Organized exploration by the Spanish Crown northward from Mexico into the well-established culture of the Pueblo Indians, in what is now New Mexico, began in A.D. 1540 under Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. In 1598, colonization from Mexico was launched with the Onate expedition, when several hundred Hispanics established the settlement of San Gabriel across the Rio Grande from San Juan Pueblo (some 25 miles north of Santa Fe). In about 1608, the Spanish moved their capital to Santa Fe.
Life for the Pueblo peoples with their Spanish neighbors began with mutual suspicion, but also with the civil exchange of food, medicine and other goods, services and knowledge. However, the Spaniards’ imposition of the encomienda and repartimiento policies signaled a turn for the worse. In the encomienda system, the Spaniards forced Pueblo families and tribes to donate food crops and other resources every year to support the Spanish missions, military forces and civil institutions. It was superficially akin to the system of tithing, but the amount the Indians were forced to contribute was well above what they could afford.
The institution of repartimiento was somewhat similar; however, instead of tribute, the Pueblo people were forced to work in Spanish households and fields. They were required to perform a substantial amount of labor each year. These systems had their origin in the feudal practices of the Spanish Crown, which consisted in part of granting Spanish knights manorial rights over peasants on lands regained from the Moors during the centuries of the Catholic Reconquest of Spain.
To make things worse, the Custo (regional head priest), Alonzo de Posada, entered the scene in the 1660s and began a campaign against Pueblo kachina dances. These dances were supposedly keeping the Pueblos from embracing the new Spanish religion, so he ordered the Spanish priests to destroy all kachina masks. In 1675, Governor Juan de Trevino arrested 47 Pueblo men and charged them with sorcery. Four were hanged and the rest were publicly whipped in the plaza in Santa Fe.
Among those whipped was Popé, of San Juan Pueblo. Upon his return home, Popé began to think of a way to get rid of the Spaniards. He set up meetings that soon included nearby pueblos. The word of an organized Pueblo revolt spread to include Taos, Picuris and Jemez, as well as the Keresan-speaking pueblos of Cochiti and Santo Domingo. The meetings were highly secret, held generally at night, and composed mostly of each pueblo’s war captains.
Five years later, at one of their last meetings, at Tesuque on August 8, 1680, two messengers were detailed to carry a knotted rope showing the number of days before the revolt would begin. But on the first day out, the messengers were reported and the information was delivered to Trevino’s sucessor, Governor Antonio de Otermin. The two messengers were located and arrested. When the people of Tesuque learned about the arrest, they became very upset, and they killed a local Spaniard, Cristobal de Herrera. Learning about the killing, the padre at Tesuque, Juan Pio, fled to Santa Fe for the night for his safety.
The next day, accompanied by a soldier, Pio went to Tesuque to say Mass. But there was no one at the village. Pio found the people in the nearby hills. He joined the people to calm them, and did not return. Only a man known as the Ope (War Chief) came out, with red on his hands—unlike the red paint on his face. The soldier guessed what had happened to Padre Pio, so he fled the scene. He reached Santa Fe to announce the beginning of the Pueblo Revolt. Quickly, the Rio Arriba (that area of New Mexico north of White Rock Canyon) was devastated and depopulated. Those Spaniards who could started for Santa Fe to take refuge at the Casa Reales (today’s Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza). Now it was time for the Pueblo warriors to destroy the others’ places of worship, as the Spaniards had done to them, and 23 priests were put to death as Catholic churches burned.
On August 13, the pueblos closest to Santa Fe invaded the capital. The Spaniards were armed with arquebuses (a heavy, portable matchlock gun), swords, daggers and shields. The warriors had bows and arrows, small shields, lances and rocks. The Tewas first joined the battle, followed by Jemez, and then Taos and Picuris. By August 16, the Spanish arms and military training began to pay off, since the Pueblo warriors were not accustomed to this type of fighting. But just in time, the Cochiti and Santo Domingo warriors arrived, led by Alonzo Catiti of Santo Domingo, a mixed-blood whose brother, Captain Pedro Marquez, was fighting on the Spanish side. The Spaniards were to report later that they fought 2,500 Pueblo warriors. Lacking firepower, the warriors blocked the stream coming into Casa Reales. Soon the Spaniards began to lose their animals from thirst and hunger. Governor Otermin called a meeting, and it was decided they would try to fight their way out rather than die of thirst and hunger. After executing 47 warriors captured on August 21, the Spaniards broke the siege and left Santa Fe. They would not stop their southward flight until they reached the area that today is El Paso, Texas. The sword and the cross were gone. It was the first successful revolt by Natives against the Europeans, and would remain one of the few ever in the Americas.
Over the next 12 years, Governor Otermin and his successor, Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate, both struck periodically at Pueblo country. Each burned several pueblos and scattered their residents; many Natives fled to the Hopi country (some remain there today; others returned in the mid-1700s), and some went to the Navajo and never returned, spreading Pueblo culture among the Navajos.
Then, in 1692, a new governor, Don Diego de Vargas, with many Indian allies—especially Piro tribes from the lower Rio Grande area and some Pueblos—set out to retake New Mexico. After many furious battles and long campaigns to suppress those pueblos still in revolt, he succeeded.
But the revolt did bear fruit for the Pueblo people. The Spaniards no longer attempted encomienda and repartimiento, they formally recognized the Pueblos’ land rights, and they no longer harassed them about their Native religion. Thus, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico continue to retain the greater part of their Native culture today, including their tribal governing systems, languages, religion, ceremonials and arts. In this, they are unique among all of North America’s Native peoples.
Engraving by Floyd Solomon, a self taught Laguna Pueblo printmaker/painter. His social commentary focuses on expressing the transition and transformation of Pueblo culture in various artistic modes.
