The demographic history of Spanish Colonial America has attracted a good deal of attention in the past two decades, as it has become more and more obvious that many of the peculiarities in the present-day distribution of the population and its racial composition have their origins in the events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Berkeley School's dealing with Mexico has long been famous, but until the late 1960s much less attention had been focused on the situation in Peru. The works of Cook (1973, 1975, 1981, 1982) have greatly illuminated our knowledge of Peru, especially in the period before 1620. It is the purpose of this article to extend the work by presenting a general view of developments from 1570 to 1690 in Alto Peru, the region that today forms Bolivia. The major source on which this article is based is the Numeración GeneraL of 1683-84, the first general census held in the region after the Visita General of Viceroy Toledo in the 1570s.

The Visita General had, as one of its main purposes, an accurate count of the Indian population (Cook 1975). In Alto Peru the survey was the basis for the ordinances of the Repartimiento de la Mita, under the terms of which sixteen administrative provinces (or corregimientos) were charged with the duty of providing an annual quota of adult Indian males for the silver mines of Potosí. The burden was limited to those males between 18 and 50 years of age (the tributaries), who were resident in their places of birth (originarios). In any year, approximately one-seventh of this group was to present themselves for the forced labor draft or mita. The sixteen affected provvinces were Quispicanche, Tintacanches, Canas, Cabana, Asangaro, Paucarcolla, Chucuito, Pacajes, omasuyo, part of Sicasica, Paria, Carangas, part of Cochabamba, Chayanta, part of Porco, and Tarija (Figure 1). The "affected provinces" extended beyond the strict limits of Alto Peru and included the then well-populated area between Lake Titicaca and Cuzco itself. In contrast, most of the eastern valleys or yungas of Alto Peru were not liable. These included the provinces of Larecaja, much of Sicasica and Cochabamba, Mizque, Tomina, Pilaya and Paspaya, Yamparaes, and some of Porco, in addition to the cities of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí.

In the century that followed, only minor changes and adjustments modified these Toledan commands, although as the seventeenth century advanced, it was clear that major demographic changes were occurring. First was the continuous fall in the number of Indians available for mita. This was generally believed to be the result of a steady outflow of originarios from those provinces that were liable. The Indians, with ample justification, regarded mine labor with horror. Many died during their term. Still more failed to return home after their stint in the mines. Others abandoned their native villages and lands, and frequently their families, and fled to areas free of the draft, there to try to establish themselves as newwcomers or forasteros.

These events merely served to increase still further the burdens on the remaining population, which, despite all, had stayed tied to villages and ayllus of origin. By 1660 the weekly total of available mitayos was less than half of the Toledan figure.

The decline in labor was clear, but there was great doubt and debate among the Spanish officials as to what had happened to the people. Was the decline of the originarios a reflection of a general decline in the overall population throughout Alto Peru, or was it, as most Spanniards insisted, rather the result of a two-fold process: massive migration to areas unaffected by mita and an enormous growth in the various classes of Indians not liable to mita even in the sixteen provinces?

In the absence of any new enumeration, this debate raged endlessly with each pressure group amassing "evidence" to support its economic interests. In 1680 Madrid charged the new Viceroy, La Palata, to settle the questions by holding a general census not only of the sixteen provinces but of those regions that had so far been exempt.

The Duque de la Palata was a forceful administrator, and, having arrived in Lima in November 1681, immmediately made the census his prime concern. He decided [end p. 31] that the enumeration should be conducted by the corrregidores, assisted by the local Indian chiefs, and the parish priests, and that there should also be an ecclesiastical parochial count as a check. On 24 July 1683, La Palata issued detailed instructions to govern the census.

These instructions were highly complex. The total population (men, women, and children of all ages, and not just the tributaries) were first to be counted in their actual place of residence on 1 October 1683. Full details were to be provided for name, age, sex, and place of birth. The intention was then to persuade migrants to return to their places of origin, or, alternatively, to extend full tribute and mita obligations to them where they now lived. Accordingly it was very important to distinguish carefully between the various legal classes of Indians: the originarios, as already described; the absentees, whose whereabouts were known; absentees who had "disappeared"; foresteros--migrants who had knowledge of their place of origin, but who were settled in their new homes on Indian land and were integrated into the structure of their adopted villages; yanaconas del rey-highly mobile migrants frequently with no known origins; mitimaes --a group who in theory were the transsplanted settlers of Inca times, but who in fact were of very mixed composition by the 1680s; and yanaconas de estancias--migrants who had settled as peons on the rapidly growing Spanish-owned haciendas and ranches.

