1. Hermano Nectario María, Historia de la conquista y fundación de Caracas , 2d ed. (Madrid, 1966). Juan de Pimentel, "Relación de Nuestra Señora de Caraballeda y Santiago de León (1578)," in Antonio Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas de Venezuela (Caracas, 1964), 118. The estimate of Indian population comes from the testimony of Francisco Infante and Garci González de Silva, 3 January 1589, in Archivo General de la Nación, Caracas (hereinafter cited AGN), Encomiendas , 5 vols. (Caracas, 1945-1958), 1: 230-232. Peter Boyd-Bowman, "Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies, 1579-1600," The Americas 33 (July 1976): 78-95. [BACK]

2. Domingo Ibarqüen y Vera, "Relación sobre El Dorado y sobre la expedición de Antonio de Berrio (1597)," in Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 247-257. [BACK]

3. Those who participated in these ventures stood to share in the spoils; this is what kept the group together and it was contingent on the leader to execute effectively what a modern historian has called "the technique of hope" if he was to maintain order and his own authority. See Mario Góngora, Studies in the Colonial History of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1975), 3-5. [BACK]

4. In Venezuela the New Laws restructuring of the encomienda, including the requirement that tribute be paid rather than labor service, was observed largely in the breach; Eduardo Arcila Farías, El régimen de la encomienda en Venezuela , 2d ed. (Caracas, 1966), chaps. 8 and 9. J. A. de Armas Chitty, Caracas: Origen y trayectoria de una ciudad , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1967), 1:78-79, 226, 2:135-136. San Sebastián de los Reyes was refounded on several occasions; Lucas Guillermo Castillo Lara, Materiales para la historia provincial de Aragua (Caracas, 1977), 268-269, 297-329. break [BACK]

5. Luis A. Sucre, Gobernadores y capitanes generales de Venezuela , 2d ed. (Caracas, 1964), 104-105. [BACK]

6. "Relación de Santiago de León," Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 120. The accomplishments of these men are given in Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Fundadores de Caracas, Méritos y Servicios, II, tomo XIX. [BACK]

7. Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Amérique: XVI ^e -XVII ^e siècle (Paris, 1977), 181-186, 296-297. C. H. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century , reprint ed. (Hamden, Conn., 1966), 16. [BACK]

8. "Relación de Santiago de León," Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 121. [BACK]

9. Late sixteenth-century grants of land and water rights, too numerous to be cited individually, can be traced in Actas del Cabildo de Caracas , 12 vols. (Caracas, 1943-1975) (hereinafter cited ACC), I, passim. The prominence of wheat mills on the Caracas landscape in the 1590s is reflected in their frequent use as reference points in grant petitions made to the cabildo. Also beginning in the 1590s the cabildo made various attempts to control certain aspects of the wheat trade: the quantity of flour that had to be gotten from a given quantity of grain, the price of bread, and occasional prohibitions on the export of wheat and flour from the city. The present-day depository for colonial notary records is the Archivo del Registro Principal de Caracas (cited here as ARPC). There are two small volumes of synopses of these records for the last years of the sixteenth century: Manuel Pinto C., Los primeros vecinos de Caracas (Caracas, 1966); and Agustín Millares Carlo, ed., Protocolos del siglo XVI (Caracas, 1966). [BACK]

10. Haring, Buccaneers , 38-39. [BACK]

11. Academia Nacional de la Historia, Actas del cabildo eclesiástico de Caracas (1580-1770) , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1965), 1:64, 78-79; ARPC, Escribanías, June 27 and July 13, 1595. The cabildo ordered all masons and carpenters to work exclusively on the church until it was completely rebuilt; ACC, 1:442 (May 11, 1596). [BACK]

12. ARPC, Escribanías, June 9 and July 21, 1597. [BACK]

13. ARPC, Escribanías, February 3, March 24, and September 15, 1599; July 15 and October 30, 1605. Baltasar García's land grant is in ACC, 1:259 (May 24, 1593); and his marriage to the widow Medina is given in Consejo Municipal del Distrito Federal, El libro parroquial más antiguo de Caracas (Caracas, 1968), 135. [BACK]

