For my cousins, growing up in New England, American history began with the Pilgrims and settlement at Jamestown. But for me, growing up in New Mexico, history began with the 16th century Spanish Conquest and the drive up into New Mexico territory followed, a century later, by the Pueblo Revolt. The history of the United States is not only the history of the English and French colonists but also of the 16th century Spanish incursions into Mexico and the American southwest and their engagements with the native peoples already inhabiting these regions. All of this has been brought to my mind since during the fall we commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month and National Indian American Heritage Month. Show The Spanish conquistadors first arrived in what became New Mexico territory in 1540 led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. However, the first permanent Spanish settlements in New Mexico did not occur until the end of the 16th century. In 1595 King Philip II of Spain granted Juan de Onate permission to settle and explore the New Mexico region. In 1598, Juan de Onate proceeded from Mexico to the land that would become New Mexico and attempted to establish a permanent settlement. Onate, like many of the Spanish conquistadors, was mainly interested in finding mineral wealth. However, Franciscan missionaries accompanied him and began to establish missions and churches and to convert the Pueblo Indians. The importance of continuing this work led the Spanish crown to continue funding the New Mexico settlements even after it was clear there were no fabulous mines or cities of gold to be found. In 1607, the governor of the province, Don Pedro de Peralta, established La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, more commonly known as Santa Fe, and in 1610 it was designated the capitol of the region. But Spanish rule in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México was heavy handed. In 1599, a group of soldiers under Juan de Onate was sent to the Acoma Pueblo to punish them for the killing of 12 Spanish soldiers. Over 600 Acoma dwellers were captured and many of them mutilated as punishment. Onate was disciplined for this overly cruel behavior, but the Spanish still exploited the Pueblos. Under the system of encomienda, the Pueblos were forced to contribute a portion of their crops each year to the Spanish government and religious missions while under repartimiento, the Pueblo people were forced to work in Spanish households without pay. However, the greatest tension between the Spanish and the Pueblo Indians was the forcible conversion to Christianity and the supression of native religious practices. Add to these several years of drought and famine in the 1660s and 1670s and stir in a charismatic leader, Po’Pay, and in 1680 the Pueblos rose up and successfully pushed the Spanish out of New Mexico for over a decade. Not much is known about the leader of the revolt, Po’Pay, known to the Spanish as Popé. The book, Po’Pay: Leader of the First American Revolution, identifies him as an Indian from Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo). He is first heard of during the 1670s when the Spanish rounded up a group of local religious leaders and brought them to Santa Fe for trial. Several of those arrested were hanged and the others whipped. Tension between the Spanish and Pueblos grew stronger after this incident and the Tewa leaders, including Po’Pay, made plans for a general uprising of the Pueblos against the Spanish. The Revolt was scheduled to begin on August 11. The Spanish learned of the plot on August 9th but despite this setback, the Pueblos advanced their plans and launched attacks against the Spanish on August 10, 1680. The Indians laid siege to Santa Fe, which held out until September 21, 1680 when the Indians allowed the colonists to retreat south into Mexico. A letter from the then governor of the province, Don Antonio de Otermin, written on September 8, 1680, details the first part of the revolt. The letter provides the Spanish perspective on the uprising with the governor stating such an event was wholly unexpected given the existing peaceful conditions:
By September 21, the governor was forced to withdraw from Santa Fe to El Paso:
