At Santa Fe during the initial meeting of the Western History Association, in 1961, France V. Scholes, dean of the Borderlanders, in reviewing the historiography of that segment of American history, noted that the narrative story has been well told but called attention to the fact that the field was in serious need of institutional studies, beyond that of the mission. Professor Moorhead has answered that challenge for one of the key institutions of the northern frontier of New Spain, and done so with skill and much insight.
Part I of his study traces the “Historical Evolution” of the presidio from the years of the Chichimeco War of the sixteenth into the busy decades of the later eighteenth century, when it became the major agency of Spanish control in the north. The presidio had already been “Americanized” by the time of the Great Northern Revolt, but in the eighteenth century the development was even more pronounced. Using the Reglamentos of 1729 and 1772, resulting from the visitations of Pedro de Rivera and the Marqués de Rubí, respectively, the various reforms of Teodoro de Croix, the Instrucción of 1786 (Bernardo de Gálvez), and finally the policies of later Commandants of Provincias Internas, Moorhead builds his story, evaluating the decrees and policies themselves and the record of their implementation.
Valuable as is this historical “half” of the study, Part II (“Descriptive Analysis”) is even more so; the study revolves around topical heads. “The Fort” sketches the physical evolution of the presidio, from a quasi-medieval castle-fortress to a complex of less imposing but infinitely more practical flat structures, constructed of the materials of the environment and better adapted to protect against a largely nomadic enemy. “The Presidiai Company” is a fine piece of social history, analyzing as it does the make-up of the soldier force, in which pure-blood Spaniards were definitely in the small minority. The author has included in this chapter much information on the equipment of the frontier soldier, arms and armor, with a most enlightening section on his leather coat, the cuero. The discussion of “The Payroll” touches the economy of the frontier, as well as the reimbursement of the frontier soldiery. Surprisingly, the hundreds of thousands of pesos which annually supported the defense in the north very regularly benefited the farther north very little; a large measure of the supplies needed, in clothing, food, and other necessities, had to be purchased in the nearer interior. The patterns of payment, the role of the presidio captains, and connected matters receive considerable treatment. In time and with official encouragement the presidios became nuclei of “Civilian Settlement,” not only for the families of the garrisons, but also for other emigrants; many modern northern towns go back to presidio beginnings. “The Indian Reservation” study shows the Spaniards well ahead of their times in experimentation with this system of control; the presidio, especially in regard to the Apaches, was an early Indian agency. In his concluding pages Professor Moorhead offers the following short definition of the presidio: “It was first and foremost a garrisoned fort presiding over a military district.... It was most often situated strategically in hostile terrain, forming an enclave of Spanish civilization and Christianity.... Its garrison was a company of quasi-regular troops, paid by the royal treasury but regulated by special ordinances, armed and mounted for the peculiar contingencies of Indian warfare, and recruited increasingly from the frontier region itself.”
Included are twenty-one plates reproducing the plans of the presidios drawn by José Urrutia during the Rubí visitation; and five excellent maps, detailing, by period, the geographic picture of the northern frontier defense line. In every way this book is a major contribution to Rorderland studies—widely researched, presented in most orderly fashion, and written in a clear and very readable style. Later institutional historians of the Borderlands have a fine model to match.
