Spaniards, Indians, and landscapes: indigenous peoples and Spanish expeditions on New Spain's northern frontier

Indigenous peoples played a central and indispensable role in Spanish expeditions into New Spain's northern frontier. Throughout the colonial period, expeditions ranging from Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528, to Pedro Vial in 1792, relied on Indigenous peoples as guides, interpreters, and, most importantly, as sources of information on food, water, and mineral resources available in the areas through which they traveled. Although Indians played a vital role in Spanish expeditions throughout the colonial period, the ways in which Spaniards interacted with Indigenous peoples changed dramatically between the sixteenth century and late eighteenth century as a result of cultural, military, and economic factors. While the roles of Indians in facilitating entradas remained the same, the development of a system of interdependency and alliance transformed the nature of Spanish-Native relations. To illustrate this key difference, this paper compares the role of Indigenous peoples in expeditions led by Panfilo de Narvaez (1528), Hernando de Soto (1539), and Francisco Vazquez de Coronado (1540), in the early colonial period, to those of Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera (1765), Juan Bautista de Anza (1774), Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante (1776), and Pedro Vial (1792) in the late colonial period.