Drake Invades Northwest Mexico--Part 1

Drake Invades Northwestern Mexico (part two)

By: Dale Cozort

What has happened so far: In this alternate history, the southern half to two-thirds of Baja California is an island rather than part of a peninsula. In 1579, Sir Francis Drake has found a good, easily defendable harbor to repair ships damaged in his groundbreaking raid on the Spanish Pacific coast colonies. His men have also discovered the coast of northwest Mexico-fertile, heavily populated, rich in silver, and not yet occupied by Spain. The potential of the coast is drawing him step-by-step into the politics of frontier Mexico, as nomadic Chichimec tribes who have fought Spain for decades check out this potential source of Allies.

So, what happens next? Baja California as a peninsula made the west coast of Northern Mexico almost unreachable by anyone but Spain. In this time-line, Baja California as an island is ideally located as a base for an assault on Northern Mexico except for one very significant problem: it's on the wrong side of the American continents.

Drake has a golden--or at least a silver--opportunity. He can claim this rich and heavily populated land for England, and strike a heavy blow at Spain and its finances. All he has to do is find a practical route around, through, or over two large inconveniently placed continents so he can resupply and reinforce his infant colony.

The Viceroy of New Spain, Don Martin Enriquez de Almanza, has what seems to be a much easier task. All he has to do is kill or capture a few hundred English sailors and overawe any Indians that dare to become their allies. He’s a good man for the job. He has already defeated one famous English sea captain, John Hawkins, and he isn’t afraid of facing Francis Drake.

Unfortunately, he won't be leading the kind of men Cortes led to conquer Mexico in 1519. The conquistadors are essentially all dead in 1579. Their children are past middle age. Their grandchildren have for the most part grown up in a comfortable, secure environment where military skills have not been necessary, and have not been tested.

There are a few hundred tough, experienced Indian fighters along the frontier with the Chichimecs, and several hundred to a thousand tough, capable men in the mining camps and ranches near the frontier. Inside that frontier, there is very little. Encomendero families are officially supposed to maintain horses and arms as part of their status, and be available for military action in defense of the land, but while the horses and weapons may be available, trained men to use them are not.

Who were the Chichimecs?

Chichimec was a term used by the high culture Indians of Mexico in about the same way the Romans used ‘Barbarian’—essentially people with a different culture.

In Spanish times, the term came to mean primarily 4 tribes of desert nomads of central Mexico, just north of the frontier between settled Indians and desert nomads. The four major tribes were the Pames, the Guamares, the Zacatecos, and the Guachichiles.

Other tribes that were sometimes classed as Chichimecs based on nomadic lifestyle or destructive raids on the Spanish were the Tezoles, the Tepeque, the Cocas, and the Tecuexes.

The Chichimecs were by no means a monolithic group. The tribes had different languages, cultures, and internal politics. They shared a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, great skill with a bow-and-arrow, (the Spanish considered them the best archers in the world) ferocious fighting ability, and usually a hatred for more settled lifestyles

Chichimec hatred for the Spanish was partially religious. Chichimec medicine made extensive use of peyote, and their religion continued to have some influence in Cazcan country.

Spanish Mexico has been called upon to support Spanish colonization efforts in places as far away as Florida and even the Philippines. Those efforts have drained away the most warlike men of Mexico, while straining the Viceroy's finances, and even leading to shortages of weapons. Firearms are chronically in short supply, as are coats of mail. Most of the Spaniards of Mexico have little experience at war, and little interest in learning about it first-hand.

The Spanish crown had long attempted to fight the frontier war on the cheap, with prominent local citizens financing their own expeditions in many cases. Forces for even a major expedition rarely exceeded 40 or 50 horsemen and at most a few hundred Indian allies. A more typical Spanish force was 10 to 30 men. Spanish forces were spread thin. They had to protect long stretches of highway with little garrisons, sometimes with as few as 3 or 4 soldiers.

For a long time, Spain's Indian allies have done much of the heavy lifting in the Spanish defense of northern Mexico. Tarascans, Tlaxcallans, and the more adventurous souls from the Aztecs' old empire have been settled in military colonies along the frontier. Warlike groups just inside the frontier like the Otomi and the Cazcanes provide most of the offensive punch for Spanish power in the area, in exchange for land, exemption from tribute, and the right of their leaders to own horses and Spanish weapons.