14. AGN, Real Hacienda, legs. 3, 5, 6. The royal tax recorded in these volumes is the almojarifazgo , and Caracas vecinos enjoyed royal exemption from this tax for most of the first half of the seventeenth century. The original cédula granting this favor, dated April 16, 1608, was copied into the cabildo record in 1619; ACC, 4:127-128. The complete record begins in 1603 because an earlier exemption for vecinos lapsed in April of that year; AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 3, fol. 460 (April 24, 1603). [BACK]

15. The figure of six arrobas of wheat flour from every fanega of grain milled is based on the actual yield of the mill belonging to the heirs of Juan Rodríguez Santos; ARPC, Testamentarías, 1638 R, fols. 279-283. [BACK]

16. In 1578 the climate in the Caracas Valley was described as having a "fresh and humid temperament and with much rain which generally begins in May and ends in December"; "Relación de Santiago de León," in continue

Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 117. Records kept at the Cagigal Observatory in Caracas during the course of the twentieth century show an average monthly rainfall of more than 100 millimeters during the months from June to October; Marco-Aurelio Vila, Aspectos geográficos del Distrito Federal (Caracas, 1967), 52-84. [BACK]

17. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II , 2 vols. (New York, 1972), 1:588-590. [BACK]

18. Andalusian wheat prices are from Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (New York, 1934), 353-357, 376-381. Hamilton's prices are in maravedís per fanega of wheat in the grain. For Caracas the single price of four reales per arroba of wheat flour, the price used to calculate the almojarifazgo export tax, was used. The following equivalents were necessary to make the comparison: one fanega of grain was equal to six arrobas of wheat flour, and one real equaled thirty-four maravedís. Therefore, the 4-reales price of one arroba of flour was equal to 816 maravedís for one fanega of wheat in the grain (4 × 34 × 6 = 816). The years between 1580 and 1620 in which Caracas wheat was cheaper than Andalusian were: 1582, 1584, 1589, 1598, 1603, 1604, 1605, 1616, 1617, 1618, and 1619. Wheat exports from Seville are analyzed in Michele Moret, Aspects de la Société Marchande de Seville au début de XVII ^e siècle (Paris, 1967), 78-79, 95-103. The interesting study by Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century (Johns Hopkins Press, 1986), gives a detailed assessment of the procedures and costs of outfitting the fleet. The rising cost of wheat, fivefold during the course of the sixteenth century, is considered (pp. 99-100), and Phillips notes that suppliers of the armada "frequently used local American products to supplement the standard rations" (p. 101). However, the case of Caracas wheat may be the exception to her contention that "In the Indies nearly everything supplied to the fleets cost more and was harder to procure" (ibid.). [BACK]

19. AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 3. ARPC, Escribanías, November 16, 1605. [BACK]

20. Due to its earlier importance as a pearl fishery, and perhaps because of its location as the first landfall after the Atlantic crossing, during the first years of the seventeenth century the island of Margarita still served as a principal depository and center for Spanish merchandise which was reexported for sale all along the Tierra Firme coast. Enrique Otte, comp., Cedularios de la monarquia española de Margarita, Nueva Andalucia y Caracas (1553-1604) , 8 vols. (Caracas, 1959-1967), 1:xix-xlvi. [BACK]

21. Carrasquer's name appears very frequently in the early records of the Caracas notaries. As befitting both his merchant occupation and his place in Caracas society, Carrasquer was the first officer ( castellano ) of the La Guaira fortress; Otte, Cedularios , I:xliii. Carrasquer as encomendero can be found in AGN, Encomiendas , I:73. See also Stephanie Blank, "Patrons, Clients, and Kin in Seventeenth-Century Caracas: A Methodological Essay in Spanish American Social History," The Hispanic American Historical Review 54 (May 1974): 274-275. [BACK]

