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| Josefa Antonia de Pas
Bustillos y Ontiveros Matriarch
of the Bustos Family of Colonial New Mexico
by José Antonio Esquibel
Part 1 of 2 |
From the New Mexico Genealogist, March 1998,
p. 19-24. Included in a series of talks
entitled "The Founding Mothers of New Mexico."
This paper was originally presented under the title "The
History of a Spanish Matriarch of Eighteenth Century Northern
New Mexico: Josefa Antonia de Pas Bustillos y Ontiveros"
at the Annual Conference of the Historical Society of
New Mexico, 20 April 1996, in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Author
José Antonio Esquibel is a New Mexico genealogist,
historian, and a co-author of The Royal Road: El Camino
Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe [Albuquerque, University
of New Mexico Press, 1998]. Esquibel hosts a highly informative
web site, Beyond
Origins of New Mexico Families. |
On
the third day of April 1731, Josefa de Pas Bustillos y Ontiveros,
then a woman of forty-seven years of age and a resident
of La Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz, took pen and ink and set
these words to paper: I, Josefa
de Ontiberos, one of the settlers from Mexico City and
a resident of La Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz, appear before
your Excellency in due form, according to the law, and
in favor to my right I say that I have presented to Lieutenant
Domingo Vijil a petition demanding a parcel of land which
today is possessed by Pascuala de la Concepcion, widow
of don Tomas de Herrera, which was given to me in the
name of his majesty as a settler in this kingdom, and
which was sold without my consent by Juan de Pas Bustillos,
asking in said petition that the deed of sale of the said
lands be manifested to me in order that in view thereof
I might claim what would be rightfully mine. ... I ask
and request with supplication to your Excellency that
you be pleased to do and determine as I have asked because
it is just, and I swear in due form that this, my petition,
is not from malice, etc.
Josefa de Ontiberos (rubric) 1
These words were written
by a woman of determination with the knowledge and pride
of having the royal privileges of a pobladora,
a colonizer and settler of the Spanish frontier. Generally
in our written histories men are remembered for their
deeds in relation to the events of their surrounding situation
and era. These words were written by a woman of determination
with the knowledge and pride of having the royal privileges
of a pobladora, a colonizer and settler of the Spanish
frontier. Generally in our written histories men are remembered
for their deeds in relation to the events of their surrounding
situation and era.
Women appear less frequently
in historical documents, and more often then not they
are remembered in relationship to other people, particularly
men, as daughters, wives, and/or mothers. This is certainly
reflected in the available historical documentation concerning
Josefa Antonia de Pas Bustillos y Ontiveros which span
from 1693 until her death in 1772. Still, as an able and
strongly independent woman she was unlike many other women
of her time.
Josefa was born of a Creolle
[European, born in the Americas] family of Spanish descent
in 1684.2 Her paternal grandparents were Mexico
City residents don Francisco de Pas Bustillos and doña
Antonia de Cervantes. Extremely little is known about
this couple except they had two known sons, Juan de Pas
Bustillos (b. ca. 1664) and Antonio Xavier de Pas Bustillos,
the father of Josefa.3 The Pas Bustillos y
Ontiveros family were at least second generation residents
of Mexico City. The earliest members of this family appear
to have been don Juan de Pas Bustillos and doña
Luisa de Alcantara Ontiveros whose daughter, Juana de
Ontiveros, was married at the Cathedral of Mexico City
in September 1644. The exact relationship of this couple
to Josefa Antonia de Pas Bustillos y Ontiveros is still
unclear.
When Josefa was baptized,
her uncle, twenty year old Juan de Pas Bustillos, was
her padrino, her godfather. Juan accepted the responsibility
of ensuring that Josefa was raised in the Catholic faith,
including the obligation to become her caretaker if her
parents were to die while she was a child. It was an obligation
which he would take very earnestly.
The earliest cultural influences
on Josefa came from her childhood experiences as a resident
of Mexico City, the viceregal capital of Nueva España.
Religiosity was a dominant factor of the culture. This
was reflected in the many churches of Mexico City and
the expression of sincere devotion by its citizens. As
a young child, Josefa would have attended mass regularly
with her parents, very likely at the cathedral where several
members of the Pas Bustillos family were parishioners.