Those Indians are not in a position to be as much help as they usually are though. An epidemic of some sort, probably typhus, has been raging in Mexico since 1576, and it shows no sign of going away. (In our time-line it didn't burn itself out until 1581.) Key Spanish allies have been very hard hit. In our time-line, one of the major Cazcane towns that had supplied a thousand warriors to the Spanish efforts against the Chichimecs before the epidemic could only supply 200 after it.

The Spanish also suffer from divisions within their own ranks. The province of Nuevo Viscaya has long claimed the section of coast where Drake has lodged. That claim has never been officially upheld, and officials in Nuevo Viscaya quickly put together an expedition to oust the Englishmen, and incidentally strengthen their claim to the territory. Nuevo Viscaya is actually north of most of the Chichimec fighting. Spaniards moving up the West Coast of Mexico, then inland settled it. Those settlers were wise enough to treat the local Indians well by Spanish standards, and as a result they have not had to face anything like the Indians problems that have plagued areas to the South of them.

The expedition reflects the old reality where the Spanish have a near monopoly on guns, horses and European tactics, rather than the new one, where Indians have another source of such things. The expedition is ambushed by Indians accompanied by a few of Drake’s men, and its 170 Spaniards are wiped out almost to a man. A few Spaniards and the bulk of their Indian allies escape, but most of Nuevo Viscaya’s soldiers and a large part of its male population is now dead. The rest of that population is spread out in sprawling ranches that collectively have over 200,000 head of cattle.

Neuvo Viscaya has seen little in the way of Indian trouble, and the 500 to 600 Spaniards have not had to settle in defensible concentrations. They learn to regret that very quickly. Drake’s men and their allies need horses and want cattle. Nuevo Viscaya is a source of both, and it is temporarily nearly defenseless. Raids organized or led by Drake’s men quickly over-run most of the province, with Spaniards and allied Indians heading for the few Spanish towns and forts. The loot from abandoned or captured ranches makes the tribes involved in the looting rich by their standards, which draws in new raiders from surrounding tribes.

The English discover that giving a tribe a few horses and teaching a few men how to handle them can pay huge dividends in terms of allies. The horses become a prestige item, and every ambitious young man wants one. At that point, raiding the Spanish frontier becomes extremely attractive. The Spanish hastily organize a force to reinforce Nuevo Viscaya, but a good part of the province is in ruins by the time they can react. Spanish forces manage to stabilize the situation to some extent, but combating the raids ties down several hundred Spaniards, including many of the most experienced Indian fighters.

The Spanish now take Drake's challenge seriously, and they actually rise to the occasion rather well given the constraints. The Spanish gather a rather large fleet with over a thousand Spanish 'soldiers' on board, and send it up the coast of western Mexico. At the same time, an even larger force of nearly 1000 Spaniards and two thousand allied Indians heads up the west coast of Mexico. The second force is intended to sweep the raiders out of Nuevo Viscaya, then provide the second prong of an offensive against Drake’s mainland bases. Those two forces contain most of the readily available combat power of Spanish Mexico.

The Spanish force is numerically impressive, but neither well disciplined or well coordinated. The Spanish make a fundamental mistake. The Spaniards with the fleet are primarily encomenderos from Central Mexico, or people they have hired and equipped to discharge their duty. They are woefully unprepared for organized warfare. There are a few experienced Indian-fighters with the fleet, but the Spanish army which will initially take on Drake is for the most part inexperienced, soft, and arrogant. It is also tardy, but it will still reach Drake long before the army marching by land gets there.

Viceroy Almanza is not stupid. He would rather not divide his forces in that manner. However, he doesn't want to give Drake even more time to make himself more formidable. He also would rather see Drake's threat eliminated without moving the men of the land army too far away from potential trouble-spots on the Chichimec frontier and actual trouble spots in Nuevo Viscaya. The army moving up the coast is primarily made up of veteran Indian fighters, and the tough frontier ranchers and miners that have long been the core of Spanish defenses in Northern Mexico.

