This post is a part of the 2024 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which were edited and compiled by members of the CRE’s board alongside editors at Age of Revolutions.

By James Bland

This is the story of a rape and murder that almost became a lynching. The final decision came down to a governor trying to hold order and an apathetic bureaucracy too far away to understand. The trial and fate of the accused Native neophyte became another example of Alta California’s caste system and just another slice of paperwork.

Lieutenant Colonel José Joaquín de Arrillaga was the governor of Alta California when scandal erupted in the northern outpost town of San Francisco. The governor’s career in New Spain was somewhat analogous to the development of the California Provinces. Like most Californios of status, Arrillaga had come from Spain and began soldiering in Mexico before going to California. Like most Californios, Arrillaga was an agent of the state, protecting the few rancheros or miners who worked in the shadow of the presidio outposts, or veterans who stayed on the frontier. Like his Baja California predecessors had cooperated with Jesuits, Arrillaga cooperated with Franciscan missionaries in Alta California. The Franciscans were responsible for the missions- including Mission San Francisco, where Aurelio was baptized. While technically servants of the state, the Franciscans’ mission of compassionate-yet-coerced conversion of Indian country occasionally conflicted with fellow Hispanic Californios. Franciscans and soldiers frequently butted heads, especially over Native rights. Nevertheless, they all had a stake in a peaceful, functional province that could guarantee internal stability and rule of law.

The Aurelio case broke that peaceful routine. A Spanish girl was found brutalized and smothered to death. The culprit was caught.  A neophyte cowherd, Aurelio lived on the grounds of the Mission San Francisco de Asís, only a few miles from the Presidio. As Aurelio was put on trial, the question of guilt was readily resolved- multiple eyewitnesses and his own confession confirmed he had committed attack. As his trial and imprisonment went on, the question became turned to culpability. Was Aurelio fully cognizant of his actions as sins and crimes, or was his “pagan,” “Indian” brain insufficiently advanced to grasp his wrongdoing? Had the missionaries failed in bringing Christian Gospel to his ignorant soul? Had the governor’s men failed to properly implement civilized bureaucracy?[1] If the Enlightenment accurately categorized Native minds as inferior, Californios had failed to implement order. Who had failed, and how were they to be punished?

Historiography: The Tyranny of the Archives and the Critical Fabulation of the Victim

Scholarship has dealt with colonial-era rape and sex. Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez asserts that colonial violence upon minorities and sexual violence against women were two sides of the same imperial coin. In the same region of the American southwest, she argues that the Hispanic and Chicano identity was formed (in part) through survival of, and participation in, colonial and sexual violence. On a broader survey of legal prosecution of rape in the colonial world, Sharon Block argued that the legal prosecution of rape cases both colonized femininity and subjugated masculinity.[2]

Joan Scott suggested that femininity was a fluid across era and society. [3] The idea of gender as a fluid category- lent itself especially well to the frontier where both men and women coped with their challenging new environment with new gendered expectations. Simultaneously, imperial agents invoked ideals of masculinity and femininity to maintain social consensus.[4]

The trouble comes when a subjugated demographic is unmentioned in archives. Marisa J. Fuentes searched for social values through minute archival details- or their absence. Fuentes argued that African slaves, and particularly women, were omitted by the slave society’s written records- contributing to their social death. Fuentes called this “the tyranny of the archives.”[5]

Gayatri Spivak asked, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” examining the British Raj. The British banned widow immolation of widows and enforced it with gusto. Spivak interpreted this as White saviors who colonized Indian men to save Indian women- women and their agency were thus eclipsed in the shadow of the British Raj.[6]

Throughout Legal Codes and Talking Trees, Katrina Jagodinsky connects rape survival with Indigenous persistence through litigation. In the face of rape and statist indifference, individual women and their families achieved survival while Indigenous communities achieved survivance.[7]

Saidiya Hartman offers an additional alternative to the tyranny of the archives. While studying the Atlantic slave trade, Hartman created the process of “critical fabulation.” Hartman draws upon the intellectual process of critical theory and the lived experience of oral history subjects to critically fabulate a credible narrative to fill in the archival gaps and give recognition whilst acknowledging limitations.[8]

Hartman’s theoretical practice of critical fabulation brings the story back to San Francisco. Tragically, yet unsurprisingly, Guadalupe has no significant voice in this story.

