The first real information on trade, as such, also comes from the Espejo documents where we are told that at Acoma the Querechos (probably, Navajo) bring "...salt, game, such as deer, rabbits and hares, tanned deer skins, and other things with which the government pays them" (Bolton 1908:183).
Presumably, some of the earlier Spanish expeditions had carried trinkets of various sorts for trade to the Indians, but it is not until 1598 when Don Juan de Onate undertook the permanent settlement of New Mexico that we have adequate records of such goods, together with inventories of supplies and equipment taken to implement the settlement.
To barter with the Indians Onate included beads, combs, Bohemian knives, scissors, mirrors, shoemaker's needles, glass earrings, hawksbells, 680 medals of alloy, rings, thimbles, rosaries, necklaces, amulets, Texcoco clay whistles, glass buttons, small flutes, awls, and Paris trumpets. The only textile materials specifically indicated for barter were blue and white Castillian thread, Portuguese thread, fine yarn, and nine small hats (Hammond and Rey I953:199-308).
In quibbling detail, the final inspection of the Onate party gives an insight into what the Spanish deemed necessary to provision the new colony. It should also destroy the illusion that the Spanish depended almost entirely on pueblo weaving to supply their clothing needs.
In 1598 there were 624 yards of cloth plus three rolls of unspecified length and 50 garments for people in Onates service alone (Hammond and Rey 1953:199-308). In the 1600 resupply there were 1,833 yards of cloth plus 170 pieces of cloth, and 545 ready-made garments. The cloth included various kinds of cottons and woolens produced in Mexico such as Campeche manta, black taffeta, "native London Cloth," sack cloth and others of mixed materials and various colors. Imported cloths included yellow, green, and iridescent taffeta from China, Holland and Rouen linen, fine Florence cloth, damask, satin, fine buckram, Monk's cloth, silk grosgrain, and Sinamay. There was also an assortment of blankets, sheets, table cloths, napkins, towels as well as yarn, Chinese braid, Portuguese thread, and spun silk in all colors (Hammond and Rey 1953:199-308). The triennial and later annual supply trains from Mexico each included large supplies of cloth. Some cloth was also supplied by the Pueblos.
If the Pueblo weavers were not the major suppliers of cloth for Spanish needs, what was the significance of their loom products in the Spanish economy? Primarily, Pueblo woven mantas served as tribute, that is, a form of taxation, reluctantly paid to the Spanish Crown or to the religious, theoretically for services rendered to the Pueblos. The 1601 Valverde interrogation into conditions in New Mexico states that "...every year armed soldiers and even the governor go in person from house to house to collect a blanket from each house or each Indian... The Indians, because of their poverty, part with these things with much feeling" (Hammond and Rey 1953: 667). Sometimes blankets were taken by force leaving their owners naked.
Slightly later Pueblo mantas had become a form of currency. In 1613, Governor Pedro de Peralta issued decrees establishing payment for damages to Indians by the Spanish citizens in the form of mantas and maize. He fined one ecomendero 50 mantas and 50 fanegas of maize for various offenses, whereupon "...seeing that the governor actually executed the decrees, the Indians, greedy for mantas, provoked and invited the Spaniards to commit acts of violence in order to claim damages" (Scholes 1937:40). Still later, because of the scarcity of metallic coin in New Mexico in the late 1700s, the manta became one of the items recognized as "pesos of the country" with a value equivalent to 32 cuartillos of aquardiente at El Paso." (Thomas 1932:113-114)
Pueblo mantas did enter into trade and commerce as well.
Francisco de Baeza was Governor of New Mexico in the middle 1630s. "He imposed a heavy burden of labor on the Indians...in all the pueblos the Indians were forced to weave and paint great quantities of mantas, bunting, and hangings... The prices paid for the finished goods represented only one-sixth or one-eighth of the current local values. By the end of 1636 Baeza had accumulated such large quantities of pinon, hides, and locally manufactured goods that nine wagon loads were made ready for transportation to New Spain" (Scholes 1937:107).The fate of those mantas specifically collected as tribute is not clear, but it is likely that they, like those woven by forced labor in the workshops, were sold in New Spain.
