Today, August 10, is the annual
San Lorenzo Feast Day celebrated by Picuris Pueblo in the northern mountains of New Mexico. It is also the anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt, which drove the Spanish colonial settlers from the territory in 1680, the ones who weren't killed outright.
THE SPANISH ARRIVE IN PUEBLO COUNTRY
The first contact between the Spanish and the Pueblos was when Coronado came upon Zuñi Pueblo in 1540. The first settlers traveled up the Rio Grande in 1598, under the command of Don Juan de Oñate.
Juan de Oñate, New Mexico's first governor, started his journey near Parral, in southern Chihuahua, and crossed the Rio Grande at El Paso on May 4, 1598. He eventually made his way north of the present city of Santa Fe and established Spain's first settlement in New Mexico at San Juan de los Caballeros--nine years before Jamestown was settled on the New England coast and 78 years after the Spanish first entered Mexico.
Cross-posted to
ePluribusMedia
Don Juan de Oñate & Acoma Pueblo
The first Spanish settlers to modern-day New Mexico came in 1598, under the command of Don Juan de Oñate:
He was a rich man, hoping to get richer. Although he was a soldier with much Indian-fighting experience, he did not lead a trim fighting force for conquest; he headed a domestic expedition, equipped for settlement. ...The expedition stretched for four miles. It had 130 men, most of them with wives and children: arms, implements, eighty-three wagons, carts, and carriages, and some 7,000 head of livestock--pigs, sheep, goats, oxen, and beef cattle, horses, and mules. In a good day, the caravan could travel more than 12 miles; on a bad day, maybe four or five-so that the caravan's tail sometimes got no farther than the previous night's camp for the head of the column.
A friend from Taos Pueblo attended the Town of Taos Fiesta Parade this year, and came away saying: "When those Spanish arrived, with their guns and their horses, my people must have been very frightened." Frightened enough that they gave up their food stores, intended to carry them through years of poor harvest. But not always willingly. There was a particularly ugly incident in 1599 at Acoma Pueblo. Oñate's nephew and a Spanish contingent went to take provisions from Acoma Pueblo. Apparently, the Acomas took exception to this, and by the time the argument was over, all the Spanish were dead. Call it punishment, call it vengeance, what was visited upon Acoma in response to this skirmish was, for its time, as awful as any terrorism or "shock and awe" from today:
Males over age twenty-five to have one foot cut off and condemned to twenty years of personal servitude. Males twelve to twenty-five years old condemned to twenty years of personal servitude. Women over twelve years of age condemned to twenty years of personal servitude. Two Moquis captured in the Acoma fight to have the right hand cut off and to be set free to take home news of their punishment. Children under twelve, whom Oñate ruled free of guilt, to be handed over to Father Martinez ... for a Christian upbringing. (Sixty of the small girls were ... sent to Mexico City for parceling among the convents there. None ever saw their homeland or relatives again.)
Native News Online Oñate at Acoma Pueblo
De Onate eventually proved to be better at exploring than he was at governing. Under his administration, the lands north of the Rio Grande became more of a headache than they were a benefit. By 1607, he was removed as governor due to mistreatment of the peoples and lands under his administration. Reports were filed of the confiscation of corn from the pueblos, beyond their ability to deliver, causing starvation in some pueblos. The villages complained about horses and livestock grazing in their fields and of periodic levies and of pillage of supplies, including the taking of cloth, leaving the natives naked. Slavery was common, and rape was a continuing problem with soldiers who had been away from Europe and family for years.
And so it was decided that too much abuse of the locals by settlers was a policy doomed to failure. But over the next decades, that lesson was largely forgotten, and life for the Pueblos under Spanish rule was not at all pleasant.
THE 1600s UNDER SPANISH OCCUPATION
From The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by native historian Joseph Sando
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.
During the 1660s, some people left Taos Pueblo and settled in Kansas for a few years, establishing a Pueblo whose ruins are known as La Cuartelejo. More on that later. The Spanish went after them out onto the plains, and brought them back to the Pueblo.
