slaves
were to be free from bondage (except in cases of just war). At that point,
indigenous slaves throughout the Iberian empire began to petition for
their freedom and masters began to draw up letters of freedom. For some
mothers and partners a verbal oath and the implicit transition from esclava
to criada may have been enough.62 For others, however, a legal document
(carta de ahorramiento) helped them feel less vulnerable.63 For Elvira, from
Pocotepeque (New Spain), who received her freedom from her master in
1551, it meant the world; she was no longer considered property. Her chil-
dren would be free from bondage (which passed from mother to child), she
could travel freely of her own volition, and she could draw up a will and
enter into legal contracts if she had a male representative. She would be a
criada—a signiicant symbolic difference in status—and would be paid for
her services. Perhaps like the freed indigenous slaves elsewhere in the Span-
ish empire, she would call herself a vecina of Lima.64 By the 1550s, baptismal
and marriage entries in Lima now referred to indigenous mothers and
brides as criadas. Gone were the days of inscribing them in the baptismal
and notarial records as su india, su moza, or as slaves. Their children were
now labeled as mestizos, and designated as either legítimo (legitimate) or
natural (illegitimate).65
Free and freed female indigenous vassals of the Spanish Crown now
actively utilized their “legal literacy” in the courts to draw up wills, dowries,
and paid work contracts called soldadas.66 Poor women could approach a
crown appointed procurador de pobres (solicitor for the poor), to represent
their interests and protect their rights in legal transactions. Free women
no longer with a Spanish partner, established curadurías to ind a tutor to
administer the money and goods left by deceased Spanish fathers. Clara,
from the highland town of Jauja, traveled to Lima to appear before an
elected municipal oficer (alcalde ordinario) in 1556. She explained that she
had served the merchant Diego Ximenez, and that she had gotten preg-
nant just before he died in Lima nearly three years before. Their daughter,
Beatríz, was now two years old. She stated that before he passed, Ximénez
had donated one hundred pesos and other parts of his estate to Beatríz,
and that Clara was now in need of legal representation. “Because I am an
india,” she explained, “I do not know what would work best for me and my
daughter who is a legal minor.”67 To meet her request, the legal representa-
tive (procurador) of the royal court, Juan de Arrandolaza, was appointed as
the guardian of both mother and child. He was charged with drawing up
a legal settlement (iniquito) to liquidate Ximenez’s estate, and to ensure
that the two females would receive their due.68 Although an unusually
rare document, it shows an indigenous woman working within the legal
framework of patria potestad (with a male Crown representative standing
in for her) to protect her interests.
Thin Blue Lines

Despite what some historians have said, not all men abandoned in-
digenous women to establish households with Spanish wives.69 Before the
1540s, between 15 and 20 percent (depending upon the location) of mar-
riages were between Spaniards and indigenous women, whether nobles or
not.70 Catalina Pérez, from Chincha, a coastal village to the south of Lima,
never stated in her will that she was a natural or an india. For her, marriage
to a Spaniard, Juan Pérez de Campos, not only gave her a new legal status,
but also a calidad (condition) that distinguished her from other indigenous
women. When she married Juan, she stated that she had nothing to her
name, although, over the course of her marriage she had acquired a number
of material goods which she bequeathed to her legitimate daughter, Juana.
She identiied herself as a decent and pious woman, a member of the Con-
fraternity of Our Lady of the Conception, and was explicit about the number
of masses to be said on her behalf and for “the ive plagues of the Lord.”71
Still, marriages, especially to former servants or slaves, were rare.
However, what scholars generally describe as informal, symbolic, or ic-
tive family ties, do not adequately convey the variety of temporary or
long-lasting relationships between Spanish males and non-elite indigenous
women. In such cases, the dichotomy between legitimate and illegitimate
households is a false one. For instance, donations made by Spanish men to
former indigenous partners provide clues to continuing intimacies, contact,
or even a sense of gratitude or indebtedness even after a relationship had
ended. Many Spaniards used the term cargo—that which a person carries
or bears—to describe the burden of responsibility that their servants/part-
ners had shouldered. Those burdens could refer to the physical demands
of labor and to the fact that they had given birth and cared for the children
of their masters. In 1552, in Peru, Leonor, from the Chincha valley to the
south of Lima, was the beneiciary of ifty pesos and six Peruvian cotton
dresses from her partner, a well-heeled tailor named Alonso Muñoz. Fran-
cisca Muñoz, their daughter, received a substantial sum to help her marry
well. Another son, Francisco Muñoz (who received ive hundred pesos)
was half-Nicaraguan; his mother, Juana, had once been Muñoz’s slave but
had died. But Leonor, we are told, was still living with Muñoz at the time
he drew up his will. “You are here [with me],” Muñoz recorded, and “I am
deeply indebted to you, Leonor.” For her long service and cargo, and the
mutual affection between them, she received a quarter of a plot of land in
Lima.72 Although Muñoz speciied that once he died his children were to
be placed in the custody of his brother, who had several illegitimate and
legitimate children of his own, Leonor had several choices. She could form
a new household with the indigenous Catalina and her mestiza daughter,
whom Muñoz had brought into the household to work as a servant, or
she could live with her (informal) brother-in-law, her children, and all the
cousins. What is important here is that she had the option to live close to
and maintain intimate ties with her children and relatives, neither ictive
nor symbolic.73
Other women involved in long-term partnerships were not as fortunate.
For many years, Inés, from Nicaragua, had been “under the authority” (en
su poder) of Juan Flores—not a wealthy man, but someone with several
slaves and arable land close to Lima. Whether she had had previous owners,
she does not say. But theirs was not a casual affair, because together they
had raised three children—Diego (eight years old), Isabelica (four years
old) and Beatríz (eight days old). Flores named them as his universal heirs
along with two other children, Juan and Cristóbal, the sons of Inés from
Guancavelica, both of whom were now old enough to apprentice with an
artisan. Unfortunately for the two indigenous mothers, Flores’s brother,
who was named their legal guardian (here, Juan Flores was exercising his
right of patria potestad), was ordered to take all of the children to the family
village in Spain.74
For many indigenous mothers of mestizo children, time and distance
did not sever the “thin blue lines” of affective ties with their former Spanish
partners and masters who were now far away.75 In some cases, the goods
they acquired from wills or donations helped to provide economic stabil-
ity for their families.76 As the historian Berta Ares Queija has shown, the
amounts bequeathed to indigenous partners and children depended upon
Spaniards’ wealth. Some left small amounts of money or a mule; others left
herds of animals, money, cloth, or clothing and even urban properties to
their partners.77 Francisca, from Cotahuasi (near Arequipa, Peru), received
word in 1547 that her former lover, Francisco de Grecia, originally from the
Canary Islands, who had served as the tutor of Francisco Pizarro’s children,
had chosen to leave a plot of prime real estate in Lima to her. Their son,
Francisquillo, was named as one of his universal heirs, along with two
legitimate children from a marriage with his now-deceased Spanish wife.
Francisca also received one hundred and ifty pesos for her marriage to
“someone native to the land.”78 For her years of service and an affective
relation with her master, Francisca Tuctopoc received two black female
slaves and one hundred and ifty pesos of worked silver.79 This was quite
an economic coup and would enable both Franciscas to prosper in the urban
petty trade markets dominated by indigenous women.80
The bequests made by Spanish males to their former or current indig-
enous partners and children had little to do with Castilian genealogical
models, which emphasized fortuitous marriage alliances, primogeniture
lineage, and legitimate unions.81 Instead, we see “the thin blue lines” of affec-
tive ties, which are often dificult to detect because scholars have been intent
on seeing the thick red lines of “family” based upon Castilian aristocratic
prescriptions.82 Although servants, slaves, and illegitimate children were
legally a part of the family, they are given little consideration in scholarship
because they usually only received minor bequests—thought to be more
symbolic than real.83 Nor are they considered part of the household or family
economy.84 But if we tilt the analytical lens slightly, we see that indigenous
women servants, like Inés or Leonor, were able to reproduce their lineage
both biologically and economically, by accruing goods, and by creating ties
with relatives “whose exact blood relationship was uncertain.”85 Women
did their best to cement reproductive and productive relations, at a time
when pulling up stakes was just as common as remaining in one place for
an extended period.86 To them, family relations might include siblings of
their partner/master, children from other unions, other servants or slaves,
or trustworthy female or male Spanish associates.
Motherhood and Mobility

