Cruz-Ángeles

Research and Narrative by José Antonio Esquibel

Juan de la Cruz, also known as Juan Catalán, and his wife, doña Beatriz de los Ángeles, are another example of a Spanish and Indian couple who are among the common ancestors of numerous people with deep family roots in New Mexico, specifically through the descendants of the Griego family. As participants in the founding of Spanish New Mexico they illustrate that Nuevomejicanos have ancestral cultural connections to European Spain and indigenous Meso-America of Central Mexico.

This is a different Cruz family than the various Cruz families that were established later in New Mexico in the 1700s. Juan de la Cruz and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles are less recognizable common ancestors because their Cruz surname was not passed on through any male lines and it was only through their daughter, Juana de la Cruz, wife of Juan Griego II, that there are descendants. Those descendants married into other seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century New Mexico families (see the genealogy below).

Juan de la Cruz, born circa 1568, native of Barcelona and a son of Antón de la Cruz, volunteered as a soldier in the army of don Juan de Oñate and presented himself in February 1597 for the muster of soldiers bound for New Mexico (George P. Hammond, ed., and Agapito Rey, trans., Don Juan de Oñate, Colonizer of New Mexico, Vol. I, 155, and Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de México, numero 22-B, f. 51r). He was the same person whose name was recorded in the January 1598 muster of soldiers as Juan Catalán, native of Barcelona, son of Antonio de la Cruz (Hammond and Rey, Don Juan de Oñate: Vol. I: 290; and Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de México, numero 22-C, f. 73v).  He was described as age 30 (born circa 1568) with a reddish beard and a wound on his right arm.

February 1597 Muster Roll Entry for Juan de la Cruz (below)

January 1598 Muster Roll Entry for Juan Catalán, aka Juan de la Cruz (below)

Barcelona was in the region of Cataluña (Catalonia) and thus Juan de la Cruz was also known as Juan Catalán. In 1631, fray Esteban de Perea  wrote that Juan de la Cruz was called “Catalán” but he was more certain that de la Cruz was French from the Valle de Languedoc, a province that borders Cataluña (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 19, f. 5r). Perea did not explain why it was that he considered de la Cruz as being from the Valle de Languedoc, but he did mention that de la Cruz had as a distinguishing characteristic “el color bermejo,” apparently a reference to him having red hair.

In his poem, História de la Nueva México, Gaspar Pérez Villagra wrote in Cantos XXVIII and XXI that Juan Catalán participated in the January 1599 siege of Acoma Pueblo in retaliation for the killing of Maese de Campo Juan de Zaldivar and other soldier.

There are yet no known accounts of Juan de la Cruz for the period of 1599 to 1626 in the surviving early archival records of New Mexico. Beatriz de los Ángeles came to New Mexico in 1600 as a criada (servant) of Cristóbal de Brito and she identified herself as a native of Tepeaca, a small community located southeast of Puebla de los Ángeles (Archivo General de Indias, Patronato, legajo 22, ramo 4, f. 560v/511v).

1600 Muster Roll Entry for Beatriz de los Ángeles, criada of Cristóbal de Brito (below)

Transcription:

—beatriz delos ang[el]es soltera n[atura]l de te

  peaca criada de xpoval [Cristoval] de brito

According to testimony of Captain Alonso Ramírez de Salazar recorded on May 30, 1631, Alférez Juan de la Cruz and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles were married by 1608 and residing at their estancia, very likely located in the modern-day valley of the lower Santa Cruz River where the descendants of this couple possessed land in the 1670s (AGN, Inquisición, t. 304, exp 27, 189r, Testimony of Alonso Ramírez de Salazar).

Juan de la Cruz and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles remained in New Mexico after 1608. She was described as an India Méxicana and native of Nueva España and was also referred to as “muy ladina y españolada,” meaning she spoke the Castilian language very well and was highly acculturated to Spanish customs (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 19, f. 5v and 14, Report of Fray Esteban de Perea, March 1631).

The children of this couple were identified as mestizos, including their daughter, Juana de la Cruz, the wife of Juan Griego, the younger, and himself part Spanish and part Indio Méxicano, through whom the Griego surname was passed on to subsequent generations. It is through the descendants of Juana de la Cuz and Juan Griego that Juan de la Cruz and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles are common ancestors for people with deep family roots in New Mexico (see Griego-Bernal).

Alférez Juan de la Cruz was deceased by May 1626 and in March 1631 fray Esteban de Perea made a note that Juan and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles were married for more than twenty years before his death, (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 19, f. 5r). In both of those years, his widow, doña Beatriz de los Ángeles, and their daughter, Juana de la Cruz, were accused of causing the death of two men, one of whom Diego Bellido, she was allegedly involved with in an illicit affair (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp 16, f. 25r and 37v). It was said that the two men died after having consumed a potion mixture in milk. Although accused of the deaths and denounced to the Inquisition as “bewitchers,” there’s no account that they were ever charged and there was never any arrest by the Inquisition.

In his report to Inquisition officials in Mexico City dated 1632, fray Esteba de Perea noted that he had always heard that doña Beatriz de los Ángeles “was a woman of great charity and a good Christian” who for many years live about two leagues (about five miles) from the convento of Isleta (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp 19, f. 5r). Perea also indicated that in his opinion of interacting with Juana de la Cruz in the Villa de Santa Fe for the past four to five years, his opinion of her was that she was a virtuous woman.

