Rise of the Pueblo

First of all, because of the slander of them and the prohibition of their traditional religion, many pueblo concealed hidden hostility towards the Spaniards. The Spaniards also violated the traditional economy of pueblo: people were forced to work on the colonial enkmiands . Some pueblo may also have been forced to work in the Chihuahua mines. However, the Spaniards brought with them new agricultural implements and also provided the pueblo with some protection from the attacks of the Apaches and Navajos . As a result, pueblo lived in relative peace with the Spaniards from the day they founded the colony of North Nuevo Mexico in 1598.

In the 1670s, the region was drought-ridden, which caused famine among the pueblo and increased the number of attacks from neighboring nomadic tribes - attacks against which Spanish soldiers were unable to defend themselves. At the same time, diseases introduced by Europeans literally mowed the natives, significantly reducing their numbers. Unsatisfied with the protection provided by the Spanish crown, and disillusioned with the Roman Catholic religion that they brought with them, people turned to their old beliefs. This caused a wave of reprisals from the Franciscan missionaries. Whereas earlier the church and Spanish officials tended to ignore the random manifestations of old beliefs as long as the pueblo participated in masses and maintained public loyalty to Catholicism, now Fry Alonso de Posada (in New Mexico in 1656-1665) banned all manifestations of paganism folk dances and worship of Kachin dolls, threatening for this with the most severe punishments. Several Spanish officials, such as Nicholas de Aguilar, who tried to curb the power of the Franciscans, were accused of heresy and put on trial by the Inquisition .

In 1675, Governor Juan Francisco Trevigno ordered the arrest of forty-seven pueblo healers and accused them of practicing witchcraft. Four healers were sentenced to death by hanging; three of these executions were carried out, and the fourth prisoner committed suicide. The remaining people were publicly beaten and sentenced to imprisonment. When this news reached the leaders of the pueblo, they arrived in Santa Fe , where prisoners were held. Since a significant number of Spanish soldiers were far away fighting the Apaches, Governor Trevigno released the prisoners. Among the liberated was San Juan (from the pueblo Oke Ovinge ), known among the Indians as Pope (pronounced Po'Pay ).

After his release, Pope, along with a number of other pueblo leaders, planned and organized the pueblo uprisings. He was preparing an uprising from Taos , New Mexico. Pope sent messengers with ropes with knots tied to them to all the pueblos; knots meant the number of days remaining until the appointed day of the uprising. Each morning, the leaders of the pueblo untied one knot, and when the last knot was untied, this would be a signal for them to jointly rebel against the Spaniards.

The day of the attack was scheduled for August 11, 1680 , but the Spaniards learned of the rebellion after they captured two young men from the tesuke pueblo, who were entrusted with delivering a message to one of the pueblo groups. Pope then ordered the execution of the conspiracy to begin on August 10 - before the uprising could be crushed.

The attack was launched by groups of pueblo taos, picouris and teva . They killed 21 of the 40 Franciscans in the province and another 380 Spaniards, including men, women and children. Spanish settlers fled to Santa Fe, the only Spanish city in the colony, and to Islet Pueblo, one of the few Pueblo groups that did not participate in the uprising.

Meanwhile, Pope rebels besieged Santa Fe, surrounded the city and cut its water supply. The Governor of Nuevo Mexico, Antonio de Otermin, barricaded himself in the governor's palace, called for a general retreat. On August 21, the 3,000 remaining Spanish settlers left the capital and headed for El Paso del Norte. Pueblo Indians received the horses of the Spaniards, making it possible to further spread the horses among the lowland Indian tribes . Considering themselves to be the only survivors, the refugees went on an exile to El Paso del Norte on September 15.

The retreat of the Spaniards left Nuevo Mexico in the hands of pueblo forces. Pope became a mysterious figure in the history of the southwest, because there are many stories about what happened to him after the uprising. Some stories say that he ordered pueblo to burn or destroy crosses and other religious images, as well as any other traces of the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including Spanish cattle and fruit trees, on pain of death. He allegedly also banned the sowing of wheat and barley. Pope supposedly went so far that he ordered those Indians who were married in accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church to expel their wives and marry others after the ritual performed according to the old local tradition. Another story tells that he left after the uprising in Taos , where he lived the rest of his days incognito to avoid persecution by the returning Spaniards and the anger of those pueblo who did not support him during the riot. Another story says that he just disappeared. In a word, no one really knows what happened to Pope, but his influence on the culture of the indigenous people of New Mexico has been felt over the next centuries and is still being felt.

After their success, the diverse Pueblo tribes, separated by hundreds of miles and speaking eight different languages, entered into a feud over who would occupy Santa Fe and rule the country. This power struggle, combined with raids by nomadic tribes, Spanish raids (including the destruction of Zia when 600 Indians were killed) and a seven-year drought weakened Pueblo's resolve and set the stage for a new Spanish conquest.

In July 1692, Diego de Vargas returned to Santa Fe with Captain Bartolome de Ojeda returning Zia. Vargas, having only six soldiers, seven guns (which he used as the main means of exerting pressure on the pueblo in Santa Fe) and one Franciscan priest, entered the city before dawn and called the Indians, promising them pardon and protection if they swore loyalty to the king of Spain and will return to the Christian faith . Native American leaders gathered in Santa Fe, met with Vargas and Ojeda and agreed to peace. On September 14, 1692, Vargas announced the formal return of the colony to Spanish rule. It was the thirteenth city that he had conquered for God and the King in this manner, as he wrote joyfully to Conde de Galve, Viceroy of New Spain.

Although the peace agreement of 1692 was reached bloodlessly, in the following years Vargas maintained stricter control over the behaving increasingly defiant pueblo. During the absence of Vargas in Santa Fe in 1693, pueblo again captured the city. Vargas and his troops regained control of the city quickly, but in a very bloody way, by executing 70 Pueblo rebels and sentencing 400 of them to slavery for ten years. In 1696, 14 Pueblo Indians attempted to organize a second uprising, starting with the killing of 5 missionaries and 34 settlers, using weapons that the Spaniards themselves sold to the Indians over the years; Vargas's retaliation was merciless, thorough, and lengthy. Towards the end of the century, the last opposing Pueblo were scattered, and the Spanish conquest of the territory was almost complete.

Although their independence from the Spaniards was short-lived, the Pueblo revolt provided the Pueblo Indians with a guarantee of freedom from future possible Spanish efforts to eradicate their culture and religion in the subsequent conquest. Moreover, the Spaniards issued substantial land awards to each pueblo and appointed state attorneys to protect the rights of the Indians and to represent their court cases in Spanish courts.

• Sando, Joe S. Pueblo nations: eight centuries of Pueblo Indian history. - Clear Light, 1992 .-- 282 p. - ISBN 0940666073 .
• Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge. To the royal crown restored: the journals of don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1692-94. - UNM Press, 1995 .-- 612 p. - ISBN 0826315593 .

• PBS: The West - Archives of the West.
• Pueblo rebellion