In theory the returns of the Numeración General should have been of the utmost demographic value. In fact a host of problems arose, some of which were inherent in the over-ambitious instructions themselves, some in the shortcomings of the various officials. Other problems were the result of growing opposition by Indians and Spaniards alike, as the purposes of the census became known (Cole 1984; Evans 1981).

Figure 1. Seventeenth-century provinces

The surviving returns differ greatly in detail, accuracy, format, and state of preservation. They cover all that part of modem Bolivia that was fully controlled by the Spannish in 1683, with the exception of Mojos and parts of the eastern lowlands. The best and most detailed are those for the provinces of Larecaja, Pacajes, Sicasica, Porco, and the cities of La Paz and Oruro. Those for Paria and Carangas are difficult to use because of their poor physsical condition; in contrast, the returns for Cochabamba and Chayanta are well preserved but provide less detail. The information for Omasuyo, Chichas, Yamparaes, and Tarija is of limited use for detailed demographic purrposes, because of the unsystematic way in which the returns were compiled, and, lastly, the returns for Potosí are missing altogether.

With all these shortcomings in mind, I will focus on [end p. 32] the following salient demographic characteristics of the Indian population: (1) the question of the "tributary index" or ratio of the males aged 18 to 50 to the total population; (2) the degree of under-enumeration and innaccuracy in the tally of the aged, women, and boys and girls; (3) the regional variations in household size and family structure; and (4) some approximate calculations of birth and death rates and life expectancy.

The summary figures of the Numeración General reveal a total of 55,946 tributaries in Alto Peru. For certain provinces (Table 1) the returns are sufficiently good to enable one to calculate the tributary index, and it averages just under 25 percent. This index is probably an under-estimate, because non-tributaries (i.e., women, children, and the aged), being of less direct economic consequence, were not so carefully counted. Nonetheless, extrapolating from this figure one may estimate a total Indian population of between 220,000 and 240,000.

These gross total population figures have been mapped by pueblo (settlement) and the results can be seen on Figures 2 and 3 (see explanatory footnotes). It should be noted that the term pueblo covers a variety of settlement types, from the nucleated villages of the Altiplano to the scattered and dispersed settlements characteristic of much of the yungas.

Table 1 divides the population of those provinces for which there is adequate information into the following major age and sex groups: the tributaries; males over 50 years of age and thus "reserved from tribute"; boys under 18; and females of all ages.

These provincial totals, with all their deficiencies, provide general features of the population structure. First note that more than 25 percent of the population are classed as boys under 18. Although young females were not as carefully counted, it is likely that they constituted an equal proportion of the population. We must conclude, [end p. 33] therefore, that more than half of the population was under 18 years of age. Using the same logic, only about 11 percent of the population survived age 50. Taken together, these demographic features indicate both high birth and high death rates. The other point worth noting is that there are no obvious demographic variations between the provinces of the Altiplano and those of the Yungas.

Fortunately, we have at our disposal other and more detailed methods of examining the age and family structure of the population. For fifteen pueblos in the provinces of Pacajes, Sicasica, Lecaja, and Chayanta, for which the returns are exceptionally full and well organized, it has been possible to construct a composite population pyramid for more than 23,000 individuals. This is illustrated in Figure 4, and it will be noted that the sample comprises about 10 percent of the total recorded Indian population of Alto Peru, thus it is large enough to smooth out any extreme local variations and enables one to make further generalizations.

More than 40 percent of the population in this sample were under 15 years of age, which, taking into account the probable under-registration, again indicates that the fertility of the population was extremely high. So was mortality, however, as only about 5 percent of the sample survived to age 60.

Further details on household size, family structure, and birth rates can be reconstructed in the provinces of Pacajes, Larecaja, and Porco. These details hint at some major regional contrasts betweeen the provinces liable for mita, which as a consequence suffered out-migration, and the provinces of in-migration. Briefly, the evidence may be summarized as follows. The average household size in provinces liable to the mita was larger: 5.14 individuals in Pacajes, and nearly as high in Porco, whereas in Larecaja, the province of preponderant immigration, it was only 2.66. Curiously, this contrast is not explained by parallel differences in fertility. Rather, it indicates that the term "household" among the highly mobile forastero population may have just included unrelated adults living together, while among the originarios, household referred to a more traditional family unit. In all provinces family size, when it can be reconstructed, was usually small. While the occasional large family of five or six children did exist, far more common were families with only two or three irregularly spaced children whose ages strongly suggest that many of their siblings had died in infancy. Marriage after age 20 was well nigh universal, and there is clear evidence for the rapid re-marriage of the widowed at least until they reached old age. Life expectancy at birth was less than 25 years.

