An Untellable Tale: Recovering Indigenous Captivity in New Mexico (1852-1870)

Abstract

For captive Indigenous peoples enslaved in northern New Mexico in the latter part of the 1800s, all settler power structures were united in perpetuating captivity and colonizing enslaved Indigenous bodies: the state, the Catholic Church, and individual households. Using Catholic Church records and censuses, this study recovers twenty-three captives from three households whose true names and identities were subsumed by the dominant colonizing forces of Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Despite the lack of bodily autonomy, captives found opportunities to create society and connections of their own within their households, their neighborhoods, and with other Indigenous peoples, amplifying their own Indigenous identities. The use of record sources and genealogical research techniques in this study provides one way forward of decolonizing genealogy and family history. This research requires acknowledgement that ultimately the stories of the enslaved are untellable, as these sources are not of the captives’ society, culture, or making. However, my ancestors’ participation in the slave economy demands I make the attempt to tell this story.