The traditional village of Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited for about 700 years. It is an official World Heritage Site
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Native News Online on
pre-Revolt conditions
Strange diseases brought by the settlers from Europe also swept through the Pueblo towns. The illnesses killed hundreds of people and left many villages empty. Before Onate and his colonists had come, the Pueblos had always prepared for dry times by storing extra food for their villages. When the Spaniards conquered the Pueblos, they forced them to surrender the stored good as taxes. When dry times came, there was no food and hundreds of Pueblos died from starvation. The people began to abandon their villages to get away from diseases, hunger, and the Spaniards. Some joined their Navajo friends living near Dinétah. Others joined the Zunis or the Hopis who lived far to the west. Some Pueblos moved onto the plains to escape the Spaniards. When Onate first entered New Mexico in 1598, there were over one hundred Pueblo Indian villages in the Rio Grande valley. By 1680, only forty-three pueblo villages were occupied.
PO'PAY & the PUEBLO REVOLT
I've heard it said that the Pueblos were open to worshiping Jesus when the Spanish Missionaries brought word of him - he seemed like a good guy. The problems came when the Spanish insisted that they give up all their other religious practices. Probably something to that.
Amongst the 47 Pueblo "sorcerers" mentioned above was a man from Ohkay Owingeh (also formerly known as San Juan Pueblo) known as Po'Pay:
Po'pay was born around 1630 in the San Juan Pueblo, in what is now the state of New Mexico; his given name, Popyn, means "ripe squash" in the Tewa language. As an adult he became a religious leader and was responsible for healing as well as for his people's spiritual life. He also knew of his people's suffering under Spanish settlers, who forced them to provide labor and food to support the Spanish community. The Spaniards also pressured them to give up their religion and way of life and to adopt Christianity--those found practicing their religion were tortured and sometimes executed. In 1675 Po'pay and 46 other Pueblo leaders were convicted of sorcery; he was among those flogged, while others were executed.
In 1680 Po'pay organized the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish. According to legend, to coordinate the timing of the uprising, he and his followers sent runners to each pueblo with knotted deerskin strips. One knot was to be untied each day, and the revolt would begin on the day the last one was untied.
Po'Pay Sculptor: Cliff Fragua, Dedicated Sept. 25,2005 at the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol
Borderlands: El Paso Community College Local History Project
An incident in 1675 served as the compelling motivation for the big Pueblo rebellion. The Spanish arrested 47 medicine men, publicly whipping them and hanging four in the plaza of Santa Fe. In the group of the survivors was one man who had enough of the Spaniards' cruel injustices and would become their worst adversary. His name was Popé (pronounced Po-PAY).
...
Popé started devising a plan that took many years to put together. He told of a dream he had in which three Indians shooting fire out of their bodies appeared to him and gave him the idea of the revolt and helped him plan it. Popé convinced leaders from several pueblos to help with the secret plans.
Borderlands: El Paso Community College Local History Project
Because the Pueblos spoke different languages, historians conjecture that Popé used drawings on deerskin representing the method of attack against the Spanish. He sent to every village cords with knots in them representing the number of days left before the revolt.
Runners are an important part of Pueblo culture to this day. Every footrace at every Feast Day commemorate and honor the Pueblo Revolt. Although there are no contemporary descriptions from those times, Willa Cather conjures up a poetic description in Death Come for the Archbishop:
North of Laguna two Zuni runners sped by them, going somewhere east on 'Indian business.' the saluted Eusabio by gestures with the open palm, but did not stop. They coursed over the sand with the fleetness of young antelope, their bodies disappearing and reappearing among the sand dunes like the shadows that eagles cast in their strong, unhurried flight.
