The Face of Between the Native American Pueblo Tribe and Conquering Spaniards

Native Americans- Revisiting the Struggles of 1680

What were the causes of the Pueblo revolt of 1680?

In the year 1680, Native Americans known as the Pueblo revolted against their Spanish conquerors in the American South West (Calloway, 2003). The Spaniards had dominated their lives, their souls and their lands for over eighty years. The Spanish colonists conquered and maintained their rule with terror and intimidation from the beginning when their troops under the command of Juan de Onate invaded the region in 1598 (Countryman 2013). When the natives in Acoma resisted, Oriate commanded that for all men over the age of 15 one leg should be chopped and the rest of the population should be enslaved, setting the tone for what was to be a brutal rule for the next 8 decades. The Pueblo people then rose as one community united by their resolve to unshackle the chains of domination, and succeeded in driving out the Spaniards. The Pueblos allowed many Spaniards to escape with their lives, however one of the most tragic fatalities of the war was the death of 21 Franciscan priests at the hands of the rebels, and the rebels also ransacked the mission churches that had been built across their lands. It took the Spanish troops over 12 years to re-conquer the whole of the Pueblo lands. However, the Spanish troops never managed to re-conquer the Hopi in the westernmost parts of the Pueblo country (Countryman 2013).

The Pueblo rebellion of 1680 was one of the most important, yet misrepresented events in history of Native Americans. After decades of oppression under the Spanish rule, the Pueblo Indians across the North American Southwest united and organized a widespread rebellion in the summer heat of 1680. The Pueblos were successful in their revolt and gained freedom from the Spanish rule by spring of the same year (McHugh 2015). When investigating the causes of the rebellion, the lack of authentic Pueblo written accounts of the event questions the validity of the available data and makes one wonder if we will ever come to know the actual sequence of events. Even though in the widely accepted narrative, the Spanish were seen as missionaries who were sent by God to save and convert the "primitive and barbaric" Pueblos, the event seen from the natives' perspective was nothing other than an invasion by foreign overlords that were full of self-interests and thus the retaliation against the Spanish oppression. The Pueblo revolt, from the burning of churches to the violent deaths of Catholic priests shows that spiritual abuse was the main cause of the uprising. Furthermore without any written accounts from the natives, we can rely on other forms in which they stored information to get valuable insight into the reasons behind the revolt and what helped them overcome the powerful Spanish troops (McHugh 2015).

Now, three centuries later, the Pueblo people still live in traditional ways in villages across the southwest region of North America. A statute that commemorates the leader of the rebellion, Po'pay is one of the two parts from the state of New Mexico in the National Statutory Hall in Washington DC, United States. The Pueblo revolt is the most significant and successful rebellion in the history of North American natives. This essay investigates the reasons behind the revolution, what occurred? What did the revolution signify? And what did it achieve in the end?

Role of religion in the conflict

Without a doubt, one of the main dimensions of the revolution was religious. From the Zuni and Acoma in the western edges of New Mexico to the Pecos Pueblos of near the fringes of the Great Plains, the Pueblo people had had enough of the missionaries, after eighty years of what renowned historian Ramon Gutierrez had described as a forced theocratic utopia. Backed by the Spanish troops and with no hindrance or reluctance to crack the whip, Catholic missionaries had gone on to destroy the traditional world of the Pueblos in almost every way, including what they should believe, how they should live, work, marry and pray. When the revolt began, the rebels specifically had a grudge with the Franciscan priests and whenever they captured them, they first tortured them before killing them. They destroyed all the vestiges of the Catholic Church; they annihilated mission churches, and defiled the vessels used to carry out mass in the church. They forbade marriages on catholic terms. Then after they were done destroying all symbols of Christianity, they restored the Kivas-places where their ancestors had honored their ancestral gods. With all Spanish practices and catholic symbols gone, they set out to continue living their lives the way their ancestors before them had lived.

Although the Pueblo people highly valued their spiritual rituals, the Catholic missionaries wanted to immediately destroy the 'pagan' practices. After the Spaniards had failed to find the much sought after golden city of Quivera in the latter half of the sixteenth century, they turned their focus to converting the natives. From the turn of the century they penetrated deeper into the lands that currently form the state of New Mexico, which were the heartlands of the Pueblo country (Liebmann, Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico 2012). Backed by the whip and the cross, the missionaries sought to completely eliminate the natives' religion. Any rebellion or resistance to the Spanish rule was responded to with torture, imprisonment or even death. For instance, records indicate that in 1655 Fray Salvador De Guerra whipped a native for worshiping idols to the extent that he was bathed in blood (Liebmann, Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico 2012). Furthermore, the catholic priests destroyed approximately 1600 native praying sticks and Katsina spiritual masks. The evidence not only reveals how the conquerors physically tortured and abused the Pueblo for their religious beliefs but also completely destroyed most of their spiritual practices. Instead of perceiving the natives as equals, the Spanish conquerors regarded them as idolaters, which further pushed their resolve to forcibly convert them (McHugh 2015).