The testimony against doña Beatriz de los Ángeles and Juana de la Cruz inform us about the influence of natural remedies for women’s health and potions and powders used in the long-standing tradition of “love magic” in both Spanish and Indian societies. Most of the potions and powders pertained to making married men faithful to the wives, to making a man attracted to his lover, and to making men resist being attracted to other women.

We also learn that doña Beatriz had an estancia in the “provincia de los Tiguas,” and accordin to fray Estaba de Perea it was located “two leagues from this convento,” presumably referring to the convento of San Francisco de Sandía, and she had several Indian servants, including Antonuelo, who was a Tewa Indian, an unnamed Indian servant who was a Tiwa Indian, and Felipa, an Indian who was the wife of Diego de Santiago, a mulato (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 16, ff. 11v, 29r, 32v, 35r, and 36v).

In 1632, it was reported that Pedro de la Cruz, a mestizo and a son of Juan and doña Beatriz, was a participant in Pueblo Indian ceremonies at San Juan, including within a kiva (AGN, Inquisición, t. 304, exp. 27, ff. 190r-190v). On September 14, 1632, Pedro de la Cruz appeared before fray Esteban de Perea to provide his testimony about his participation in the Indian religious ceremonies, declaring he was a soldier and vecino of the Villa de Santa Fe and was age 24, indicating he was born circa 1608 (AGN, Inquisición, t. 304, exp. 27, f. 195r). In his defense Pedro stated that he and Gerónimo Pacheco had gone to San Juan Pueblo to recover some mares and before returning they entered a kiva to get warm there were some Indians were playing “patoles,” an Indian game played with beans. An Indian entered with a small child in his arms and a ceremony occurred. Pedro declared it was a child naming ceremony and afterward he and Pacheco simply left. Pedro signed his name, indicating he was literate.

He married Bernardina Morán, his comadre, who was previously married with Francisco Bernal (son of Juan Griego and Pascuala Bernal) and was described in 1631 as “mestiza and mulata, daughter of another that is more than Indian she appears to be more mulata then Indian” and as mulata in 1660 (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 19, ff. 6r and 32r; and AGN, t. 587, exp. 1,   Proceso contra Don Bernardo López de Mendizábal, ff. 166v and 169r-169v).

In December 1632, fray Esteban de Perea reported to the Inquisition Tribunal in Mexico City that in New Mexico “the people from a young age are raised with the customs of the Indians, since there is no schooling,” and he noted there were many mestizos among the Spanish citizens of New Mexico (AGN, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 19, f. 2r) The Cruz and Griego families were prime examples of mestizos who were among the elite families of 17th-century New Mexico.

At the time of the 1680 Pueblo Indian uprising, the de la Cruz family still owned property in the jurisdiction of La Cañada located along the Rio Grande just north the junction with the Santa Cruz River, which was recalled in 1693 when the area was surveyed for the establishment of the Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz (Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series 1, Roll 50, frame 1143ff).

The descendancy from Juan de la Cruz and doña Beatriz de los Ángeles is through the daughter, Juana de la Cruz, wife of Juan Griego II, son of Juan Griego I and Pascuala Bernal. Juana de la Cruz and Juan Griego were the parents of six known children:

1. Nicolás Griego who married Antonia Martín (Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I, no. 294, Griego vs Arias de Quiros, 1703). They were the parents of four known children (SANM I, no, 294 and 929):

a.  María Griego

b. Juana Griego

c.  Catalina Griego married (1) February 2, 1693, Ysleta del Paso, Diego Trujillo, son of Cristóbal Trujillo and María de Sandoval, and married (2) in 1707, Villa de Santa Fe, with Melchor de Herrera, soldier of the Presidio de Santa Fe, widow of Ángela González, son of Nicolás Jaimes de Herrera and doña Juana Barrón, natives of Guanajuato, Nueva España (Fray Angélico Chávez, “New Mexico Roots, Ltd.: An Addendum, Part IV” New Mexico Genealogist, Vol. 49, No. 4, December 2010, 190: AASF, Roll 60, DM 1707, October 5, 1707, nos. 11-12, Santa Fe; and Chávez, “New Mexico Roots, Ltd.,” 824)

d. Juan Griego

2. María de la Cruz Alemán, wife of Diego del Castillo, aka López del Castillo (AGN, Inquisición, t. 587, exp. 1, f. 170r, Testimony of Diego del Castillo).

3. Graciana Griego, wife of Francisco Xavier (AGN, Inquisición, t. 596, exp. 1, ff. 212r-212v).

4. Juana Griego, known as la clériga (Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I, No. 818).

5. BlasGriego, died April 1692, who married Ines Romero, daughter of Captain Diego Romero and Sebastiana Mestas, natives of La Cañada (“New Mexico Roots, Ltd.: An Addendum, Part III,” New Mexico Genealogist, Vol. 49, No. 3, September 2010, 147). Known children of Blas Griego and Sebastiana Mestas:

a.  Josefa Griego married in 1699, El Paso del Río del Norte, with José Romero, native of New Mexico, soldier of the Presidio de Santa Fe, parents unknown (AASF, Roll 60, DM 1699, no. 15, El Paso del Norte; and Chávez, “New Mexico Roots, Ltd.,” 1580).

b. Juan Griego, born circa 1686, married (1) Antonia Varela, and married (2) Juliana Sánez, native of the Villa de Santa Fe, daughter of Agustín Sáenz and Antonia Márquez (AASF, Roll 61, DM 1716, Albuquerque, no. 26; Fray Angélico Chávez, “New Mexico Roots, Ltd.,” 760).

6. Juana Griego

Researched by José Antonio Esquibel

Narrative by José Antonio Esquibel