PBS timeline
1680: From his headquarters in a kiva at Taos, Popé leads the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in New Mexico. On August 10, in a coordinated uprising at more than two dozen Indian settlements, separated by hundreds of miles and six different languages, the Indians kill more than 400 Spaniards, including 21 of the province's 33 missionaries, and sack or destroy every building and church.
Those who survive flee to Santa Fe, where they are surrounded by a combined force of 2,500 warriors who burn the town and mock their persecutors, now barricaded in the Governor's Palace, by chanting phrases from the Latin Mass. After a skirmish which temporarily drives the Indians back, the Spanish retreat to El Paso on the Rio Grande, establishing a secular community around the mission founded there in 1659.
The Pueblo people watch this retreat from the hills overlooking Santa Fe, content simply to have their homeland back again. Under Popé's leadership they have carried out what will stand as the most successful Indian revolt in North American history.
But even with the Spanish gone, the life of the Pueblos still bears the scars of their influence. Popé eradicates all signs of the Christian religion, but he retains elements of the Spanish political system, setting himself up in the Governor's Palace as ruler of the pueblos and collecting tribute from the once autonomous communities of the region until his death in 1688.
Borderlands: El Paso Community College Local History Project
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a great victory for the Indians, but it was short-lived. Popé made himself governor of the Pueblos and became very demanding of them. Arguments evolved. And the unity of the villages dissolved. The pueblos furthermore were continuing to suffer from a long-time drought. Food was scarce and many starved. By the time Popé died in 1688, the pueblos were weaker than ever. The Indians suffered for 12 years, and in 1692, Diego de Vargas and his expedition reconquered Santa Fe. One of Popé's lieutenants, Tapatu, even embraced de Vargas, thinking life would improve under new Spanish authority.
Borderlands: El Paso Community College Local History Project
Historians disagree on what happened at the Isleta Pueblo. Some have suggested that the Isleta Tiguas had refused to join the rebellion. Others say that because the Spanish had been able to take over the pueblo, they took hostages south with them to insure their own arrival. In any case, the first Tiguas began their trek south where they would be forced to establish a new home, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.
These are the Texas Tigua tribe defrauded by Abramoff. Here's some of those modern day Tiguas with Rep. Bob Ney (OH-18), in a photo they released after he claimed to know nothing of them in testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Abramoff hearings. Ney announced this week that he was withdrawing from the race for relection this fall.
The RECONQUEST & PICURIS PUEBLO
PBS timeline
1692: On an expedition to reclaim New Mexico for Spain more than a decade after the Pueblo Revolt, Diego de Vargas leads a band of 200 soldiers from El Paso to Santa Fe, where he surrounds the town before dawn and then calls on the Indians to surrender, pledging clemency if they will swear allegiance to the King and return to the Christian faith. After a decade in which many have been forced to abandon their pueblos to escape Apache raiders, the Indians gathered in Santa Fe agree to peace. Vargas keeps his word, and over the next few months extends the same offer throughout the region. By year's end, he has accomplished his mission and reimposed Spanish rule over New Mexico almost without bloodshed.
Nowadays, Picuris is a tiny tribe, consisting of about 50 households. But at the time of contact, estimates are that the population was about 5000. Known as Mountain Gap people, they frequently made hunting trips to the plains. They were also the very last of the Pueblo tribes "discovered" by the Spanish, and never took well to them. They were amongst the fiercest fighters in the Pueblo Revolt, under their leader Tupatu. That name is remembered today, and children still are given that Indian name in his honor.
After the Reconquest, there was a failed revolt against it in 1696. Rather than submit to Spanish rule again, the Picuris took off, en masse, living for a time in a cañon area replete with wetlands in western Kansas, now part of Lake Scott State Park, and called the El Cuartelejo Pueblo Ruin. The same place that Taos Pueblo refugees had lived for a time 30 years earlier:
Reconstructed here are the remains of a seven-room pueblo identified in 1898 as El Cuartelejo. According to Spanish records two groups of Pueblo Indians form New Mexico fled into the Plains to escape Spanish rule. The first were Taos Indians who settled here with a band of Plains Apache about 1664 and remained for several years. Their village became known as El Cuartelejo and the local Apache as the Cuartelejo band. The second were Picuris who joined the Apache in 1696 and were returned to New Mexico ten years later by Juan de Ulibarri.