Here it is appropriate to try and recreate what Guadalupe’s world was like. It is far too difficult to attempt to understand Aurelio, who likely suffered from mental illness in addition trauma from being an orphan. Guadalupe, at the age of nine, would have lived a charmed life surrounded by her father’s comrades and her mother’s neighbors. Living either in the walls of the presidio or directly adjacent to the fort, the Galindo childhood would have been one of assumed safety. Her father’s firearms, the drills, and the displays of obeisance by neophytes suggested to Guadalupe she lived in a world that was ordered by her father and his adult associates. The farthest Guadalupe could have comprehended was likely Monterrey- where the governor and men like her papa ran Alta California- a bigger version of her home town. The Mission was the site of Guadalupe’s Baptism and the most majestic monument to God, the paternal figure whose bells began and ended each of her days.[9]

Her case demonstrates several things about Californio society. The daily experience of a subjugated and allied Native population was crucial to the Californio self-image of success: if “friendly Indians” sinned against God and committed crimes against the crown, Californios had failed in their primary directives of bringing about Spain’s kingdom and God’s will. The language of the legal proceedings suggested a dual-worldview influenced by devout religiosity and racial categorization. The physical and mental gap between Alta California and Mexico City demonstrated that Californios were very much a borderlands people. Californios experienced grief and failure during the case- experiences metropolitan Mexico City did not comprehend.

Facts of the Case

Arrillaga was truly sitting on a powder keg. An innocent girl was dead. Her rapist and murderer, a neophyte cowherd, had confessed. Her devastated mother was disillusioned with her Native neighbors and had lost faith in public trust. The victim’s father, a soldier, had apprehended the criminal and had barely been restrained from throttling him. The soldiers called for blood. They insisted the killer’s confession proved full culpability. The friars insisted that the man was feebleminded: unable to discern right from wrong. While the convict howled like a man possessed in his chains, the priests called for mercy, asking that the man be imprisoned, not executed.[10]

The town, mission and people of San Francisco were scandalized by the crime. Ultimately, Arrillaga passed the burden of judgment up the ladder. His clerk drew up a dossier bound for Mexico City. It was titled “A Case formed against Aurelio, Indian Neophyte of the Mission of San Francisco, for murder and Rape committed against the girl Guadalupe Galindo of the age of eight years on the morning of May 9 of this year.” By December, the case briefing made it to the hands of Audiencia Judge José de Cristo.[11]

Arrillaga’s petition for the Viceregal auditor to consider the convict’s “righteous judgement” was a carefully selected phrase that implied conscience to determine good from evil. Despite the triumph of the materialist and objectivist thinking, the Enlightenment had not yet delineated psychoanalysis as entirely separate from Christian assertions of moral conscience. The question was not an issue of temporary insanity- in his own testimony, Aurelio confessed to have full control over his actions. This was an issue closer to the “age of reason;” the ability to grasp a particular moral transgression.

Before Arrillaga abdicated the case to Mexico, local authorities had already completed the investigation and recommended execution. It was not Arrillaga, but his subordinate Luís Argüello who presided over the case. From investigation to prosecution, the case was processed by presidio soldiers- the same who found Guadalupe’s corpse and apprehended her killer.

Within the same morning, the violated body of an eight-year-old girl had been found and the suspect, a neophyte named Aurelio was imprisoned. The same day, Captain José Arguello commissioned Sergeant Luis Peralta to investigate the case with a firm statement: “If this is any kind of a city, the case will stay in my hands.” There was a message beneath Arguello’s message: stay in your place and follow my orders, this is the governor’s decision to execute, not yours.[12]

“Any kind of a city,” exhorted the investigator’s local loyalty. Alta California was on the road to becoming an independent province. San Francisco was the northernmost presidio and second-most important city in the province after the capital at Monterey. Northern missions depended on the bayside presidio, as would whalers from the north and trade ships from the Orient.  Arguello chose not to appeal to Peralta’s honor or his duty as a soldier. San Francisco stood literally at the frontier of the province, and metaphorically, so too did the city’s ability to enforce law and order.

