City Indians in Spain's American Empire: Urban Indigenous Society in Colonial Mesoamerica and Andean South America, 1530–1810 (First Nations and the Colonial Encounter)

City Indians presents pioneering histories of urban Indians in early Latin America. An important but understudied segment of colonial society, urban Indians composed a majority of the population of Spanish America's most important cities. This volume spans a good part of the Americas, from Northern Mexico to Peru, over the course of three centuries. The chapters address a wide variety of topics, from indigenous governance and interethnic interactions to migration and identity. Native nobles, chroniclers, textile workers, migrants, widows, orphans, and muleteers are among the protagonists of the study. This anthology, the first of its kind in English, demonstrates the importance of urban Indian contributions to Spanish American society in the colonial period and beyond. ... Scholarly contributions include chapters by Susan Schroeder, “Whither Tenochtitlan? Chimalpahin and Mexico City, 1593–1631,” and David Cahill, “Ethnogenesis in the City: A Native Andean Etnia in a Colonial City.” The volume opens with commentary by John K. Chance, scholar of urban Indians in Latin America and author of Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca, and is summarized in “Concluding Remarks” by Kevin Terraciano, author of The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries.