102° 
INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY-—PUBLICATION 
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Guadalajara 
ch Inclusions of Foreign Speech, ca 1550 
T7 > Area of Tarascan Speech, 1946 
——--— Boundory of Michoacén 
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Miap 7.—Pre-Conquest and modern 
New Spain 1 year after the coming of Cortés. 
Thereafter epidemics occurred periodically during 
the colonial period, completely obliterating the 
population of some districts, especially those in 
the low, hot lands. Smallpox, measles, and 
probably typhus (teré¢ekua) were the most 
common kilers. Mendizdbal (1939) has. esti- 
mated that in the first century of Spanish occupa- 
tion the Indians of New Spain were reduced to 25 
percent of their pre-Conquest numbers, and that 
the pre-Spanish population of the diocese of 
Michoacdn was possibly 200,000, which was 
reduced to some 92,000 by 1550. Judging from 
the accounts in the Relaciones Geograficas of 
1579-81, the basins of the Balsas and Tepaleatepec 
suffered the most heavily. There from one-third 
all of the inhabitants of some villages were 
ryed. Accounts of the 16th and 17th 
> mention scores of villages in the Taras- 
‘hich are now nonexistent, the inhabi- 
» this calculation from figures given in the Suma de 
Troneoso, 1905, vol. 1). 
boundaries of Tarasea speech. 
tants having been wiped out entirely, or the few 
survivors having migrated later to larger towns. 
Spanish exploitation and settlement in Mich- 
oacdn slowly effected the reduction of Tarascan 
speech. Guzman’s entrada (1530) left a trail of 
destruction and displacement of population 
throughout northern Michoacén. Moreover, dur- 
ing the exploitation of placer gold along the 
tributaries of the Balsas and Tepaleatepee (1524— 
35) Spanish miners destroyed and dislocated many 
Tarascans through enslavement and overwork.” 
On the other hand, Franciscan and Augustinian 
missionaries, who by the end of the 16th century 
had established themselves in most of the large 
Tarascan pueblos, were strong agents of accul- 
turation, replacing many indigenous material and 
2 The Indice de Protocolos, vol. 1 (ed. Millares Carlo and Mantecon), 
gives abundant evidence of the feverish gold panning operations in the Balsas 
and Tepaleatepee drainage from 1524 to 1528 and cites the wholesale use of 
Indian slave labor. Such activity probably continued until the enforce- 
ment (in the 1540’s) of the New Laws, which forbade slave labor and conse- 
quently deereased the profitableness of gold washing. Furthermore, many 
Spanish adventurers turned from gold panning to silver mining after the 
discoveries in the Tasco district during the 1530's. 