The presidio’s men began inquiries immediately. There is something to consider in the method in which the witnesses themselves gave their testimony- in the small town of San Francisco, the inquiring sergeants knew all the witnesses. Each witness was asked “to swear to God and to promise to the King to tell the truth,” with their hand raised. This was ceremonial, but not all of these swearing ceremonies were done in a court room or chapel. The sergeants went where the witnesses were able to provide their statements. Peralta affirmed through his own words and reputation; “to this [inquiry], I give my faith.”[13]

Venancio Galindo, Guadalupe’s father, was the first witness. He testified that he had sent his wife with his “big girl” to play in the glen outside the presidio early that morning. Over the course of the day, Guadalupe was separated from her mother. “The whole troop” of soldiers began the search. Soldiers found Guadalupe’s body, and at the sight of it they “lost their voices.”[14] Everyone was struck mute and motionless until one soldier lifted her up and the troop “escorted her” to Galindo’s house (note the chivalrous euphemism).

Guadalupe’s autopsy was performed by two civilian wives of presidio officers who worked as midwives- the only readily available medical experts. Guadalupe had sustained brutal wounds all over her body. Not much later, Galindo’s wife sounded the alarm: Aurelio, a mission neophyte, had fled from the same glen and was heading for the hills. The troops pursued, and he was captured and imprisoned.[15]

Not being able to read or write, Guadalupe’s father put the sign of the Cross underneath his summarized testimony. Judging by the scrawl, his hand was shaking as he signed what amounted to his daughter’s death certificate.[16]

Luís Peralta could have easily summarized or specified Venancio’s vague remarks, but he left the father’s shocked and somewhat crude remarks as they were initially reported. His inclusion of “being a young man of just thirty years of age, not yet educated to write,” was a tender addition to excuse Galindo’s illiteracy. That was not fitting in the brisk, efficient work of a bureaucrat, but entirely in keeping with the pitying support of friend in shock over a tragedy. Peralta was an officer and steadfastly did his duty- but he did not hide that he was working with sympathetic companions.[17]

More testimony suggested how Aurelio earned, and betrayed his victim’s trust. Guadalupe’s mother María Romano Sánchez had often trusted her oldest daughter to go play in the glen outside the presidio- and had twice seen her climbing trees with Aurelio. Once, Guadalupe had received a cup of cream from Aurelio. While he was a mission neophyte, it seems that Aurelio and other Natives like him moved throughout the area with frequency- enough to the point that María could recognize him. So regular was the interaction between neophytes and Spaniards the mother was not concerned to see one playing with her daughter or bringing her gifts.

While María was in the glen searching for Guadalupe, she encountered Aurelio and asked about Guadalupe. He responded that he had been busy chasing a lost cow, and while he had seen Guadalupe early in the morning, he had barely spent time with her- rather encouraging her to go gather some branches for a wreath; the same fronds and reeds by which her body had been found. María admitted that under her oath to God, she could not determine with proof who had committed these “disgraces,” but her instincts said it was Aurelio.[18]

The soldiers who found Guadalupe’s body testified that Aurelio had been found holed up amidst a copse of trees on a hill overlooking the path back towards the mission. In addition to the proximity, he was found with the same reeds and sticks found near the body. The soldiers found Aurelio squatting down and covering his face with both hands.[19] Descriptions of Aurelio as a stooped, stealthy figure—hiding, absconding, covering himself, crawling to a copse of trees—indicated a sense of disgust for his posture in addition to his crimes. His physical movement and posture relayed the impression of a skulking and stunted creature. This would have matched Californios’ image of a threatening Native, particularly surprise attacks that had taken Mission Santiago (1734), the failed settlement at Yuma (1781), Mission San Diego (1775) and the conspiracy of San Gabriel masterminded by Gabrieleña medicine woman Toypurina (1785). By the turn of the century, Californios had developed an experience of vigilance over mission neophytes and the satellite rancherías.

Secondly, witnesses seemed shocked that the crime took place in a space they thought was safe. The path between San Francisco’s presidio and mission was only a few miles, regularly tread by church-going Californios, shepherds and cowherds. The crime underscored Spain’s fragile control on the borderlands.[20]

Finally, Peralta interrogated Aurelio in prison. The neophyte openly admitted his guilt. Peralta recorded the extensive interactions Aurelio related as he approached the girl. In summary, Aurelio claimed he had forced himself on Guadalupe and that he had only gagged her so she would not make any noise- he insisted her death was accidental. He related the same conversation as María Sánchez- he was searching for a cow, gave misleading directions as to Guadalupe’s whereabouts, and made off towards the mission. He made no explanation of filling her mouth with sand or smearing her face black. Aurelio swore his statement. Peralta commented, “We do not know his age, as they baptized him as a little gentile, but by our count [he is] eighteen or twenty years old.”[21]

The witnesses’ disgust came through even in their notarized testimony. Peralta did not mince words: “he clearly deserves the punishment of death.” Remembering Arguello’s warning to not usurp authority, He was cautious. “Though I am not to say, having not been instructed in the laws of the judiciary, for which I leave the decision to my superiors who have convened for this matter.”

