Up Close and Personal: Royal and Ecclesiastical Visitas on the Frontier in the 1560s and the 1780s

• In Event: Collaguas I, el conocimiento sobre historia andina cuarenta años después. Visitas y temas de etnohistoria en perspectiva

Abstract

This paper will compare two long (10,000 folios each) visitas of peoples in relatively remote areas of the viceroyalty of Peru. One is a sixteenth century royal visita; the other is an ecclesiastical visita from the 1780s. The documentation for both affords windows into these eras. Information on populations, principal persons (native authorities, encomenderos, royal officials, and priests), economic activities, language(s) spoken, folkways, tribute, ecclesiastical presence, native ceremonies and healing, settlement patterns, reducciones, and the like is common in both manuscripts. Testimonies and petitions provide the native voice. I will emphasize the data and their use to fill the gap in our knowledge of life on the frontiers, of isolated peoples far from centers of power and influcence.

Author

• Susan E Ramirez, Texas Christian University