1 Vandeusen

Indigenous Slavery’s Archive
in Seventeenth-Century Chile
Nancy E. van Deusen
Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article-pdf/101/1/1/847836/1vandeusen.pdf by UNIV CA DAVIS user on 21 April 2024

Abstract This article considers the creation and activation of certification documents codifying the capture-
event and moment of enslavement of Reche-Mapuche people during the Araucanian wars with Spanish
settlers in seventeenth-century Chile. Certification documents were normalized by the military bureaucracy
and activated by slave owners who subjected and maintained Reche-Mapuche men, women, and children in
bondage. These documents were foundational because they could reproduce what purportedly happened in
other documentary and oral forms and facilitated the circulation of essentialized truths about the enslave-
ment of individuals and about slavery writ large. In their legal petitions for freedom, Reche-Mapuche slaves
had to speak against the grain of these legal instrumenta, which expressed a legally enforceable act or action
as well as evidence of that action. Certification documents also had an archival afterlife following enactment
of the abolition of Indigenous slavery in 1679.
A s we navigate the “archival turn” in our historical investigations, no longer

do we consume “facticities” without questioning the processes involved in
document creation and why the papers we examine are present in repositories.1
Archives are now more commonly the subjects of ethnographic investigation as
we follow the lives led by paper repositories and the people who create them and
their place in the production of knowledge writ large. Although the term archive
has been approached in multiple ways, I follow philosopher Michel Foucault’s
definition of the archive as an expression of a larger “system of its enunciability”
that articulates the historical conditions that determine what is put in writing
and how documents function as a preserved discourse.2 A deep understanding
of archival production is integral not only to understanding the violence of
colonialism and slavery but also to fathoming the relationship between archives
and bondage, which often go hand in hand.3 Scholars working on Indigenous
I would like to acknowledge the suggestions made by Luis Miguel Glave Testino, Iman
Mansour, Joanne Rappaport, Preston Schiller, Daniel Stewart, Jaime Valenzuela Márquez,
and the two anonymous readers for HAHR. Research for this article was made possible by a
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant, 435-2018-0032.
1. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 32–33 (“facticities” on p. 33); Hull, “Documents and
Bureaucracy,” 253; Burns, Into the Archive; Premo, “Documented.”
2. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 129.
3. Stoler, “Colonial Archives,” 87–88.
Hispanic American Historical Review 101:1

doi 10.1215/00182168-8796451 Ó 2021 by Duke University Press
2 HAHR / February / van Deusen
slavery point to the purposeful inscription of specific ethnonyms in documents,

which relegated targeted Indigenous people into bellicose and rebellious ene-
mies therefore subject to slavery.4 More generally, research shows that absence
is often at the center of investigations into when people in bondage appear in
records and when they do not.5 Discussions of paucity, silence, and the need for
recoverability commonly appear in scholars’ considerations of the limitations

of slavery’s archive.6
How then, do scholars of Indigenous slavery respond to archival pleni-
tude?7 This article considers the creation, maintenance, and activation of
documents containing frequent references to Indigenous slaves and processes
of enslavement taking place in seventeenth-century Chile.8 Although consid-
ered by some to be an exception in the history of Indigenous slavery, which
many assume ended in Spanish America following the passage of the New Laws
of 1542, Indigenous slavery in Chile matters in other ways. Centering a
peripheral economic and political arena such as Chile is crucial for expanding
our comparative knowledge of the techniques of Indigenous slavery’s gover-
nance in different arenas of the Spanish empire, even if the procedures of rule
and forms of written expression differed. Enslavement of the Reche-Mapuche
people during the Araucanian wars was legalized in 1608 and sanctioned by the
Spanish crown until 1674, although it was practiced long before and after these
royal decrees were enacted, as surviving documentation shows.9 The 1608
4. Conrad, Apache Diaspora; Giudicelli, “ ‘Identidades’ rebeldes”; Rushforth, Bonds of

Alliance.
5. Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”; Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 46–69; van Deusen,
Global Indios, 1–33.
6. Arondekar, “In the Absence”; Connolly and Fuentes, “Introduction,” 112–13;
Gilliland and Caswell, “Records and Their Imaginaries.”
7. Arondekar, “What More Remains,” 147–48.
8. In colonial Chile, there was no one single repository where slave documents were
stored, nor were they organized according to the same provenance used in Chilean archives
today.
9. Obregón Iturra and Zavala Cepeda, “Abolición y persistencia,” 9, explains that the
term Araucano was invented by the soldier-poet Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga. Indigenous
people in the colonial period referred to themselves as Reche, meaning “pure people.”
Indigenous people in Chile today use the term Mapuche to refer to themselves. Araucano-
Mapuche combines an invented colonial ethnonym with a modern usage. Slaves were simply
called aucas (or aucaes) in many Spanish-generated documents of the period, a construct
that referred to people living south of the Bı́o-Bı́o River who were considered rebellious
and barbarian and therefore enslaveable. Between 1612 and 1624, royal law mandated that
only defensive military activity could occur, although this law was ignored. Xufré del
Aguila, Compendio historial; Jara, Guerra y sociedad; Mariño de Lovera, Crónica, 329, 333,
Indigenous Slavery’s Archive 3
decree allowed two forms of bondage. The first category, esclavitud de guerra
(slavery based on just war), meant that captured adults would be slaves for life
and that the condition of slavery would be passed on to subsequent generations
through the mother’s lineage. The second category, servidumbre, included
infants and male children under the age of ten and a half and girls under the age
of nine and a half, who were to remain in the custody of their masters as laborers

until they reached twenty years of age. It is also important to note that crown-
sanctioned slavery in seventeenth-century Chile existed alongside legal and
illegal practices of Indigenous slavery, employed by Europeans and Indigenous
peoples living in other Spanish-claimed territories, that would thrive well into
the nineteenth century.10
To consider slavery’s archive in the context of Chile, I focus on certification
documents created by military officers to describe and inscribe the conditions
of what I call the capture-event of the slave in question. A certification docu-
ment was legally required to be rendered for each slave captured (although
children would be registered with mothers) before the legal title of slavery could
be drawn up. At first glance, these documents appear to be formulaic and
functional while also containing information about the captive’s Reche-
Mapuche and Christian names, age, cacique, land of birth, and (for women) any
accompanying children: information garnered to identify and render a Reche-
Mapuche man, woman, or child into a legal slave. While rich in ethnographic
information, these documents are useful in other ways.
Throughout this essay, I argue that certification documents are not only
instruments of bureaucratic organizations or containers of representative ter-
minology but constitutive of bureaucratic rules, knowledge practices, out-
comes, and even organizations themselves.11 Certification documents were
paper records that codified the competence to objectify, subject, and maintain
men, women, and children in bondage.12 In that sense they were both texts and a
priori determinants of the historicity of slavery, through their power to
enunciate and legitimate the past in the present. As we shall see, certification
documents proclaimed, in an ostensibly impartial manner, which stories of legal
336, 406; Valenzuela Márquez, “Esclavos mapuches,” 229–31, 250–51. On the relationship
between encomienda Indians, yanaconaje (personal servitude and the severing of ties with
a Native community), and slavery, see Contreras Cruces, “Encomienda y servicio
personal”; Contreras Cruces, “Migraciones locales.” On changes in labor categories after
1674, see Obregón Iturra and Zavala Cepeda, “Abolición y persistencia.”
10. Reséndez, Other Slavery; van Deusen, Global Indios; Conrad, Apache Diaspora.
11. Hull, “Documents and Bureaucracy,” 253.
12. Osborne, “Bureaucracy,” 290.
captivity could and could not be told.13 The bureaucratic procedure involved in
their creation was also part and parcel of why these papers had the power to
dictate the parameters of enslavement as well as legal slavery and its gover-
nance.14 Built into this papereal system of dominance was, as historian Michel-
Rolph Trouillot once noted, “the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy.”15
Certification documents instrumentalized violent conduct by military officials

and slave owners who could easily reproduce what happened in those papers
into other documentary and oral forms, thus facilitating the circulation of
certain essential truths about slavery and enhancing slavery’s archival density.
Slavery was integral to the economy and politics of seventeenth-century
Chile. Wealthy and moderately wealthy Chileans, from governors to artisans,
either owned or participated directly or indirectly in capturing, marketing, and
selling Reche-Mapuches.16 These Chileans depended on the free and unfree
Indigenous labor of the Reche-Mapuche people for agriculture, viniculture,
mining, military slave-raiding ventures, and maintenance of household econ-
omies.17 Continual warfare during the protracted Araucanian wars not only
produced a steady stream of aucae slaves but created a deeply militarized
society. The numbers of soldiers fluctuated from year to year, but around
midcentury, at the peak of the Araucanian wars, 2,000 soldiers and officers were
active, and all able-bodied males had to be ready to serve in voluntary militias.18
Women married officers or soldiers, fostering an “aristocracy” that blended
generational connections between landowners, holders of encomiendas,
13. Stoler, “Colonial Archives,” 91.