22. Frederick Pike, "Aspects of Cabildo Economic Regulations in Spanish America Under the Hapsburgs," Inter-American Economic Affairs 13 (1960): 83. break [BACK]

23. Blank, "Patrons, Clients, and Kin," 260-83. Blank's consensus view is most clearly expressed in her "Societal Integration and Social Stability in a Colonial Spanish American City, Caracas 1595-1627" (Ph.D. Diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971). [BACK]

24. Sucre, Gobernadores , 115-118. [BACK]

25. ACC, 1:169-171 (October 8, 1591); 1:191 (May 25, 1592); 1:209-211 (September 4, 1593); 1:221 (June 28, 1593); 1:239 (March 30, 1593). [BACK]

27. ACC, 1:374 (June 13, 1594). The cabildo granted petitions for eleven mill sites during the 1590s, however only four are referred to in the Actas as actually in place and functioning (those that were certainly built are marked by an asterisk in the following list; dates refer to the first reference in the source). Anauco: Juan de Villegas Maldonado (September 14, 1592); Juan de Riberos (June 13, 1594); Chacao: *Sebastián Díaz (May 24, 1593); Francisco Olalla (May 24, 1593); Jácome Fantón (May 24, 1593); Diego de Xexas (May 24, 1593); Garci González de Silva (May 24, 1593); Catuche: *Esteban Marmolejo (August 2, 1599); undetermined site: *Alonso Andrea (November 27, 1592); Juan de Guevara (June 6, 1593); *Francisco Sánchez de Córdova (October 24, 1590). [BACK]

28. ACC, 1:480 (January 8, 1598). [BACK]

29. The provision which allowed millers one almud for every fanega of wheat that they ground is in ACC, 3:70-71 (January 29, 1607); that an almud was the eighth part of a fanega comes from Hamilton, American Treasure , 192. [BACK]

30. Blank, "Patrons, Clients, and Kin," 267. [BACK]

31. ACC, 1:298 (November 26, 1593). This history, written by a "poet-soldier" named Ulloa, has been lost. [BACK]

32. ACC, 1:379-380 (June 15, 1594); 1:383-384 (July 4, 1594) for ejido . Figueredo is in ACC, 1:160 (December 3, 1590); 1:380 (June 14, 1594); 2:311-312 (June 14, 1594); 2:313 (September 1, 1594). The first reference to González de Silva's petition for the same land is ACC, 1:511-512 (August 2, 1599). Figueredo's composición payment is recorded in AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 3, fol. 6. [BACK]

33. González de Silva appears as padrino at Figueredo's wedding in February 1759; Consejo Municipal, El libro más antiguo , 167. Figueredo's quinto payment is in AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 3, fol. 16; his statement about his respect for González de Silva is in ACC, 2:327-328 (January 24, 1601). [BACK]

34. ACC, 2:320-329 (January 24 and 29, 1601). Paula and Clara Guevara Díaz de Rojas would marry Baltasar and Gaspar González de Silva Rojas in the 1620s; Carlos Iturriza Guillén, Algunas familias caraqueñas , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1967), 1:325-326. break [BACK]

35. ACC, 2:325 (January 29, 1601). [BACK]

36. ACC, 2:336-339 (April 17, 1608). [BACK]

37. Recopilación de Leyes de las Indias , libro iv, tit. xii, ley xiv, cites a royal cédula of November 1, 1591, which required that land and water not held with adequate title was to revert to the crown. Governors and viceroys could ask to see titles at any time, and they could declare invalid ones null and void. Libro iv, tit. xii, ley xx, cites a cédula dated January 10, 1589, which allowed viceroys and governors to revoke grants made by cabildos if title had not been confirmed by the crown, always after the grant holder had been given opportunity to pay the composición fee. [BACK]

38. ACC, 2:286-290 (July 29, 1609). [BACK]

39. ACC, 1:183 (September 14, 1592); 3:97-98 (June 28, 1607); 3:163 (June 9, 1609); 3:234-236 (April 9, 1610); 3:273 (March 21, 1611); 4:45 (June 6, 1619). [BACK]