Occasionally one can ind documents that reveal women who remained
close to their natal environment and were able to raise mestizo children
after a temporary relationship with an itinerant Spanish male had ended.
Isabel, from Puerto Viejo, Ecuador, appears in the will of Alvaro González
Hidalgo, her former lover, who had fought in many crucial battles of the
early colonial period. It had been at least three years since they had been
together, although he remained aware of Isabel’s circumstances. He had left
horses and mules in the care of a trusted companion in Quito, and Isabel,
who was now there raising their son, was to receive the proceeds from the
sale of two mules and a horse which would give her enough to live on and
raise the boy, Perico.87 In 1549, Francisca, who was living in Pachacamac (to
the south of Lima) and raising her mestizo son, Perico, received word that
she would receive forty pesos and that her son had been designated as the
universal heir of Pedro de la Pena, the city’s town crier (pregonero) and the
recipient of two hundred and ifty pesos.88
Nevertheless, many indigenous women—regardless of whether they
continued living close to their homelands—remained in the long shadow
of patria potestad. Although they hoped to raise their children to adulthood,
they lived with the possibility that a legal representative of their former
partner would unexpectedly show up on their doorstep to demand that
their children be sent to Spain or elsewhere. Even Leonor from Chincha
(discussed earlier) knew that when her long-term partner died she would
lose custody of her children. Like many mothers, María from Cueva, Pan-
ama, was still breast feeding her infant daughter when she received word
in 1537 that her child was to be placed in the custody of a named guardian
in Lima, and would be shipped off to Spain when she was old enough to
travel. Despite María’s loss, she could reside in the home her master left to
her daughter—a four-story house next to Gonzalo Pizarro’s—and reap the
proits of an estancia (estate) outside the city.89
Archival documents reveal durable relations, but also provide glimpses
of the fragility of the Spaniard-servant affective bond. Around mid-century,
Leonor, who was from the Cuzco area, was working as a servant in a Spanish
household in the village of Hatari. At some point she met Pedro Çaera, the
son of Captain Hernando de Çaera and Costança, an indigenous woman
(perhaps of the nobility) from the village of Cuevagillo in the “provinces of
Nicaragua.” He was traveling in the Andean highlands and would not stay
long. Still, the bonds that developed between them were deep enough that
it inspired Çaera to name Leonor, who was then seven months pregnant,
as his universal heir in a will drawn up in November of 1553. His newborn
child was to receive the remainder of his worldly goods.90 Over the course
of the next year, however, the situation changed dramatically. Çaera mar-
ried a Spanish woman and decided to draw up a new will which did not
even mention Leonor. He did provide money for his two-month-old son
and ordered that a Spaniard in Cuzco administer the funds and see to it
that “the boy would become a proper man.”91
Although uncommon, some indigenous mothers crossed the Atlantic
to live in Spain with their children and Spanish partner.92 Such an effort
required documentation, and an assurance that the woman, if still a slave,
was traveling of her own volition.93 It also exposed indigenous family mem-
bers to new vulnerabilities. In a court testimony that took place in 1544, the
indigenous Juan Márques, explained that his sister, María, had had carnal
relations with his (informal) brother-in-law, the Spaniard Juan Márques. The
couple, their two children, and the brother had traveled to Spain together
(the brother and sister “of their own free will”), and many of the villagers
of Dueñas (in northern Castile), the family’s ultimate destination, assumed
that the couple had married since they had lived like man and wife. But
they had not, and when the master decided to wed a Spanish woman,
María returned to Mexico, leaving her three mestizo children and brother
there in Dueñas. Whether she had a choice in the matter, we are never told.
Márques had not been dead that long when his wife attempted to sell one
of the children and María’s brother. Fortunately when Juan Marqués initi-
ated a lawsuit, the Council of the Indies ruled in favor of the indigenous
litigants (the New Laws freeing all indigenous people had passed two years
earlier) and they were all declared free.94 This example highlights once again
the vulnerabilities of slaves or freed persons despite the existence of laws
meant to protect them. In this particular case, the death of the patriarch left
the brother and children vulnerable to abuse by other family members who
only saw them as human capital.
The Ties that Bind