By the time the fleet gets underway, Drake has had time to repair his ships and assess his strategy. The safest option would be to pull out of the area altogether, or at least to abandon Fort Elizabeth, as the mainland fort has been named. Either of those options would eliminate any chance of sealing an alliance with the Indian groups who had been quietly looking into the idea of such an alliance. It would give Spain time to occupy and fortify the area without English opposition.

Drake decides to at least test the Spanish mettle. He launches a series of attacks on Spanish settlements along the coast to gather material for the battle. Some of that material goes to cement alliances with more of the local Indians. Key leaders of the Yaquis and related tribes have already received stolen horses, and Spanish swords, raising their prestige and whetting tribal appetites for more of such items. Now some such items go to Chichimec leaders who have been quietly making their way to Fort Elizabeth. Drake wants to make sure the Spanish pay a heavy price for pulling out much of their frontier defense manpower for the march north.

As the Spanish fleet anchors close to Fort Elizabeth, Drake launches a night attack using improvised fire-ships. That temporarily disperses the Spanish, and several ships are sunk or damaged enough that they are forced to ground themselves. The survivors are killed or captured by Indians before they can get organized. Drake also captures part of the dispersed fleet before it can get reorganized. The Spanish have lost almost one-third of their ships and about that much of their army before the battle is joined.

The rest of the campaign doesn't go any better for the Spanish. The Yaquis are good fighting men, and they join into the campaign whole-heartedly. The Spanish lose most of their cavalry shortly after they land by riding headlong into an ambush that more experienced fighting men would have spotted easily. The losses are not ruinous, but the men from central Mexico panic, going directly from contempt of Indian fighting power to a total rout in a matter of minutes. A few men manage to get organized and fight their way to a defensible position, but less than two hours after they land the Spanish are down to not much more than 200 men. Those men are surrounded by several thousand Yaquis and several dozen Englishmen. Many of the Yaquis are armed with captured Spanish weapons.

The Spanish hold out until nightfall, then try to break out and get back to their ships. They run into a devastating English/Yaqui ambush, but some manage to fight their way through it. By the time they make it back to their ships, less than 100 men are left, and many of them are badly wounded or have lost most of their equipment. The Spanish fleet pulls out the next day, with Drake harassing them. They limp home carrying a tiny, demoralized remnant of their army.

That leaves the Spanish/Indian army heading up through Nuevo Viscaya. Drake has launched a series of sea-borne raids south of the frontier, threatening the fabulously rich silver mines at Zacatecas. The Chichimecs are to some extent coordinating their attacks with Drake's, keeping the weakened Spanish forces from concentrating completely on either threat. English advice makes the Chichimecs more deadly, and frontier posts that had been secure suddenly become death traps. The Chichimec tribes are suddenly able to use captured Spanish weapons much more effectively, and have considerably more of them. Drake uses captured Spanish weapons shrewdly to bind the nomadic tribes to his cause and make them more effective.

Drake desperately needs to get back to England for supplies and reinforcements, but he can't do that without fatally weakening his forces. Native production can sort of keep him supplied for a while, but the Yaquis and their neighbors are still in the stone age. As an interim solution, Drake carries off several dozen mestizo and Indian artisans, along with their families, and settles them in one of the few areas of Drake's Land (the main island of Baja California) suitable for agriculture.

The bulk of the Spanish army marches back to Zacatecas to repel a rumored Chichimec/English attack. There, it suffers the almost inevitable fate of a large body of men with little knowledge of sanitation in the middle of a typhus epidemic--typhus sweeps through the army. The Indian allies are especially hard hit. They lose nearly 600 men, and the survivors scatter, taking the sickness back to their villages and towns, most of which have already been hit at least once. The Spanish are not immune to typhus, and they lose over 150 men, with many of the others becoming sick.

To add to the Spanish woes, black slaves see the absence of so many Spaniards as an opportunity, and revolts flare up in several parts of Mexico. There is no shortage of people in Mexico who hate Spanish rule and see Drake's presence as a way of changing things. That even applies to some apparently staunch Indian allies. For example, the Cazcanes have been Spanish military allies for close to twenty years, and contributed 300 men to the Spanish cause, but continued Spanish defeats are weakening that loyalty.

