Mixed Race Studies

Mark Tawin’s Mississippi: Race, 1800-1850

Mark Twain’s Mississippi
Project Partners: Northern Illinois University Libraries, The Newberry Library, The St. Louis Mercantile Library, Tulane University Libraries and  University of California, Berkeley
Made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services
2005

Peter J. Kastor, Associate Professor of History and American Culture Studies Program
Washington Unviversity in St. Louis

The changes in the Mississippi Valley from 1800-1850 represented a condensed version of the broader changes that would occur throughout North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Not only did the last vestiges of Indian power collapse in the faced of white supremacy, but the fluid and complex relationships that had marked life for so long gave way to an increasingly simplistic racial hierarchy.

All of the factors at work in the Mississippi Valley—demography, commerce, diplomacy, and culture—came together to reshape these racial relationships. For example, the Europeans who vied for control of the Mississippi in 1800 may have each sought racial control, but they lacked the diplomatic power to do so. Meanwhile, the relative scarcity of white settlers made the Europeans dependent on Indians for trade. Indians welcomed this state of affairs, since the needs of Europeans for diplomatic allies or for trading partners often placed Indians in advantageous situations. Nothing exemplified this state of affairs better than the large population of mixed-race peoples who occupied the Mississippi Valley. In addition to the Métis in the mid and upper Mississippi Valley, the lower Mississippi Valley was home to a large population with African and European ancestry. That mixed-race population formed the majority of the free people of color in New Orleans, the largest and most prosperous free black community anywhere in North America. These mixed-race populations all secured their goals by exploiting the economic and diplomatic realities that continued to shape life on the Mississippi…

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Without Impediment: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Colonial Mexico

The Americas
Volume 67, Number 4 (April 2011)
E-ISSN: 1533-6247; Print ISSN: 0003-1615

Jake Federick, Assistant Professor of History
Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin

On April 18, 1773, in the town of Teziutlán in the eastern mountains of Mexico, Captain don Raphael Padres participated in the baptism of his godson in the local church. He stood watching as Father Francisco Flandes leaned over the baptismal font to daub oil on the head of Joseph Philipe. As the priest performed the sacrament, reciting the script of baptism, the boy’s parents, don Cristóbal Hernández and doña Isabel Pérez, followed along. After anointing the child, Father Flandes turned to the militia captain to inform him of his responsibilities as godfather, explaining the spiritual kinship that Padres now had with the boy. After the rite was completed, the priest recorded his actions in the church’s book of baptisms. He noted the boy’s age and that he had been legitimately born the previous day. He also listed the names of the boy, his parents, the godfather, and the godfather’s wife, doña Josepha Fernández. The priest also pointed out that all the adults were españoles (of pure Spanish ancestry).

Two years later, on July 4, 1775, Captain Padres once again stood at the baptismal font in the Teziutlán church. The priest presiding over the rite this time was Pedro Francisco Gómez, and the child was five-day-old Mariana Paula. She too was legitimate, the child of Manuel Castillo and Antonia Vásquez. According to the book of baptisms, Manuel and Antonia were de razón (an abbreviation of gente de razón), which meant literally that they had the power of reason but in the eighteenth century the term was used to describe non-natives. Padres was described only as being from the local parish; no racial information was recorded. On this occasion, for some reason, the priest did not feel that it was necessary to note a casta (racial category) for young Mariana or her parents…

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