Andrew S.

Terrell
HIST 6393: Atlantic History to 1750

Review Essay: Comparing Peripheries

• Brooks, James. Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest
Borderlands. Chapel Hill, NC: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
• Gutiérrez, Ramón A. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality,
and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1991.

James Brooks and Romón Gutiérrez, writing a decade apart, approach southwestern

borderland territories by looking at gender and class relations with the Native Americans and

their Anglo neighbors. Gutiérrez focuses more on sexuality and its changes as Christianity

penetrated the established political economy of New Mexico, while Brooks stays broader and

analyzes not just sexuality and marriage, but also kinship and interdependent relationships

among neighboring tribes. Both of these monographs not only add significantly to our view of

colonial America, but also challenge how we categorize American slavery institutions, interracial

marriages, and the effects of Anglo societal norms on an established deviant culture.

American slavery studies have focused more on the eastern coast institution where there

were clear lines of ownership. This institution’s identity and methodologies tend to be used in

defining ‘American slavery’ under one specific umbrella. Brooks shows us, however, that such a

generalization is counterfactual. What became the American southwest was once part of the

Spanish empire’s periphery and belonged to Native pueblo and semi nomadic tribes before them.

Within these Spanish borderlands, slavery was commonplace and a large part of tribal relations.

Brooks classifies this slavery institution within the kinship structures of the Natives. He

contends that raids from all tribes and nations throughout the borderlands were one form of

adopting a woman or child from another tribe; essentially this was assimilation. It was practiced

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by all and allowed for a closer bond to be forged than the traditional slavery institution that was

proactively coercion-driven. Furthermore marriages to captive women helped complete the

cycle of assimilation by creating familial relationships to counter any rebellious sentiments from

captivity and labor. The strength these relationships maintained were very potent as

demonstrated by the lack of separation endorsed by the US government in the latter nineteenth

century when slavery was abolished. This was one level of the social network between the

tribes. Gutiérrez, likewise, asserts the higher value placed on female slaves because of their

reproductive ability and their connection to social nobility. Native females in captivity were

ways of measuring wealth and power because the number of staff and family size were the

manifestations of patriarchy.

Gutiérrez, however, places a greater emphasis on the change of marriage as an institution

overtime thus overlooking the more nuanced analysis provided by Brooks. When it comes to

comparing sexuality and marriage, Gutiérrez has an easier time depicting the promiscuity of the

Pueblo tribes prior to and during the Franciscan missions. As he states, “Traditionally, men spun,

wove, hunted, and protected the community. Women cared for hearth and home and undertook

all building constructions.” Spanish missionaries and eventually colonists believed this structure

needed refinement. Before the friars entered the borderlands women were able to use sex as a

weapon, and in intertribal affairs as a diplomatic outreach. Once missions were established,

European-Christian teachings and moral suasion of monogamy and fidelity were instilled into the

minds of the youth thus fundamentally changing how Natives looked at sexuality. This change

of course took many generations as the allure of the Natives overcame even the oaths of friars.

Women held a means to power and influence when they controlled sexual relations. Once they

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lost this small grain of power they lost to men their rights to land and control over their own

children. Essentially sex was a form of gender politics and the change in this affected tribal

politics, the social network of neighboring tribes, and gender roles all at once. The power

vacuum created by this change in the system allowed for missionaries to interdict their teachings

and use Christian fundamentals as more than religious affirmations but as a form of state control

by the state. The paradox of this was how the Spanish had worked adamantly to remove the

Moors from Iberia just decades before the Friars set out to the new world periphery. Though this

connection is not touched by either monograph, there is certainly an immense field of religion-

controlled state entities to be studied at some point with this period.

The religious invasion pushed for changes in labor, local chief autonomy, and day-to-day

livelihood. Such divisive changes culminated in the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. By 1692 when the

Spanish began their reconquista, the new powers at be realized certain parts of the Pueblo culture

could not, or rather, should not be changed. Land rights and religion were largely recognized by

the new Spanish authorities in Sante Fe and relations between the Natives and their Spanish

neighbors remained stagnant with few uprisings into the latter eighteenth century. Gender roles

in infrastructure maintenance moved to mirror the Anglo ideas of what was most proper. An

irony of the Franciscan attempt to mold the Pueblo societies was that Spanish and Native men

negotiated interdependency and maintained honor by “acknowledging the exchangeability of

their women and children.” Brooks expounds at length the role intermarriages played in initial

contacts. Brooks realizes how war and gift exchange were used to meet the same goals and this

involved women on what may seen as a violation of human rights today. Then, Brooks and

Gutiérrez maintain, this was just not the case.

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 Both authors see the invasion of the United States in 1846 as a pivotal spot in the history

of what would become New Mexico. Capitalist markets and the expansion of American societal

norms did not fall to natives’ intransigence as they had to the Spanish. The authors seem to hint

that the American take over, however, did allow some cultural aspects to live on though it is

unclear to this reader what these aspects were other than the kinship slavery system. The

American aim, Brooks asserts, was to replace kinship with state sponsored individual autonomy.

This forced change allowed tribes to be “rounded up” in the latter nineteenth century rather

easily. However, since the narratives end with the American appearance there remains many

unanswered questions over whether the United States would learn from the Spanish model.

Brooks and Gutiérrez wrote on the Spanish borderlands in social history differently than

many other scholars have. To this end, they each deserve recognition. The only reservations on

taking some of their work, especially Gutiérrez would be using as much speculation as they did

in analyzing sources. Of course, this cannot be avoided especially when working with this era of

history so it is largely a moot point. That the authors were able to take their readers into a

localized cultural and societal study with as little as they had to work with is a crowning

achievement for scholarship.