Purity of Blood

Spain took control of the Louisiana colony at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. Its first task was to impose Spanish law and customs on the people who lived there. The Spanish government forbid all colonial government officials and army officers from marrying women who could not prove their limpieza de sangre—purity of blood. This rule ensured that the ruling class of the Spanish colonies would always be “racially pure.”

Proving purity of blood was not easy for the colonists of Louisiana. For one thing, every person born and raised in the colony was a French citizen until the Spanish took over in 1763. Early in the colony’s history, the French government imported hundreds of women to marry their colonists and boost the population. Most of these women came from poverty or had been convicted of crimes, meaning many Louisiana colonists were descendants of convicted murderers or sex workers. Louisiana also had a large population of immigrants from Germany and Italy. Finally, there was a large population of free mixed-race people in the colony because in the early days of settlement white French colonists frequently married free and enslaved Black and Indigenous women.  

This social history meant that Louisiana’s population was a great deal more complex and diverse than other American colonies. By insisting that only women with impeccable white ancestry could marry its officials and officers, the Spanish government was trying to reassert white supremacy.

This is the opening statement from the 1776 limpieza de sangre trial of Margarita Wiltz. Margarita was the daughter of German immigrants and the widow of a French merchant. She was engaged to Jacinto Panis, a captain in the Spanish Army. Margarita had to prove her purity of blood to the Spanish Minister of the Indies in order to marry him.

Margarita submitted thirty pages of evidence, including long, detailed statements from respectable witnesses. The documents claim that Margarita had no “inferior” blood or history of criminality in her family. After submitting her documents, Margarita swore an oath of loyalty to the Spanish government. This process was intended to assert the superiority of people of European descent, while also making sure any woman who married into the Spanish ruling class would bear racially pure and morally upstanding children.

The colonial government brought Margarita’s case before the king of Spain, who approved the match. Margarita and Jacinto were married before the end of 1776.

• French and Indian War: A colonial war that was fought from 1754 to 1763 between the British and the French. Indigenous communities sided with the colonial power they expected would best protect their sovereignty. The Spanish were allies of the British. Part of the larger global conflict known as the Seven Years’ War. The British triumphed and greatly expanded their territory in North America.
• limpieza de sangre: Purity of blood.
• Louisiana: Founded in 1682, this was the second North American colony claimed by the French. The territory stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. It was taken by the Spanish in 1763.