The Xicaque before Spanish Rule in Leán y Mulia, Honduras

Abstract

Abstract In the late seventeenth century the Spanish colonial administration began to issue decrees that sought to implement the familiar colonial policies of entrada, reducción, and misión within an unconquered region of the Province of Honduras called by the Spanish Leán y Mulia. After a few short-lived settlements in the early part of the eighteenth century, a new wave of Franciscans began attempts to convert the Xicaque of Leán y Mulia in 1747–54. In 1751 the onset of a smallpox epidemic at the Franciscan misiones became the watershed event that defined subsequent interaction between the Spanish and the Xicaque and, because of this, defined Spanish policy within the region of Leán y Mulia. A fear of contracting the disease would subsequently linger in the memory of the Xicaque at the misiones and in Leán y Mulia. This dread of disease and sickness predetermined subsequent social relationships between the Xicaque and the Spanish settlers who sought their indoctrination and acculturation in subsequent decades of the eighteenth and nineteenth century with no success.