in the event of attack by the enemy tribes surrounding the province. The in the frontier communities become mediators between the often-hostile Indian tribes surrounding the Spanish settlements and the Spanish authorities. The following description from the 1740s of the Tome-Valencia settlements by a Spanish religious official, Fray Menchero, describes and their settlement on land grants: "This is a new settlement, composed of various nations [tribes], who are kept in peace, union, and charity by the special providence of God and the efforts of the missionaries,... the Indians are of the various nations that have been taken captive by the Comanche Apaches, a nation so bellicose and so brave that it dominates all those of the interior country...They sell people of all these nations to the Spaniards of the kingdom, by whom they are held in servitude, the adults being instructed by the fathers and the children baptized. It sometimes happens that the Indians are not well treated in this servitude, no thought being given to the hardships of their captivity, and still less to the fact that they are neophytes, and should be cared for and treated with kindness. For this reason many desert and become apostates. The settlements of Tomé and Belén, just south of Albuquerque, were described by Juan Agustín Morfi as follows in 1778: "In all the Spanish towns of New Mexico there exists a class of Indians called genízaros. These are made up of captive Comanches, Apaches, etc. who were taken as youngsters and raised among us, and who have married in the province…They are forced to live among the Spaniards, without lands or other means to subsist except the bow and arrow which serves them when they go into the back country to hunt deer for food… They are fine soldiers, very warlike… Expecting the genízaros to work for daily wages is a folly because of the abuses they have experienced, especially from the alcaldes mayores in the past… In two places, Belen and Tome, some sixty families of genizaros have congregated." Tribal origins According to DNA studies, Hispanos of New Mexico have significant proportions of Amerindian genes (between 30 and 40% of the Nuevomexicano genome) due to the interbreeding between Spanish and genízaros. Most were Navajo, Pawnee, Apache, Kiowa Apache, Ute, Comanche, and Paiute, who had been purchased at a young age and worked as domestic servants and sheepherders. Throughout the Spanish and