14. Dery, “ ‘Papereality,’ ” 677; van Deusen, Global Indios, 147–68.
15. Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 84. The term papereal is based on archivist David
Dery’s exploration in Dery, “ ‘Papereality.’ ” He argues that the form of representation
(paper or a document) can sometimes represent “reality” more than the things or events
being represented.
16. For instance, Martin Erices y Salinas bought the position ofmaestro de campo (field
marshal) from the governor, Francisco Meneses (1664–68), on the condition that Erices y
Salinas would sell captured aucaes for a lower price to Meneses, via third-person
intermediaries to avoid legal problems. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 79. See also Valenzuela
Márquez, “Indios de arriba,” 626.
17. On Indigenous slavery and the domestic economy in Chile, see Chuecas Saldı́as,
“Esclavitud indı́gena.” On Indigenous people working in Chilean mines, see Jara,
“Importación de trabajadores indı́genas,” 179. On members of the military owning
vineyards in Concepción, see Stewart, “Las viñas de Concepción.” African-descent slaves
never dominated the labor force in colonial Chile. Mellafe R., La introducción.
18. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 53; Barros Arana, Historia jeneral, 3:363; Góngora,
Encomenderos y estancieros, 99–101.
merchants, and those involved in military service.19 Over the decades, lower-
ranked soldiers attempted to buy their way into the officer class, which swelled
in numbers in the last third of the seventeenth century, just as slavery was being
declared illegal.20 Most members of Chile’s military were not gainfully
employed, however. Over 25 percent of active soldiers living with their families
in the presidios, forts, or smaller tercios on the frontier were poorly paid and

often in debt.21 Some of them had been forced to come to Chile from other
parts of the Viceroyalty of Peru.22 To make ends meet, they resorted to raiding,
capturing and selling Reche-Mapuche women and children living in Indigenous
territories south of the Bı́o-Bı́o River, where the Spanish endeavored to settle
and establish forts.23
If the capture and sale of slaves was central to the economy, the archive was
the foundation on which its legitimacy rested. After each maloca (military raid)
dozens if not hundreds of certification documents were drawn up, creating a
large paper trail detailing in a regimented manner the enslavement of thousands
of individuals in seventeenth-century Chile. As slavery’s archive grew over the
decades in proportion to slavery’s intensity, the originals of certification doc-
uments often remained with government officials in charge at the time (referred
to by the generic oficios de gobierno in documents) in libros de gobierno.24 Slave
owners also kept originals or copies in trunks or among their papers, or they
knew which notaries had recorded them in their bulky ledgers. This attention to
preservation meant that certifications, like legal titles of slave ownership, were
considered important enough to inventory and store for future use. Without
them, it would be more difficult to prove ownership. But these papers were also
vulnerable. In Santiago, the seat of government, a devastating earthquake in
1647 killed 25 percent of the population and destroyed many of the papers held
19. Espejo, Nobiliario, 18–24.

20. In 1693 there were 497 officers in the Spanish army in Chile, which corresponds to
23 percent of the total number of soldiers. Stewart, “Created Nobility.”
21. Vargas Cariola, “Estilo de vida,” 427. The term casa-fuerte was also used in
colonial documents to refer to fortifications.
22. Contreras Cruces, “La soldadesca,” 13–14.
23. Tesillo, Guerra de Chile, 23r, 40v; Tesillo, Epitome chileno; Contreras Cruces,
“Como una guerra.”
24. One case from the 1660s mentions that the original certification document
remained in the possession of General don Melchior de Carvajal, the proveedor general del
real exercito (quartermaster general of the military). Archivo Nacional Histórico de Chile,
Santiago (hereafter cited as ANHC), Real Audiencia (hereafter cited as RA), vol. 2544, pieza
12, fol. 224r.
by the Real Audiencia of Chile.25 Given the precariousness of military activity

and the explosiveness of Reche-Mapuche uprisings (such as the one in 1655),
forts and the documents stored there were destroyed with regularity.26 Further
documents were lost in the 1657 earthquake that razed Concepción.27 To
compensate for the absence of original certifications, officers who were pres-
ent when slaves were captured began to appear in litigation suits to provide

memoriales, or witness accounts. The spoken word iterated both present and
absent documents as a priori—that is, as constitutive of a reality now being
reconstituted.28 They used memory to fill in gaps, thus re-creating foundational
acts of papereality, or the reality being created by paper. Both documentary and
verbal iterations of slavery were integral to the perpetuation of Reche-Mapuche
slavery in seventeenth-century Chile, despite the exposure of papers to the
vicissitudes of climate and warfare.
Certifications were one of many instrumenta (formally executed legal
documents) that were given credence for their objectivity and ability to serve as
credible evidence in court. They expressed a legally enforceable act, action,
process, contractual duty, obligation, or right, as well as evidence of that act,
process, or agreement. I begin this article by explaining how a certification
document was created and explain why following correct procedure in its
construction as a legal instrument was as important as the preservation of the
paper document itself. Next, I show how these documents were made mean-
ingful through interventions by notaries, slave and slave-owning litigants, legal
advocates, and archivists. I then discuss how and when the certification docu-
ments were activated and circulated. I maintain that certification documents
were foundational, since the capture-events and other information recorded in
the documents were then copied into other kinds of documents, including wills,
bills of sale, and inventories of laborers (matrı́culas), which depended on cer-
tification documents to construct their own truth-building narratives and
reclassify former slaves according to newly acceptable labor categories. A
25. “Carta del tesorero de audiencia Miguel del Lerpa al rey,” Santiago, 23 May 1647, in
Palacios Roa, Fuentes, 64; Catálogo, viii; Valenzuela Márquez, “Indios de arriba,” 629. On
the fact that few records in public archives survived, see Amunátegui, El terremoto, 123.
On cabildo records surviving, see Amunátegui, 384–85. On the July 12, 1648, letter from the
audiencia to the king recounting how they took care ofofficial papers, see Amunátegui, 564.
26. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 268–70. Diego Barros Arana mentions the purposeful
destruction of documents during the 1655 uprising but does not say by whom or why.
Barros Arana, Historia jeneral, 4:502n35.
27. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 256.
28. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 127.
consideration of the life cycle of the certification document, from its inception
to its normalization, its activation and foundational relationship to other doc-
uments, and its final supplanting by other documents, allows us to gauge its
effectiveness and inherent value. The military bureaucracy of Chile had the
power to shape the lives of Reche-Mapuche people not only with weapons but
with the production and preservation of written instruments that enabled

slavery’s governance.
Document Creation
Certification documents were generated at the various fortifications that dotted

the landscape near the Bı́o-Bı́o River boundary, far from the established cities of
Santiago and Concepción.29 These small military hubs, called a veritable
“hotbed of humanity” by historian Hugo Contreras Cruces, housed hundreds
of Chilean and Spanish-descent people and were essential for the irregular but
ongoing military raids that occurred throughout the seventeenth century.30
They were more like small villages than forts, with stores, churches, and
dwellings.31 Indios amigos (Indigenous allies) serving as soldiers for Chilean
military officers lived with their families in thatched houses clustered near the
forts.32 Larger presidios meant to stave off Dutch and English threats and to
serve as prisons were located nearer to urban centers such as Chillán, Con-
cepción, and Valdivia. By the middle of the seventeenth century, roads con-
nected the larger tercios of Yumbel and Arauco with the presidio of Valdivia on
the coast. Both roads passed by the fort at Boroa, located close to where the
destroyed city of La Imperial had once been located.33 The maintenance of
roads between forts meant that goods, including human merchandise, could be
moved efficiently from one location to another. Although they served as centers
of military activity, forts also served as slave markets. According to a contem-
porary observer, Jesuit Diego de Rosales, Boroa was like “another Guinea.”34 At
Boroa and other military centers, soldiers sold slave “pieces” ( piezas) and other
merchandise to interested parties and middlemen (tratantes) who had traveled
there from Santiago or Concepción to buy or sell slaves.
29. Vargas Cariola, “Estilo de vida.”

30. Contreras Cruces, “La soldadesca,” 14.
31. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 66–67.
32. González de Nájera, Desengaño, 221–22, 255–56; Rosales, Historia general de el
reyno de Chile, 83; Jara, Guerra y sociedad, 82–94.
34. Rosales, Historia general de el reyno de Chile, 394. It was destroyed in 1657. Martı́nez
Busch, “Las fortificaciones.”
Most certification documents being created at these forts during the

Araucanian wars followed a template, with information being presented in a
logical order. A complete certification document would begin with a statement
by the raid’s commanding officer or one of his subordinates, whether a head of
a squadron, maestro de campo (field marshal), sargento mayor (sergeant major),
capitán (captain), or another war officer. A soldier-notary, charged with official

record keeping, chronicled the officer’s statement that a legally sanctioned and
authorized maloca had occurred in the territories of a specific cacique. A key
element of the narrative was a briefdescription of the maloca, a term that, by the
beginning of the seventeenth century, had become an institutionalized practice
naturalized in writing and “presented with official certainty.”35 The soldier-
notary annotated pertinent information regarding these small, rapidly executed
surprise raids, including their date and the name of the person conducting them,
who could be an indio amigo. Malocas (also known as malones) were utilized by
Spaniards and Indigenous groups in Chile to confiscate merchandisable goods
(called botı́n), especially cattle, horses, and human beings. Rather than complex
battles, these were small-scale operations meant to inflict some damage but,
more importantly, to gain human resources. The surprise element afforded the
victims of the attacks little time to organize a defensive response. These raids,
according to historian Álvaro Jara, were occurring long before the royal decree
of 1608 authorizing slavery, which legitimized them as an institutionalized
tactic.36 But even after 1608, contemporary observers noted that the need for
malocas was often exaggerated or contrived.37 The escalation of unwarranted
malocas had the effect of exacerbating tensions with Indigenous enemies,
working against ongoing diplomatic parliaments, perpetuating further vio-
lence, and ensuring the continuation of slavery. Furthermore, the intensifica-
tion of malocas over the course of the seventeenth century ensured that Spanish
soldiers and indios amigos would benefit economically from the capture of
“pieces.”38
Once the maloca-event had been rendered into a logical narrative order,
the notary next listed the name, gender, age, and cacique of the prospective
slave. A typical certification would read, “And among other pieces, Andrés Vera,
35. Sellers-Garcı́a, “Biography.”