Ramon Lasso de la Vega, a retired ensign, was commissioned to act as Aurelio’s defense. Vega had played no part in the original investigation, and did not have a stated connection to deceased or the accused.  Arguello and Peralta were both brief in their nomination, so the reason for Vega’s role in the defense is unclear. However, he resolved that he would defend Aurelio, “for the sake of his own [Vega’s] virtue and honor, to defend the side of Aurelio with the truth as much as could be possible.”[22]

Peralta summoned his witnesses and once again, the witnesses were read their statements and again they swore to God that their testimony was true, complete, and unchanged. This formalized process reached the same conclusion as the original investigation- Aurelio was conscious and intent in his act.[23]

De la Vega’s role as Aurelio’s defense was a thankless one, but he argued at full tilt. He stated that even a neophyte like Aurelio could not have intended to kill such a “tender, defenseless” girl as María Guadalupe, “who had no bad thoughts.” In a long-winded defense, Lasso de la Vega explained that Aurelio’s confession should be taken at face value- the death was accidental. De la Vega argued Aurelio’s status as a neophyte, a Native, and a gentile, was why he was not as morally developed as was expected of a Spaniard or Creole. In addressing his lies, Lasso argued “he could only, not knowing anything else, give a false [directions] and flee to the hill, as is the custom of Indians.” The defense pled that while he wished that no such attack took place, and he condemned it wholeheartedly, Aurelio should beseech mercy “from the viceroy, voice of the KING [sic] (may heaven prolong his life), and the fatherly love he holds for his neophytes, and hope that he is inclined towards clemency.”[24] The only argument he could offer was to appeal to the religious and scientific disdain colonial Spain had for Natives. Lasso de la Vega’s defense was akin to a modern-day culpability plea; rather than a mental illness, the defense attributed incapacity to Aurelio’s race and threw him to the mercy of the viceroy. After two days of depositions, Peralta declared Aurelio guilty and deserving of execution, but officially left the sentencing to his superiors- either the governor or the viceroy.[25]

When this disposition was included in the dossier bound for Mexico City, Arrillaga echoed Peralta’s assessment in his addendum. Peralta, Arguello and Arrillaga had each bitten their tongue in turn, each passing the hammer of vengeance to their superior. Despite their shared experience of wrath, they abdicated their frontier justice in favor of Enlightened legal process in the capital of New Spain.

Joaquín de Arrillaga wrote himself to the viceroy, lamenting both the trauma inflicted on his community and the difficulty he faced in mitigating the outrage. Behind the elegance, he was strikingly honest with his thoughts. “The more I see of this case the more I see what this execrable treason and barbaric cruelty deserves… whose horrible circumstances now have the vindictive public demanding satisfaction: they cannot, nevertheless, dispense it in such issues of gravity as this: the essential formalities [due process] are what makes it [justice] complete, and they must be practiced.”[26]

If Aurelio was less than rational due to his racial features, Arrillaga would concede the convict’s spiritual and mental capacity to be limited. Arillaga called for the early modern equivalent of a psychological exam; Aurelio was offered confession by a priest, who attempted to gather more information about Aurelio’s state of mind and intentions regarding the crime: that is, the friars used spiritual guidance as a way to assess Aurelio’s righteous judgement and additionally assess a possible madness, “to see if he was fleeing towards the hill or going directly to the church- if he was [church-bound], he was conscious of the enormity of his crime and deserves the death penalty for which they’ll make all urgent demands, showing his answers prove his malice.”

It seemed obvious to the governor that anyone suffering guilt would seek out a church- thus a Native running to the hills or woods (as Aurelio did, and other fugitive neophytes did before and after him) did not have the fully developed conscience like Californios. Despite his visible distress and hisconfession, Aurelio’s indigeneity and his full moral culpability were mutually exclusive. By Arrillaga’s estimation, a fully-formed or converted Californio would by definition seek the relief and protection of the church.[27] Furthermore, Arrillaga had the friars examine for possible “dementia,” to see if the defense’s claims of mental instability or insanity were accurate. He desired to see, “if any [of the friars] attempting [the examinations of conscience] were familiar with demanding clear specifications of figures and symbols, and having knowledge of such concepts, to see whether such clarity was transitory or permanent.” It would be priests conducting the evaluation of character, with regular reports from the soldiers. To conclude his evaluation, Arillaga referenced morality again: “this will finally show if his [consistent behaviors] will surmount to [vindicate] his malice, which to seems to be perpetual.” In a postscript that followed his governor’s report, Presidio Captain Arguello implored for the auditor to move quickly for the sake of the whole Presidio. Cries for justice were beginning to conflict with colonial jurisprudence as the litigation lumbered towards the capital.[28]