She received her early instruction in the Catholic faith
from her family and learned much by witnessing the solemn
expression of this faith in the many religious ceremonies
at church and in public. In particular, the penitential
processions of the numerous hermandades (brotherhoods),
through the city streets during the seven days prior to
Easter Sunday would have made a lasting impression on
any person, particularly a child.4 Indeed,
many of Josefa's descendants would themselves be members
of hermandades and participate in penitential rites
during Holy Week in northern New Mexico. Josefa's grandparents
had been residents of the Calle de Vergara in Mexico City.
She herself was born on Calle de Alameda, and her younger
brother, Antonio, was born on Calle de Reloj.5
To the east of the city lay Lake Texcoco where Josefa
may have played along its banks under the watchful eye
of a parent. There were several plazas in this large city,
but the very heart of activity was the Plaza Mayor, a
grand open space bounded on the north by the magnificent
Cathedral of Mexico City and to the east by the viceregal
palace. On the plaza, merchants would sell their wares
and food, especially meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains.
Certainly, Josefa walked on the Plaza Mayor, and on one
or more occasions watched with excitement as the viceroy
and his wife rode to or from the palace in their luxurious
carriage.
At about age six, Josefa
was one of many children of the city to live through the
disastrous events of 1691 which culminated in the tumult
of 1692. In June 1691, Mexico City and the surrounding
area received an extreme amount of rainfall, causing ravines
and dry stream beds to overflow. This was followed in
July by thirteen days of continuous rain which resulted
in the rising of the waters of Lake Texcoco to flood the
city. Streets became impassable and had to be navigated
by canoes. As the flood worsened with additional run-off
water from nearby mountains, buildings in the city collapsed
and the necessary supplies of firewood, meat and vegetables
became scarce. Many crops had failed and others could
not be harvested in August because of continued rainfall.
All residents, rich and poor, suffered the shortage of
food which hit Mexico City hard in September and continued
into the spring of 1692. The Pas Bustillos family members
undoubtedly did their best to provide for themselves in
this period of hardship which severely disturbed the usual
routine of life in the capital city. Much of the populace
grew extremely discontented and demanded that royal authorities
act to make food available in the city. This discontentment
erupted into protests and rioting which took place in
June 1692 with more than two hundred Indians attacking
the palace of the archbishop and the royal palace which
housed the viceroy.6 These horrendous events
may have had some influence on the decision of the Pas
Bustillos family to eventually enlist as colonists for
New Mexico. Certainly, these events became a memory which
Josefa would not forget, and the experience of hardship
prepared her for the hardship of frontier life in New
Mexico. By the age of nine, in 1693,
Josefa and her brother, Antonio, were part of the household
of their uncle Juan de Pas Bustillos.7 It would
appear that Josefa's parents were deceased at the time,
or in some other way absent from her life. Because her
uncle took his spiritual duty earnestly, she was brought
into his household.
In the previous year, Juan
had been married at the Cathedral of Mexico City to twenty-seven
year old Manuela Antonia de Alanis. The marriage took
place in September, only two months after the tumult of
1692. Sometime between July and September 1693, Pas Bustillos
with his wife, niece and nephew, had enlisted as colonists
for the restored realm of New Mexico.8 Whatever
their personal motivation, this was an opportunity to
serve the crown in exchange for being granted land and
obtaining all privileges, honors, and favors as pobladores,
colonizers and settlers of the frontier.
The call for colonizers
had been initiated in Mexico City by the viceroy of Nueva
España, the Conde de Galve. The news of the restoration
of New Mexico reached the viceregal capital in late November
1692 and spread quickly among the populace.9
The Pas Bustillos family very likely participated in the
public celebrations which took place across the whole
city.