36. Jara, Guerra y sociedad, 145–46.
37. Rosales, Manifiesto apologético.
38. On the aid of indios amigos, sometimes totaling in the thousands, see González de
Nájera, Desengaño, 99; Rosales, Historia general de el reyno de Chile, 382; Jara, Guerra y
sociedad, 145.
who assisted in the reduction of Changuel, captured an 11-year-old girl named

Mallen from Cucaguallo and subject to the cacique Guinolbilo.”39 Naming a
notable cacique like Anganamón, Pelequén, or Ayllacuriche became indexical
of a particularly meaningful maloca against a formidable enemy whom Span-
iards living in Santiago and Concepción would have known about.40
Next came an examination of the captive by an appropriate authority, often

a Jesuit or priest stationed at the fort. He would verify with the prospective slave
that the depiction of the capture-event and the biographical information were
true. Once verified, the notary would write a declaration that the captive in
question was now a slave. The declaration included the ecclesiastical authority’s
signature as well as the date and place where the authorization occurred. One
must wonder what interpreters were asking captives during this moment of
archival inscription. A trained linguist was meant to be on hand to explain the
narrative content to the prospective slave. But it should come as no surprise
that Indigenous participants would have a different memory of the maloca-
event from what was inscribed in the document. How could young children
(since many captured were young) comprehend the impact that this docu-
ment creation event would have on their lives, much less understand what was
being asked of them during the interview? This is especially true given that
decades later Reche-Mapuche litigants and their legal advocates would question
the truthfulness of the information contained in their so-called biography of
enslavement.
Following the questioning of the slave, the highest local governing author-
ity present would dictate to the scribe that the certification was complete and
that a legal title of possession (for the benefit of the purchaser buying the slave
from the soldier) could now be drawn up.41 If present, the new slave owner
would then pay the necessary fees and register the legal title with a notary, at
which point the new owner was free to leave with the slave and documents.42 It
should be emphasized that these were the most formal of law-abiding certifi-
cations. Many that were later included as evidence in litigation suits were brief,
39. “Certificación de esclavitud,” Nuestra Señora de las Nieves fort, 26 Mar. 1648,
ANHC, RA, vol. 657, fols. 1r–v. Vera was captain of the indios amigos and in charge of the
Indian village.
40. On Ayllacuriche as indexical for slave, see Chuecas Saldı́as, “Esclavitud indı́gena,”
212–13.
41. “Certificación de esclavitud de un indio de guerra,” 2 Sept. 1667, in Jara and
Pinto, Fuentes, 181–82.
42. Stewart, “Indian Labor,” 260.
half-page dispatches dictated by the maestro de campo authorizing the removal

of a specific slave captured in rebel territory and allowing the new owner to
draw up a document of legal title.43
What is noteworthy about the recording of maloca-events in slavery cer-
tification documents is how they became ontological, fostering a way of
knowing about slaves and enslavement that became generalized and normal-

ized. The procedural regularity of certification documents created a narrative
unity of events in time and space that detailed what historian Kathryn Burns
calls “truth by template.”44 The documents were foundational to how slave
owners and others learned about enslavement processes occurring far from
urban centers. Despite the impression of conformity and constancy, however,
the certification document did not always make clear the circumstances of the
maloca, especially when raids occurred against caciques who had made peace via
treaties with military authorities. Abbreviated variations of formal protocol
were also not uncommon in the archive. The timing of a particular document’s
creation was also questionable; certification documents were often drawn up
months after the raid had occurred for the benefit of the slave’s purchaser.45
This meant that certification documents often collapsed different temporal
moments (the memory of the maloca-event and the transfer of the property to a
new owner) into a seamless chronological order.46 More broadly, certification
documents would become a vital means by which to interpret the a priori past
in the present.47 They demarcated a temporal distinction between a person’s
life before and after they were placed into bondage and their change in legal
subjectivity.48
Certification documents are also significant because they were multi-
authored, collaborative, and composite creations. Each participant played his or
her part in the enactment of these ritualized inscriptions. The officer who
ordered the maloca, the Indigenous and European-descent men who carried it
out, the notary who recorded the event, the interpreter and priest who examined
the slave and oversaw the verification procedure: all were involved in some
capacity in the document’s creation. The governor’s secretary was charged with
43. “Certificación del maestre de campo don Melchor Alcocer Maldonado [ . . . ],”
Concepción, 11 July 1667, in Jara and Pinto, Fuentes, 182–83.
44. Burns, Into the Archive, 37.
45. For an example ofex post facto creation, see “Juicio seguido con Domingo de Soto
Pedrero,” Concepción, 1667–79, ANHC, RA, vol. 925, pieza 1, fol. 45r.
46. Van Deusen, Global Indios, 125–46.
47. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 35.
48. Mawani, “Law as Temporality,” 68.
making a copy of all final documents, including slave titles.49 Religious

authorities, especially the Jesuits, were also active participants in slavery’s gov-
ernance, since they were on hand to authenticate that protocol had been fol-
lowed in the enslavement of each captured child and adult. Even the slave in
question was implicitly involved, since he or she supposedly corroborated the
narrative and answered questions put forth to him or her. Then again, if soldiers

served as notaries, how much were they contributing to the maintenance and
power of slavery’s archive as they copied, stored, and made instrumenta like
certifications available for interested parties? Their power to retrieve, create,
manipulate, or copy documents could make or break a legal sentence that would
favor a slave owner or a slave. Indeed, their words, inscribed in the formulas or
on the blank spaces of parchment, had the power of enforcement.50
Many of those involved in creating slavery’s archive knew one another and
were complicit in ensuring that a smooth, orderly process had been followed. At
the fort closest to where the military raids occurred, junior officers notarized
documents related to enslavement and other matters. Some involved in creating
the archive were family members. Simón Sotomayor was a captain of the cavalry
at the fort of Boroa and an active participant in the slave trade. Although he held
several notable positions, his status as sergeant major of the kingdom (sargento
mayor del reino) enabled him to control the aucae slave market (and the papers
generated as a result) from one region to the next. His cousin Tomás served as a
general interpreter (interprete general) and specialized in attending peace treaties
and efforts to redeem captive Spaniards.51 Like other general interpreters,
Tomás was also present to question captured slaves when they arrived at the
nearest fort and engaged regularly with different governors in overseeing cer-
tification procedures.52 Members of the military, therefore, colluded in creating
and maintaining the archival fictions and truths of slavery.
Activation
Archival historian Eric Ketelaar once wrote that “every interaction, interven-
tion, interrogation, and interpretation by creator, user, and archivist is an
49. Stewart, “Created Nobility.”

50. Burns, Into the Archive, xii.
52. “Certificación de esclavitud de un indio de guerra,” 2 Sept. 1667, in Jara and Pinto,
Fuentes, 181–82. For one certification document involving Tomás de Sotomayor, see “El
marqués de Navamorquende declara por esclava [ . . . ] una india auca, cogida de la
guerra,” 13 Nov. 1669, in Jara and Pinto, Fuentes, 184–86.
activation of the record. The archive is an infinite activation of the record.”53

Colonial vassals in Chile thus activated certification records in several ways.
They were used to support notarized transactions, or their contents were copied
into newly created records. If a lawsuit disputing encomienda rights or claims to
freedom from bondage moved from the phase of initiating charges to a judge
calling for witnesses, deponents could speak to the veracity of the certification

records’ contents. Most commonly, certification documents were activated as
evidence that protocol had been followed in their creation and that the maloca-
event had been correctly recorded.
On hand in Chile were military and religious authorities ready to activate
the archival record by serving as expert witnesses and validating that the crea-
tion of documents presented in lawsuits had followed protocol in establishing
where and when specific military raids had occurred.54 By the 1660s, some of
the longest-serving military officers who either had moved up through the
military ranks or now occupied a bureaucratic position at the highest levels of
government were being called in to testify during lawsuits initiated by enslaved
Reche-Mapuche men and women.55 That was certainly true of the licentiate
don Juan del Pozo y Silva, 56 years of age, who testified on behalf of doña
Leonarda de Ormeño, a slave owner who had once lived across the street from
him in Concepción. Now a lawyer working for the audiencia, he questioned the
claims made by the plaintiff, the Reche-Mapuche Francisca, who was peti-
tioning for her freedom from Ormeño. Her capture had occurred during the
governorship of don Martı́n de Mujica (1646–49), when Pozo y Silva served as
the auditor-general of the military. In that capacity, Pozo y Silva was aware of
the many certifications that were being dispatched, especially after a maloca in
Cucaguallo in which Francisca was supposedly captured. Although he had not
been present at the moment of the documentary inscription, he was never-
theless considered an expert witness. He was able to explain the general context
within which Francisca was made into a slave and to emphasize his responsi-
bility in overseeing that correct procedure was followed under similar cir-
cumstances.56 Another witness in that same lawsuit, Captain Juan Garcı́a
Venegas, stated in 1668 that after the 1648 maloca, as the government secretary,
it was he who had been tasked with drawing up the certification for Francisca
53. Ketelaar, “Tacit Narratives,” 137.

