Find the chief. Indigenous authorities and the colonial documentary corpus (Tucumán and Nueva Vizcaya, 16th and 17th Centuries)

Abstract

The current paper deals with the identification of indigenous authorities in colonial sources, in two borderlands of the Spanish Empire, Tucumán and Nueva Vizcaya, between the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The figure of the chief appears to be omnipresent in colonial documents, in administrative files as well as in documents referring to war. Its recurrent apparition, though, is almost always problematic and ambiguous. The “caciques”, “curacas”, “principales” and so on show up either as autonomous emanation of the group they represent and as necessary figures of the bureaucratic colonial organisation. They were rebel leaders and also representatives chosen by Hispano-Creole instances to represent a previously submitted contingent. This article poses a few hypotheses in order to distinguish in colonial sources a leader who effectively takes its power from within its society from a cacique appointed by the colonial order, whose position is mainly heteronymous.