Ruins of El Cuartelejo, Scott Lake SP, Kansas
Most of the Picuris did not return, fleeing the Spanish to the south. There might well be a connection between those "vanished" Picuris and the Kiowa-Apache whose reservation is now in Oklahoma. They are neither Kiowa nor Apache. Their oral tradition, I'm told, says they came from the north and the west, and that they really hated the Spanish. To my knowledge, this connection has never been pursued. Picuris Pueblo tribal leaders and elders made a pilgrimage to visit El Cuartelejo in about 2000, for the first time in 300 years.
Fast Forward: Oñate's Quadricentennial
Remembering that Oñate first headed north from Mexico in 1598, the state of New Mexico planned a rousing celebratory commemoration in 1998. A new Oñate Visitor Center for Rio Arriba county was built near the site of the first settlement, near the San Juan Pueblo (now officially known by its Tewa name, Ohkey Owingeh). And a big statue was commissioned and dedicated in anticipation of big anniversary:
Shortly after the dedication, the director of the center, one Estevan Arellano, was contacted by a reporter from the Santa Fe New Mexican, wanting comment on what had happened to the Oñate statue. The director insisted everything was fine, but the reporter convinced him to go check the statue while he held the line. Arellano came back to the phone, shocked: Someone had sneaked in undetected with a welding torch, and cut the foot off the Oñate statue!
Arellano was shocked! and reflexively blamed the incident on white newcomers intent on causing division between the Hispanics and the Indians. A flurry of editorials and letters to the editor ensued. The consensus seemed to be that if you're going to commemorate history, it was probably a good idea to actually talk about what happened in that history. And so the largely forgotten history of Oñate and his depredations were reviewed.
Just as the story was quieting down, someone calling themselves The Friends of Acoma Pueblo sent in a photograph of the severed foot, together with a manifesto of sorts. It was the last time that Oñate's statue was covered on the front page of the New Mexican. The statue was repaired and moved to a location where it would be harder to vandalize it again. It's hard to tell where the new foot was welded on.
PO'PAY in the NATIONAL STATUARY HALL
Meanwhile, down the road, Herman Agoyo of San Juan Pueblo, was busy working on his own commemoration. Nearing retirement, the former Chairman of the All-Indian Pueblo Council was working on a personal project. New Mexico had only provided one statue for the Gallery, so could get another. After several years effort, Agoyo got approval for the project, raised money, and commissioned the statue pictured earlier in this diary. It was dedicated last September, when the rest of us were transfixed and horrified by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But if you find yourself in the National Statuary Hall and see this statue of Po'Pay, you can remember the Pueblo Revolt, and Tupatu of Picuris who made the long journey to Kansas, and the horror of the mass amputations at Acoma, and the New Mexico guerilla art project that reminded us all that history is often something other than glorious.
If only I had a picture of the "captive" foot to close the diary with. But sadly, the story unfolded back in the 1990s, and I've been unable to locate a copy of the picture published in the paper back then.
San Juan Ohkay Owingegh Pueblo Today
Message from Earl N. Salazar Governor of San Juan Pueblo back in 1998:
So 400 years later, in the midst of the worst of what any people could be subjected to, we have survived. The 19 Pueblo Nations still carry the sacred canes as a symbol of their sovereignty. As a direct result of the strength and perseverance of our forefathers, and their adherence to our native culture and traditions:
- We still have our remaining homelands
- We still have our language
- We still have our religion
- We still have our traditional form of government
And, with a very successful casino operation, they've been busy buying back lands taken at the barrel of a gun (as well as starting up other business enterprises, and providing community and social services). Most of the gaming tribes around the country apply their proceeds to similar purposes.