The cases of Leonor (from Chincha) and María indicate that while
some partnerships might not endure a lifetime, some lasted for years, if
not decades. Even after relationships dissolved, the picture painted by dif-
ferent authors of abandoned indigenous women resorting to prostitution
does not resonate with the extant documentation. A woman was not so
dependent upon a single man (because families were not nuclear) that when
he moved elsewhere she would be left irrevocably destitute and isolated.95
That is because indigenous women formed broader kinship networks
based upon what the historian Ehud Toledano calls the “cohesive under-
girding” of social relations, based upon vertical (within a household) and
horizontal (economic and social networks among households) alliances.96
When Spaniards pulled up stakes their former partners—whether free or
enslaved—were sometimes placed in the care of a trustworthy companion
or respectable Spanish woman; a new household with new possibilities.97
In some instances, former partners and their children were united under
the same roof with other female partners and half-brothers and sisters.
Francisca, an indigenous woman from Mexico, had a daughter, Catalina,
with Miguel de Vidángoz, from Navarre, around 1529, before dreams of
treasure lured them toward Peru. When he drew up his will in Lima in
1537, Vidángoz left his legally recognized daughter in charge of his friend,
Bernardino de San Pedro (a scribe). He speciied that Francisca and another
female indigenous slave should remain in Lima. After decades of slavery
Francisca, whose arm showed “signs of being captured” was to receive her
freedom and ifty pesos “to adorn herself and live modestly.” Bernardino
de San Pedro was to look after her, as Vidángoz described her, “as some-
thing of mine” (como cosa mia). The two thousand pesos left to his daughter,
Catalina, could be spent if she were to remain in Lima, or return with San
Pedro to Spain. Another Catalina, a former partner from Charcas who was
now living in Cuzco, was offered money and the choice to come with her
son (by Vidángoz) to Lima to live with San Pedro, who would look after her
as well. If Vidángoz had had his wish, the half-siblings and former partners
would have been united in one household.98
This is even the case in those households labeled by some historians as
harems.99 For Peru, there are a handful of examples of several indigenous
partners living in one household and having children with the same master.
We can only speculate that for these women the experiences of polygyny
were probably less than ideal. Each of the Spaniard’s partners may have
formed part of a kinship grid, but not every one was equal, and their chil-
dren were distinguished by the male señor “by means of criteria that escape
our scrutiny.”100 On the other hand, indigenous women and their children
learned to pool their resources and rely upon one another as family. This
is exactly what the six women who had children with Antonio del Solar
did after he donated his houses in Lima’s Spanish core and a large herd of
goats to each of his children and their mothers for their services and “goods
(bienes) they have given me.”101
After relations with a Spanish master/partner had ended, indigenous
women sometimes entered other households as servants. Once established,
they formed new affective and economic bonds. At an earlier point in her
life, Madalena, from Nicaragua, had given birth to a daughter, María, with
the Spaniard, Carvajal, who had subsequently returned to Trujillo, Spain.
Upon her master’s recommendation, María Rojas, probably a mestiza and
married, had taken both mother and daughter into her household, which
also included a Spanish woman, Julia, and a mestiza orphan, Juana. What
these women did to maintain the household is not revealed in the docu-
mentation, but there is no doubt that they formed close relationships. As
she drew up her will, Rojas had Madalena’s long-term survival in mind.
She bequeathed the corn and beans ready to be harvested from her garden
plot to her, along with a piece of land to cultivate future crops. This would
allow Madalena to be self-reliant. However grateful she might have been,
Madalena could not be entirely at ease because part of her daughter’s heri-
tage was Spanish and the father could still exert his legal authority, even
from a distance. Because Rojas had a legal obligation to Carvajal to ensure
that María had a proper upbringing she determined in her will that once
she had died, María should be placed in the custody of another Spanish
married woman, who would care for her until she married or immigrated
to Spain to be with her father.102
Even after indigenous women married or established long-term re-
lations with other men, they did not always forget or shun their former
partner and master. Leonor Martín, who drew up her will in September of
1553, identiied herself as being from Venezuela. She had recently married
Andrés Martín, and her former master and lover, Estéban Alonso, pro-
vided her with a dowry which consisted of one hundred and thirty pesos,
a copper pot, three gold rings, and a pair of precious sea shells, perhaps a
symbolic reminder of the northern sea. Among her other possessions were
several elegant dresses. While we can easily understand why Leonor would
designate her two-year-old daughter, Juana, also Alonso’s child, as her
universal heir, it is less clear why she would name Alonso to be the execu-
tor of her will and leave nothing to her husband. Perhaps Leonor reasoned
that Alonso would be more likely to protect his daughter Juana’s interests
than her current husband.
The second example also reveals the maintenance of economic and
kinship ties to a former Spanish partner. María Guacacha’s will, drawn up
in 1573 in Lima, is a testament to a long life that involved servitude and a
partnership with the Spaniard shoemaker, Hernán Gómez, and a subsequent
marriage to an indigenous man with whom she had a legitimate daughter.
Thirty-ive pesos from María’s estate were to go to her mestizo son Pedro,
still in his father’s custody. The other half of the seventy-peso donation was
to be paid to Pedro by his father, Gómez, as part of the debt he still owed
María and her current husband, Francisco de Arequipa. While not speci-
ied, María and Francisco had either worked for Gómez or had engaged in
a business transaction with him. Perhaps María thought he owed her back
wages. To unite the two branches of her family, María designated both Gó-
mez and her husband as her executors, and named her legitimate daughter
Francisca as her universal heir.103
The third example reveals ties to a former lord and partner, Pedro
de la Calle, but also shows affection and respect for Calle’s mother, María
de Escobar, revered by Peruvian historians as a Spanish “pioneer” who
cultivated the irst wheat and barley in Peru. Beatríz Utca, from the repar-
timiento (labor allotment) of Yucay in Cuzco, had spent several years with
de la Calle, and together they had several children. In 1556, Pedro decided
to return to Spain, by which time Beatríz was no longer involved with him
(another indigenous woman, Isabel, was). When Pedro drew up his will, he
designated ifty pesos to Beatríz for her good services and so that she would
pray to God on behalf of his soul. Although Calle named his new partner,
Isabel, as one of his universal heirs, he also divided the inheritance equally
among the children he had had with Beatríz and Isabel. Here Beatríz could
be content that Calle had not only shown her some respect by leaving her
a small sum, but that he had also shown paternal responsibility toward
his children. After separating from Calle (they probably spent some time
together in Lima), Beatríz returned to Cuzco (she may have maintained
contact with his mother, María de Escobar, who lived there until she died),
and married Juan Tonque from Chacari. In her 1572 will, she left her modest
goods to her daughter, Isabel Escobar (also Calle’s daughter), who adopted
the surname of her Spanish grandmother.104
The brief life histories of Leonor, Beatríz, and María, demonstrate that
the affective and economic ties with the fathers of their mestizo children did
not end once they had formed new partnerships. On the contrary, they seem
to have viewed family as an inclusive web of social and blood relations
that traversed time and distance.105 The memories of bondage, abuse, and
neglect, however, also coursed deeply in the psyches of many women. Some
commemorating their life as they drew up wills were probably reticent to
acknowledge a past that associated them with deracination and bondage.
In 1558, Inés Hernández did not mention any Spanish males or patrons in
her will. Originally from Pánuco (New Spain), it is highly likely that she
and her sister, Isabel Sánchez, were abducted, shipped from the Gulf coast
to Santo Domingo and then sold illegally. Both Inés and Isabel ended up
in Lima, but the details of those journeys evade our scrutiny because Inés
chose not to mention them. Inés had probably been a servant or attached to
a male patron at one time, but clearly by the time Inés drew up her will she
had transcended bondage. How she did that, we do not know. She identi-
ied herself as ladina, someone familiar with her Spanish letters. Over the
years in Lima she had raised the daughter of an indigenous woman from
Nicaragua who had died. She insinuated herself deeply into the Catholic
culture of the city, and requested to be buried in the Cathedral with a sung
mass. She demonstrated her Christian charity and piety by donating alms to
the poor and to the hospitals for Spaniards and Indians, a standard practice
for the devout at that time. Inés even associated herself with a community
of lay pious women called beatas, upon whom she could rely for temporary
shelter, for solace during an illness, and to say prayers on behalf of her soul.
Over the years she earned enough capital to buy two female African slaves
whose two children she donated to individuals and ecclesiastical institu-
tions. Inés never completely severed ties to her homeland, even though the
ive pesos in alms she left to the Hospital of Our Lady of the Conception in
Mexico City was more symbolic than real. Unlike most indigenous women
whose ties with blood relations were severed when they experienced der-
acination, Inés was fortunate to have had her blood-kin sister, Madalena,
by her side throughout much of her life. She was the one who received all
of Ines’s worldly possessions.106
Material Vestiges
Objects like cloth, animals, or clothing, willed by a master to a female
servant, might serve as a form of remuneration or an acknowledgement of
a former or current affective bond. But the absence of a former lover in the
highly mobile early modern world might also give the presence of their
stored or discarded objects an evocative quality. Objects remained with
the possessor as a symbol not only of absence or the hope of return, but as
evidence of a residual intimacy, or a maternal bond that transcended space
and time. When Juana from Cuzco drew up her will in May of 1556, she
left her sister, Magdalena, money and a manta (blanket), but the bulk of her
few material possessions (doves, silver bowls, and clothing), household
goods and over one hundred pesos she had managed to set aside went to
her mestizo son, Juanico, her universal heir. He was the son of Juan Catalán,
her señor, who had been absent for some time. Because Juanico was a legal
minor, she named a Spanish priest to be her son’s tutor and to administer
her son’s goods until, as she hoped, Catalán would return to fetch his son.107
When, for some unknown reason, Juana decided to draw up a second
will four months later, she mentioned that she was presently the partner
of Francisco Martín. She wanted her son, who was still studying with the
priest, to accompany her sister to the home of Antón Martín (probably her
partner’s brother), one of the executors of her will. Again, she mentioned
the father of her son, whom she had served well, and that she still had some
of his things which she wanted returned to him: “I declare that I have in my
possession twelve pieces of painted clothing which belong to Juan Catalan
as well as a silver close-stool (bacinylla), a wide-mouthed pitcher covered
in netting (cántara de red), certain papers rolled up in a woollen cloth (paño)
and some coins in a wooden box (caja).”108 Although Juana had formed a
new partnership, and could be content that her son was being properly
educated, Catalán’s remaining objects were a kind of cultural biography
of an intimacy both present and absent.109 Each item had the potential to
trigger memories of Catalán’s daily bodily movements, a story of how the
painted clothing came to be his, an image of him slaking his thirst or docu-
menting an event, or of tossing pocket change in the box for some future
petty transaction. They were still visible in Juana’s life.
There is also something deeply intimate about leaving items handled