54. Obregón Iturra, Des indiens rebelles, 62–64.
55. The overlap between audiencia members and the military has been noted by
Flusche, Two Families, 111–12.
56. Testimony of Juan del Pozo y Silva, Santiago, 1668, ANHC, RA, vol. 657, pieza
1, fol. 29r.
(and others).57 Confirming the act of creating or witnessing the creation of slave
certifications rendered these witnesses into legally valid instrumenta for the
defense, making it difficult to disprove their veracity. In other words, by virtue
of their authority they legitimized the legal weight of the context of fact crea-
tion, bringing into existence what did not exist.
Some historians date the more rigorous procedure of creating slavery

certifications to the rule of Francisco de Borja y Aragón, the prı́ncipe de
Esquilache, who was viceroy from 1615 to 1621.58 The use of certification
documents in litigation suits predates his ordinance, however. In 1611 don
Diego Jaraquemada, an estate owner (estanciero) and encomendero in Purapel,
sued doña Luciana de Vergara y Silva over the right to the labor of certain
Beliche people. In doubt in this case, which lasted until 1614, was whether 27
Beliche men, women, and children had been living in rebellious territory when
they were captured in 1610 in southern Chile by Vergara y Silva’s son, don
Pedro de la Barrera Chacón, then the governor of Chiloé (he was deceased by
1611).59 If they were at peace and not rebelling against the crown, as Jar-
aquemada suggested, he could claim them as free laborers. At issue was also the
denaturalization from their homeland of the 27 people in question, considered
illegal by royal decree. A year after their capture, Vergara y Silva’s representative
placed them on his ship to Valparaiso. There they disembarked and made the
140-kilometer trek to Vergara y Silva’s estate in the Colina valley.60
What is of interest here is how certifications were activated in the proof
phase of a lawsuit. First, Vergara y Silva’s lawyer presented the ship logs listing
the slaves and their masters as well as the certification documents that accom-
panied the slaves.61 The information contained in the certification documents
was read aloud to witnesses on behalfof Vergara y Silva, who then responded to
that information. Rather than contradict or verify the information’s accuracy,
deponents addressed whether proper protocol had been followed in the doc-
uments’ creation. Witnesses were asked whether they had seen Barrera Chacón
57. Testimony of Juan Garcı́a Venegas, Concepción, 20 Sept. 1668, ANHC, RA, vol.
657, pieza 1, fol. 36r.
58. Rosales, Historia de el reyno de Chile, 36–37; Barros Arana, Historia jeneral, 4:156.
The branding of slaves was forbidden in a 1635 decree: “Consulta, Junta de Guerra,”
Madrid, 24 Apr. 1635, Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter cited as AGI), Chile 4,
fols. 47r–48r.
59. Dı́az Blanco, “La empresa esclavista.”
60. Muñoz Correa, “La esclavitud indı́gena,” 125. Ginés de Lillo, the maestro de
campo who conducted Vergara y Silva’s affairs, later married her daughter.
61. “El fiscal con Luciana de Vergara y Silva,” 1611–16, AGI, Escribanı́a 928B, fols.
49r, 59v.
gather the 27 war captives at the fort in the presence of the caciques, the crown
protector of Indians ( protector de indios), the residing priest, and a linguist who
examined the captives.62 Two witnesses contradicted this legal fiction by saying
that the documents had not been drawn up at the fort in Chiloé but rather while
the slaves were being loaded onto the ship headed for Valparaiso.63 Other slaves
(but not the 27 in question) had, in fact, been certified at the fort a year after

their capture, along with those captured in other malocas conducted in 1610
and 1611.64 Still, supportive witnesses reminded the judges that Barrera Cha-
cón was such a good Christian that he would have never captured peaceful
indios. Moreover, he would have ensured that a translator, priest, and protector
of Indians were present for the certification of slavery procedure. The ultimate
sentencing by the audiencia (and the appeal before the Council of the Indies)
had nothing to do with the certification documents’ legitimacy, however.
Rather, the document charade resulted in the invocation of a 1610 royal decree
prohibiting the removal of friendly indios from their homelands to other parts
of Chile or elsewhere. To avoid further deracination and fraudulent activity,
Viceroy Juan de Mendoza y Luna, the marqués de Montesclaros, had ordered
that slaves and masters throughout Chile were to be registered.65 I have not
found evidence that this order was ever carried out.
Certification documents were also used at the imperial level to ensure that
proper procedure had been followed (for instance, noting the date and place of
the maloca-event). This is especially true for Indigenous parents or caciques
selling off or violently exchanging children captured by a different ethnicity,
preferably females (called hueñis or chinas), for goods or other slaves (rescate) to
Spaniards. Even friendly Reche-Mapuches, destitute and desperate to survive,
exchanged relatives for food, weapons, horses, and clothing, a practice that
became more common in the late 1640s. Supposedly, parents gave permission
for Spaniards to use their children’s free labor through an agreement called
usanza, but this practice was abused by Spaniards and Indigenous groups
62. Questions for witness interrogation, in “El fiscal con Luciana de Vergara y Silva,”
1611–16, AGI, Escribanı́a 928B, fol. 76r.
63. Testimony of Pedro Gonçales de la Hoz (captain), Santiago, 31 Mar. 1612, AGI,
Escribanı́a 928B, fols. 79v–80r; testimony of Tomás López de Gallegos, Santiago, 5 Apr.
1612, AGI, Escribanı́a 928B, fols. 81r–v.
64. “Certificaciones,” in “El fiscal con Luciana de Vergara y Silva,” 1611–16, AGI,
Escribanı́a 928B, fols. 85r–103r.
65. Copy of prohibition and order to register all slaves, 8 Dec. 1610, in “El fiscal con
Luciana de Vergara y Silva,” 1611–16, AGI, Escribanı́a 928B, fols. 135v–36r. This
document was issued by King Philip III at the request of Mendoza y Luna, who was
viceroy from 1607 to 1615.
alike.66 Legal advocates sometimes referred to the Siete Partidas (a statutory

code compiled between 1252 and 1284 in Castile), which sanctioned this form
of slavery.67 But some were not convinced. In a 1651 petition to the Council of
the Indies, complete with testimonies, Chile’s protector of Indians, Doctor
Antonio Ramı́rez de Laguna, complained about the gross misapplication of
usanza. Because the people of Boroa were starving, Ramı́rez de Laguna argued,

they were willing to pawn (empeñar) family members to soldiers and others in
exchange for small payments to buy food or clothing. After drawing up certi-
fication documents, soldiers then sold the family members as slaves, which was
not how the Boroa people understood the exchange agreement. Some of these
children were being shipped to Peru, although many females remained in Chile
because of their reproductive value as slaves.68
Included among the documents meant to counter Ramı́rez de Laguna’s
position were copies of three certification documents presented to the Council
of the Indies. Those who favored usanza’s continuation hoped to demonstrate
through these certification documents that proper procedure had been followed
and that all sales were voluntary and mutually agreed on. The first certification
document was issued by the alférez (a junior officer) Diego de Tapia, com-
mander (cavo) of the small fort of Toltén, which was connected by road to
Valdivia and had a boat service to ferry people and supplies across the river. This
document states that on September 30, 1650, an indio named Carinabil
appeared before Tapia claiming that “he was selling” his 14- or 15-year-old son
named Benul to a soldier named Juan Muñoz Moreno in exchange for goods to
be paid in six installments. Following the standard examination format, author-
ities asked Benul if he was the person in question. According to the record, after
the transaction was complete Carinabil “was content” with the sale.69
66. Villar and Jiménez, “ ‘Para servirse de ellos.’ ” On the abuse of this practice, see Nuñez
de Pineda y Bascuñan, Cautiverio feliz, 267. This type of slavery predates the Araucanian
wars. Valenzuela Márquez, “Esclavos mapuches,” 240.
67. Hanisch Espı́ndola, “Esclavitud,” 22.
68. “Testimonio, Sargento Mayor don Martı́n Zerdan,” Santiago, 5 June 1651, AGI,
Chile 13, ramo 5, no. 32, fols. 3r, 6v. Slavery by usanza was prohibited a year after the great
Reche-Mapuche uprising of 1655, on April 18, 1656. Hanisch Espı́ndola, “Esclavitud,”
31–32.
69. “Certificación del alférez Diego de Tapia,” Toltén, 30 Sept. 1650, AGI, Chile 13,
ramo 5, no. 32, fol. 2r. For the other two certification documents included, see
“Certificación del don Juan de Salazar y Solis Enriquez,” Boroa, 20 Jan. 1651, AGI, Chile
13, ramo 5, no. 32, fol. 2v; “Certificación, Capitán Gerónimo de Molina Vasconcelos,” n.d.,
AGI, Chile 13, ramo 5, no. 32, fol. 3r. See also Chuecas Saldı́as, “Esclavitud indı́gena,”
214–18.
Certification documents were also activated because they were founda-