In sum, the demographic structure revealed was one of extreme fragility. Although the childless families and broken structures described for the period 1520 to 1620 were not now so frequent (Cook 1973,1981,1982), the [end p. 34] extremely high mortality meant, that, despite a crude birth rate that must have been in excess of 40 per thouusand, there could have been little or no natural increase in population. Nonetheless, there is evidence that the catastrophic declines of the sixteenth century had ceased, and fragmentary evidence suggests that during the sevventeenth century there had been relatively little change in total Indian numbers despite massive changes in population distribution caused by migration. It is to these subjects that we now turn.

Since the Visita General of Toledo there had been many changes in the boundaries of pueblos, repartimientos, and provinces that make direct comparison of data difficult, but if we confine ourselves to the number of recorded tributaries for the areas for which we can make approximate comparisons, we may present the following generalized figures.

Table 2 shows a slight downward drift in the total numbers of people and a most drastic population redisstribution in the century between 1578 and 1683. All the Altiplano provinces lost population dramatically, with the exception of Porco, much of which was not liable to mita. In contrast, the yungas provinces grew rapidly in number, especially Larecaja and those parts of Sicasica and Cochabamba that were free of the Potosi draft. The mechanism at work, as La Palata and his advisors had suspected, was internal migration (Evans 1981; Sanchez Alborn6z 1973, 1978, 1982). To recapitulate: the cause of migration was basically the unequal and uneven burrdens of tribute and mita, burdens inequitable both reegionally and demographically. Originally the whole purpose of the reducciones or resettlement of Indians into nucleated villages undertaken by Toledo had been to facilitate their exploitation and their Christianization (Levillier 1935---42; Malaga Medena 1972). Now, in fleeing mita, Indians also fled the villages. In consequence, in the immigrant provinces, a very different and dispersed pattern of settlement emerged. The differences in household size between provinces are very likely a result of the migration.

The contrast between the provinces of out- and innmigration can also be dramatically illustrated by a commparison of the percentages of originarios found in the 1683-84 count (Table 3).

In general, those provinces that had the highest prooportions of originarios (Pacajes, Carangas, and Paria), were precisely those where depopulation had been most marked (Table 2). In contrast the provinces with the highhest rates of population increase in table 2 (Larecaja, Cochabamba, or Sicasica) are those with the highest perrcentages of immigrants. Population growth where it had occurred was almost solely because of in-migration, the demographic structure of the population indicating little or no natural increase.

Table 2. Redistribution and decline of population, 1578-1683

The instructions for the census had recognized several types of immigrants who were distinguished from each other, not only by legal class, but more especially by their economic function in their new homes. This distinction is important in the settlement geography of the late seventeenth century, although enumeration inconsistencies make interprovincial comparisons difficult. A comparison between Pacajes and the yungas of Larecaja illustrates a number of interesting features (Table 4). It should be remembered that Pacajes had suffered the full rigors of the mita with consequent severe population deecline, yet it had a surprisingly high proportion of nonnoriginarios; Larecaja, in contrast, was sub-tropical and a well-known refuge for all types of migrants.

The high percentage of absentees in Pacajes is eviidence of the continuing flight of population, as few of them-regardless of whether their destinations were known--ever returned. In Larecaja, by contrast, the few [end p. 35] absent were generally specifically stated to be on shorttterm business. The forastera class, who had been inteegrated into their new communities, formed a quarter of the population in both provinces. In Pacajes, however, they were specifically stated to have been economically vital to' the functioning of the mita and tribute systems, although in theory they were not directly liable (Cole 1984). In Larecaja their position was more complex. Forasteros were only found in some pueblos, by and large in the older settlements that still had some remainning originarios. Into this society they were fully inteegrated and were functionally almost indistinguishable, from the natives.

The yanaconas del rey and mitimaes of Pacajes were few in number. Furthermore they were limited to certain pueblos and in the case of the mitimaes were of pre-Spanish origin. Lastly, the complete absence of the yanaconas de chacras in Pacajes is a comment on the general absence of Spanish-owned haciendas and ranches, which required a ready labor force.