on a daily basis—work tools worn smooth from use, a mattress with two
body-shaped indentations, a large trunk illed with treasures—to someone
close to you. The indigenous Francisca was so grateful for what she had
received from the carpenter, Pedro de Bonilla, that she drew up a docu-
ment to express her gratitude. The year was 1554, and Cristóval de Bonilla,
the executor of his brother’s will, brought the Chachapoyana, Francisca,
a blanket, twenty-eight pesos, a mattress, a chest, and a sword Pedro had
willed to her. Although the will never speciied whether Francisca had
been Bonilla’s partner or merely a laborer, clearly the relationship between
them was a warm and trustworthy one. The notary, unused to such a legal
transaction, could not fathom why Francisca was drawing up a document.
He called upon two Spanish witnesses to observe the transaction, and twice
the scribe asked Francisca whether she was afraid that someone was trying
to mistreat, intimidate, or question her actions. Francisca insisted (and the
scribe recorded) that she had not approached him out of fear, and that no
one had threatened her about making such a declaration. If she were afraid,
“she would have said so.” Francisca’s intention was to confess in writing
that she was extremely content with the items now in her possession. In
addition to the mattress, chest, and sword she had already received, she
was to get a large blanket (still at a friend’s country estate), his clothing,
and all the utensils and tools in his carpentry workshop.110 Either Francisca
would carry on the trade she now knew so well, or she could sell the things
of value and live off the proit. Perhaps leaving Francisca these particular
worldly goods was a way of symbolizing the quotidian connections of work
and pleasure that Pedro and Francisca had shared.
Migratory indigenous women also left goods behind to ensure a solid
future for their children. In 1573 Beatríz’s will mentioned Angelina Luís,
her mestiza daughter still living with her father, Bartolomé Luís, in Santiago,
Chile. Although now widowed (she had married an indigenous man) and
living in Lima serving her señora as a maid, Beatríz had once lived in Chile
with Luís, and had left some of her possessions there. Why she moved
and why she left goods and acquired property is never explained, and it
is a little odd since she identiied herself as being from Quito. Perhaps she
thought that she would return someday to Santiago. To her daughter she
bequeathed a garden plot in the conines of the city of Santiago, as well as
eighty gold pesos, a large pitcher (tinaja) and some clothing. These items
were to be held in Luís’s custody until the time came for Angelina’s wed-
ding, when he was to sell them and provide her with cash.111 In her case,
the objects of value garnered by her mother’s sweat and care would link
the transitory past of a long-absent mother to a daughter’s future stability.
Conclusions
Despite severe restrictions and the formidable will of Spanish masters,
indigenous women in bondage inserted themselves into the “ordinary” of
colonial life. Women went from being considered property to free servants;
they formed families and households despite deracination and distance, or
severed ties with former partners and masters; and they developed new
affective and economic ties with lovers, husbands, children, and others.
From the moment of abduction and sexual violation until their deaths,
these women endured horror, upheaval, loss, joy, and prosperity in their
intimate relations.
This article does not presume, however, to “set the record straight”
on early colonial female indigenous slave and male Spanish relations.112
All that can be done is to present a sense of these women “as nearly selved
other[s],” who were circumscribed by severe gender and imperial inequali-
ties.113 Without claiming to represent the truth or female subject formation,
or, in some cases, their voices, I can portray episodes of epistemic violence,
the loss of will, and the fragmented construction of intimacies that formed
a part of a larger whole however the historian wants to construe it.114 I can
render the remote substance of female indigenous servants and slaves into
a historical narrative with its place beside other master narratives, and
perhaps close the gap that has rendered them silent for so long. In the end,
although detecting the strong pulse of early colonialism remains elusive, I
can still sense its distant and feminized murmurings.
Notes
I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ful-
bright Commission, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, Susan Kellogg, Jane
Mangan, Karen Powers, Jean Quataert, Susanne Seales, Preston Schiller, Giovanna
Valencia, and the two anonymous readers for their support and suggestions.
1
See Karen V. Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of
Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2005), especially, 68–92; and idem. “Conquering Discourses of “Sexual Conquest””:
Of Women, Language, and Mestizaje,” Colonial Latin American Review, 11:1 (2002):
7–32. For a different perspective see, Juan Marchena Fernández, “Los hijos de la
guerra: modelo para armar,” in Congreso de historia del descubrimiento (1492–1556),
Actas, (Ponencias y comunicaciones) (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1992), III:
311–420, “sons of the conquerors” citation on page 314.
2
Although the promulgation of the New Laws in 1542 declared the Indians to
be free by nature and not subject to enslavement, the laws were not systematically
enforced in Latin America until the 1550s.
3
Stephanie Wood, “Sexual Violation in the Conquest of the Americas,” in The
History of Sex and Sexuality in the United States, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New
York University Press, 1998), 9–34; Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of Latin
America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 58—63.
4
William L. Sherman, Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979); Mario Góngora, Los grupos de conquistado-
res en Tierra Firme, 1509–1530: Fisionomía histórico-social de un tipo de conquista (Santiago:
Universidad de Chile, 1962), 64.
5
Carlo A. Millares and J. I. Mantecón, Indice y extractos de los protocolos del
Archivo de Notarías de México, D.F. 2 vols (Mexico: Colegio de México, 1945–1946);
“Obligación de Juan Marroquí,” 19/VI/1537, Archivo General de la Nación, Perú,
(henceforth AGNP), Protocolos (P), Pedro de Castañeda 18, 34v; (sailor) “Venta,”
14/I/1538, 342; (smith) “Venta,” 24/IX/1538, f. 360; (notary) “Finiquito,” 2/III/1539,
P, Pedro de Salinas (PS) 152, 172r-v.
6
Around 1550, the offspring of Spanish-indigenous parents came to be called
mestizos; but until then it was rarely used in Lima and Mexico. For purposes of clarity,
I employ the term mestizo throughout the article.
7
Susan Kellogg, “Depicting Mestizaje: Gendered Images of Ethnorace in Col-
onial Mexican Texts,” Journal of Women’s History, 12, no. 3 (2000): 71. On relations
between Spaniards and the in situ indigenous female nobility see, Susan Schroeder,
Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman
and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Berta Ares Queija, “Mancebas
de españoles, madres de mestizos: Imágenes de la mujer indígena en el Perú
colonial temprano,” In Mujeres en la construcción de las sociedades iberoamericanas,
eds. Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Berta Ares Queija (Seville: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientíicas, 2004), 15–39. Following Karen Powers (“Conquering
Discourses,” 11), I use the term partner rather than mistress or concubine because
the latter two constructs emphasize the sexual and extra-marital dimensions of
cohabitation at the expense of kinship formation and the resource sharing aspects
of Spanish-indigenous interactions.
8
Indrani Chatterjee, “Testing the Local Against the Colonial,” History Workshop
Journal 44 (Oct. 1997): 215–24.
9
The “cold space of empire” quote comes from Elizabeth Vibert, “‘Writing
Home’: Sibling Intimacy and Mobility in a Scottish Colonial Memoir,” in Moving
Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, eds. Tony Ballantyne
and Antoinette Burton (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 67–88,
quotation on page 67.
10
On “canonical discourses,” see Ula Y. Taylor, “Women in the Documents:
Thoughts on Uncovering the Personal, Political, and Professional,” Journal of Women’s
History 20, no. 1 (2008): 187–196. On the masculine biases in scholarship see, Verena
Stolcke, “Invaded Women: Sex, Race, and Class in the Formation of Colonial Society,”
The European Journal of Development Research 6, no. 2 (1994): 7–21; Wood, “Sexual Viola-
tion,” 8–16; Powers, “Conquering Discourses,” 7–12.
11
Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, (Little & Brown,
1967); Luis Martín, Daughters of the Conquistadors: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru, (Dal-
las: Southern Methodist University, 1983); James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532–1560:
A Colonial Society, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1968); Marchena Fernández, “Los
hijos de la guerra,” III: 337.
12
María d. C. D. Bedmar, “Familia y relaciones extraconyugales en Jaén en la
baja edad media (Aportación a su estudio),” in De la Edad Media a la Moderna: Mujeres,
educación y familia en el ámbito rural y urbano, eds. María T. L. Beltrán and Marie-Catherine
Barbazza (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1999), 73–85; R. C. de la Llave, “A una
mesa y una cama: Barraganía y amancebamiento a ines de la Edad Media,” in Saber
y vivir: Mujer antigüedad y medievo, eds. Maria I. C. Secall and R. F. Somalo (Málaga,
Spain: Universidad de Málaga, 1997), 127–53; María T. Beltrán, “Hacia la marginación
de las mujeres en el Reino de Granada (1487–1540),” Trocadero (Universidad de Cádiz)
6–7 (1994–95): 85–101.
13
Stolcke, “Invaded Women,” 9. For another perspective see, Claudio Esteva-
Fabregat, Mestizaje in Ibero-America, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995).
14
Peter Boyd Bowman, Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World, 1493–1580
(Buffalo: State University of New York, 1973).
15
Araceli Barbosa Sánchez, Sexo y conquista, (México: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1994); Wood, “Sexual Violation.”
16
Barbara Potthast, “The Creation of a Mestizo Family Model: the Example of
Paraguay,” The History of the Family, an International Journal 2, no. 2 (1997): 123–39.
For important studies on indigenous women in the post-1550 period see, Kimberly
Gauderman, Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito, (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2003); Jane Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban
Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Karen Graubart,
With Our Sweat and Labor: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Schroeder, et. al, Indian Women.
17
Karen Graubart, “Indecent Living; Indigenous Women and the Politics of
Representation in Early Colonial Peru,” Colonial Latin American Review 9, no. 2 (2000):
213–235, quotation at page 223 from Pedro Cieza de León’s, Crónica del Perú: Tercera
Parte (1550–1554) [1989], 173.
18
Richard Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social
en Hispanoamérica, 1493–1810 (Madrid, Spain: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientíicas, 1953), I: 208–209. Verena Stolcke, “Invaded Women.”
19
This assumption that marriage with a Spanish woman was the sine qua non
ideal to which all aspired permeates the literature on early mestizaje and “family”
formation. In particular see, Angel Rosemblat, La población indígena y el mestizaje en
América (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1954), II, 63; Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in
the History of Latin America (Boston: Little Brown, 1967); Marchena, “Los hijos,” 335.
20
“Donación, Nicolás de Ribera,” 27/III/1542, AGNP, P, PS, 153 (1542–43),
29v–30v.
21
On petitions to legitimate children see, “Juan de Pancorbo, hijo” AGI Lima
566, libro 4, 6/VII/1541, 195v; “Pedro de Cháves,” 6/VII/1541, AGI, Lima 565,
libro 4, 234v (219v); “Francisco Crespo,” 4/IV/1542, 314v; “Francisco Gorducho,”
14/V/1542, 321r.
22
A notable exception is, Camile Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman
in the Conquest of Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).
23
“Testamento de Pedro de Alconchel,” Revista del Archivo Nacional del Perú,
IX, no. 1 (1936),111–121; Testamento, Pedro de Alconchel,” 25/XI/1544, BNP, A 30,
62v–67v; “Codicilio” 26/XI/1544, 86r–87.
24
Gayatri C. Spivak, “The Rani of Simur: An Essay in Reading the Archives,”
History and Theory 24, no. 3 (1985): 247–73, quotation on 267; Ann L. Stoler, “Tense and
Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colo-
nial Studies,” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 829–65; Ramón A. Gutiérrez,
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 866–69;
Lynn Zastoupil, “Intimacy and Colonial Knowledge,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial
History 3, no. 2 (2002): 1–39.
Ares Queija, “Mancebas,” 19, 26–27.