tional to the content creation and activation of other documents. They facili-
tated the ability to manifest proprietorship in other documentary contexts.
Notarized records such as wills and dowries cited certification documents,
especially if the legator intended to pass human property on to legatees.70 A
father leaving a slave to his marriageable daughter presented a certification

document or cited its contents to legitimize the dowry’s transaction. Referring
to the certification meant that the slave in question was a “slave by law” because
it proved that he or she had been captured legally and that the slave could
remain in his daughter’s possession after her marriage.71 Bills of sale were
generally on stronger legal grounds if a copy of the certification document
accompanied them. Owners even referred to them as another “sign” of pos-
session, like the title of ownership itself.72
Even if no certification document came with a bill of sale, the seller often
reproduced essential information contained in the certification document into
the bill of sale. In the moment of fact assembly, the original moment of the
capture-event served as a palimpsest layered into new documentary assem-
blages. The newly created document dialogued with the old certification doc-
ument by duplicating the slave’s place of origin, the conditions of capture
(whether by a Spaniard or an indio amigo who had conducted the raid), the
governor of Chile at the time of capture, which sergeant major or maestro de
campo was in charge when the document was drawn up, to whom the slave was
sold, and (noted on the back of the sale document) if any other legal transfers
(traspasos) had occurred.73 Bills of sale sometimes included the place oforigin or
name of the slave’s cacique, all information generally found in certification
documents. The transference of the slave’s history, whether fictive or real, gave
more credence to the future activation of the newly created document. One
seller expressed confidence in writing that although no certification document
had accompanied the bill of sale, he was willing to testify to the veracity of the
legal document’s information if a lawsuit should ensue.74
70. Muñoz Correa, “La esclavitud indı́gena,” 123.

71. Muñoz Correa, 127.
72. “Venta de una esclava india cogida en la guerra,” 28 Apr. 1651, in Jara and Pinto,
Fuentes, 169.
73. Bill of sale for a slave, 1659, partially transcribed in Muñoz Correa, “La
esclavitud indı́gena,” 144–45.
74. “Venta de un esclavo indio tomado en la guerra,” 31 Aug. 1651, in Jara and Pinto,
Fuentes, 164–65. After the 1670s, when abolitionist sentiment was on the rise, it would
become necessary to provide more than a dowry or bill of sale to prove legal ownership.
Certifying Luisa Colmey, Auca
I turn now to a consideration of the freedom suit of Luisa Colmey in order to

iterate how certification documents shaped a foundational truth regime that
could be activated and be in dialogue with newly created documents that
denoted legal possession and perpetuated slavery’s fictions. By the time that the
india Luisa Colmey decided to leave Ana Pajuelo’s home in 1653, slavery’s

archive was well established, and papers were regularly being activated for
different intentions. No longer a young woman, Colmey had to travel to San-
tiago to file a legal complaint (demanda) after seeking the counsel of the pro-
tector of Indians, don Antonio Albares.75 In her initial allegation and petition
for justice recorded by a notary, Colmey specified that she wished to contract
her services as a free laborer with Luis Bernal de Mercado, an important San-
tiago notary who had inherited the position from his father.76 By taking this
action, Colmey was questioning Pajuelo’s claim that Colmey was her property,
since by law an enslaved Colmey could not contract out her own services
without her mistress’s permission. The audiencia judges ordered Pajuelo, the
widow of General Juan Sánchez de Abarca, to produce documents, including a
certification of slavery and the legal title issued by the governmental secretary.
Pajuelo’s attorney then presented to the judges a half-page simple certification
dated October 20, 1627, simple because it lacked any witness accounts or an
examination of the slave. Only when Albares protested did the audiencia judges
order Pajuelo to present the complete documentation within three months and
pay a bond. In the interim, Colmey was ordered to return to her owner.
Nothing transpired until 1657, when Colmey ran away a second time and
again sought legal counsel. At that point, Pajuelo knew that her papers needed
to be put in order. Her lawyer, Juan de la Barra, requested that Admiral Pedro
Porter Casanate, captain general of Chile, draw up a title of slavery document
for Pajuelo based on the information contained in the simple certification
document. That document said that Captain Juan Fernández Rebolledo had
certified to a notary his participation in a maloca ordered by Chile’s captain
general in September 1627 in the “lands of Pellaguen [sic; Pelequén]” in which
an alférez’s servant captured a girl of ten named Colmey, the daughter of
See, for example, “Beatrı́z, india con Antonio Sagrado, sobre su libertad,” Santiago,
1675–95, ANHC, RA, vol. 1822, pieza 2a.
75. “Demanda,” Santiago, 13 Feb. 1653, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a, fol. 95r.
76. This case is discussed in extensive detail in Valenzuela Márquez, “Indias esclavas,”
350–54. On the Bernal de Mercado family working as notaries, see Valenzuela Márquez,
351. Luis’s brother Alonso would in fact become one of the legal protectores de indios in
the late 1660s.
Minchaqueupu and subject to the cacique Anganamón. The document went on

to claim that the certification was then signed by Fernández Rebolledo and a
sealed copy put in the “libro de Gobierno.”77 Around the time that Fernández
Rebolledo made this certification the libro de gobierno had been created on
order of the governor, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, due to abuses that had
occurred in indiscriminately branding young children in Chile and selling them

in Lima, where they could fetch higher prices. Within three months of capture
slaves were required to be registered in this book, but often they were not
registered until a formal sale occurred.78 The title of possession for Colmey had
been issued on October 20, 1627.79 But Colmey’s legal representative, don
Antonio Ramı́rez de Laguna, again questioned the simple certification on the
grounds that it was a copy and only contained the authorization signature of
Fernández Rebolledo.80 A previous royal decree from Viceroy Borja y Aragón,
the lawyer added, stated clearly that the originals of certification documents had
to be presented in lawsuits. Moreover, the simple certification document pre-
sented to the audiencia judges lacked two key legal elements: an examination by
a priest and an annotation of Colmey’s age at capture. The document’s
incompleteness warranted moving to the next legal stage, the calling of wit-
nesses.81 Colmey was not alone in having to fight against simple certifications
that seemed hastily executed or drawn up years after the maloca-event, when a
sale was imminent. Even though she was a slave, Colmey had the legal right to
see the original certification document, which under normal circumstances
would remain in the slave owner’s possession.
Because no examination of Colmey had taken place in 1627, the audiencia
called a Jesuit named Juan de Junel to examine her on April 30, 1657. Priests
were active participants in the maintenance of Reche-Mapuche slavery at the
forts, and it was no different in Santiago, the capital of the captaincy general.
During that interview Junel showed Colmey a copy of the certification of
slavery document and then asked her to relate the circumstances of her capture.
77. “Certificación,” Fuerte de San Phelipe [sic], 27 Oct. 1627, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386,
pieza 3a, fol. 97r.
78. Barros Arana, Historia jeneral, 4:156.
79. Fernández Rebolledo was infamous for capturing large numbers of slaves and
cattle. Tesillo, Guerra de Chile, fol. 48v.
80. Three years later, Ramı́rez de Laguna was accused of criminal abuses against
indios. “Comisión a Pedro de Azaña Solı́s,” Santiago, 1660, AGI, Escribanı́a de Cámara
932A.
81. Petition from Antonio Ramı́rez de Laguna, Santiago, n.d., ANHC, RA, vol. 2386,
pieza 3a, fols. 116v–17v.
She said that it had occurred over 32 years ago and that she could no longer
remember what had happened, her previous name, her homeland ( patria) or
cacique, or how old she was at the time of capture.82 Junel’s reaction was
sympathetic: he understood Colmey’s inability to remember given that she was
just a child when the documentary inscription had occurred. Nevertheless, he
completely ignored her statement and then proceeded to confirm that the