In Larecaja things were very different. The mitimaes of this region had long been present and the tradition for highland pueblos to send manpower to exploit the reesources of the lower elevations had continued into the seventeenth century (Saignes 1978). Their presence was widespread and in some pueblos they comprised the largest single group. It was, however, the yanaconas de chacras who were clearly the most rapidly growing category of the population by the late seventeenth century. They were a third of the total provincial population, but they formed the absolute majority in all the newer regions of settlement, where they served as peons on the ever-expanding coca and cattle operations of the Spaniards. This group was clearly highly mobile. The yanaconas del rey, all of whom claimed La Paz as their place of origin, favored certain pueblos and were most frequently found as casual labor.

The evidence from Sicasica and Porco on which I am currently working shows parallel features, with Porco having some similarities to the situation in Pacajes, while Sicasica closely resembles Larecaja.

The factors affecting the distribution of the population in the late seventeenth century were varied, and complex, and were undergoing rapid and continuing change. To understand the human geography of the period it is neccessary to appreciate not only the enormous environmental variations, but one must understand also the effects of Spanish policies that had provoked such massive migrations. These migrations had produced economic and soocial changes that further intensified regional and social contrasts.

CONCLUSIONS
By the late seventeenth century the population geography of Alto Peru was in a state of rapid change. The depopulation of the Altiplano was continuing apace, but the population that remained was still in general tied to[end p. 36] the reducciones established by Toledo in the 1570s, and they continued to live within the general framework of Indian communal structures. In contrast, the mobile immigrants of the yungas were generally divorced from both nucleated settlement and kinship ties. They lived scattered, largely independent of the traditional structures of the community, and an increasing number of them had become peons on land now claimed by Spaniards. This process was to gain strength as the eighteenth century advanced, and it remained the dominant social feature of Alto Peru until the reforms of this century. It was La Palata's intention to have arrested the process. This was a prime reason for the census. He failed, but his enumeration enables us to reconstruct the population geography of the area at a crucial point in its transition from the early colonial period to that of more recent times.

REFERENCES CITED
Cole, Jeffery A. 1984. Viceregal persistence versus Indian mobility: the impact of the Duque de la Palata's reform program on Alto Peru, 1681-1692. Latin American Research Review 19(1): 37-56.

Cook, Noble David. 1973. The Indian population of Peru, 1570-1620. Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin.

__________. ed. 1975. Tasa de la visita general de Francisco de Toledo. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Lima, Peru, 1975.

__________. 1981. Demographic collapse: Indian Peru 1520-1620. Cambridge, Mass.

__________. 1982. Population data for Indian Peru: sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hispanic American Historical Review 62(1): 73-120.

Evans, Brian M. 1981. Census enumeration in late seventeenth century Alto Peru: the Numeración General of 1683-84. In Studies in Spanish American population history, ed. D. J. Robinson. Dellplain Latin American Studies no.8, 25-44. Boulder, Colorado.

Larson, Brooke. 1978. Economic decline and social change in an agrarian hinterland: Cochabamba (Bolivia) in the late colonial period. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.

Levillier, Roberto. 1935-42. Don Francisco de Toledo, suupremo organizador del Perú: su vida, su obra (1515-1582), 3 vols. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.

Málaga-Medina, Alejandro. 1972. Toledo y las reducciones de Indios en Arequipa: aspecto demográfico. Historiografía y bibliografía Americanistas 16(3).

Saignes, Thierry. 1978. De la filiation a la residence: les ethnic dans les vallees de Larecaja. Annales economies civilizations 33 (5&6): 1160-1181.

Sánchez-Albornóz, Nicolas. 1973. El Indio en el Alto Perú a fines del siglo XVII. Seminario de historia rural andina. Lima.

__________. 1978. Indios y tributos en el Alto Peru. Lima: I.E.P.

__________. 1982. Migraciones internas en el Alto Perú. EI Saldo acumulado en 1645. Historia Boliviana II/I: 11-19.

__________. n.d. Mita, migraciones y pueblos. Variaciones en el espacio y en el tiempo. Alto Peru, 157881692. Manuscript.

Archival Sources
The summary returns and most of the correspondence relating to the Numeración General are today in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, notably in the following legajos: Charcas 270, 271, 272.

The detailed surviving returns of the Numeración are in the Archival General de la Nación [AGN] in Buenos Aires. They comprise (by province), Legajos 17.2.3 (Omasuyu), 18.1.2 (Pacajes), 18.4.4 (Carangas), 18.4.3 (Paria), 18.6.5 (Porco), 19.7.3 (Chayanta), 18.4.2 (Yamparaes), 18.7.4 (Chichas and Tarija), 18.1.1 and 18.1.3 (Cochabamba), 17.3.2 (Sicasica), and 17.2.4 (Larecaja). [end p. 37]