25
26
Kamala Visweswaran, “Betrayal: An Analysis in Three Acts,” in Scattered
Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, eds. Inderpal Grewal
and Caren Kaplan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 90–109,
quotation at page 99; Powers, Women in the Crucible, 75.
27
Karen Y. Morrison, “Slave Mothers and White Fathers: Deining Family and
Status in Late Colonial Cuba,” Slavery and Abolition, 31:1 (2010), 29–55.
28
Saidya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror and Self-Making in Nineteenth-
Century America, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53, 87–89. Walter John-
son, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History, 37, no. 1 (2003): 113–24; Marisa J. Fuentes,
“Power and Historical Figuring: Rachel Pringle Polgreen’s Troubled Archive,” Gender
and History, 22, no. 3 (November 2010): 565, 576–77.
29
Indrani Chatterjee, “Colouring Subalternity: Slaves, Concubines and Social
Orphans in Early Colonial India,” Subaltern Studies X (Dehli: Oxford University Press,
1999), 49–97; Camilla Townsend, “‘What in the World Have You Done to Me, My
Lover?’ Sex, Servitude, and Politics Among the Pre-Conquest Nahuas As Seen in the
Cantares Mexicanos,” The Americas 62, no. 3 (2006): 349–89.
30
Sharon Block, “Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion,”
in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), 143, 157–58; and idem., Rape and Sexual
Power in Early America, (University of North Carolina Press; Omohundro Institute of
Early American History and Culture, 2006).
31
Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices, 154–55; Nancy E. van Deusen, “Diasporas,
Bondage, and Intimacy in Early Colonial Lima, 1535–55,” Colonial Latin American
Review 19, no. 2 (2010): 247–77.
32
Carolyn Steedman, “Intimacy in Research: Accounting for It,” History of the
Human Sciences 21, no. 4 (2008): 17–33.
33
Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2007), 1; Saidya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small
Axe 26 (2008), 2–3.
34
Morella Jiménez, La esclavitud indígena en Venezuela en el siglo XVI (Caracas:
Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1986), 170–87.
35
“El Fiscal de Su Majestad con Alonso López y Francisco Núñez Zarzuelas
sobre la libertad de Beatriz (llamada Violante) y la de Diego su hijo, indios,” Ar-
chivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Justicia 836, no. 1, 1552, images 33, 85,
96; María T. L. Beltrán, “Estructura de los grupo domésticos en Andalucía a inales
de la edad media. Aportación a su estudio,” in De la Edad Media a la Moderna, eds.
Beltrán and Barbazza, 87–100.
36
“Testamento, Juana de Espinosa,” AGNP, P, Juan Gutiérrez 71, 12/IX/1573,
973r–974r.
Adapted from Das, Life and Words.

