著者

坂野 鉄也

出版者

公益財団法人史学会

雑誌

史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.119, no.2, pp.147-180, 2010-02-20

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The purpose of this paper is to explain the reason why in the sixteenth century Paraguay the Spaniards or their descendants quarrelled between themselves in court, sometimes for five or six years, about the rights over yanaconas, who served them while living in their residences or farms; it is not aim to discuss the inter-Spanish relations but to search for the cause of trying to get a few of yanaconas in exchange for many efforts and expense. This discussion proposes to rethink the relationship between the Spaniards, the colonizer, and the Indios, the colonized, and to make clear the image of the Paraguayan colonial society as it appeared in the middle of sixteenth century. The results of the analysis based on judicial documents, reserved but not yet put in order in the Archivo Nacional de Asuncion, Paraguay, are as follows. 1) The yanaconas were situated under a specific legal system differentiated from that of the colonial institution, encomienda system. 2) The real image of the yanaconas is not similar to that described in previous studies, in which historians and anthropologists have supposed that they were indios who lived near Asuncion, the first and capital colonial city of the Paraguayan region, or the captured indios who resisted to Spaniards or the Spanish colonization. 3) In colonial Paraguay under the condition of a partially functioning encomienda system, the yanaconas filled the role of connection between the Spaniards and the conquered or unconquered indios by receiving visits of their relatives, a common practice in their native society. This resulted in the Spaniards or their descendants competing to get or not lose yanaconas.