It took 12 years before the Spanish were able to reoccupy Santa Fe and the surrounding territory. During those 12 years there were several punitive expeditions against the Pueblos as well as offers to negotiate – in 1683 the Picuris Pueblo sent an emissary to Governor Otermin offering aid in the Spanish reentry in exchange for peace and an agreement not to kill the natives or burn their homes. However, the Spanish continued to launch punitive expeditions against the Pueblos – attacking Santa Ana in 1687 and Zia in 1689. Finally in 1692, a new governor, Diego de Vargas left El Paso on route to Santa Fe. After surrounding the town with his army and two cannons, the Indians agreed to negotiate and De Vargas was able to reclaim Santa Fe without a fight. Despite this, there were two subsequent revolts against Spanish rule in 1694 and 1696 – both of which were crushed by De Vargas. Moreover, although the friars had returned with De Vagas, the forced labor practices and aggressive suppression of native religion did not. During the 1700s, the Spanish and Pueblo peoples began to live together in greater harmony and in 1820, the Pueblos were granted equal citizenship in the province. The leader of the 1680 rebellion, Po’Pay is commemorated in the Capitol’s National Statutory Hall – the second statute given by New Mexico. The Church of San Miguel, the oldest church in Santa Fe, N.M
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was one of the most significant events in New Mexico’s history. The revolt wasn’t successful in terms of permanently driving the Spanish from New Mexico. It was successful in terms of curtailing the cruelty and exploitation exhibited by the Spanish prior to the revolution. It was not the first act of resistance. There were constant uprisings in the northern pueblos in response to Spanish exploitation, abuse and oppression, with the Coronado expedition establishing a precedent for the atrocities that followed. Coronado ExpeditionCoronado hadn’t anticipated the harsh conditions. Marching across the arid terrain of southern New Mexico depleted their food supplies. By the time he reached Hawikuh Coronado’s troops were starving and increasingly mutinous when they realized the reports of wealth and abundance in the northern lands were lies. Zuni PuebloThe Zuni were already aware of Spanish exploits in Mexico. Word travels fast on the north-south trade routes. The Zuni had relocated their women, children, and elderly to the impregnable mesa top sanctuary on top Dowa Yalanne by the time Coronado arrived. The Zuni warriors tried to repel the invaders, but the Spanish had greater numbers and superior weapons. For the next several months Coronado occupied Hawikuh, putting an enormous strain on the Zuni’s food supply. Representatives from Pecos Pueblo traveled to Zuni to meet with the Spanish. They offered to guide them to wealthy tribes in the east. Pecos relied on trade with both the pueblos and the plains. Raiding parties from eastern tribes were a persistent problem and dispatching the Spanish to deal with them probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, the Spanish had really interesting things to trade, things they had never seen before, like horses, sheep, and steel. Coronado’s emissary encountered the Tiguex communities farming the fertile flood plains of the Rio Grande near present day Bernalillo while traveling to Pecos. Given the rapidly dwindling food supply in Zuni, Coronado decided to set up his winter camp in one of the Tiguex pueblos, advancing with his troops to seize the community in the fall of 1540. Tiguex PueblosCoronado’s troops summarily evicted the residents of Kuaua Pueblo with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Whereas many accounts imply that the villagers left peacefully, archaeological evidence discovered in the 1930s suggests there was a battle. That seems more likely. Coronado used the village as a military base. He demanded supplies from the Tiwa pueblos, as well as the Keres and Tewa pueblos north of Tiguex. The Spanish traded with the neighboring pueblos for the first few months, but provisions became scarce and the pueblos refused to give up more of their food, because they needed it to survive the winter. Tiguex WarCoronado ordered his men to take what they needed by force. The post-harvest cornstalks, normally saved for cooking and heating fuel during the winter, was fed to the Spanish livestock, leaving the pueblos both hungry and cold. Spanish soldiers raped women in the pueblo. The Tiwas retaliated in December, killing some of the expedition’s horses and mules. Coronado responded by declaring a war of “fire and blood,” which is known as the Tiguex War. He dispatched a large force of soldiers to attack a neighboring Tiwa village, Arenal. They killed all of Arenal’s warriors, including burning 30 men alive at the stake. The Tiwas abandoned their community on the river banks, retreating to a mesa-top stronghold. Coronado couldn’t breach their defenses. He laid siege from January – March of 1541 until the Tiwa ran out of food and water. The Tiwa tried to escape, but the Spanish soldiers caught them. The conquistadors killed all of the men and most of the