The Cazcanes

The Cazcanes were a large and originally very warlike group who lived just north and west of Guadalajara. They were at the core of Indian resistance to Spanish rule during the Mixton Rebellion of 1541-42. After that war, they became military auxiliaries of Spain, fighting their former allies among the Chichimecs, though apparently some of them joined Chichimec raids at times. The Cazcanes had some characteristics of the desert nomads to the north of them, and some characteristics of the more settled Aztecs and Tarascans to the south of them. They occupied a strategic position in that most of the Spanish roads north to the rich Spanish silver mining town of Zacatecas either went through or near their territory.

The Cazcanes are also frankly terrified of the Chichimec tribes, especially now that the Cazcane ranks have been thinned by the epidemic and the Chichimecs have been strengthened by English know-how and captured Spanish weapons. The Cazcanes are acutely vulnerable, and they know it. In our time-line, the Chichimecs were able from time-to-time to intimidate parts of the Cazcanes into joining their raids. In this time-line, the Chichimecs are demanding that the Cazcanes join them and expel the Spanish entirely from their territory. That isn't an entirely unacceptable thing from the Cazcane standpoint. They rebelled against Spain in the Mixton Rebellion of 1540-41, and probably came close to doing it again in the 1560's. Many of the Cazcanes have taken to Spanish customs and religion, and their role as military allies has given them considerable autonomy. On the other hand, that autonomy is fading as more Spanish move in, and Cazcanes become less vital allies. Cazcanes are losing land and crops to Spanish cattle ranching, and tribute is becoming more burdensome as the Cazcane population falls. Young Cazcane warriors see the Chichimecs riding captured Spanish horses and carrying captured Spanish swords and they grow restless.

With the Spanish threat temporarily diminished, Drake prepares to take a minimal crew and head back to England, taking the riskier but quicker route back around South America. He knows that his reception in England may be somewhat mixed. Queen Elizabeth is not ready for an open break with Spain, but the silver of Northwest Mexico will be a major lure for the always cash-strapped monarch. The English have never recognized Spain's claim to territory in the New World not actually occupied by Spain, and have their own New World claims based on the Cabot voyages.

The only important questions in Queen Elizabeth's mind will be practical ones. Can the English plant a colony in Drake Land and sustain it? The answer is probably no if the only way to resupply it is by going around the southern tip of South America. But what other route is there? Drake has a fairly good knowledge of the geography of Northern Mexico by now. A small party of his men has linked up with native traders and followed the traditional trade routes through Opata country, then through the traditional Jumano routes across the Southern Plains, and to the Gulf coast. A harbor on the Gulf of Mexico, possibly on the Texas coast would make supporting Drakes Land somewhat more possible, though still not easy.

As Drake prepares to leave, Spanish Mexico starts going off like a chain of firecrackers. The series of Spanish defeats have badly damaged Spanish military prestige. Cazcane warriors straggling home from the epidemic-struck army have a somewhat exaggerated idea of how much the Spanish have been weakened, but their stories add to a growing feeling of danger and opportunity. The Chichimec tribes are threatening the Cazcanes with their increased military power and enticing them with stolen Spanish silver, guns, horses and swords. Groups of young Cazcane men begin slipping away and joining Chichimec raids, sometimes with the knowledge, though not necessarily the approval of their communities. They return with loot and stories of Spanish weakness. Within a short time, parts of Cazcane country become very dangerous for Spaniards.

A group of Spaniards turns a dangerous situation into an open revolt by launching a slave raid on one of the most loyal Cazcane towns and hauling away several hundred captives. Spanish slave raiders have long helped to keep the Chichimec war alive by their indiscriminate raids on raiders and peaceful nomads alike. Now they turn on a vulnerable ally. The results of the slave raid are disastrous. The Cazcanes revolt, killing or capturing the scattered Spaniards in their country. They also leave a major section of the frontier wide open to Chichimec attack.

The Indian Slave Trade

Spanish soldiers on the frontier were usually poorly paid. To compensate them, the Spanish government reluctantly authorized enslavement of hostile Indians, usually for a period of no more than 20 years.

Soldiers were often accused of enslaving peaceful Indians and fomenting hostilities on the frontier in order to enslave Indians. There was an extensive trade in Indian captives, with most of them being held in areas some distance away from the frontier. Mexico City had a fairly large population of Chichimec slaves.