While Mexico City deliberated, Peralta continued to evaluate Aurelio. In interviews with the guards, he recorded an episode when Aurelio was being escorted outside of his jail cell. Mid-speech, Aurelio was struck as if frozen, with no response to outer stimuli, for several moments. Besides this incidence and a persistent stutter, Aurelio seemed a mentally competent adult. He occasionally attempted to hide and escape during walks outside the walls, after which he was not permitted outside the plaza. Interviews with soldiers failed to produce conclusive evidence that Aurelio was, or had been insane or incompetent. In discussions, Aurelio had become “The Indian Neophyte who had killed Venancio’s girl.” For the soldiers, the case had reverted to the family-level of grief and vengeance- responses to questions of sanity were brusque and unengaged. When questioned, Aurelio maintained the same story- he had acted on carnal instinct, accidentally killed Guadalupe, and that he regretted his actions.[29]

Even so, Lasso de la Vega clung to his defense- Aurelio’s ability to intentionally commit murder was an “evident paradox,” derived from his Native nature, intention of presenting Guadalupe with gifts, and being “naturally consumed with satiating his carnal appetite.” Drawing again on the race-essentialism of Enlightened science (rather than religious) thought, Lasso de la Vega asserted the need for a medical expert in the case to affirm Aurelio’s simple and carnal nature.[30]

Ultimately, Mexico City sided with de la Vega. The Audiencia declared that Aurelio had the “nature of a tributary Indian,” and was “a younger man of less than twenty and five years,” with “the concurring circumstance of Aurelio as a recently-baptized neophyte…and thus without divine protection [guidance]” as mitigating circumstances for a “more moderated punishment.” Furthermore, the testimonies of the midwives were dismissed as “not having expert instruction and not able to recognize the full signs of rape.” Ultimately, after additional paperwork, Mexico City recommended a treatment of “piety and pity,” with 200 lashes and ten years of labor. There was an additional admonition from Mexico that Californios would do well to “separate Indians and Castilians for the benefit of both.”[31]

---

James Bland is a PhD Candidate at the University of Oklahoma History Department. His focus is on Colonial Latin American and Native American history. He received his BA in History and BS in Economics at the University of Wyoming. He earned a Masters in American History with a specialization in Public History at George Mason University. In addition to historical work, James has also worked in museum collections and interpretations, as well as teaching community college.

Title Image: The San Carlos Mission on the Spanish Borderlands. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Endnotes:

[1] The story of race as an element of both legal and scientific grounding predates the Enlightenment. However, the scholastic conception of race was an inevitable byproduct of the classifications of early naturalists and absolutist legalists. For a era-wide treatment of race as a quantifiable commodity, see the early chapters of Gary Taylor, Buying Whiteness: Race, Culture, and Identity from Columbus to Hip Hop (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). For the pre-Enlightenment origins of race in Europe, see Jean E. Feerick, Strangers in Blood: Relocating Race in the Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

[2] Nicole Marie Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

[3] Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75.

[4] For an interrogation into frontier masculinity, see Susan Lee Johnson, “‘A Memory Sweet to Soldiers’: The Significance of Gender in the History of the ‘American West,’” The Western Historical Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1993): 495–517. For examples of (White) femininity as an ideal being invoked for frontier cohesion, see Laurel Clark Shire, The Threshold of Manifest Destiny: Gender and National Expansion in Florida (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). For examples of ideal femininity contested in the religious and racially syncretic Hispanic borderlands, see Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: University Press, 1991); Amy G. Remensnyder, La Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Emmanuel Ortega, “The Virgin of the Macana and the Pueblo Revolution of 1680,” SmartHhistory, October 16, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/virgin-macana/.

[5] Marisa J Fuentes author, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). For Fuentes’ commentary on the generational consequences of archival tyranny, see Marisa J. Fuentes, “Slavery’s Archive and the Matter of Black Atlantic Lives,” English Language Notes 59, no. 1 (2021): 229–31.

