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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 1 



story we obtained from Ponce. According to 

 Torres, Cocupao means "a stone's throw" {tiro de 

 piedra), and was given because each landless 

 Indian in the area threw a stone to establish the 

 extent of his property. Torres probably had 

 noticed, in scanning colonial titles, that often 

 there was mention of thi-owing in connection with 

 the granting of title to a piece of property. 

 Actually this was an old European custom in 

 which the person about to be invested with a piece 

 of property would pick up a handful of earth and a 

 handful of grass or herbs and would walk over the 

 property. The Santa Fe title gives the Michoacdn 

 version of this act as follows: the presiding judge 

 took the representative of the Pueblo de Santa Fe 

 by the hand and put him into the newly acquired 

 lands, and the representative then took stones and 

 threw them from one part to another (tomo las 

 piedras y las hechd de una parte a otra) and gathered 

 grass and walked over the lands, and was chal- 

 lenged by no one. 



During the sixteenth century began the long 

 series of controversies with Santa Fe. As has 

 been mentioned, the oidor Don Vasco de Quiroga 

 about 1533-34 founded the Pueblo Hospital de 

 Santa Fe de la Laguna. According to the 1538- 

 39 title of Santa Fe (in the 1803 notarized copy), 

 about 1533 Don Pedro Guanga (Governor of 

 Tzintzuntzan) and his wife Dona Inez gave to 

 the proposed hospital lands which occupied the 

 triangle from the peak of Tzirate to the lake at 

 Chuplcuaro, along the lake to a point opposite 

 the Pcnol de Capacuaro (also Cocontal, Toscon- 

 tal, and Huarapo), and northward up the valley 

 of Patacazcuaro (which contains the present 

 Potrei'o Grande del Lindero and the drainage of 

 Atzitzindaro) to the Tzirate. A few years later 

 Don Pedro added lands to the south and east of 

 the Cerro Capacuaro or Huarapo, extending as 

 far southeast as the estancia or cattle ranch of 

 Juan de Villasenor. This second grant apparently 

 consisted of the lands now known as Samano (just 

 south of Quiroga town), which were claimed by 

 Santa Fe as late as 1711 (in a dispute with Cocu- 

 pao and Tzintzuntzan), and which were in the 

 possession of Tzintzuntzan during most of the 

 nineteenth century. The estancia of Villaseiior 

 probably constituted the lands which shortly 

 came into the hands of the Caceres family of 

 VaUadolid, and which became the Hacienda de la 

 Teneria in the seventeenth century. Probably 



this Juan de Villasenor was the Juan de Villa- 

 seiior y Orozco who visited Michoacan in 1531, 

 and later became the great encomendero of Huango 

 and Puruandiro to the north, and the ancestor 

 of many famous people, including Father Hidalgo 

 and Emperor Iturbide. The above-mentioned 

 lands were added to and the titles were made 

 ironclad by royal and viceregal cedulas (1535, 

 1538, 1539) obtained through the influence of Don 

 Vasco de Quiroga. This is an important point, 

 since in all the later colonial history of disputes 

 between Cocupao and Santa Fe, the reviewing offi- 

 cials would acknowledge that Cocupao was en- 

 titled to its 500 varas in aU directions, but they 

 could not get the full 500 toward the west and 

 the south because of the roj^ally backed titles 

 possessed by Santa Fe. Cocupao was in the unfor- 

 tunate position of being an unimportant pueblo 

 with no powerful advocates, whOe Santa Fe was 

 the pet project of Vasco de Quiroga who (as oidor 

 and later Bishop of Michoacan from 1538 to 1565) 

 was the most powerful individual in Michoacan 

 and one of the most influential in all Mexico and 

 the Spanish possessions. After the death of 

 Quiroga in 1565 Santa Fe continued under the 

 direct administration and protection of the bishops 

 of Michoacan (through their deans and cabildos 

 of the cathedral). Since the Indian pueblo of 

 Santa Fe constituted a parish of the ordinary 

 clergy from its founding, the bishops (who ap- 

 pointed the local priests or rectors) were naturally 

 concerned with preserving the boundaries of 

 Santa Fe and the income from the lands at their 

 maximum. 



After the events of the 1530's, there is little of 

 note in the settlement history of Cocupao until 

 the seventeenth century. By the 1590's the 

 ravages of epidemic diseases had so reduced the 

 population that another congregation was neces- 

 sary. The Indians of the Pueblo de Tzirandan- 

 gacho e Tzanambo were located in the Pueblo de 

 Santiago adjoining the Pueblo de Cocupao (junto 

 al de Cucupa), but they complained that the 

 lands were useless because they were either ex- 

 hausted or too swampy. The location of the 

 Pueblo de Santiago and these lands is uncertain. 

 Possibly the scribe meant lands withm the pueblo 

 of San Diego Cocupao since San Diego is some- 

 times a variant of Santiago. Furthermore, there 

 is stLU a swampy area with many little springs 

 between present Zirandangacho and Quiroga. 



