Bernardo de Gálvez: a Balanced View of Indigenous Resistance in the Northeastern New Spain during the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The article presents a vision of the nomadic indigenous resistance in the northeast of New Spain during the second half of the 18^th century and its confrontation with the Hispano-Creole conquest. In this case we analyze the point of view of Bernardo de Gálvez, an experienced Spanish military officer and politician, well acquainted with the North part of the viceroyalty, in the sense that he adopted a mostly balanced position in his criteria about these nomadic populations, who faced the Spanish empire in America, in particular of the Lipan (N'dé) ethnic group. Other topics correlated to the same theme are also addressed, such as the systems of colonialist alliances with other indigenous populations and the assessment that Galvez again introduces on the Hispanic-Creole armed detachments of the North, as well as their resulting limitations, despite of it. The work pays tribute to several historians who have dealt with the subject in the past, such as Luis Navarro García and María del Carmen Velázquez Chávez.