Slavery a core factor leading to the conflict

Besides religious differences, slavery was perhaps the factor that provided the final push for the locals to revolt against their Spanish overlords. Legal enslavement of the natives had already been forbidden by royal decree from the Spanish King since the mid 16th century; however that had not put an end to the actual practice. The so-called "just wars" offered one loophole, and on that basis the Utes, Apaches and other Native American tribes that had resisted the Spanish conquerors then became fair game to the enslavers. Settled Christian native-Indians such as the Pueblo people could be put under slavery for certain durations if they refused to acknowledge the Spanish authorities. Compulsory encomienda labor, which was supposedly given by the natives in return for the "benefits" that the Spanish conquerors had brought, was quite similar to slavery. Enslaved Indians frequently ended up in huge, labor-dependent silver mines in Chihuahua. Some of them were taken as far south as Cuba to work alongside enslaved Africans in plantations. Native women and children were also sold across the plains for domestic labor and sexual exploitation. Outside the Spanish controlled lands, slaving frontiers were advancing westwards towards the plains both from the British Colonies (particularly South Carolina) and from New France. The Apache, Navajo and Pueblo country lay an ocean away from the European capitals, but its natives were caught up in a giant web whose most common shared institution was that of human slavery (Countryman 2013).

Cause of Misconception about the conflict

With only a handful of exceptions, studies of the Pueblo revolt era have all been based on the same collection of documentary evidence, mostly consisting of accounts from Franciscan ecclesiastical correspondence (Hackett 1937; Espinosa 1988) and Spanish military journals (Hackett and Shelby 1942; Kessell and Hendricks 1992; Kessell et al. 1995, 1998). These collections of written records have mainly resulted in histories portraying the Pueblo revolt mainly through the perspective of the Spanish conquerors, and the few Pueblo perspectives are included only through European translators and interlocutors (Weber 1999b:9). These written records have been relied upon even though there are obvious and significant biases in their accounts, as the Spanish writers tried to rationalize their defeat and justify their subsequent attempts at reconquering the territory. Primary texts tend to portray the event as an unusual anomalous event and refute the long periods of resistance of the locals to the Spanish religious persecution and economic oppression (Liebmann, Matthew & Preucel 2007).

Moreover, these texts contain very little in terms of the changes that were made to the Pueblo social and cultural formations between 1680 and 1692. The Spaniards who had been pushed out of the region during the period were only making brief and poorly recorded forays into the region, while the locals did not record their events in writing (Hackett 1937; Espinosa 1988). As a result, historical researches have concentrated on the Pueblo revolt era in the 1682 and jumped to the ritual repossession of Vargas in 1692, leaving the intervening decade of the region's independence largely undocumented. Many studies have hence shown the revolt as a temporary hindrance to the inevitable expansion of the Spanish Empire (Bolton 1916; Bowden 1975; Garner 1974; also see Knaut 1995). From an anthropological point-of-view, the social and cultural practices of the Pueblo tribe during the intervening years are crucial to understanding the overall effects of the revolt era on the development of the natives' cultures (Liebmann, Matthew & Preucel 2007). Following which, we explore;

How the conflict affected social life and settlement of the Puebloans

Pre-Revolt era

Before the people of Pueblo first came face-to-face with the Spanish, they were generally distributed across the plains in clusters of large villages (Schroeder 1979). The pueblos who lived in these villages were usually located near valleys in close proximity to the most fertile lands. There is a huge difference in the settlement structures both within and among the villages in these pre-Hispanic settlements. However, almost all of them were located around a plaza with Kivas which were used in ceremonial or religious activities (Liebmann, Ferguson and Preucel 2005). Even though the natives shared many similarities in their cultural, social and religious practices, they also differed from each other huge ways. For instance, the native peoples of Pueblo spoke about 7 different languages, some of which had several dialects between them. The language that was spoken in different village clusters formed the main basis for social and political alliances among most of the settlements which were otherwise autonomous (Liebmann, Ferguson and Preucel 2005).

