Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. All were
reconnoitered by American mountain
men, whose home country was soon to
absorb the entire region.
American trappers and traders like
James Ohio Pattie and Kit Carson also
penetrated into Arizona, which had a few
Mexican settlements, mostly around Tubac
and Tucson. Not only were these settl-
ments frequently attacked by Apache, but
they had also suffered from the collapse of
the old mission system when the Mexican
government began an erratically applied
program to secularize mission lands. By
1831 Tucson’s total population was only
465 and Tubac’s 303—and the population
of pobladores in Arizona fell even further
during the next 17 years.
Some Mexicans became traders them-
selves, traveling to Missouri to buy manu-
factured goods, which they then brought
back to New Mexico and the neighboring
state of Chihuahua. But the larger flow of
people was from the United States to New
Mexico, and New Mexico tried to keep
them from staying when they arrived. The
example of Texas was all too evident:
American immigrants could easily grow to
outnumber the Mexicans. New Mexico
therefore took care to offer few land grants
to Americans and to be choosy about those
who were admitted. American squatterssometimes took up residence illegally, but
they tried to adopt Hispanic customs so as
to be less noticeable.
Trade and foreign contact were not
the only things that changed when Mexico
became independent. The Plan of Iguala
and the Constitution of 1824 both guaran-
teed racial equality, making it illegal to
oppress Native Americans simply because
of their race. The frontier provinces, with
their need to pull together, had long
enjoyed a relatively high degree of racial
egalitarianism, with racial intermarriage
common and people accepted as “Spanish”
(and now as “Mexican”) so long as they
adopted Hispanic culture—and especially
if they made money and rose in class.
Now the law supported this tendency.
On the other hand, New Mexican
society under Mexican rule was still high-
ly stratified by class. It became even more
so as the new abundance of manufactured
goods and trading wealth got concentrat-
ed in the hands of the rich landowners or
patrones, widening the gap between them
and the poor. Debt peonage, already in
place, increased, particularly through the
partido system that dominated sheep-
ranching. In this system, similar to share-
cropping, the herder cared for a rich man’s
flock in return for a cash advance and a
share, or partido, of the newborn sheep. In78 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Californios taunt a cornered bear for sport. (Library of Congress)