ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Grafting Colonial Identities: Don Carlos and the Orchards of the Oztoticpac Lands Map of 1540

• In Event: Grafting Colonial Botanies

English Abstract

Orchards in New Spain can be viewed as contact spaces in which European technologies, such as grafting, met with Indigenous worldviews and agricultural practices. This study focuses on how an Indigenous noble utilized his orchards to display an understanding of European technologies and assert himself as a social elite in the then-contested class order of New Spain. The Oztoticpac lands map is the focus of this analysis, as it is the earliest known depiction of grafting in New Spain. It was created on behalf of the inquisition for the trial of Don Carlos, an Indigenous noble who allied with Cortés during the conquest of Mexico. Post-conquest, Cortés gifted Don Carlos one of the estates depicted on the map, where Don Carlos planted a grafted orchard of Indigenous trees with Spanish fruit-tree limbs. Owning an orchard was socially significant in both European and Indigenous circles, however the decision to use grafting rather than import Spanish trees catered to European botanical traditions that prioritized man’s control over nature. I argue that this decision indicated Don Carlos’ desire to reestablish his place as a social elite, and that his utilization of European plants and technologies symbolized an attempt to graft himself into the emerging political regime. While Don Carlos did not live to see the fate of his estate or legacy, a close analysis of the surviving Oztoticpac lands map reveals new avenues for understanding how Indigenous nobles utilized Spanish technologies as a means to gain social capital within a new colonial system.

Author

• Elise Milburn, Pennsylvania State University