Long before Pueblo woven goods entered into Spanish commerce, however, they had been part of a trading pattern between the Pueblos and the buffalo hunting tribes of the Great Plains. During the Valverde investigations of 1601 Joseph Brondate testified that: "The Vaqueros come from the Buffalo Plains, which are located forty or fifty leagues from the camp. They come to the pueblos to trade meat, skins, tallow, and fat. They transport all this by loading on dogs not much larger than water spaniels, which they have for this purpose and for carrying their tents. Most of the dogs are very white, others have black spots. The Indians pitch their tents, carried on the backs of the dogs, about three or four hundred paces from the pueblos, and the natives from the neighborhood come there to trade maize and blankets to the Vaquero Apaches, who on such occasions gather there to the number of four or five hundred..." (Hammond and Rey 1953: 660-661).
Throughout the Spanish colonies in the New World, it was common practice to introduce sheep to provide wool and looms for weaving it into cloth and blankets to meet the everyday requirements of the Spanish colonists. From shortly after the beginning of colonization in 1598 the Spanish in New Mexico appear to have carried on weaving on the horizontal treadle loom. There is no reason to think that looms as such were transported from Mexico, but the knowledge of building and using them together with the sheep to supply them is evident. When the missions were established in the 1620s, sheep were given to the Pueblos and one of the duties of the friars was to train the Pueblos to weave in wool as they had in cotton (Towne and Wentworth 194-5: 29-30). Whatever the original intent of the introduction of sheep and looms, commercial weaving very soon became a reality. When Luis de Rosas followed Baezas as governor in 1637, he also followed his example of exploitation of the Pueblos. However, he went a step further by establishing a workshop in Santa Fe. To supply the workshop and to give himself a greater monoploy on textile trade, Rosas siezed looms (telarillos, i.e.big looms) from private citizens and used both Indian and Spanish labor (Scholes 1937:147). By 1639 Rosas had accumulated enough goods to make a shipment to Parral, Chihuahua, which included 19 pieces of Sayal, a coarse woolen cloth, each 100 varas (about 92 yards) in length, which could only have been woven on the treadle loom with warp and cloth beams. In addition to the Sayal, there were 49 wall hangings, 126 mantas, 350 large blankets, and miscellaneous other woven items (Bloom 1935:244-245). Thus, whether they wished it or not, both Pueblos and Spanish were involved in the production and trade of textiles early in the 17th century.
It is not known precisely when the Navajo learned to weave, but they began to acquire sheep about 1640 in raids along the Rio Grande in retaliation for slaving raids by the Spanish (Worcester 1951:l06), raids which increased throughout the l660s (Hackett III 1937:302). During the same period of time a number of Pueblos fleeing the Spanish in the Rio Grande Valley found refuge among the Navajo. It is probable that these refugees taught the Navajo to weave sometime in the latter half of the l7th century, before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, for in 1706, less than l0 years after the revolt was finally over, the Navajo had already made weaving a cottage industry and were actively trading their surplus woven goods to both the Pueblos and the Spanish settlers. Two documents make this clear.
In 1706 Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdez stated that the Navajo "...cultivate the soil with great industry, sowing corn, beans, squash, and other seeds, such as those of chile, which they use, having found them in the towns of our Christian Indians of this Kingdom. Yet this is nothing new among these Apaches, for whenever they are sedentary they do the same things. They make their cloths of wool and cotton, sowing the latter and obtaining the former from the flocks which they raise" (Hackett III 1937:382). The Rabal Document is the report of an interrogation of a number of persons who had visited the Navajo country in the period between 1706 and 1745 (Hill 1940:400-440). The report makes it clear that as early as 1706 the Navajo were exchanging basketry, leather, and woven goods, both of wool and cotton, to Pueblos and Spanish for other articles which they needed. While some of the exchange took place in the camps of the Navajo, it is also evident that the Navajo were attending the trade fairs with their goods. Thus it would appear that the Navajo had mastered weaving during the last half of the l7th century, for by the beginning of the l8th they had embarked on the textile trade in which they became an important factor during the l9th century.
