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rule. As time went on, the Indian admixture increased. The laws of the Indies provided that Spaniards and castes should not settle in the Indian towns and missions, on the theory that the association was bad for the Indian. Nevertheless, before the end of the eighteenth century many Spaniards, and especially the castes, settled in the Indian pueblos, where they gained possession of the Indian lands, and by getting the Indians in their debt, kept them in practical peonage. Similarly, the castes often got control of the pueblo government. The Indians were required by law to nominate their own "governors, governors," but in many cases the coyotes and mulattoes managed to secure the election.

Of all the elements in the population none was more unhappy than the genizaros, or Janissaries. These were Indians of various tribes of the plains, ransomed or captured in childhood, employed as servants, and Christianized. They were employed especially as scouts and as auxiliaries in campaigns, hence their name. They were an extraneous element in society, and they tended to segregate themselves from both Spaniards and Pueblos. Frequently they ran away. For these out

casts the missionaries in 1740 founded a mission

settlement at Thomé on the Río Grande, just below Isleta; others were founded later at Belén and Sabinal.

The river valleys of New Mexico were highly productive. Irrigation was commonly practiced. In the upper districts maize, wheat, cotton, garden truck, cattle, sheep, goats, horses, mules, and fowls were raised on a considerable scale. Sheep raising flourished especially in the north, and cattle abounded at Taos and Soledad. The Indians manufactured fabrics of cotton, wool, buffalo, deer, and rabbit hides. At Albuquerque woolen and cotton fabrics were woven by the Spaniards. At El Paso a fine acequia watered large fields of wheat and maize and vineyards which produced "fine wine in no way inferior to that of Spain." Some of the haciendas were large and productive. That of Captain Rubín de Celis, ten leagues below El Paso, had on it twenty Spanish families. The Treval hacienda, at Laguna, customarily planted two hundred fanegas (400 bushels) of wheat and three hundred fanegas of maize, all by means of tributary Indian labor.

At Taos annual fairs were held. Wild Indians brought captive children and buffalo and deer skins, to exchange for horses, mules, knives,

hatchets, and trinkets. The Moqui pueblos had a large commerce in cattle and fabrics with the surrounding tribes, particularly with the Yumas and Mojaves of the Colorado River. The Spaniards conducted Indian trade at long distances, making frequent or even annual expeditions to the Jumanos of central Texas, to the Pawnees and the Arapahoes beyond the Arkansas, and to the various tribes of the Utah Basin, as far as Lake Utah. The monopolistic system of Spain restricted external trade to narrow channels. The great commercial event of the year was the departure of the annual caravan of cattle, carts, and pack mules, bound for Chihuahua, whither exports were sent and whence manufactured articles were obtained.

In the eighteenth century the French of Louisiana began to smuggle into New Mexico much needed merchandise. After Louisiana passed into the hands of Spain, communication was opened with St. Louis, and trade with the Plains Indians increased. Early in the nineteenth century American traders and adventurers attempted to enter the country, but usually fell into Spanish prisons. In 1806 Zebulon Pike, the American explorer, was captured by Spaniards and taken to Santa Fé. To his American eye Santa Fé's one-story houses of

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thick adobe walls looked from a distance "like a fleet of flat-boats which are seen in the spring and fall seasons descending the Ohio. . . The public square is in the center of the town, on the north side of which is situated the palace or government house, with the quarters for the guards, etc. The other side of the square is occupied by the clergy and public officers. . . . The streets are very narrow, say, in general, twenty-five feet. The supposed population is 4500.”

When Mexico threw off the Spanish yoke in 1821, New Mexico became a province of Mexico, with a northern boundary at the forty-second parallel, including Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and most of Arizona. The exclusive policy of Spain was now relaxed, and American trappers and traders found free access. American pioneers like Kit Carson and Charles Bent adopted the country and married its daughters; and traders opened the great caravan trade from St. Louis to Santa Fé, thence to Chihuahua and to Los Angeles. When New Mexico passed into American hands the population had reached sixty thousand-a figure about equal to the total French population in North America at the end of the French régime.

CHAPTER VII

THE JESUITS ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE

On the Pacific slope the frontiers of effective settle ment marched northward by slow degrees into Arizona and Lower California. This advance was led throughout the seventeenth century by Spanish Jesuits, contemporaries of the better known Black Robes in Canada. Laboring in a much more propitious field, they were able to achieve more permanent results than their less numerous and less fortunate French brothers in the Canadian wilderness. The Jesuits on the Pacific slope made important contributions to civilization. A large part of the population in this area today has sprung from ancestors, on one side or the other, who got their first touch of European culture in the Jesuit missions and most of the towns and cities of today have grown up on the sites of early missions.

Missions were an integral part of Spain's scheme

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