40. Tulio Febres Cordero, Archivo de historia y variedades , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1930), 1:191-194. In 1612 the commerce between San Antonio de Gibraltar on the south side of Lake Maracaibo and the Andean town of Mérida was so extensive that the cabildo of Mérida proposed the establishment of a customs house and warehouses at Gibraltar to protect their wheat shipments; ibid., 1:97. [BACK]

41. Caracas was at the peak of its wheat boom in 1606 when Maracaibo vecinos sent for help to Governor Sánchez de Alquiza, who had passed through Maracaibo on his arrival in Venezuela that same year and knew first hand of the war between Quiriquires and Motilones and the Maracaiberos. At first Sánchez de Alquiza refused, ordering instead that the lake town's encomenderos had to put down the uprising within four months or lose their grants. A change of heart in 1608 sent Juan Pacheco Maldonado and fifty men, gathered from the Andean town of Trujillo and from Coro, to the succor of Maracaibo. AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 208. [BACK]

42. F. Braudel and F. Spooner, "Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750," chap. 7 in E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1967), 4:471, 477, 484-485. [BACK]

43. AGI, Contaduria, leg. 1613. [BACK]

44. ACC, 2:23-233 (December 6, 1605). Eduardo Arcila Farías, Economía colonial de Venezuela , 2d ed., 2 vols. (Caracas, 1973), 1:128-129. [BACK]

45. Sucre, Gobernadores , 98-107. [BACK]

46. Tomás Polanco Martínez, Esbozo sobre historia económica venezolana (Madrid, 1960), 109-115. Eduardo Arcila Farías, Economía colonial de Venezuela (Mexico, 1946), 289-292. [BACK]

47. José de Viera y Clavijo, Noticias de la historia general de las Islas Canarias , 5 vols. (Madrid, 1772-1783), 4:259. [BACK]

48. See n. 14 above. [BACK]

49. AGN, Real Hacienda, legs. 3, 5, 6. For vecino status of shippers, see: Consejo Municipal, El libro más antiguo ; Carlos Iturriza Guillén, ed., Matrimonios y velaciones de españoles y criollos blancos celebrados en la catedral de Caracas desde 1615 hasta 1831 (Caracas: Instituto Venezolano de Genealogía, 1974); "Relación de los extrangeros que residen en la ciudad de Santiago de León (1607)," AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 193; road tax list, ACC, 2:96-99, 118-119. [BACK]

50. The foreign vecino share of tobacco exports for the period 1604- hard

1607 was: 1604: 0 of 122 arrobas (0%); 1605: 135 of 1970 arrobas (6.8%); 1606: 995 of 5583 arrobas (17.8%); 1607: 250 of 1362 arrobas (18.3%). [BACK]

51. Carlos Iturriza Guillén, Algunas familias valencianas (Caracas, 1955), 100-104 (Juan de Guevara); Carrasquer, Guevara, and Vásquez de Escovedo were concuñados , brothers-in-law by marriage (to the sisters Díaz de Rojas), Carlos Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 1:243-249. Baptisms of the Rodríguez Jaramillo and Villanueva children are in Consejo Municipal, El libro más antiguo , 17 and 32. Diego de Villaneuva was royal treasurer and author of an important survey of the Caracas region, ''Relación de Diego de Villaneuva y Gibaja, (1607)," given in Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 287-301. His marriage to young catalina Mejía is in Iturriza Guillén, ed., Matrimonios y velaciones , 35. The Portuguese traders Caravajal and Diaz León are listed in AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 193, "Relación de los estrangeros. . . ." Juan de Aguirre can be found in ARPC, Escribanías, August 15, 1605. Alonso Rodríguez Santos and his descendents are in Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 2:778-787. [BACK]

52. ACC, 2:255 (June 26, 1605). [BACK]

53. Sucre, Gobernadores , 106-107; Consejo Municipal, El libro más antiguo , passim. [BACK]