Throughout the l7th century New Mexico was a Mission field and the Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley had been forced to contribute their share of woven goods as taxation to their Spanish overlords. After the Pueblo Revolt and the Spanish Reconquest, New Mexico became a Crown Colony. By 1744 the Spanish settlers in "the Villa of Albuquerque and village of Atrisco" in the Rio Abajo appear to have established weaving centers. "Both together have something more than a hundred families who are employed in planting and weaving hose and blankets..." (Hackett III 1937:400). The Pueblo Indians became citizens. Nevertheless, during the mid-1700s the Pueblos were still being given wool by the governors and other civilian officials and forced to process the wool and weave hundreds of blankets, and knit quantities of stockings which were then disposed of by the government officials (Hackett III 1937:400-485). The western Pueblos carried on a healthy trade with the tribes living farther west and south. In l776, Sedelmayr reported that: "The...Moquis, who go at times to trade with the Cocomaricopas of the Colorado...went into temporary camps to trade with them..." (Ives 1939:108-1l2). This trade continued into the last half of the l8th century for the Anza and Garcia diaries of 1774 and Font's diaries of 1775 and 1776 make it clear that the Papagos and Yumas living along the Gila and lower Colorado rivers and the Yavapai of western Arizona wore blankets of black, blue, and white stripes, and blue cloth which they obtained from the Moqui who go at times in trade through the Mojaves (Bolton 1930:47, 167; 320). Some of the Yuma traded their blankets to the Spanish soldiers for glass beads (Bolton 1930:107).
Ugarte in 1786 proposed to Anza that the colonists be encouraged to deal fairly in trade with the Navajo, not to cheat too much, and proposed that tariff regulations be drawn up to that effect (Thomas 1932:357). He also proposed that the Spanish intermarry with Navajo women, especially with the daughters of chiefs to bind them closely to the Spanish: "Perhaps the frequency with which our Christian Indians go and come to their (Navajo) rancherias and they respectively to the pueblos for reasons of commerce, will produce the desire, as well as the protection with which they may see that your lordship safeguards these marriages dispensing to those who contract them all the advantages and benefactions possible in the places which they might elect for their establishment and residence" (Thomas 1932:357).
The attempt to encourage Navajo weaving continued for in 1788 Vicente Troncoso escorted Antonio El Pinto, a Navajo headman just released from prison, to his village. Troncoso noted that the Navajo women "...make the best and finest sarapes that are known, blankets, wraps, cotton cloth, sashes and other (things) for their dress and for sale.... (A) proposition I made them...in order to stimulate them more to work with the interest it will produce for them, which is in essence, their sarapes being so appreciated even by the presidial officers, they might make as much as they can until the departure of the wagon train (to Chihuahua), they might deliver them to me so that I might send them to be sold and with the proceeds bring them spun wool of several colors in order that with these making them more showy they would command a better price and (be of) equal utility, it seeming to them very well that my plan be executed..." (Correll, I, 1979:85-87). The same document shows the Navajo using imported cloth of cochineal or scarlet some of which appears to have been raveled and rewoven since "...their dress is of two blankets of black wool with a colored (word illegible) border..." (Correll, I, 1979:85-87).
Only seven years later (1795) Governor Chacon remarked that the Navajo "...work their wool with more delicacy and taste than the Spaniards" (Bloom 1927:233). At any rate, specimens recovered from Massacre Cave show that by 1804 raveled cloth -- bayeta -- was being rewoven in fine Navajo textiles (Amsden 1934:140). The source of this early bayeta is unknown but in being a thin-threaded worsted yarn, dyed with lac, rather than a thick-threaded woolen yarn dyed with cochineal, it does not correspond to traditional English baize (Wheat 1984:17). Other early raveled yarns may well have come from bayeta /EM> or bayetones woven in the Rio Grande Valley (Bailey and Haggard 1942:35, 223).
