PUEBLO REVOLT

PUEBLO REVOLT. After the Spanish established a colony in the Rio Grande valley in 1598, they seized Indian land and crops and forced Indians to labor in Spanish fields and in weaving shops. The Indians were denied religious freedom, and some Indians were executed for practicing their spiritual religion.

The pueblos were independent villages, and the Indians spoke many dialects of several distinct languages. Occasionally an uprising against the Spanish would begin in one pueblo, but it would be squashed before it could spread to neighboring pueblos. Leaders were hanged, others enslaved.

In 1675, the Spanish arrested forty-seven medicine men from the pueblos and tried them for witchcraft. Four were publicly hanged; the other forty-three were whipped and imprisoned. Among them was Popé, a medicine man from San Juan. The forty-three were eventually released, but the damage had been done and the anger ran deep. Through the use of multilingual Indian traders, Popé recruited leaders (including Saca, Tapatú, and Catiti) in other pueblos to plan the overthrow of the Spanish. He demanded extreme secrecy.

The date was set. On 10 August 1680, Indians attacked northern settlements, killed Spanish men, women, and children, took horses and guns, and burned churches. As word spread of the massacres, nearby Spanish settlers fled to Spanish Governor Antonio de Otermín's enclosure at Santa Fe.

In the southern area around Isleta, Indians spread rumors that the governor had been killed, leading settlers to flee. Meanwhile, Indians surrounded Santa Fe, and after a few days' siege, Otermín's settlers retreated south.

Although the Indians had killed 400 Spaniards and succeeded in driving the rest of the colonists out of the Rio Grande country, they did not continue their confederation. As a consequence, the Spanish were eventually able to re-establish their authority. By 1692 they had reoccupied Santa Fe, but they did not return to their authoritarian ways. The Spanish did not force the Indians to convert to Christianity and they tolerated the continuation of native traditions. Pueblo people have been able to maintain a great deal of their traditions because of the respect they won in the 1680 rebellion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Knaut, Andrew L. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Riley, Carroll L. Rio del Norte: People of the Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to the Pueblo Revolt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995.

Veda BoydJones

See alsoConquistadores ; New Mexico ; Southwest .

Pueblo Revolt (1680).This uprising against Spanish rule in New Mexico, resulting in a rare retreat by a European colonial power, involved a complex mix of ethnic, religious, administrative, and economic grievances rooted in the Pueblo Indians' and mixed‐bloods' resentment of European rule. Spanish colonizers and Franciscan missionaries had established themselves in New Mexico by 1598. Initially most of the Pueblos adapted to Spanish rule and Catholicism, but drought in the 1660s led to anti‐Spanish unrest and a revival of traditional religion. Tensions worsened when Spanish soldiers under Governor Juan Francisco Trevino sacked the Pueblos' sacred kivas, publicly whipped native religious leaders, hanged three, and arrested others. One arrestee, Popé, of San Juan Pueblo, escaped to Taos Pueblo, a center of anti‐Spanish resistance. Taos's economy, dependent on trading corn to the Apache to the north, had been disrupted by Spanish demands for corn. Under Popé and others, Taos fostered anti‐Spanish agitation from the 1670s on. Trevino, confronted with armed insurgents, released the prisoners but tensions continued. Beginning on 10 August 1680, the insurgents killed sixty‐eight Spanish colonists, destroyed Catholic churches and killed missionaries, and besieged Santa Fe. The surviving Spanish fled to Mexico.

After the violence came negotiations over the precipitating grievances. Some Pueblos, fearing Apache raiders, reestablished their Spanish ties. In 1692, Spanish authorities under Governor Diego de Vargas returned to New Mexico, having negotiated reforms that curbed Spanish power and benefited some of the revolt's mixed‐blood leaders. Even so, Pueblo resistance erupted again in 1696. Contemporary historians, emphasizing the complexity of the issues and groups involved, view the revolt as a microcosm of sociocultural differences and amalgamation in a colonial setting.
See also Indian History and Culture: 1500 to 1800; Spanish Settlements in North America.

Bibliography

Charles W. Hackett and and C.C. Shelby , Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermin's Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682, 2 vols., 1942.
David J. Weber, ed., What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 1999.

Juan Gomez‐Quinones

Pueblo Revolt an organized rebellion of Pueblo Indians against Spanish rule in New Mexico in 1680. Led by Popé, a Tewa medicine man of the San Juan Pueblo who had been imprisoned by the Spaniards, the Pueblo united to attack Spanish settlers on August 10. The Spaniards fled on August 21, many to the El Paso region, with fatalities numbering some 400. In 1692 Gov. Pedro de Vargas reconquered the Pueblos in an expedition to recover New Mexico.

Diego de Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León , c.1643-1704, Spanish governor and captain general of New Mexico , b. Spain. As governor (1691-97) he reconquered (1692) and resettled New Mexico for the Spanish after the Pueblo revolt in 1680 had driven the Spanish settlers from the region. In 1696 he suppressed another Pueblo revolt. He was reappointed governor in 1703 and conducted a campaign against the Apaches in 1704.