37
38
“Gonzalo Hernández de Rojas con Juan López de Archuleta,” 1530, AGI Jus-
ticia 8, no. 1, 56r-v. On the power and agency of notaries see Kathryn Burns, Into the
Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru, (Duke University Press, 2010).
39
Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to
American Diaspora, (Harvard University Press, 2007), 34–35, 97ff; Hartman, “Venus
in Two Acts.”
40
Diego de Trujillo, Relación del descubrimiento del reyno del Perú, ed. Raúl
Porras Barrenechea (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla,
[1571] 1948), 48; Juan Ruiz de Arce, La Memoria de Juan Ruíz de Arce (1543): Conquista
del Perú, saberes secretos de caballería y defensa del mayorazgo, ed. Eva Stoll (Madrid:
Iberoamericana, 2002), 69–71.
41
See Documents 1 through 32, Library of Congress, Harkness Collection,
(henceforth HC) Box 1, Coaque, 22/IV/1531 to 11/IX/1531.
42
Góngora, Los grupos, 53–59; James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social
and Biographical Study of the First Conquerers of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1972), 67.
43
Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca, 7.
44
Antonio del Busto Duthurburu, Marchas y navegaciones en la conquista del
Peru (Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero, 2006); Juan Ruíz de Arce, “Llegada a Coaque,”
in Los cronistas del Perú (1528–1650), ed. Raúl Porras Barrenechea (Lima: Sanmartí
Impresores, 1962), 113–14; Heidi V. Scott, Contested Territory: Mapping Peru in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2009), 19–26.
45
“Cuentas del Real Hacienda desde 1532 hasta 1572,” AGI Contaduría 1825.
While at Coaque, between April and August of 1531, slave sales of forty-three girls
and women were registered in the treasury records.
46
Sharon Block, “Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion,”
in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), 141–63.
47
van Deusen, “Diasporas,” 253–54.
48
Veena Das, “The Act of Witnessing: Violence, Poisonous Knowledge, and
Subjectivity,” in Violence and Subjectivity, eds. Veena Das, et al (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997), 205–225, quotation on 205.
49
Pradeep Jeganathan, “A Space for Violence: Anthropology, Politics and the
Location of a Sinhala Practice of Masculinity,” in Subaltern Studies XI: Community, Gen-
der, and Violence, eds. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), 37–65.
50
Block, “Lines of Color,” 145.
51
Block, “Lines of Color,” 143–45, quotation at page 145.
52
For an example of a Spaniard having to ransom his Lucayan servant from
other Spaniards interested in making a proit, see “Testimony, Gonzalo Fernández,”
1521, AGI Justicia 45, 101v–102v.
53
“Sebastián de Caboto vs. Juan de Junco,” 1530, AGI Justicia 713, im. 86. On
male violence against slaves to seek revenge see Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and
Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia, (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2009), 170–72.
54
Spivak, “The Rani,” 267.
55
Covarrubias, Tesoros, 766. See also, “Mozo,” in Diccionario crítico etimológico de
la lengua castellana, ed. J. Corominas (Bern, Switzerland: Franke, 1954), 463–64.
56
Chatterjee, “Testing the Local,” 220–21.
57
Robert I. Burns, ed., and Samuel P. Scott, trans., Las Siete Partidas (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), IV: xxiv.
58
Silvio A. Zavala, Servidumbre natural y libertad cristiana según los tratadistas
españoles de los siglos XVI y XVII (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1944), 15.
59
See the deinition of “family” in the partidas of Alfonso X (VII, tít., XXXIII,
ley VI), Gaunt, “Kinship,” 259; David Herlihy, “The Making of the Medieval Family:
Symmetry, Structure, and Sentiment,” in Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage,
Household, and Children, ed. Carol Neel (Toronto: Medieval Academy of America, 2004),
135–153; Francisco C. Jiménez, “La familia en España: una historia por hacer,” in La fami-
lia en la España mediterránea, siglos XV-XIX, ed. Vilar, Pierre (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica,
1987), 13–35; J. C. Baroja, “Sobre los conceptos de casa, familia y costumbres,” Saioak:
Revista de Estudios Vascos, no. 2 (1978), 3–13; Beltrán, “Estructura de los grupos,” 90.
60
“Carta de alhorría,” AGNP, P, PS, 154, 2/XI/1547, 517rv; “Carta de traspaso,”
19/XI/1546, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 598r.
61
“Donación, Nicolás de Ribera,” 27/III/1542, AGNP, P, PS, 153 (1542–43), 29v-
30v; “Donación, Juan Jiménez de Selaya,” 1546/11/08, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 553r–554r;
Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial
Lima (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
62
“Curaduria, 6/XI/1546, AGNP, P, Pedro de Salinas 154, 541r–544r.
63
“Alhorría,” 14/VIII/1538, AGNP, P, Pedro de Castañeda 18, 685v–686; “Aho-
rro,” 11/XI/1550, Juan Martínez 114, 150r–v.
64
“Carta de ahorro,” 27/II/1551, AGNP, P, Juan Martínez, 114, 179-v; Karen
Graubart, “The Creolization of the New World: Local Forms of Identiication in
Urban Colonial Peru, 1560–1640,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89 (Aug
2009): 471–499.
65
“Bautismos, Sagrario Parish,” AAL, tomo 2A, 1556–1578; Rosa P. Cánepa,
“El primer libro de matrimonios de la Parroquia del Sagrario de Lima,” Revista del
Instituto Peruano de Investigaciones Genealógicas, no. 2 (1947): 41–51.
66
On legal literacy see, Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, eds., Dead Giveaways:
Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press, 1998), 4; “Servicio, Elvira, india de Santo Domingo,” AGNP, P, Sebastián
Vazquez, 160, 18/VIII/1552, 635v; “Juramento,” 23/VIII/1558, AGNP, P, Gómez de
Morales, 58, 719.
67
“Curaduría,” 18/III/1556, AGNP, P, Diego Gutiérrez 64, 687r.
68
“Curaduría,” 18/III/1556, AGNP, P, Diego Gutiérrez 64, 687–v.
69
Ares Queija, “Mancebas,” 16–17.
70
In the 1514 repartimiento in Santo Domingo, twenty percent of legitimate
unions were between Spanish men and indigenous women; Luis A. Marquez, ed.,
Repartimientos y encomiendas en la Isla Española: El repartimiento de Albuquerque de 1514
(Madrid: Fundación García Arévalo, 1991). Marchena, (“Los hijos de la guerra,” 341)
reports that 15.4 (Mexico) and 12 (Peru) percent of conqueror Spanish-indigenous
noble unions were legitimate.
71
“Testamento, Catalina Pérez,” 12/VI/1550, BNP, Diego Gutiérrez, A36,
180r–181v.
“Donación,” 25/X/1553, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez, 160, 1002.