During the late 18th century there appears to have been in the Rio Abajo a continuation of the weaving industry of the mid-1700s for the census of 1790 lists nearly 100 professional weavers supported by 37 carders and 16 spinners all in the vicinity of Albuquerque (Olmstead 1975). Furthermore, many of the haciendas and estancias of the lower Rio Grande Valley had some weavers. By contrast there were listed for the entire Rio Arriba only one carder and two weavers, all resident in Santa Fe (Olmstead 1975).
In August, 1803, Governor Chacon wrote that:
"With respect to arts and trades, it may be said with propriety that there are none in this Province, there being no apprenticeship, official examination for master workman, any formality of trades-unions, or other things customary in all parts, but necessity and the natural industry of these inhabitants has led them to exercise some, for example weaving in wool.... The first work on racks narrow bayetones (Thick napped baize), long fresadas (blankets), Sarapes, bayetas (thin unnapped baize), sayal (sackcloth) and gergo (carpeting) which weaves they color with indigo and Brazil nut which they import from the outer country, and with some stains and herbs which they know. From cotton they make a kind of domestic sheeting (manta)..." (Bloom 1927:233-234).
Because of the poor state of Spanish weaving, especially in the Rio Arriba, the government sent, in 1807, Don Ignacio Bazan and his brother Juan from Mexico City to Santa Fe to instruct the local weavers in proper methods of spinning, designing, and weaving, both in wool and in cotton (SANM:l5,l6).
Five years later, the Exposicion of Don Pedro Bautista Pino presents a clear picture of the situation in 1812 (Bailey and Haggard 1942). According to Pino:
"There is no manufacturing in the Province of New Mexico other than that of wool and cotton. Necessity has compelled the people to weave baize (bayetones), serge, blankets, quilts, zarapes (sic), baize, sackcloth, coarse frieze, cotton hose, and table cloths.... Within recent years we have witnessed the introduction of fine looms for cotton by an expert sent there by the government. He has given instruction to many people in a remarkably short time. Although I call this fine weaving, I do so with reference to that which was formerly woven, for this fine cloth is hardly better than coarse goods in comparison with the fine materials from China, with which we are familiar.... Traders are compelled to export products at their own risk and expense and to seek purchasers in other provinces. In order to go from this province to others it is necessary to join a caravan of 500 or more men; for whoever dares to go out with a smaller number is in great danger... These caravans generally congregate in the month of November" (Bailey and Haggard 1942:35- 36).
Within a relatively short period of time after the Bazan brothers had completed their training, Spanish weaving had become even more important to the regional economy. New weaving centers were developed in the Rio Arriba to go along with those of the Rio Abajo, and a major trade in woolen textiles developed. New markets were found and old ones expanded, and while coarse woolen cloth of various kinds continued to be made, it was the blanket in all its varieties which became the major item of trade.
Gregg gives a good picture of blankets and the trade:
"The New Mexicans are celebrated for the manufacture of coarse blankets, which is an article of considerable traffic between them and the southern provinces, as also with the neighboring Indians, and on some occasions with the United States. The finer articles are curiously woven in handsome figures of various colors. These are of different qualities, the most ordinary being valued at about two dollars apiece, while those of the finest texture, especially their imitations of the Sarape Navajo, will sell for twenty dollars or more. There have also been made in New Mexico a few imitations of the Sarape Saltillero , -- the blanket of Saltillo, a city of the south celebrated for the manufacture of the most splendid fancy blankets, singularly figured with all the colors of the rainbow. These are often sold for more than fifty dollars each" (Gregg 1954:147-148).
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