THE PUEBLO REVOLT: THE SECRET REBELLION THAT DROVE THE SPANIARDS OUT OF THE SOUTHWEST
By David Roberts
Simon & Schuster, $25, 279 pages, illus.
REVIEWED BY BILL CROKE
In 1680, a well-coordinated uprising in the northern province of Nuevo Mexico resulted in the expulsion of the entire colonial Spanish population numbering roughly 3,000. The revolt was the brainchild of one Pope (pronounced “Popay”), a “sorcerer”, who had previously been imprisoned by the Spaniards.
The conspiracy, beginning on August 9, manifested itself by the simultaneous rising of 20 different pueblos (Jemez, Taos, Pecos, et al., permanent adobe towns founded by the Anasazi, who had migrated to the Rio Grande Valley from the Four Corners area in the 13th century) scattered across present northern New Mexico.
This was the only time in the history of the Americas that an entire settled European population was expelled from Indian country. In the pueblos, 19 Franciscan missionaries were murdered, along with local settlers. The rest of the colonial population either escaped south in small groups, or sought the safety of the walls of the provincial capital of Santa Fe, where 900 — along with Governor Don Antonio de Otermin and his troops — endured a siege of 10 days.
On August 20, Otermin and a hundred soldiers broke out and fought a successful pitched battle with hundreds of Indians — killing 300 — and thus buying the advantage that allowed the Spaniards to escape south. Otermin won the battle but lost New Mexico.
He led his hungry people to El Paso under the constantly harassing vigilance of Pope’s puebloans. “The Pueblo Revolt” — the title of David Roberts’ excellent history — was so well executed that Otermin didn’t even know his antagonist’s name until 16 months later. One of the big questions that the author poses is: How did Otermin not anticipate the insurrection? The Spaniards were completely taken by surprise.
It seems that Pope, from his base at San Juan Pueblo, had for five years following his imprisonment brilliantly planned the uprising, communicating by messengers with the other pueblos in perfect secrecy. There were clandestine meetings, and in the end, “knotted cords” used by the pueblos to count down the final days to the August rebellion.
The Spanish had made their first “entrada” into the pueblo world in 1540 with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s two-year odyssey at the head of 350 troops and 1,300 Indian allies from Mexico. An earlier adventurer, Cabeza de Vaca, had brought back far-fetched tales of cities built of gold. Coronado’s epic but fruitless wandering in search of these “Seven Cities of Cibola” took him as far north as the plains of present Kansas.
But still the stories of riches in the north persisted, and after 50 years of halfhearted attempts at conquest, Don Juan de Onate, “the last conquistador,” subdued the pueblos beginning in 1598, thus establishing the permanent Spanish presence. Onate was the first royal governor of Nuevo Mexico. The second, Pedro de Peralta, founded Santa Fe in 1610, the oldest American city west of the Mississippi.
Onate inaugurated 80 years of iron-fisted Spanish rule based on a slave-labor economy. The puebloans built churches, and worked in the fields and mines. The Franciscans Christianized the pueblos, and suppressed the native animistic religion, notably the worship of the kachinas, which was essentially ancestor worship. Later on, this persecution would give rise to the likes of Pope and his followers, and the inevitable revolt.
Pope was an autocrat, an Indian Pol Pot intent on erasing all traces of Spanish culture, especially the religious aspects. Churches were reduced to rubble, and puebloans forbidden to practice the faith, or even to speak Spanish. (Many had become thoroughly Christianized, and a return to kachina worship was unthinkable.) Indians with Spanish names (which were common) had to change them.
Further, 80 years of Spanish rule had instilled a sense of everyday European culture that the natives found attractive. For instance, more efficient agricultural methods were hard to let go. And savage Apache, Ute and Navajo raids (this was how large Spanish horse herds, abandoned in the revolt, found their way to the nomadic plains tribes, thus revolutionizing their way of life) made many puebloans long for a return to Spanish security.
All this made the pueblos ripe for the “reconquista,” a patiently executed four-year operation begun in August 1692. Newly appointed governor Diego de Vargas led 160 soldiers up the Rio Grande Valley, where he found the southernmost pueblos eerily deserted, victims of the aforementioned raids.
Farther north, Vargas encountered small groups of destitute puebloans. Aware of his entrada, a large force of them had taken refuge in Santa Fe, and the governor reversed the fortunes of the 1680 Spaniards by putting the city under siege.
Resistance was weak, and the Indians soon surrendered, Vargas formally establishing himself as New Mexico’s new governor. He spent the next four years methodically conquering remote pueblos as far afield as present Arizona, and encountering little defiance (one of the chapters in the book is titled “The Bloodless Reconquest”). At the same time Vargas encouraged the immigration of new settlers from Mexico. By 1696 the reconquista was complete.
Today the Southwest is the most demographically interesting region in America. New Mexico in particular is a cultural stew strategically important to the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. And its border with Mexico gives it tactical importance concerning U.S. immigration policy and the war on terror.
The place is rife with ironies. The illegal immigration “reconquista” of the Southwest is strangely reminiscent of the events of the 17th century. Hispanics are the fastest-growing demographic in the region. The descendants of the puebloans are still largely homogeneous and distrustful of both Hispanics and “Anglos.” David Roberts’ book illustrates the fact that, in some ways, nothing has changed in 300 years.
Bill Croke is a writer in Cody, Wyo.
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