The slave trade tended to keep Indians hostile, and it also provided the Chichimecs with some of their most effective leaders, as slaves escaped or were released after their term of enslavement and went back to their people bitter and with an extensive knowledge of Spanish habits.

Drake takes advantage of the opening. A few dozen of his men lead nearly a thousand Chichimecs and over five hundred Cazcanes on a series of devastating raids into the northwest part of Spanish-held Mexico. The result is as devastating for northwest Mexico as the English/Indian raids on Florida in 1704 were in our time-line. At first the Spanish don't understand that the nature of the threat has changed. Groups of 50 or 100 Spanish soldiers would have been far too large for the Chichimecs to challenge under most circumstances a year ago. Now a column of 170 men trying to rescue a group of besieged Spaniards in Cazcane country is ambushed and wiped out to a man, as are several smaller groups. Isolated garrisons which could have held out indefinitely a year ago are quickly overrun. Isolated Spaniards begin streaming back from the frontier.

Civilized Indians see that exodus and begin abandoning the frontier in droves, and heading back to more secure centers with whatever they can carry. The Chichimecs swoop down on refugees, killing or carrying off hundreds of Spaniards and thousands of civilized Indians. Raiders push further south into the old Tarascan country, raiding ranches and driving off cattle and horses .

Viceroy Almanza himself quickly raises 1200 men to head north and reinforce the frontier. Unfortunately, most of that army is poorly trained and poorly armed, though there is a core of experienced Indian-fighters. Most of the infantry is armed with pikes or swords with too few crossbows or firearms. That's unavoidable. Weapons of all kinds are in short supply in Mexico by this time. They pursue raiders back almost to Cazcane country, but then Chichimecs manage to stampede most of their horses. That leaves them vulnerable and Chichimec and Cazcane warriors send showers of arrows and occasional crossbow bolts and gunshots into the column while avoiding a standup fight. Those tactics eventually force the Spanish to turn back.

Viceroy Almanza demonstrates his leadership ability by holding the column together as the Spanish endure days of hit-and-run attacks without breaking and without engaging in a headlong pursuit that would probably lead to the inexperienced soldiers getting ambushed and cut to pieces. Even experienced and disciplined infantry would have probably panicked after being showered by very accurate and deadly archery day after day without being able to do much about it. Finally Almanza is severely wounded by a cross-bow bolt, and the column disintegrates. A few hundred exhausted and often unarmed survivors make it back to the relative safety of Spanish settlements. The wounded Viceroy is captured by the Cazcanes and taken back to their country in triumph.

So far, Spanish losses have been severe, but not ruinous. They've lost something over 2500 men from disease and battle casualties out of a Spanish population of around 60,000. That's over one-sixth of the colony's Spanish men of military age. Unfortunately, it also includes over half of Mexico's experienced Indian-fighters. Mexico's improvised leadership is frantically trying to put together an army from Spanish artisans, the spoiled younger grandsons of the conquistadors, Indians and mestizos of increasingly dubious loyalty, and volunteers from surrounding Spanish colonies. Drake doesn't give them time to do that.

The fabulous silver mines at Zacatecas are vulnerable--isolated from the rest of Spanish-held Mexico by a wide stretch of depopulated or hostile territory, and with a significant part of their male population dead or unarmed from previous defeats. Unfortunately for Drake, close to 500 tough, experienced Spanish soldiers left over from the attempt to march north to Fort Elizabeth are still in the area. Drake and his allies get a taste of why the Spanish were able to take and hold Mexico in the first place as the Spanish successfully defend the mines in spite of a revolt of black and Indian miners. The Chichimecs do manage to loot most of the surrounding area, leaving the mines even more isolated.

Next, Drake and his allies turn their attention south. A few towns and forts on highways between Zacatecas and Guadalajara are still holding out. They fall one-by-one as the Chichimecs use Spanish weapons and tactics learned from the English in their war. The war then moves south to the area around Guadalajara. Guadalajara itself is too strong to be taken quickly, so Drake leaves a small covering force and heads south into the old Tarascan areas.