[6] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: MacMillan, 1988).

[7] Katrina Jagodinsky, Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands 1854-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

[8] Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14. For an example of using lived experience and critical theory to explain anthropological history, see Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 1996); Saidiya V. Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

[9] This brief narration is extrapolated from the documented material I delineate throughout the article. A special thank-you is in order to both Dr. Lauren Duval and to Dr. Melissa Stockdale. Both encouraged me to apply critical thinking and fabulation to the available documentation regarding this case.

[10] Luis Peralta, Matias Guererro, and Ignacio Lascano, “Proceedings of the Aurelio Tribunal” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 571-586, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[11] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Introduction to Testimony of the Criminal Case Formed against Aurelio, Indian Neophyte of the Mission of San Francisco, for murder and Rape committed against the girl Guadalupe Galindo of the age of eight years on the morning of May 9 of this year.” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), 565, No 37, 567, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[12] José Arguello, “Letter to Snr. Sergeant Luis Peralta,” May 9, 1805, No 17, 567, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[13] Peralta, Berreyea, and Guererro, “Notarized Introduction to Testimony of the Criminal Case.”

[14] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Testimony of Venancio Galindo” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 567, Archivo General de la Nacion. Note the phrase “grandecita” for eldest daughter is an informal, diminutive term, unlike “hija mayora,” or “prma [sic],” like other abbreviations in Peralta used in his shorthand throughout the dossier. Not only did Venancio invoke this term as a father, Peralta copied it as acknowledging Guadalupe’s emotional rank in the eyes of the presidio.

[15] Peralta, Berreyea, and Guererro, 568.

[16] Peralta, Berreyea, and Guererro, 569.

[17] In later testimonies, Peralta simply commented that an illiterate witness, “affirmed their words with the sign of the cross,” or “gave the cross” in a much simpler method, suggesting Venancio’s interview impacted him differently.

[18] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Testimony of María Romano Sanchez, the wife of Venancio Galindo” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), 570, No 37, 569, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[19] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Testimony of Ramon Linares” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 572, Archivo General de la Nacion; Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Testimony of Nazario Berreyza” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 573, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[20] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Testimony of Jose Aceves” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 574, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[21] Luis Peralta, Jose Berreyea, and Matias Guererro, “Notarized Confession of Aurelio the Neophyte” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, October 19, 1805), No 37, 575, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[22] Peralta, Guererro, and Lascano, “Proceedings of the Aurelio Tribunal.”

[23] Jose Joaquin de Arrillaga, “Second Letter to Don Jose de Antonio de Cristo y Conde,” March 10, 1807, No 37, 585, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[24] Ramon Lasso de la Vega, “Defense of Aurelio at the Tribunal by Don Ramon Lasso de la Vega” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 1806), No 37, 588-589, Archivo General de la Nacion. While his handwriting was elegant, the paper he placed it on was not, and the translation was very difficult.

[25] Luis Peralta, “Conclusion of the Tribunal” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, September 13, 1805), No 37, 587, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[26] Jose Joaquin de Arrillaga, “Letter of Reflection by Joaquin Jose Arrillaga to Jose Antonio de Cristo” (Monterey, December 16, 1805), No 37, 586-593, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[27] Arrillaga, 593.

[28] Arrillaga, 593.

[29] Jose Viaden and Ramon Abella, “Notarized Baptismal and Burial Certificates of  Guadalupe Galindo” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 10, 1806), No 37, 600-601, Archivo General de la Nacion; Luis Peralta, “Behavioral Interview Regarding Aurelio With Ramon Linares” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 10, 1806), No 37, 592, Archivo General de la Nacion; Luis Peralta, “Behavioral Interview Regarding Aurelio With Nazaro Berreyza” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 11, 1805), No 37, 593, Archivo General de la Nacion; Luis Peralta, “Behavioral Interview With Aurelio” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 10, 1806), No 37, 594, Behavioral Interview With Aurelio.

[30] Ramon Lasso de la Vega, “Behavioral Interview Regarding Aurelio With Ramon Lasso de la Vega” (Presidio San Francisco, Alta California, May 18, 1806), No 37, 593-599, Archivo General de la Nacion.

[31] Juan Ignacio Vicuna and Pedro Alontesedro, “Deliberations from the Superior Court of Mexico City” (Mexico City, May 10, 1806), No 37, 602-608, Archivo General de la Nacion.