The Function of the Market in Changing Economic Structures in the Mission Communities of Pimería Alta, 1768-1821

Abstract

The initial thrust of Spanish conquest and colonization in Northwest Mexico, as throughout the great Chichimec frontier, was centered in the mission. Under the terms of thepatronato real, the mission served as an instrument of Spanish imperial policy, aimed to accomplish the pacification and acculturation to Christian and Hispanic norms of society, of the semi-nomadic peoples who occupied the vast regions of mountain barrancas, mesas and valleys, coastal plains and desert lands to the north of the Mesoamerican civilizations.The mission communities were designed to place the Indians in fixed settlements, thereby preparing the way for civil colonization and further exploitation of the potential riches of these remote dominions of the Kingdom of Castile. The Indians gathered into the missions represented to the Crown a force for productivity as field and mine laborers. Although mission Indians were exempt from tribute, in the Northwest, the surplus produce from mission lands contributed to the economy of the region; and, as early as the seventeenth century, mission Indians appeared in the mines of Sonora and Chihuahua.