Presentations
I love speaking to groups of people. Each of the following make for great one or two hour presentations or classes. Pre-fabricated powerpoint presentations, and their accompanying handouts are available for your group. If you'd like to know more about any of these topics, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Eighteenth-Century Adventures and Misadventures along El Camino Real
Jacinto Sánchez de Iñigo, Ysidro Sánchez Bañales, and Francisco Xavier Fragoso all traveled the Camino Real during the eighteenth century and left a story behind. Each of them was accused of a crime (two robberies and one insubordination) and all of them were required to testify on their own behalf in a New Mexican court. Their recorded testimonies, along with those of their accusers and various witnesses, offer detailed if not always coherent accounts of their adventures and misadventures. In two cases, the acting judge—usually the governor of the moment—handed down a sentence or an order. In the earliest case, however, the accusation was apparently dropped. All three cases offer insight into Spanish colonial justice and the not always exemplary behavior of presidio soldiers, as well as vignettes of conditions and interactions along the Camino Real and its arteries.
Spanish Colonial Women: Husbands & Wives & Spanish Law in New Mexico
Women’s history is full of surprises. For instance, during the Spanish Colonial period, Spanish women enjoyed various kinds of protection under the law for which their English-speaking counterparts had to wait nearly two hundred years. Drawing from original historic documents historian, Linda Tigges will share stories of women who exercised their legal rights in eighteenth century New Mexico, protecting themselves from a breach of promise for marriage, bad marriages, loss of inheritance, and aggressive neighbors.
Acequias Complaints in Albuquerque and the Rio Abajo
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The Inquisition in Early Eighteenth Century New Mexico
The Holy Office of the Inquisition returned to New Mexico with investigations in to bigamy, concubinage, and other aspects of immoral behavior of the new Mexicans. Described in this class are a bigamy case involving testimony from both New Mexico and Spain, threatened ex-communication for braiding of hair, and a minor case of sexual witchcraft. The class will include a discussion of Inquisition law and an exercise in trying a bigamy case.
Why Money is Better than Barter: Trade in Early and mid-Eighteenth Century Northern New Mexico
When the Spanish returned to New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt, they were confronted by hostile Indians, disease, and an inhospitable landscape. Because there was almost no coinage in the colony, a system of barter developed allowing them to trade with the Plains Indians, the Pueblos and the merchants of Chihuahua. Linda Tigges, a Casa San Ysidro docent, will use original historic documents to describe how barter works and why it entangled so many traders in arguments and lawsuits
The Santa Fe Presidio and the Royal Horse Herds
The soldiers of the Spanish presidio needed large horse herds to combat the very effective horse soldiers of the hostile Indians, in particular the Comanche and the Apache. The large horse herds, necessitating large pastures and abundant water. This presentation describes the efforts of the presidio generals and officers in finding pastures and water when much of the pasture land hand been granted to the Spanish Colonists or was held by the Pueblo Indians.