authority who had created the simple certification document containing her
history had acted in good faith: “Given the fidelity and legality of the person
who gave this certification, I judge what is said in this certification to be true
with regard to this pieza, and said certification I have seen [being] authorized by
Secretary Domingo Garcı́a Corvalán. I [have] examined the content and
because it is true, I sign my name.”83 Here Junel accepts the authority of the
document creator to inscribe the truth, without questioning any procedural or
informational discrepancies. Following the examination charade, the “new”
certification document was signed and dated May 28, 1657.84 After having
submitted the “new” certification document to the judges as evidence, Captain
General Porter Casanate then issued in Concepción on July 7, 1657, a legiti-
mate title of slavery giving Pajuelo the right to “sell, donate, exchange, or
change [Colmey] for whomever she wished.” At the same time, audiencia judges
asked Pajuelo to respond to the demand of the attorney on behalf of Colmey
that Pajuelo call for witnesses.85 The creation of the posthumous certification
document confirmed that Colmey was Pajuelo’s property.
During the second phase of the lawsuit, deponents spoke to the authen-
ticity and viability of the certification document as the main source of evidence,
since by law the questioning parties (in this case, Colmey and her legal repre-
sentative) bore the burden of challenging the document (and, by implication,
the word of the document creators) as proof. This concurs with the idea in the
early modern period that the action of creating documents and then storing
them in a viable repository (for instance, in the libro de gobierno) made them,
82. Examination of Luisa Colmey, Santiago, 28 May 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza
3a, fols. 116r–v. A lack of remembrance was common among Indigenous slaves captured as
children. Van Deusen, Global Indios, 1–33.
83. Examination of Colmey, Santiago, 28 May 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a,
fol. 116r.
84. Examination of Colmey, Santiago, 28 May 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza
3a, fol. 116r.
85. “Demanda,” Concepción, 24 July 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a, fol.
11r.
by their very nature, sources of truth.86 Thus witness depositions often spoke
oral truth (based on memory) to written truth (the act of having created truth on
paper). Witnesses called to speak on behalf of Colmey had seen her arrive to
Concepción as a small girl, between six and eight years of age, well below the
legal age for temporary servitude.87 Their hope was that the absence ofevidence
for Colmey’s age in the certification document drawn up over 30 years after the

fact would carry enough weight to free her. Those speaking on Pajuelo’s behalf
all corroborated that Colmey was over the legal age of nine and a half when she
arrived at the estate.88 Here the case ends. Like many other freedom suits,
Colmey’s remained incomplete. No mention was made of the fact that, by law,
she should have been freed from servidumbre at the age of 20. Nor do we know
whether she ever achieved her freedom.
This leads to my next point about the power of slavery’s archive. Infor-
mation about slaves and their enslavement process is present in certification and
sale documents, but whether they tell us anything about the interior lives of
people in bondage is another matter. The case of Luisa Colmey, among others,
raises the question of what we mean by agency and the recoverability of
Indigenous slave voices in mediated freedom petitions, especially when witness
depositions are present.89 What is key to a consideration of slave agency in the
context of colonial Chile, I believe, is understanding the conditions under
which a slave litigant could express a legal biographical self in light of the power
that lay in the production and activation of certifications and other documents.
Litigation suits, of which several dozen exist for the seventeenth century, do
contain the possibility of seeing slaves as compromised subjects rather than as
objects, especially if witness testimonies were garnered to provide or corrob-
orate contextual information.90 Yet when petitioning for freedom, dozens of
86. Head, “Documents, Archives, and Proof,” 914–15.

87. Despite the 1608 decree, underage children regularly appear in sale or transfer
documents. Muñoz Correa, “La esclavitud indı́gena,” 117.
88. Some of the witnesses for Luisa were of the servile class, such as “Marı́a Mensia,
india, 60 years old, working in the service of Antonio de Ovalle and speaking through an
interpreter,” “Gerónima, a servant in the home of don Antonio de Oballe,” and “Pedro
Ñeque, yndio, 60 years old and speaking through an interpreter.” “El Protector General de
los Indios con Ana Pajuelo,” Santiago, 1657–58, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a, fols. 131v,
133r, 134r. Witnesses on behalf of Pajuelo were military authorities: testimony of Diego
de Leyba (maestro de campo), Santiago, 7 Nov. 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a,
fol. 137r; testimony of Gabriel de Luján (alférez), Chucmco, 12 Nov. 1657, ANHC, RA, vol.
2386, pieza 3a, fol. 138v.
89. Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”; Kazanjian, “Freedom’s Surprise.”
90. Smallwood, “Politics of the Archive,” 126. Matrı́cula lists sometimes contain brief
interviews with Reche-Mapuche laborers. Chuecas Saldı́as, “Articulación familiar,” 53.
slave litigants like Luisa Colmey had to engage with the paper trail created for
and by enslavers and slave owners as well as the testimony of military and
ecclesiastical personnel committed to upholding slavery’s governance by
bringing the omniscient past into the present. Reche-Mapuche slaves were
protesting within a set of dispositions in which many colonial vassals—from
military notaries to audiencia members and the governor himself—actively and

wholeheartedly participated. Slaves were also protesting unjust actions within
an arena of archival plentitude, in which the production and enunciability of
papers enforcing Indigenous bondage in Spanish America were well estab-
lished. Within this broader archival context, documents, and especially certi-
fication documents in colonial Chile, constituted what slave litigants like
Colmey should and could say and how they could talk about their history of
bondage and that of other family members.91 Moreover, the legal self projected
by a slave litigant was predicated on the fact that he or she had to present certain
information that correlated with the certification documents. Even when
Colmey asserted agency by stating “I don’t remember” during the Jesuit Junel’s
questioning, her words were ignored.92 There is subjectivity even in Colmey’s
case, or at least I would argue that there is. There are counterhistories—the “I
don’t remembers” that seek to disavow other, universalizing narratives. But it is
important to recognize that one intention is predicated on the other. It is then
up to historians (and witnesses) to “imagine what cannot be verified.”93 In
Colmey’s case, what was never verified was her age at the time of capture and
what happened to her after the case ended without resolution.
Luisa Colmey’s 1657 petition for freedom case is an early one.94 Beginning
in the late 1650s, appointed legal representatives ( procuradores de indios) were
either better prepared or more willing to do their job of protecting the Reche-
Mapuche people, as nearly one dozen slaves came before the Real Audiencia of
Chile to protest their lives in bondage.95 These include Indigenous plaintiffs
91. Hull, “Documents and Bureaucracy,” 253; van Deusen, Global Indios, 147–68.
92. Examination of Colmey, Santiago, 28 May 1657, ANHC, RA, vol. 2386, pieza 3a,
fols. 116r–v.
93. Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” 12.
94. There are also two other early cases: a brief, incomplete petition from 1659, and
one from Mariana, an india, questioning the terms of her service. See, respectively, “Sobre
la libertad de dos indios llamados Bernabé y Alonso y sus familias,” 1659, ANHC, RA,
vol. 2255, pieza 7a; “Mariana de Amezquita sobre reducir a Mariana, india, a su servicio,”
Santiago, 1667, ANHC, RA, vol. 1764, pieza 10, fols. 154r–57v.
95. Valenzuela Márquez, “Indias esclavas,” 344. Some of these cases include “Autos
que le sigue la india Teresa sobre su libertad,” 1676, ANHC, RA, vol. 2818, pieza 3a;
“Protector general de indios con Antonio Ugarte sobre la libertad de ciertos indios,”
who had been serving masters for 20 and even 30 years. After the brutal uprising
of 1655 and the years of repression that followed, an abolitionist sentiment was
on the rise.96 Another uptick in freedom suits occurred in the mid-1670s after
news reached Chile that Queen Mariana had declared in late 1674 that Indi-
genous slavery in Chile was to cease immediately and that all slaves were to be
freed. Given the reluctance of Governor Juan Henrı́quez de Villalobos (1670–

82) to publish and publicize the royal decree until 1679, he and the members of
the audiencia sought a compromise arrangement.97 In consultation with the
viceroy in Lima, the governor suggested drawing up a census ( padrón) of all
slaves and Indigenous minors:
It seems to me that it would be convenient that before taking a

resolution to free the slaves a matrı́cula and enumeration of them be
drawn up, including their names, ages, lands of their birth, names of
caciques, and which slavery documents are in the possession of the
former owner. As they are empadronado (registered) they should be
placed in deposit with the possessors, so that they may receive good
treatment, education, and teachings in the things of our Catholic faith.98
This procedural measure would ensure compliance with the 1674 royal decree
while also placating nervous slave owners, who were given yet another oppor-
tunity to prove that their papers, and thus the documentary rendering of their
slaves’ pasts, were in order.99
Undertaking the padrón resulted in an archival reshuffling, whereby old
documents such as certifications and legal titles now served to authenticate a
new form of master-servant possession and enable a logical transition in status
from slavery to legal deposit (depósito) with former owners. Depósito was a legal
relationship with precedents dating back to the medieval legal code, the Siete
Partidas, that implied guardianship and tutelage of the Indigenous person under
Spanish control. The person held in depósito was technically free from
1673, ANHC, RA, vol. 1834, pieza 7a; “Beatrı́z, india, con Antonio Sagrado sobre su
libertad,” 1675–95, ANHC, RA, vol. 1822, pieza 2a; “Protector de indios con Costanza
de Ovalle,” 1672, ANHC, RA, vol. 2356, pieza 3.
96. Valenzuela Márquez, “Indios de arriba,” 626.
97. “Carta del Governador Juan Enrı́quez,” Santiago, 8 Oct. 1676, AGI, Chile 57,
doc. 13 (the document was seen in the Council of the Indies on February 7, 1678); Hanisch
Espı́ndola, “Esclavitud,” 59.
98. “Carta del Governador Juan Enrı́quez al rey,” Santiago, 29 Oct. 1676, AGI, Chile
57, doc. 13, fol. 102r.
99. Hanisch Espı́ndola, “Esclavitud,” 121–24.
permanent bondage.100 Often the children of now technically former slaves

