Note IV'-22 — Chapter IV · OBSERVATIONS ON NEW SPAIN.[IV'-1]

Chapetones is a word which, with several variants in form, is pretty well known, and to be found in many dictionaries, though its origin may never have been satisfactorily shown, or at least agreed upon. In its application to un-American Spaniards in America the sense implied seems to have been always reproachful—perhaps something as our cowboys and other "rustlers" in the wild and woolly West would speak of a "tenderfoot" or "greeny." In Mexico the word corresponding to Chapeton or Chapetone was Gachupin or Gachupine, "applied to natives of Spain who are called Chapetones in Peru and Maturrangos in Buenos Aires," as one of the authorities before me says. I am afraid that it is significant of some unpleasant matters already noted, to find Pike here using the word said to be current in Peru, instead of that which was usual in Mexico: see Memoir, anteà. Geo. W. Kendall's Narrative of the Texan Expedition of 1841, 2 vols., small 8vo, London, 1845, II. p. 75, speaks of "the Gachupines, or natives of Old Spain"; and p. 76: "the Gachupines were indiscriminately slaughtered," etc. Gregg, Comm. Pra., I. 1844, p. 170, has: "Gachupin—a term used to designate European Spaniards in America." Wislizenus uses Gachupins.