women. The soldiers enslaved the remaining women for the duration of Coronado’s occupation. Though Coronado left in 1541, and it would be 39 years before the Spanish returned, he devastated the Tiguex communities. They never recovered. The Spanish created the Sandia Pueblo land grant in 1748 for Puebloan refugees who fled Spanish occupation by living with the Hopi in western Arizona. Sandia Pueblo is the only Tiwa community remaining in the area Coronado attacked, although 15 other Tiwa, Keres, Tewa, and Towa pueblos remain on or near the same sites where Coronado found them in 1540. Juan de OñateWhen Juan de Oñate returned to colonize the region in 1598, he brought both settlers and a pack of Franciscan padres. Though the purported purpose of ecclesiastical involvement was to ‘save souls,’ the underlying motives were control, subjugation and exploitation of the indigenous people; deliberate cultural genocide, borne of a sense of manifest destiny imbued by extreme ethnocentrism. Oñate divided the territory into 7 provinces, dispatching priests to each one. The process involved reducing the number of pueblos through consolidation so the population would be easier to control, convert and tax, a policy refered to as reducciones de indios. This empire building policy also provided a larger, more concentrated, labor force for both the civil authorities and clergy to exploit. MissionariesA few of the Franciscan priests tolerated traditional religious practices as long as the Puebloans attended mass and maintained a public veneer of Catholicism. Others weren’t tolerant, establishing totalitarian theocracies in their designated provinces, characterized by ruthless suppression of religious practices and persistent abuse of Pueblo labor. The priests destroyed kivas, forbade ceremonial practices, and desecrated or destroyed sacred objects. The policy of encomiendas, which authorized demands of fealty, tribute and labor from the natives, created a strain on civilizations that already struggled to survive the winter months without starving. In response, the pueblos frequently rose against their oppressors. The uprisings usually involved a handful of pueblos, with insufficient warriors and weapons to be successful. The Spanish authorities often discovered, and ruthlessly crushed, rebellions before they could organize effectively. They killed the dissidents or sold then as slaves. Acoma PuebloIn 1598, Acoma refused to pay the “food tax” demanded by the Spanish. The Acoma leader, Zutacapan, found out that the Spanish intended to invade Acoma. He was aware of the brutal and extreme retaliation experienced by other villages. Initially, Acoma tried to negotiate and Oñate sent his nephew, Captain Juan de Zaldívar, to the pueblo to consult with him. When Zaldivar arrived on December 4, 1598, he took sixteen of his men up the mesa and demanded food. After being denied, the Spaniards assaulted some of Acoma’s women, provoking a confrontation with the warriors of the village. A fight ensued, leaving Zaldivar and eleven of his men dead. When Oñate learned of the incident, he ordered Juan de Zaldivar’s brother, Vicente de Zaldívar, to punish the Acoma. With about 70 soldiers, Vincente de Zaldivar left San Juan Pueblo in late December, arriving at Acoma Pueblo on January 21, 1599. The battle began the following morning, January 22, 1599. It lasted three days. On the third day, Zalvidar and twelve of his men ascended the mesa and opened fire on the pueblo with a cannon. The conquistadors stormed the village. Out of the estimated 6,000 people living at or around Acoma Pueblo in 1599, at least 2,000 were warriors. 500 died in the battle, along with about 300 women and children. Massacre at AcomaThe Spanish captured approximately five hundred people and sentenced them to a variety of fates, all bad. They sentenced every male over the age of twenty five to have their right foot cut off and to be enslaved for a period of twenty years, carrying out the sentence on twenty-four warriors. Additionally, they ordered all males between the ages of twelve to twenty-five to be enslaved for twenty years, along with all females over the age of twelve. Sixty of the youngest women were deemed not guilty and sent to Mexico City,“parceled out among Catholic convents”. Historians believe they were sold as slaves. The Spanish troops arrested two Hopi men and severed one of their hands before releasing them to provide a warning to other pueblos about the cost associated with defying Spanish rule. Oñate’s actions in Acoma were not only traumatizing to Acoma, but shocking and appalling to the other pueblos. Despite cultural and linguistic differences, the pueblos and tribes in this region were not strangers to one another. Through