I represent Mariana Prieto, a mestiza woman born in the Indian Nation. At the time of the 1820 census of Pensacola, I was 42 years old. I lived with the widowed Don Felipe Prieto, a civil servant in the Spanish government, and we had 2 children. Families of mixed ethnicity like ours were quite common in Spanish West Florida, as the Spanish did not have the same social taboos as Anglo-American society. Also sharing our household was a German man named Federico Dayrlen whose relationship to us is not specified. Don Felipe’s will described me as “a free woman of color, born of a man of color of the 3rd degree and an Indian woman,” so I was of mixed African and Indian heritage.
Mariana Prieto