72
73
“Testamento, Alonso Muñoz,” 13/VIII/1552, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez,
160, 631–34.
74
“Testamento, Juan Flores,” 15/X/1557, AGNP, P, Lorenzo Martel, 109, 609r–
611r.
75
I adapted the terms “thin blue lines” and “thick red lines” from David Gaunt,
“Kinship: Thin Red Lines of Thick Blue Blood,” in Family Life in Early Modern Times,
1500–1789, vol. 1, The History of the European Family, eds. David I. Kertzner and Marzio
Barbagli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 257–87.
76
“Testamento, Diego Francisco,” 3/I/1554, AGNP, P, Bartolomé Gascón 42,
12v ; “Testamento, Juan Griego,” AGNP, P,PS, 154, 18/XI/1546, 588r–590v; “Donación,
Gerónimo de Bardales,” BNP Diego Gutiérrez A35, 8/I/1549, 29v.
77
Ares Queija, “Mancebas,” 23.
78
“Testamento, Francisco de Grecia,” 29/XI/1547, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 531–534.
79
“Testamento, Pero Rodríguez Caravallo,” BNP A546, Diego Ruíz, 17/III/1562,
188r–v.
80
Mangan, Trading Roles; Graubart, With Our Sweat and Labor.
81
Sebastián de C. Orozco, Felipe C. R. Maldonado and Manuel Camarero, eds.,
Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1995), 639;
Herlihy, “The Making,” 138.
82
Gaunt, “Kinship,” 257–87; Herlihy, “The Making,” 143.
83
Criados in Spain, were mainly women, and formed between ive and ten
percent of the urban population, Pierre Vilar, ed., La Familia en la España Mediterránea
(Barcelona: Centre D’Estudis D’Història Moderna “Pierre Vilar”; Editorial Crítica,
1987), 24. Beceiro Pita and Córdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, 248–50, 331–45. Covarrubias,
Tesoro, 536. Large numbers of servants also migrated to America.
84
Linda A. Pollock, “Parent-Child Relations,” in Family Life in Early Modern
Times, eds. Kertzer and Barbagli, 191–220, statistics on 207–08; Beltrán, “Estructura
de los grupos,” quotation on 94; Maria C. G. Herrero, “Mozas sirvientas en Zaragoza
durante el siglo XV,” in El trabajo de las mujeres en la Edad Media hispana, Angela M.
Fernández and Cristina S. Graiño, eds. (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-Mudayna,
1988), 275–85; G. L. Serrano, “El servicio doméstico en Córdoba a ines de la Edad
Media,” in Actas del III coloquio de historia medieval andaluza: La sociedad medieval andaluza:
grupos no privilegiados (Jaén, 1988) 237–246; R. C. de la Llave, “El papel de la mujer
en la actividad artesanal cordobesa a ines del siglo xv,” in El trabajo, eds. Fernández
and Graiño, 235–254; María Teresa López Beltrán, “La accesibilidad de la mujer al
mundo laboral: el servicio doméstico en Málaga a inales de la Edad Media,” in Es-
tudios históricos y literarios sobre la mujer medieval (Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones,
Diputación Provincial de Málaga, 1990), 119–142; María T. L. Beltrán, “El trabajo de
la mujeres en el mundo urbano malagueño a inales de la Edad Media (1487–1540),”
in Saber y vivir, 155–81; Concepción V. Robles, “El prohijamiento y la estructura oculta
del parentesco en los grupos domésticos malagueños a inales de la Edad Media e
inicios de la Edad Moderna (aportación a su estudio),” in Vidas y recursos de mujeres
durante el Antiguo Régimen (Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones, Diputación Provincial
de Málaga, 1997), 47–77.
85
Gaunt, “Kinship,” 261.
86
Susan Ramírez, To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Bases of Authority and
Identity in the Andes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 226–30.
87
“Testamento, Álvaro González Hidalgo,” 1/X/1548, BNP Diego Gutiérrez,
A33, 150–152v.
88
“Testamento, Pedro de la Pena,” 11/IV/1549, BNP A35, 112r–114v.
89
“Carta de donación,” HC 246, 26/IX/1537; “Poder,” HC 247, 26/IX/1537;
“Poder,” 6/VII/1554, AGNP, P, Diego Gutiérrez, 64, 214–v; “Donación,” 6/VII/1554,
idem., 215–v.
90
Testamento, Pedro Çaera,” 5/XI/1553, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez 160,
1008–1009.
Testamento, Pedro Çaera,” 16/I/1554, AGNP, P, Bartolomé Gascón 42, 51v–53v.

