The Administration of Law in Colonial New Mexico

Abstract

As a graduate student working on my dissertation research at the University of New Mexico, I became friends with a delightful gentleman, a retired engineer who had become fascinated with the genealogy of early New Mexico families. Each working day found us arriving early at the special collections area of the library, where we greeted one another and then settled in for several hours of research on our respective projects. This continued for some months, until one day-out of the blue-he eyed me from across the table and asked, Cutter, what are you working on? With puppy-dog enthusiasm and with all graduate-student earnestness, I explained to him my aim to illuminate how Spanish justice functioned in colonial New Mexico. Well, that should be easy, he quipped. They just lined 'em up and shot 'em. In retrospect, I am fairly certain that my friend meant to get a rise out of me-which he did. His remark, however, captures the essence of an all-too-common image of the Spanish colonial regime, one that depicts Spanish law as being inflexible, severe, and pitiless. This article presents another view of the Spanish colonial legal system, one that contrasts sharply with popular notions. The focus here is on New Mexico, a province on New Spain's far northern frontier, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spanish colonists brought with them to this rugged frontier setting a rich legal tradition, which served as the foundation for the provincial legal culture elaborated Charles R. Cutter is an associate professor of history at Purdue University. In 1992 he was elected to membership in the Instituto Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano and is the recipient of numerous research awards, including two Fulbright research grants and a grant from the program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and Education and the United States' Universities. Professor Cutter has written extensively on the legal history of colonial Mexico and the Borderlands, and his recent book, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810 (1995) won the Fray Francisco Atanasio Domifnguez Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico and the Presidio La Bahia Award from the Sons of the Republic of Texas. The author wishes to thank his colleagues at Purdue University, Michael A. Morrison and John L. Larson, for their encouragement and assistance in organizing a roundtable session on Borderlands history at the 1997 SHEAR conference.