Revolt era

During the Pueblo revolt of 1680, many rebels destroyed churches and left the mission villages they had been confined to, to form new Pueblo settlements (Hackett, Wilson & Shelby 1942). A number of Pueblo communities rebuilt their villages on top of mesas in anticipation Spanish efforts at reconquest. The Spanish troops made a couple of abortive attempts to reconquer the Pueblo country in the 1680s and even though they were not able to regain full control until the year 1696, their early attempts brought about huge casualties to the southern Pueblo settlements (Ford et. al. 1972; Wilcox 1981). In the year 1689, for example, the troops under the leadership of Domingo Jironza Petris de Cruzate attacked Zia Pueblo, resulting in the deaths of over 600 natives (Kessell and Hendrick 1992). These bloody attacks meant only one thing to the Puebloans, that the Spaniards would wage a brutal war to retake their colony. After the Jironza-led attack, the inhabitants of Zia Pueblo rebuilt their village at the top of a mesa (Cerro Colorado) so as to protect themselves from further attacks, as did many other settlements during the revolt (Liebmann, Ferguson and Preucel 2005).

2. Ethnogenesis

One of the most crucial long-term effects of the Pueblo uprising is the formation of new social identities that removed or assumed the previous traditional ethno-linguistic boundaries which had defined the Pueblo village settlements during the eighty years of Spanish domination (Ford et. al. 1972; Wilcox 1981). This process, which is commonly referred to as ethnogenesis is defined as formation of enduring identities in terms of radical change after cultural and political struggles (Hill 1996:1). Ethnogenesis is primarily an adaptation that is especially common among indigenous communities that have been greatly affected by colonial agendas and institutions (Roosens 1989).

In the lands that the Spanish had occupied in New Mexico, they used ethnic categorization to consolidate and legitimize their economic and political systems. The ascription of a "Pueblo" ethnicity to people who were culturally and linguistically diverse, allowed asymmetric economic and social relations between the natives and the settlers to seem both natural and broadly applicable (Wilcox 2001; Preucel et al. 2002). What is interesting about the Pueblo uprising is that, the leader of the rebellion, Po'pay used this ethnic categorization to mobile these diverse peoples in different settlements against their rulers. Hence the independent ethnic categorization "Pueblo" was reoriented and used instead to create and signify political alliance and to allow a united resistance in the early 1680s (Liebmann and Preucel 2007).

Alliances made by the Pueblos

The 1680 revolt was by no means an isolated event. The entire 17th century history of the modern state of New Mexico and that of northern Mexico is marked with years of rebellion and unrest. Many of the native communities in the region had been conquered and enslaved and wished to liberate themselves from the Spaniards. However, most of them understood that even though they significantly outnumbered the Spaniards, their enemies were organized, determined and ruthless. The Spanish troops possessed steel weapons and firearms that were superior to anything that the locals had access to (Countryman 2013). However, despite the fact that they were against a superior and organized invader, records show that there were repeated revolts and uprisings among the Native Americans who had supposedly been "reformed" to Spanish and Christian ways. There were several other native communities who also took part in the revolt. The neighboring Navajos and Apaches remained free of Spanish rule, both because of their nomadic lifestyles and also because the Spanish troops had been stretched to their limits. But for many years the peoples of these communities had to fight frontier battles. In fact, these other communities also played such a great role in the revolt, that according to Forbes, the term "Pueblo revolt" is but a misnomer and a different term that should be used is the "Great Southwestern Revolt," since it describes the late 17th century revolt more accurately (Countryman 2013).

As a consequence, the Pueblo Revolt not only affected the Pueblo tribe but also other tribes in the surrounding area. One of the other tribes that participated in the revolt was the north-central New Mexico's Jamez tribe. During the era of the revolt, the Jamez lands had served as a place of hiding or retreat. The people had been directly motivated or encouraged by the actions of the Pueblo tribe (M. Liebmann 2008). It was not just the Jamez tribe that formed an alliance with the Pueblo people, indeed during the revolt the Apaches and the Navajos also came to their aid (Brugge 1969). These alliances contributed significantly to the revolt and helped the locals to take back their lands and exile their conquerors.

How the revolt sparked a fire

The Pueblo Revolt not only affected the settlers in the New Mexico region, this is because immediately after that, other oppressed Native American tribes had heard of the success that the Pueblo people had had in driving out their Spanish colonizers, they also set out to do the same. The news that the Pueblos had succeeded to overthrow their conquerors sparked an incessant series of revolts in other American Indian tribes all across the colonies in South America. For example, as Page (2002) noted in his work, the word spread throughout the south and encouraged resistance and rebellion that plagued the colonists for many years. The Pueblo revolt inspired other Indian tribes and sparked events all over the Americas.

From the information above, it can be said that the revolt had long-term effects not just for the Native Americans and the colonists in the area where the revolt took place, but also for other tribes and colonists throughout the New World. The strategies of the Pueblo people enabled them to retake their lands for about ten years. The revolt proved that colonists could not just walk in and demand for natives to change, even if the locals where naturally pacifistic, they too were willing to risk their lives for what they believed in, just like the colonists. This was a crucial time in history that helped shape how the United States formed.