Sunday, April 26, 2015

Trail Dust - Spanish passion for noble rank helped king colonize New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

...In centuries past, Spaniards too had a passion for titles, perhaps even more so than Englishmen. Many families first gained noble rank during the medieval wars with the Moors as a reward for extraordinary military service. In the 12th century, for example, two brothers named López led an assault on the Moorish-held Portuguese city of Chaves and captured it.

A grateful king made them knights and ordered that their name should, thereafter, be López de Chaves. The brothers’ descendants long afterward helped explore the New World, and the name Chaves (or Chavez) is a common one now in New Mexico and Chihuahua.

Practically every Spanish commoner hoped someday to advance at least to the lowest noble rank, that of hidalgo. The term comes from the contraction of three words, hijo de algo, meaning simply, “son of something.” Those who could save enough were able to buy the title from the king. But most poor people had to count on winning it through some valued deed.

Hidalgos were exempt from taxes, they couldn’t be arrested for debt, like the common folk, and they could pass on the title to a male heir. Among status-conscious Spaniards, hidalgo rank was much coveted.

...When Juan de Oñate was preparing to march north in the closing years of the 16th century and settle New Mexico, he ran into trouble enlisting colonists. Spaniards well knew the dangers and hardships they would find on the Rio Grande frontier and, hence, were not eager to sign on.

The king lent a hand by proclaiming that every man who joined Oñate and stuck it out in New Mexico for five years would be made a hidalgo. Recruitment sped up after that.

...Such noblemen were permitted to add the title “Don” before their first name, such as Don José on Don Manuel. The usual explanation is that the term Don comes from combining the first letters in the phrase, de origin noble. However, Fay Blake of Albuquerque, a scholar of Jewish history, informs me that it may actually derive from the Hebrew word Adonas, which means “Our Lord.”


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