This manuscript contains a collection of documents relating to a land dispute in Querétaro, a region of north-central Mexico which was especially agriculturally wealthy during the early stages of Spanish colonization – at the time when this dispute occurred.
The plaintiff in the dispute, Felipe Buitrón Muxico, who is most likely responsible for the compilation of the manuscript, was one of the founding members of the city of Querétaro in 1656. Buitrón argued that two caballerías of pasture land located to the west of Huimilpan and San Pedro and to the south of Santiago de Querétaro legally belonged to him but that he had been dispossesed by a Sebastián de Artiaga, a resident of Mexico City and breeder of both large and small livestock. While Buitrón stated that he had obtained the lands legally through an agreement with the Jesuit College of Valladolid some time past, Sebastián de Artiaga said he had obtained the lands, also legally, from the widow, Doña Francisca de Castrovilla, who had purchaed them from the Agustinian Order of the province of Michoacán who, in turn, had inherited them from Jorge Manrique and from a Don Miguel Elías, ‘who had been the Chief Amerindian of the town which is now the abandoned village of Santa María’ (‘Indio Principal que fue de la Ciudad que es en el pueblo desplobado de Santa María’) who had been granted them by the Viceroy of New Spain. The Spaniards had arrived in Querétaro in 1529 and allied with the Otomí people led by Conín (Christian name Fernando de Tapia), they had defeated the Chichimeca people in battle in 1531. Soon after Santiago de Querétaro had been established. Religious orders and Spanish settlers arrived in the region but tensions with the native inhabitants had persisted so that most settlement had occurred south of Santiago de Querétaro near Huimilpan in the region of the lands, in fact, disputed in this manuscript. Spanish colonisers struggled to settle the region and growth was sporadic so that it was only in 1656 that it was declared a ‘Muy noble y leal ciudad’ with Felipe Buitrón Mujica, the plaintiff in the documents in this manuscript, as one of the founding members. He occupied a senior position in the municipal government as Depositario General for the duration of this court case (see R. Ferrusca Beltrán, Querétaro: de pueblo a ciudad, 1655–1733 Disposiciones jurídico-administrativas, Santiago de Querétaro: Historiografía Queretana, vol XIII, 2004, p. 150) but his standing, nevertheless, did not guarantee his success in this case where, as part of the messiness of the Spanish colonisation process, there were myriads of interests involved from those of the colonial authorities and religious orders to those of the Spanish settlers and the original Amerindian inhabitants.
The map included in the manuscript shows, in detail, the areas, which Buitrón claimed and positions them within the context of the surrounding countryside and settlements in the area. In the centre is the village of Santa María (which the text of the manuscript notes had been abandoned), located on a ridge, overlooking the valley of Santa María which is surrounded by wooded, hilly country and a river that flowed from the village of San Pedro (shown to the south east) descending into the valley over a waterfall. To the north is shown a mountainous, barren region and below this are shown the two caballerías being contested by Buitrón and below them the road running from Huimilpan, which is itself also shown on the plan at its eastern extremity. The human landmarks shown are the haciendas of Bartolomé de Hordeña and that which had belonged to Hernando Redondo but now belonged to Buitrón. Also shown are the ‘estancia de Santa María’, the ‘sitio de Sossa’ and, in the centre of the plan but with slight damage as it is located on the margin, is drawn an eye with the caption ‘ojo de … esta en la cañada de Santa Maria q. corre al poniente donde … el sitio de Dronmüguelelias [?]’, possibly indicating the locations of Amerindian settlements.