commerce, alliances, peace and war, they had interacted for centuries. News of conflict, uprisings, Spanish misdeeds, battles and war traveled fast up and down the Rio Grande, with localized frustration and anger congealing into regional ambivalence and animosity towards the invaders. Things didn’t improve in the 1600s. Tension MountsCatholic missionaries attempted to eradicate the ancestral Pueblo world in every respect. The priests dictated what people could believe and how they could marry, work, live their lives, and pray. The Spanish civil authorities, clergy and military vied for the tribute and labor of the local population, leading to persistent conflict between church and state, with the inhabitants of the pueblo caught in the crossfire. Tensions increased among the Spanish soldiers seeking wealth, the priests needing wealth to build churches, and the Indians whose labor and resources were exploited by both. By 1626, the Spanish had established the inquisition in Quarai, one of the Salinas pueblos. Bernardo López de Mendizábal served as governor of New Mexico between 1659–1660. He attempted to curtail the powers of the priests, prohibiting them from forcing the native population to work for free and acknowledging the right of the indigenous people to worship according to their traditions, including performing the sacred dances banned by the Franciscans. In return, the Inquisition convicted him of heresy and condemned him to based on thirty three counts of malfeasance and the practice of Judaism. The priests resumed their policy of religious intolerance. From 1645 on there were several abortive uprisings and the Spanish singled out the medicine men for reprisal. Drought, Disease & RaidsDrought and unusually high temperatures in the 1660s and 1670s made life increasingly difficult. Fray Alonso de Benavides wrote multiple letters to the King of Spain, noting “the Spanish inhabitants and Indians alike are forced to eat hides and straps of carts.” All of the indigenous people, from the Puebloans to the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche were starving. Raiding parties became a frequent and persistent problem for the pueblos, ravaging communities beset by famine. With no food in the villages, the raiders took people. They sold them into slavery in exchange for food. The Spanish soldiers and Pueblo warriors couldn’t quell the attacks. The Spanish exacerbated the tension by seizing crops and possessions, leaving the Pueblos with nothing. The Pueblos attributed their hardships, and the prolonged drought, on the disruption of their religious practices. A population estimated to be 40,000-80,000 in the mid-1500s was reduced to an estimated 15,000 by the late 1600s, primarily due to the impact of violence, forced labor, European diseases, and famine. Po’payThe unrest among the Pueblos came to a head in 1675. Governor Juan Francisco Treviño ordered the arrest of forty seven Pueblo caciques, a Spanish term for indigenous leaders or medicine men. Governor Treviño accused the men of sorcery and plotting a rebellion. He sentenced four to be hung, with three executions carried out. A fourth man committed suicide. He had the remaining prisoners publicly whipped and sentenced to slavery. When news of the arrests reached Pueblo leaders, seventy warriors descended on the Governor’s office in Santa Fe demanding the release of the remaining prisoners. They forced Governor Treviño to concede, because his troops were far from Santa Fe fighting Apaches. He wanted to avoid provoking additional uprisings, because the Apache and Navajo were becoming increasingly aggressive throughout the region, putting a strain on his limited military resources. One of those released was Po’pay (Popé) from San Juan Pueblo (Ohkay Owingeh). Little is known about Po’pay prior to his arrest in 1675. Historians estimate that he was born in 1630, which means he came of age during a period of enormous strife and hardship. Famine and attacks were decimating the pueblos. The Spanish were unable to protect them and, instead, were aggressively eradicating their way of life. Po’pay was described as a “fierce and dynamic individual…who inspired respect bordering on fear in those who dealt with him.” After his release from prison, Po’pay retreated to Taos Pueblo, the northernmost outpost of the Spanish Empire. The residents of Taos had a reputation for aggressively resisting the Spanish. Po’pay began to organize and plan a rebellion with a singular, clear objective: drive the Spanish from ancestral land, eradicate their influence, and return to the traditional ways of life. He began secret negotiations with leaders from all of the pueblos.
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