Volunteers to help recolonize
New Mexico began to come forward, and the viceroy's own
initiative to provide compensation and supplies to prospective
colonists for their northward journey brought forth additional
families. In September 1693 a total of sixty–seven
families comprised of 235 people were situated just north
of the city at the encampment of Guadalupe.10
A muster roll of these families
provides us with the first historical record of Josefa
in which she is described as being nine years old with
a round face, slightly cross-eyed, and a short and turned
up nose. Brief descriptions were needed to physically
identify the colonists traveling into a dangerous frontier
region.11
Viceregal stipulations ensured
that only Españoles, people of Spanish descent,
were allowed to enlist as colonists for New Mexico. Church
records were consulted to verify that couples were indeed
legitimately married. The majority of the responding families
were of the tradesmen class—tailors, weavers, painters,
carpenters, stonemasons, and millers.12 The
occupation of Juan de Pas Bustillos in Mexico City is
not known, but in New Mexico he was a teacher and was
known to have kept school at Santa Fe in the early 1700s.13
Finally, after many delays, the long awaited day of departure
arrived. Josefa rode in a mule–drawn wagon with her
adopted family. The route north to New Mexico was to follow
the Camino Real to Querétaro, then to Zacatecas,
Cuencamé, the outpost of El Gallo, Parral, El Paso
del Norte, and finally Santa Fe. On the muster rolls of
families made near Zacatecas and Cerro Gordo during the
long journey, the Pas Bustillos surname was shortened
and recorded as Bustos, perhaps Bustíllos was actually
pronounced Bústillos which then became Bustos.14
Josefa, as a member of the
largest group of people to traverse the entire length
of the Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe, was one
of eighty-eight children, consisting of forty-one percent
of the entire colonizing expedition, who completed the
fifteen hundred mile trip.15 This must have
been a most memorable, exciting and challenging adventure
for young Josefa. With her family she lived on the Camino
Real for nine months. It was anticipated that the northward
journey would take only ninety days, but difficulties
caused the expedition to move much slower. Bonds were
formed among many families that would later be strengthened
in New Mexico by matrimonial alliances. It was during
this journey that Josefa very likely was introduced to
four year old Jose Ruiz de Valdes, who would later become
the father of her eldest son, and was himself the son
of fellow colonists Jose Ruiz de Valdes and Maria de Medina
Cabrera.16
In mid–June 1694, the
colonizing expedition arrived at Santa Fe to the early
morning welcome of the local citizens who themselves had
resettled the town six months earlier.17 The
new settlers came with the intent to stay and establish
a new lifestyle in the frontier. The Pas Bustillos family
resided in Santa Fe until April 1695 when the new Villa
de Santa Cruz de la Canada was founded specifically to
accommodate the families recruited at Mexico City. Juan
de Pas Bustillos, also known as Juan de Bustos, was granted
land in the Santa Cruz area by Governor don Diego de Vargas.18
At this time, Santa Cruz was the northern most settlement
in the Spanish Americas. Bustos and his family had adopted
a very challenging lifestyle which contrasted sharply
with that which they had in Mexico City.
Two years later this family was accounted
for as recipients of livestock distributed by Governor Vargas.19
The record of distribution identifies Josefa as a "daughter"
of Juan de Bustos and his wife Manuela Antonia. In time,
this family found it difficult to work the land, and it
is apparent that Bustos did not make a successful adjustment
from urban dweller to pioneer of the far northern frontier.
This was partly due to the ill health of Bustos who was
remembered as a sickly man.20 He was certainly
more attracted to the lifestyle offered at Santa Fe, where
he began to spend more time. The result was that in 1700
he sold his land in the Santa Cruz area to fellow Mexico
City colonist Tomas de Herrera y Sandoval and kept his permanent
residence at Santa Fe. 21
Indications are that Josefa remained in the Santa Cruz region,
perhaps living in the household of another family. At this
period she was a young woman of sixteen years of age, a
time when marriage was expected for most women. Eight years
later in 1708, still unmarried, Josefa gave birth to her
first known child, a son who was the namesake of her grandfather,
Francisco. There isno documentation preserved in the Spanish
Archives of New Mexico nor the Archives of the Archdiocese
of Santa Fe to provide us with details about the circumstances
which led to the birth of this child. Was Josefa raped,
or was she manipulated through the promise of marriage and
seduced, or did she take a young man as her lover? Whatever
the situation, the father's name was public knowledge. From
a later record we learn that he was nineteen year old Jose
Ruiz de Valdes whose family had also come from Mexico City
and settled in the Santa Cruz area.22 By impregnating
Josefa, Valdes had brought shame upon her and her family.
According to custom, some measures would have been taken
to restore her honor unless she herself was responsible
for her circumstance. For any number of reasons, the couple
never married. Either she did not wish to marry him, or
one or both of the families opposed the union. Curiously,
Valdes did not remain in Santa Cruz, but settled at El Paso
as a soldier and was married in October 1711 to Micaela
Lucero de Godoy.23 Perhaps he was exiled or his
family sent him away to keep him separated from Josefa.
