Historia y Sociedad (Jan 2018)
An Early 17th Century Testament of a Cacique from the Royal Audience of Quito
Abstract
The testament transcribed and analyzed in this section belongs to cacique Don Gaspar Zanipatín from the Juan Londoño Montenegro encomienda in Mulaló, a town founded near the skirts of the Cotopaxi volcano. The testament was written in the early 17th century in San Francisco del Quito and is a small sample from the native textual community formed in the incipient colonial society of the Royal Audience of Quito. Throughout the testament, it’s worth noting the way in which European literacy became embedded in the thinner filaments of the territory’s native people, mainly amidst the need of the indigenous elite and their descendants to affirm their good Christianity and their desire for salvation and, more importantly, the need to establish in writing their hope of preserving and maintaining their predominance and social status in the native and Spanish hierarchies. The text is only a fragment of more than 130 testaments granted by the indigenous elite and their descendants between the 17th and 18th centuries in Quito and its surroundings. In this way, the soul and body of cacique Don Gaspar have remained for posterity in an exceptional record among the broad public notarial deed of the Royal Audience.
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