Slavery in New Mexico

The church on the plaza at San Miguel del Vado. San Miguel was established as a frontier town on the Pecos River and the Santa Fe Trail, about 50 miles southwest of Fort Union, to serve as a buffer against Indians from the Plains. The town was settled by genizaros, descendants of Indian slaves.

NPS Photos

Private Teofilo Martinez of the New Mexico Volunteers was stationed at Fort Union in 1864 when he met the woman who would become his wife. It was relatively unusual for a fort private to wed--the Army preferred soldiers to be bachelors. Even more unusual, his wife was a runaway slave. Even more unusual, she was of Hispano ethnicity, and had fled to the fort from her Indian captors.

The newly arrived Americans would discover that New Mexico had a long traditon of slavery in the territory--a tradition that cut across racial and ethnic boundaries in complex ways.

Ancient Antecedents

For years, Indian warfare between tribes had included the taking of human captives to keep as slaves or to sell in the New Mexico trading towns of Pecos or Taos. In medieval Europe, the Spanish and Muslims also took slaves in their fighting against each other. So when the Spanish arrived in North America, they began seizing Indians as enslaved captives--using them in silver mines, as shepherds or as household servants. Likewise, various tribes began seizing Hispanos and using them as slaves.

Slavery New Mexico-style was not the same as its namesake in the American South. The number of enslaved people in New Mexico was much lower as a portion of the overall population. And in New Mexico, most of the enslaved (or their offspring) eventually slipped back into mainstream society in one way or another. Whereas in the Deep South, enslaved African-Americans were consigned to slavery generation after generation.

The Genizaros

When Spanish raiders seized Indian captives, typically Navajos or Apaches, they were often brought into the captive family. Known as genizaros, the captives were usually kept as subservient members of the family. Historians have traced this tradition by researching church baptismal records, since the Spanish families typically gave the captives a Catholic upbringing.

The female genizaros generally became household servants. Young boys were often used as shepherds or ranch hands. Grown men were not generally taken as slaves, but were killed in battle. The taking of prisoners of war was not part of traditional combat in the Southwest.

The genizaros produced families of mixed ethnicity. Typically, they were able to advance their status beyond that of slave, but mainstream Hispanic society still looked down on them. The genizaros originated from various tribes that were hostile to one another, but rather than becoming enemies, they lived together peacefully in New Mexican society.

It was also difficult for the genizaros to acquire land. The Spanish established genizaro settlements at the edge of their frontier as buffers to protect the territory from Indian attacks. Towns such as Abiquiu, Belen and San Miguel del Vado started as such communities. San Miguel is about 50 miles west of Fort Union on the Santa Fe Trail and was the original port of entry for Santa Fe traders arriving in Mexico from Missouri.

These were dangerous places. But for genizaros settling there, it gave them a chance to own land, gain social status, and escape from the domination of the ruling Spanish class. Before the coming of the Americans, the Spanish used genizaros as frontier soldiers against the Indians. When Civil War erupted in New Mexico and the Union Army began recruiting soldiers locally, Company E of the First New Mexico Volunteers was recruited in Abiquiu and the nearby Chama Valley. Company E, which was mustered into service at Fort Union, was made up largely of genizaros.

 

Young captive living with the Apaches.

Arizona Historical Society
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Economics and Demographics

Slavery in New Mexico revolved around population trends and economic need. The Comanches and Kiowas, warlords of the Texas Panhandle and the nearby Plains, suffered steep, disease-induced population declines after contact with the Spanish and the Americans. So captives tended to be incorporated into their tribes.

The populations of pueblo-dwelling Indians also cratered after contact with the Spanish. So they often joined Hispano war parties in order to gain Ute or Navajo captives to boost their numbers. For their part, the Utes, native to much of Colorado, raided westward into the desert regions of the Great Basin to seize Paiutes as captives.

The Navajos often seized Apaches as captives, but the holding of slaves was not common among the Navajos. The Navajos were the only tribe in the Southwest able to maintain their population during the years of conflict with the U.S. Army. However, there was always a ready trading market in the Southwest for human captives. Enslaved captives could be sold or traded for horses or weapons, the two most important commodities.

As Anglo settlement of the west increased, some of them, too, became enslaved captives of various tribes. Some of the enslaved Hispanos and Anglos became guides, scouts and interpreters for the Army since they knew Indian ways and languages.

With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the arrival of the U.S. Army in the 1850s, economic growth blossomed in New Mexico. Hispanic sheep flocks expanded in response to growing trade, and slaving raids on the tribes partially filled the demand for more shepherd labor.

 

The Peons

About 20% of the captive labor used by Hispano families were fellow Hispanos. New Mexico had a well-entrenched system of peonage labor, with strong backing from the wealthy Hispanic establishment. Not technically slaves, the peons were poor laborers who were perpetually in debt to their patrons. They were obligated to labor for their masters as long as they were unable to pay off their debts. In some cases, poor laborers borrowed money to pay for expensive ceremonies in the Catholic church, such as marriages, baptisms or funerals.

Although New Mexican peonage was not based on race or ethnicity (peons and masters were all Hispanos), children of a peon inherited peonage status if the parents were unable to pay off their debt. When the U.S. Army began recruiting Hispanos for the Union war effort during the Civil War, it created tension with the patrons. The Army regarded the peons as free men able to enlist of their own free will, and the peons saw military service as a way to get out from under their peonage. The patrons viewed it as theft of their labor.

New Mexico peonage persisted throughout the Civil War years, until the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1867 outlawing indebted servitude.

 

U.S. Army officer James Carleton brought the first African American slaves into New Mexico Territory in the early 1850s.

Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA)
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By The Numbers

Population figures for enslaved people are hard to come by. But by any measure, the enslaved population in New Mexico was a tiny fraction of the enslaved African Americans in the American South.

The total population of New Mexico Territory at mid-century was about 100,000--about 60,000 Hispanos and some 40,000 Indians. There might have been as many as 4,000 enslaved Indians. Although another estimate suggests that one-third of the New Mexico population at the end of the 1700s were genizaros.

One source estimates the number of captive Hispanos across the entire Southwest at 5,000 from 1540 to 1820. Another estimate puts the number of enslaved Anglos at about 1,000 from 1860 to 1875. So enslaved individuals may have been on the order of about 10% of the population.

In contrast, in the American South in 1860, African American slaves were about one-third of the entire population--about 4 million slaves and 8 million whites.

There were 64 African American slaves in New Mexico in 1860, mainly the personal servants of U.S. Army officers, including some who served at Fort Union. The first African American slaves in New Mexico were imported in 1851 by Army officer James Carleton (who hailed from Maine and later commanded New Mexico's military operations during the Civil War). He sold the slaves to Territorial Governor William Lane.

Numeric data, as well as excellent background, comes from Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, by James F. Brooks and from Russell Magnaghi, "Plains Indians in New Mexico: the Genízaro Experience" in Great Plains Quarterly, Spring 1990.