91
92
“Licencia á Gonzalo Hernández, indio,” 1558, AGI, Indiferente 2049, n. 10.
93
“Carta de poder,” 3/IV/1543, HC, Doc. 496, 412v–414r.
94
“El Fiscal contra Isabel de Herrera,” 1544-45, AGI Justicia 199, n.1., ramo 3.
95
Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 216.
96
Ehud R. Toledano, As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic
Middle East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 29.
97
“Traspaso,” 19/XI/1546, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 598v.
98
“Testamento, Miguel de Vidangoz,” 20/VI/1547, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 398r–
402v.
99
Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 215–16; Powers, “Conquering Discourses,” 11-12;
“Testamento, Francisco Martínez,” 26/VIII/1553, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez 160,
994–995v.
100
Chatterjee, “Testing the Local,” 221; Townsend, “‘What in the World?,” 357,
368, 373–77.
101
“Donación,” 5/VII/1547, AGNP, P, PS, 154, 425v–426v; Horacio Urteaga,
“Libro de bautismos de la Catedral de Lima,” Revista del Archivo Nacional del Perú,
(hereafter RANP), vol. 10 (1937) 15/V/1541, p. 227; vol. 13 (1940), 10/IV/1547, p. 242;
vol. 14 (1941), 12/VI/1547, p. 89; 22/XII/1548, p. 191. In 1555 Solar signed a contract
with an organist to train his daughters to play, “Concierto,” AGNP, P, Bartolomé de
Quiñones, 138, 27/I/1556, 214r.
102
“Testamento, María Rojas,” 26/I/1554, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez, 160,
1097v; “Testamento, Leonor Hernández,” 30/XII/1558, P, Fernán Gómez de Morales
58, 415r–416r.
103
“Testamento, María Guacacha,” 24/IV/1573, AGNP, P, Juan Gutiérrez 71,
473r–474r; “Asiento,” 28/IX/1555, AGNP, P, Bartolomé de Quiñones 158, 103r.
104
“Testamento, Beatríz Utca,” 9/VIII/1572, AGNP, P, Marcos Francisco de
Esquivel 33, 72a-b; “Testamento, Pedro de la Calle,” 17/VI/1556, P, Luís de Villareal
162, 181v–182v; see also, “Testamento, Juana india,” 16/III/1577, P, Marcos Francisco
de Esquivel 33, 750r–751v; “Testamento, Catalina de Ampo,” 9/XI/1564, P, Juan García
Nogal 41, 949v–951r.
105
E. A. Hammel and Peter Laslett, “Comparing Household Structure over Time
and Between Cultures,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16, (Jan 1974): 73–109.
106
“Testamento, Inés Hernández,” 5/V/1558, AGNP, P, Lorenzo Martel 109,
817r–818v.
107
“Testamento, Juana Yndia,” ?/V/1556, AGNP, P, Estéban Pérez 125, 612r–
613v.
108
“Testamento, Juana Yndia,” 3/IX/1556, AGNP, P, Luis de Villarreal 152,
243r–244v.
109
The term cultural biography refers to the meanings an object acquires through
possession or in a speciic historical context, see Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biog-
raphy of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things, ed. Arjun
Appadurai (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91.
110
“Testamento, Pedro de Bonilla,” 30/VIII/1554, AGNP, P, Bartolomé Gascón,
42.1, 506r; “Declaración,” 5/IX/1554, AGNP, P, Bartolomé Gascón 42.1, 545r.
111
“Testamento, Beatríz, india,” AGNP, P, Juan Gutiérrez 71, 11/V/1573, 510r.
112
Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 125–126.
113
Spivak, “The Rani,” 255.
114
Spivak, “The Rani,” 267; Hartman, “Venus,” 8, 10–11.

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2012

The Intimacies of Bondage

Nancy van Deusen

I ntimate partnerships between indigenous women and Spanish men

© 2012 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 24 No. 1, 13–43.

participants in the cultural and biological process of mestizaje (mixture or

origin, according to one witness, was Morro de la Hamaca, a hamlet located

Francisco de Castrillejo, her señor (lord). By identifying herself with a Span-

local (de la tierra) indigenous women taken as captive slaves or exchanged

and in front of other indigenous slaves, “had carnal access to Margarida.”

Thin Blue Lines

Motherhood and Mobility

The Ties that Bind

There is also something deeply intimate about leaving items handled

Ares Queija, “Mancebas,” 19, 26–27.

Adapted from Das, Life and Words.

“Donación,” 25/X/1553, AGNP, P, Sebastián Vázquez, 160, 1002.

Testamento, Pedro Çaera,” 16/I/1554, AGNP, P, Bartolomé Gascón 42, 51v–53v.

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