became indios de depósito and were enumerated on matrı́culas of newly created
encomiendas, the number of which spiked after 1674 as retired soldiers sought
land or labor grants for their years of service.101 This guaranteed the prolon-
gation of unfreedom across generations.102 Even if the right to an encomienda
was denied, individuals would make requests to maintain indios under their

guardianship (in depósito), based on the “fact” that the parents had been former
slaves.103 Former slaves also began serving as laborers on the small parcels given
by governors to newly minted military officers in former frontier areas.104 To
complicate matters, all Indigenous people from Arauco, Tucapel, and other
forts south of the Bı́o-Bı́o River were henceforth to be placed under the crown’s
protection and would be free from service on individual encomiendas. Given
the complexity of the different arrangements, some scholars have argued that
this transition from slavery to servile dependency took over 30 years and three
governorships to accomplish and only served to blur the line between slavery
and servitude even further in colonial Chile.105 Certification documents were
now foundational in the sense that they were being used to distinguish enco-
mienda (free) Indians from those “taken in war” (tomada en la guerra or cogida en
la guerra), an important distinction to make once slavery was abolished in
1674.106
Evidence of the rituals involved in gathering together people and drawing
up empadronamientos (censuses of all Indigenous people) during this period in
Santiago and other cities is now lost, but we know that such censuses were
carried out.107 In 1676, slave owners appeared before Santiago’s corregidor with
100. “Revalida las ordenes de la libertad de los indios,” 12 June 1679, in Recopilación de
leyes, libro 6, tı́tulo 2, ley 16.
101. For information on the new encomienda system after 1670, see Stewart,
“Indian Labor.” On slaves becoming encomienda Indians, see Chuecas Saldı́as, “Esclavitud
indı́gena.”
102. Valenzuela Márquez, “Los indios cautivos,” 241–45.
103. “Petición de Jose Martı́nez de Prado,” Santiago, 1688, AGI, Chile 52, no. 10.
104. Stewart, “Élite militar”; Chuecas Saldı́as, “Articulación familiar.”
105. Obregón Iturra and Zavala Cepeda, “Abolición y persistencia,” 23.
106. “Agustı́n de Jara contra Benito Sánchez-Gavilan,” Santiago, 1673–77, ANHC,
RA, vol. 1296, pieza 3, fols. 7r–8v; “Convenio entre Andres Enriquez y Lorenzo Nuñez de
Silva sobre cambio de un indio de encomienda por un indio esclavo cogido en la guerra,”
11 Sept. 1604, in Jara and Pinto, Fuentes, 159–60.
107. The audiencia’s president and judges ordered the public notary of Santiago to
conduct the empadronamiento: “Amparo y defensa de Clara, india, contra don Francisco
de Saravia,” Santiago, 1679–80, ANHC, RA, vol. 2544, pieza 12, fols. 223r, 231r; Hanisch
Espı́ndola, “Esclavitud,” 59.
their slaves and the certification and title of slavery documents in hand. Former
slaves were interviewed as part of the census and asked if the information
contained in the documents presented by the slave owners was correct. The
display of manifestaciones, or documents and statements by slave owners and
slaves verifying the purported facts, was especially relevant for those Reche-
Mapuche men and women who would subsequently argue that they were not

encomendable (able to be held in encomienda) but rather free to contract out their
own labor or serve as laborers held in trust by the king. To protect those indios
who could not be held in encomienda or depósito, government officials in
Chile, particularly the protector of Indians, were charged with drawing up
cartas de libertad (letters offreedom) and keeping them on file.108 In one instance
I found, a Reche-Mapuche woman named Beatrı́z was told to see the protector
of Indians after she reported to the inspector general of Indians in 1676 that she
was not a slave.109 Beatrı́z was not alone. Other Reche-Mapuche men and
women protested that the certification documents presented as proof of slavery
for either themselves or their mothers had either been fabricated or referred to
the wrong person, even to long-deceased slaves.110 The falsification of docu-
ments resulting from the padrón also involved the collusion of some of Chile’s
highest governmental authorities, who were still profiting from the sale of
slaves after 1674.111 To counter the notarial sleight of hand occurring at this
critical juncture as Chile transitioned to a nominally free Indigenous labor
system, some Reche-Mapuche laborers filed legal claims, with minimal success.
To defend themselves, others requested cartas de amparo (letters protecting legal
rights) to contract their wage labor with whomever they wished.112 Scholars
have shown that the children of slaves were particularly vulnerable to this kind
108. Stewart, “Élite militar,” 163. This cédula was cited in several litigation suits,
including “Miguel Antegueno, indio de reducción de Purén,” 1692–1708, ANHC, RA, vol.
2271, pieza 3a, fol. 53v.
109. Declaration ofdon Antonio Sagredo Molina, n.d., ANHC, RA, vol. 1822, pieza 2a,
fol. 71r.
110. “Beatrı́z, india con Antonio Sagrado, sobre su libertad,” Santiago, 1675–95,
ANHC, RA, vol. 1822, pieza 2a, fol. 82r; “Francisco Camillanca, autos con Blas de los
Reyes,” Santiago, 1701, ANHC, RA, vol. 2137, pieza 12a, fol. 150r; “Alonso Bernal de
Mercado, protector de indios contra Leonarda de Ormeño sobre libertad de Francisca,”
Santiago, 1667–69, ANHC, RA, vol. 657, pieza 1.
111. Declaration by Tereza/Catalina before the audiencia, Santiago, 17 Mar. 1677,
ANHC, RA, vol. 2818, pieza 3a, fol. 151r.
112. “Defensa por el indio Martı́n de Boroa,” Santiago, 1697–98, ANHC, RA, vol.
2109, pieza 4; Chuecas Saldı́as, “Articulación familiar,” 54.
offraudulent documentation and that it sometimes took a lawsuit to protest the

volley of new illegal inscriptions.113
In some cases, the 1676 census only created further documentary
entrapment. To launch his documentary counteroffensive against the Reche-
Mapuche Clara who petitioned in 1679 to be free from depósito, Francisco
Bravo de Saravia Sotomayor ordered the Santiago cabildo notary, Captain

Gerónimo de Vargas, to retrieve a copy of the manifestación that Bravo de
Saravia Sotomayor had made during the 1676 census.114 Bravo de Saravia
Sotomayor also presented the certification document issued in 1666 by Gov-
ernor Francisco Meneses in Concepción. The notary Vargas, who had also been
in charge of the 1676 manifestación, testified on behalf of Bravo de Saravia
Sotomayor that the slave owner had followed correct protocol and that his
papers were in order.115 Both the information contained in the census and the
certification document thus reinforced one another, doubly inscribing Clara.
Nevertheless, Clara cast doubt on the moment of inscription that had rewritten
her history ten years earlier in 1666. Via the protector of Indians, Clara spoke
against the narrative logic of the certification document. The notary recorded
her testimony in the third person: “She [Clara] is from Paicavi, her cacique was
Quelennaro, and she was from a peaceful area. She was herding her father’s
[Huilipan’s] sheep when two soldiers captured her and took her to [the fort at]
Arauco along with her father, mother, and two sisters, saying that they had been
captured because they had rebelled.”116 While living at the Arauco fort and even
later, Clara and her mother were forced into domestic service, at one point with
113. Even after the audiencia declared that some indios were free from depósito, some
owners continued to insist that “their” indios would remain under their guardianship (in
depósito) or as a part of their encomienda. See “Miguel Antegueno, indio de reducción de
Purén,” 1692–1708, ANHC, RA, vol. 2271, pieza 3a, fol. 65r; “Petición, carta de amparo,
Joseph de Antevila,” Concepción, 27 Oct. 1703, ANHC, RA, vol. 2550, pieza 7a, fol. 222r.
On children being incorporated into encomiendas, see “Agustı́n de Jara contra Benito
Sánchez-Gavilán,” Santiago, 1673–77, ANHC, RA, vol. 1296, pieza 3; Chuecas Saldı́as,
“ ‘Venta es dar,’ ” 178–80.
114. Order to Gerónimo de Vargas, Santiago, 8 Aug. 1679, ANHC, RA, vol. 2544,
pieza 12, fols. 219r–36v.
115. Declaration of Gerónimo de Vargas, Santiago, 9 Aug. 1679, ANHC, RA, vol.
2544, pieza 12, fol. 232r; “Ana Gómez Zevallos, sobre la libertad del indio Diego Prado,”
Santiago, 1680, ANHC, RA, vol. 947, pieza 1; Valenzuela Márquez, “Indias esclavas,”
348n94.
116. “Declaración de Clara, india,” Santiago, 17 July 1679, ANHC, RA, vol. 2544,
pieza 12, fol. 224v.
Governor Meneses, infamous for mandating brutal malocas.117 Contesting the

information recorded during the 1676 manifestación, Clara requested that a
carta de amparo be drawn up by the audiencia to guarantee her rights as a
woman free from being assigned to an encomienda. She also wanted to be able
to travel freely with her husband of seven years, a Black slave, who lived over 36
miles away. She was one of the lucky ones who successfully countered the

weight ofdocumentary proof and was freed from involuntary service. Although
we are not privy to the musings of the judges, they may have placed upholding
the sanctity of marriage and cohabitation of spouses above the certification
document origin story that had been activated again during the 1676 census of
Indigenous slaves and minors.
As we also saw in the case of Colmey, discussed above, slavery’s governance
functioned by following proper protocol in producing the document in ques-
tion and having a reliable witness (in Colmey’s case, a priest) to verify the
document’s authenticity. Litigants in bondage like Clara were constrained by
procedure, legal interpretation, and what they could and could not say to
contest the reality and narrative logic of documents. The contents of these
documents, in turn, created ways of knowing about individuals and their
experiences of unfreedom in the past and the present and spoke to the ways by
which individuals recurrently chose to activate the archive.
Conclusions
By the end of the seventeenth century, extant classifications of unfree Reche-