No mention was made about his previous relations with her
during his prenuptial investigation. The
birth of Josefa's first child marked the beginning of
her life as a matriarch of a large family. Over the course
of the next fourteen years she gave birth to at least
five other children. The various surnames of her children
indicate they were born of different fathers whose identities
are not given in existing historical and sacramental records.
Her eldest son used the surname of Valdes y Bustos. Four
other sons and a daughter used the surnames of Bustillos,
Bustos, Ontiveros, Gonzalez, Gonzalez de la Rosa, and
de la Rosa interchangeably.
Although there were other women in New Mexico
who had children outside of marriage, Josefa de Ontiveros,
would become one of only a few New Mexico Spanish women
of her generation who founded and presided over a large
and extended family group. Other such notable women include
Juana Lujan, founder and matriarch of the prominent Gomez
del Castillo family of the San Ildefonso–Pojoaque area,
Josefa Baca, founder and matriarch of her own significant
branch of the Baca family of Rio Abajo, and her aunt Juana
Baca founder and matriarch of the Luna family of Rio Abajo
with a branch later settling in Abiquiu.24
These women were strongly independent
and managed their lives differently than the typical women
of their times. Not without difficulty, each was able to
successfully raise and provide for their natural children
without a husband; children who contributed positively to
the communities in which the lived. As adults, these children
appear to have not experienced any significant social stigma
due to their bastard status, and married into other prominent
Spanish families of New Mexico. These marriages formed valuable
kinship alliances between in-laws through compadrazgo relationships,
particularly between their single mothers and the parents
and siblings of their spouses. These
matriarchs remained connected to their communities and
were owners of land, having full knowledge of their rights
and privileges as "pobladoras", and they understood
the value of those rights. In this regard, they were not
women without means. Regardless of their lack of marital
status, they retained a measure of social status as individuals
endowed with the honors of settlers in the name of the
king. It was not necessary to have wealth, many possessions,
or a husband to keep and make use of these honors. Josefa
de Ontiveros and the small handful of other women like
her took full advantage of this as they balanced living
life on their own terms and maintaining enough of the
social precepts to not become outcasts. Their status as
unwed mothers did not impede the devout expression of
their religious faith and their duty to ensure that their
children and godchildren were raised and educated in the
Catholic tradition.
Between 1719 and 1749 the
name of Josefa de Ontiveros, also referred to as Josefa
de Bustos, was recorded in the church records of Santa
Cruz, Taos, San Juan de los Caballeros, San Ildefonso
and Nambe.25 She was the madrina for
at least 13 children, ten of them orphans. A few of those
orphans were probably adopted into her own household.
The remainder of this article was published in the New
Mexico Genealogist, June 1998, p. 71-75. |
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| 1Spanish
Archives of New Mexico, Series I (SANM I): 1076.
2Spanish
Archives of New Mexico, Series II (SANM II): 54c.
3Ibid. Jose Antonio Esquibel
and John B. Colligan, "The Spanish Recolonization
of New Mexico: An Account of the Families Recruited at
Mexico City in 1693," unpublished manuscript, 800+
pp.
4Diary entries by Juan Francisco
Gemelli Carreri made in early April 1697 provide one of
the few accounts of the penitential processions which
occurred in the days prior to Easter Sunday through the
streets of Mexico City. These very public ceremonies were
impressive. Most of Gemelli Carreri's diary entries are
brief, but with regard to the penitential processions
he provided additional details, including descriptions
of public self-flagellation. Many of the New Mexico colonists
recruited at Mexico City in 1693 were the principal settlers
of Santa Cruz de la Cañada from which many other
Spanish settlements in northern New Mexico sprang. Some
of the men of these families may have belonged to brotherhoods
in Mexico City and particpated in the yearly pentitential
processions, and could have been the earliest influence
in establishing the Penitentes of northern New Mexico.
Juan Francisco Gemelli Carreri, Viaje a la Nueve España
Tomos, traducido por José Maria de Agreda y Sanchez
(Mexico: Jorge Porrua SA, 1983), 102-105.
5SANM II: 54c.
6Carlos de Sigüenza y
Góngora, Alborto y Motin de Mexico del 8 de
Junio de 1692: Relación de don Carlos de Sigüenza
y Góngora en una carta dirigida al almirante don
Andres de Pez, ed. Irving A Leonard (Mexico City:
Talleres Graficos del Museo Nacional de Arqueologiz, Historia
y Etnografia, 1932).