After 60 years of plagues, the Indian population has dwindled to as little as 10 percent of it's initial level and much of the old Tarascan culture has been lost. Some Tarascans have enthusiastically embraced Spanish culture, but most have sullenly tolerated it. A few eagerly join the English and Chichimecs in destroying Spanish ranches and estates, or killing Spaniards in their midst. A few flee with the Spaniards to Spanish strongholds. More quietly arm themselves with their traditional weapons and any Spanish weapons they can find, and try to survive.

The Tarascans

The Tarascans of western Mexico formed an empire fairly close in power to that of the Aztecs when the Spanish arrived in Mexico in 1519. Their population was much smaller than that ruled by the Aztecs, but they integrated conquered populations into their empire instead of just extorting tribute from them.

The Tarascans were great archers, and good metallurgists, making extensive use of bronze. They fought several wars against the Aztecs, and usually won.

After the Aztecs were conquered, the Tarascans agreed to submit to Spanish rule, but kept their own king and a considerable amount of autonomy until the early 1530’s, when their king was tortured and killed by the Spanish.

The Tarascans had long fought against the Chichimec nomads on their borders. They continued to do so as Spanish allies after the conquest, though some of them did desert their sedentary lifestyle and join the Chichimecs, probably in reaction to the gradually decreasing autonomy available in their homeland.

The Cazcanes try to push the Tarascans into open revolt, pointing to the fate of the enslaved Cazcanes, but for the most part all they get is a willingness to look the other way as raiders pass through. Some Spanish settlements hold out in the old Tarascan territory, but the raids leave more of Mexico in ruins, with horses, livestock, and Indian workers driven off or carried away. Ranches and estates have been systematically looted and burned. Hundreds of Spanish settlers have been killed or carried off.

The success of the initial raids is the stimulus for more raids, as Indian groups that have been sitting on the fence or remaining nominally pro-Spanish join in, envious of the loot their neighbors are carrying off. The process spins out of Drake's control, and goes far beyond what he intended. The Spanish are mobilizing, but not fast enough. Bands of Spanish adventurers arrive from as far away as Peru, and often add to the chaos by attacking and looting friendly Indian towns.

Indian raiders are now pushing the frontier back along almost its entire length, even devastating the province of Panuco on the Gulf coast. To make matters worse, groups of blacks and mestizos are filtering into the vacuum, gathering in displaced or panicked Indians and offering them protection in return for 'taxes'. Some of these groups begin raiding remaining Spanish areas, adding to Spain's problems. There are around twenty thousand blacks in Mexico at this time, and while most of them remain quiet, several hundred to a thousand are in revolt. Even the Tlaxcallans, Spain's oldest and most steadfast allies in Mexico, stand aside as Chichimec raiders and a few renegade Tlaxcallans destroy ranches and estates in their territory. Another long-time Spanish ally, the Otomi, goes almost entirely over to the English, leaving another portion of the frontier vulnerable.

The Chichimec tribes, along with the Cazcanes, Otomi, and a few others, have gotten rich in stolen horses, cattle and other goods. The Yaquis and related tribes trade corn and to some extent goods made in Drake's Land for some of those goods, and for civilized Indian slaves to work in their fields. They also have a trickle of English-made goods to trade. Those come from an interesting source. Drake has still had no direct contact with his homeland since he started this venture. However, leaks from the Spanish court have given the English a pretty good, if dated, idea of what he is up to. Several adventurous English captains try to follow Drake's route and hopefully claim a share of the fabulous amounts of silver he is supposedly carrying. A few of them actually make it to Drake's Land and give Drake a precarious link with his homeland.

And that’s about it for this issue. I intend to finish this one up next issue if everything works out.

What happens next? Drake has been wildly successful, but if Spanish Mexico mobilizes and relearns how to make war it still has far more power than he does. Drake has been able to live primarily off of his enemies so far, but that is a precarious way to live. How can he assure supplies to his infant colony? Can he keep Spanish Mexico off balance enough to keep it from using its potentially overwhelming power to crush him? As always, comments are very welcome.

If you are enjoying this scenario, or if you are disappointed with it, please let me know. I always read and enjoy any feedback I can get.

Note: I'm still planning to start an 'e-mail to the editor' section--hopefully soon. If you do e-mail me, please indicate if you would like me to use your e-mail in that section. The default is no.