Mapuche laborers were applied in manifold new ways. Some former slaves were
now held in encomienda (encomendados) or deposit (depositados); some were
labeled as putativos (legitimate children of slaves), amparados (free to contract
their own labor), or adjudicados (individuals who had committed a serious
crime).118 What these categories meant to thousands of Reche-Mapuche
people is difficult to determine. When a few were asked if they were free, they
responded that they were “in deposit,” implying that they considered them-
selves to be in a state of unfreedom.119 Certification documents were no longer
117. “Declaración de Clara, india,” Santiago, 17 July 1679, ANHC, RA, vol. 2544,
pieza 12, fol. 224v; “Petición,” Santiago, 4 June 1679, ANHC, RA, vol. 2544, pieza 12, fol.
220r; Valenzuela Márquez, “Indias esclavas,” 330.
118. Chuecas Saldı́as, “Articulación familiar,” 50–55.
119. When questioned about his status, one laborer said, “I’ve been in this house a
long time but I don’t know why, and they told me that I was an indio de depósito.” Chuecas
Saldı́as, 52.
foundational or used as evidence in matrı́culas or in the production of new kinds

of documents. But the narrative of the maloca-event still lingered in some of the
matrı́culas of newly sanctioned encomiendas. Among other demographic data,
these registers still recorded whether Indigenous laborers had been “taken in
war” or acquired by usanza.120 In some cases, being categorized as originating
from a formerly rebellious area where a warrior-cacique such Ayllacuriche

governed served as code for a former person in bondage.121 Into the eighteenth
century, Reche-Mapuche men and women would continue needing to find new
ways to counter the shift in taxonomies that slotted them into one or another
labor category that did not fit the patterns of their lives.
Ethnographic attention to the production and activation of documents
related to slavery reveals various configurations of normative power at work. A
microhistorical consideration of the life of slavery’s archive in Chile shows that
documents are not only containers of facts or repositories of events. They
constituted governance over a person by virtue of their very creation and
existence in material format.122 Deceptively benign, the narratives contained in
these documents organized, consolidated, verified, and articulated the param-
eters of slavery in deeply insidious ways. The documents circulated into and out
of the lives of thousands of individuals, both enslaved and free. They were
articulated in multiple ways. Not only did the activation of records help to
safeguard an individual’s right to maintain a person in bondage, but procedures
associated with verifying a document’s authenticity upheld slavery’s gover-
nance, both in the moment of a record’s creation and at a future date. The
subversive adjustment of Colmey’s history and legal subjectivity as authorities
drew up a new certification document over 30 years after the fact, the ques-
tioning by slaves of how documents being presented to authorities rendered
them into someone else: these were moments of slavery’s governance. The
enunciation of the archive shaped how Chilean slave raiders and owners
behaved in and outside a legal context and how those slaves being objectified by
this paper reality diligently strived against the grain of this archive to gain their
freedom and other rights.
Chile was not the only colonial arena where Indigenous slavery flourished.
In other locales of Spanish America, Indigenous slavery thrived well into the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whether or not it was sanctioned by the
Spanish crown or local authorities. In that regard, Chile serves as an example of
120. Chuecas Saldı́as, “Esclavitud indı́gena,” 209–10.

121. Chuecas Saldı́as, 212–13.
122. Pigg, Erikson, and Inglis, “Introduction,” 167.
the ways by which documents function as law, since their very creation, exis-
tence, and activation worked to uphold practices of bondage in cities and rural
settings throughout the empire. The power and ubiquity of Chile’s military
bureaucracy is perhaps unique to Spanish America, but understanding how
documents served as legal instrumenta in this setting has much broader
implications. Granted, this was an archive of plentitude, with a vigorous

presence in the lives of the free and unfree. But, as we have seen, even in cases of
archival abundance absences and obfuscations emerge. I suggest that we see
military-bureaucratic rule in seventeenth-century Chile as an opportunity to
consider the technique of archival rule in other settings that may have fewer
sources but where tactics to maintain or enhance Indigenous slavery involved
the creation and articulation of documents employed to administer a desired
reality. Rather than thinking about laws and ordinances as governing Indi-
genous slavery, perhaps we need to think about the circumstances under which
documents as truth claims facilitated and legitimized involuntary possession,
removal from place of origin, and the transferral or sale of a person as property
to someone else. In many borderland arenas of empire where Indigenous
slavery flourished, documents acted as legal mandates—of what could be said
or done—rather than because of or in contrast to decrees and ordinances
allowing or prohibiting slavery. Maintaining a document in hand ensured the
verification of a truth that slave owners and colonial authorities sought to
manifest and maintain. Thus, as we have seen for Chile, the viability and per-
petuation of situations of unfreedom depended on certain kinds of documen-
tation that reinforced and sustained the right to preserve and bequeath forced
laborers to subsequent generations or to forcibly remove them to another
location. It is at the level of archival inscription, activation, and enunciation that
we can best understand the power of Indigenous slavery’s governance and its
afterlife.
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comercialización de su producción durante el siglo XVII.” RIVAR 2, no. 4
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Nancy E. van Deusen is professor of colonial Latin American and Atlantic world history at Queen’s
University. She is the author of thirty-five articles and four books on topics including the histories of
Indigenous bondage in the Atlantic world, experiences of enslaved Africans, and gender relations
and female Catholic spirituality in colonial Peru. She is currently researching for “The Dis-
appearance of the Past: Native American Slavery and the Making of the Early Modern World,” a
book that will address why the ubiquitous practice of Native American slavery in the Western
Hemisphere and beyond disappeared from our narratives about the past. She takes an ethno-
graphic approach to slavery’s archive to show how erasures, normalization practices, reinscrip-
tions, and obfuscation minimized or effaced a practice that continued into the nineteenth century.

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Indigenous Slavery’s Archive

Nancy E. van Deusen

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A s we navigate the “archival turn” in our historical investigations, no longer

Hispanic American Historical Review 101:1

slavery point to the purposeful inscription of specific ethnonyms in documents,

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4. Conrad, Apache Diaspora; Giudicelli, “ ‘Identidades’ rebeldes”; Rushforth, Bonds of

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13. Stoler, “Colonial Archives,” 91.

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19. Espejo, Nobiliario, 18–24.

by the Real Audiencia of Chile.25 Given the precariousness of military activity

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Certification documents were generated at the various fortifications that dotted

29. Vargas Cariola, “Estilo de vida.”

Most certification documents being created at these forts during the

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35. Sellers-Garcı́a, “Biography.”

who assisted in the reduction of Changuel, captured an 11-year-old girl named

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half-page dispatches dictated by the maestro de campo authorizing the removal

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making a copy of all final documents, including slave titles.49 Religious

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49. Stewart, “Created Nobility.”

activation of the record. The archive is an infinite activation of the record.”53

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53. Ketelaar, “Tacit Narratives,” 137.

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alike.66 Legal advocates sometimes referred to the Siete Partidas (a statutory

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Certification documents were also activated because they were founda-

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70. Muñoz Correa, “La esclavitud indı́gena,” 123.

Certifying Luisa Colmey, Auca

I turn now to a consideration of the freedom suit of Luisa Colmey in order to

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Minchaqueupu and subject to the cacique Anganamón. The document went on

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86. Head, “Documents, Archives, and Proof,” 914–15.

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It seems to me that it would be convenient that before taking a

permanent bondage.100 Often the children of now technically former slaves

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offraudulent documentation and that it sometimes took a lawsuit to protest the

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Governor Meneses, infamous for mandating brutal malocas.117 Contesting the

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By the end of the seventeenth century, extant classifications of unfree Reche-

foundational or used as evidence in matrı́culas or in the production of new kinds

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120. Chuecas Saldı́as, “Esclavitud indı́gena,” 209–10.

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