7SANM II: 54c.
8Ibid. Juan de Pas Bustillos
and Manuela Antonia Alanis recorded banns of matrimony
at the Cathedral of Mexico City on 7 Sep 1692. Juan was
identified as a native of Mexico City and the son of Francisco
de Pas Busillos and doña Antonia de Cervantes.
Manuela Antonia was a native of the Valle de Islahuaca
and a resident of Mexico City since she was a child, but
her parents were not identified. The couple was married
on 14 Sep 1692.
9John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks
and Meredith D. Dodge, eds., J. Ignacio Avellaneda, Associate
Editor, Larry D. Miller, Assistant Editor, José
Antonio Esquibel, Research Consultant, To the Royal
Crown Restored: The Journal of Don Diego de Vargas, New
Mexico, 1692-94. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1995), 100-107.
10SANM II: 54c. Esquibel and
Colligan, "The Spanish Recolonization of New Mexico."
11 SANM II: 54c.
12J. Manuel Espinosa, Crusaders
of the Rio Grande: The Story of Don Diego de Vargas and
the Reconquest and Refounding of New Mexico (Chicago:
Institute of Jesuit History), 124. Jose Antonio Esquibel,
Remembrance/Recordacion: The Spanish Colonists that
Arrived in Santa Fe 12 June 1694 (Denver: Genealogical
Society of Hispanic America, 1994), 4, 19-28.
13SANM I: 1076.
14Esquibel and Colligan, "The
Spanish Recolonization of New Mexico"; Archivo General
de Nacion (AGN), Historia 39:1.
15Esquibel, Rememberance/Recordacion,
14.
16SANM II: 54c. Archives of
the Archdiocese of Santa Fe (AASF), DM 1723:6.
17Espinosa, Crusaders of
the Rio Grande, 188.
18SANM I: 678, 819, and 1076.
19SANM II: 65.
20SANM I: 1076.
21SANM I: 678 and 1076.
22AASF: DM 1723:6.
23AASF: DM 1711:17.
24Fray Angélico Chavez,
Origins of New Mexico Families in the Spanish Colonial
Period in Two Parts: The Seventeenth (1598-1693) and the
Eighteenth (1693-1821) Centuries (1954), Rpt. Santa
Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, (1993), 144, 187, 214-215.
Herencia, (Albuquerque: Hispanic Genealogical Research
Center of New Mexico) Vol. 2:2, July 1994, 19. Juana Baca,
matriarch of the Luna family, was actually a daughter
of Cristobal Baca and Ana Moreno de Lara. She was enumerated
in the household of her mother as an 18 year old in the
1692 census, El Paso district. See Kessell, Hendricks,
Dodge, eds. To the Royal Crown Restored, 62; Margaret
L. Buxton, The Other Luna Family: The Maternal Ancestry
of Miguel de San Juan," privately published,
1991 (copy available at the Albuquerque Public Library
Special Collections/ Genealogy Library); Rick Hendricks,
ed., John B. Colligan, compiler, New Mexico Prenuptial
Investigations from the Archivos Historicos del Arzobispado
de Durango, 1760-1799, 128, 133.
Juana Baca, matriarch of the Luna family, was actually a
daughter of Cristobal Baca and Ana Moreno de Lara. She was
enumerated in the household of her mother as an 18 year
old in the 1692 census, El Paso district. See Kessell, Hendricks,
Dodge, eds. To the Royal Crown Restored, 62; Margaret
L. Buxton, The Other Luna Family: The Maternal Ancestry
of Miguel de San Juan,", privately published, 1991
(copy available at the Albuquerque Public Library Special
Collections/ Genealogy Library); Rick Hendricks, ed., John
B. Colligan, compiler, New Mexico Prenuptial Investigations
from the Archivos Historicos del Arzobispado de Durango,
1760-1799, 128, 133.
25 Taos baptismal records: 30 July 1719, 13 Aug 1719, 18 Oct 1719, 2 Dec 1719, 20 Apr 1720, and 7 Jun 1720 and 25 Jun 1720; Nambé marriage records: 5 Mar 1723; San Ildefonso baptismal records: 15 Jan 1728; Santa Cruz baptisms: 24 Mar 1732, 1 May 1734, 15 May 1743, and 30 Mar 1749; San Juan de los Caballeros marriage records; 7 Oct 1743. |
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