Popé's Revolt

Significance: This August 10, 1680, uprising against European colonial authority ensured the survival of Puebloans as a distinct people.

The first permanent European colony in Pueblo territory was established by Juan de Oñate in 1598. The jewels and gold of the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola had proven to be a myth, but the Spanish still intended to settle the land. Franciscan friars came to seek converts to Catholicism, the civilian authorities and settlers to seek their fortunes in mining, trading, and ranching. The entire Spanish system was based on the need for American Indian labor. In order to get it, the Spanish imposed the encomienda system, which gave large land grants to holders, known as encomanderos. The part of this program known as repartimiento bestowed upon the encomanderos the right to the labor of any nearby natives. Annual taxes also were collected from the natives in the form of produce, textiles, or other resources.

Spanish Brutality

The Spanish were able to impose these measures by access to guns and horses and frequent displays of force. Harsh physical punishments were meted out for even slight infractions. The Franciscans—who recognized no belief system except their own and thus felt justified in exterminating Pueblo religion—saved the most extreme measures for natives practicing their traditional beliefs. Father Salvador de Guerra, in 1655, had an “idolator” at Oraibi whipped, doused with turpentine, and burned to death. Even missing the daily Mass could bring a public flogging.

This unrelenting assault on native beliefs and practices was the single greatest cause of Popé’s Revolt, also known as the Pueblo Revolt. The people believed that harmony within the community and with the environment was maintained through their relationships with a host of spirit figures called kachinas. They communicated with the kachinas at public dances and in ceremonies conducted in their circular churches, called kivas. It seemed no coincidence to the natives that when priests stopped these practices, things began to go wrong.

Severe droughts, famine, Apache raids, and epidemics of European diseases reduced a population of fifty thousand in Oñate’s time to seventeen thousand by the 1670s. Three thousand were lost to measles in 1640 alone. At times between 1667 and 1672, people were reduced to boiling hides and leather cart straps for food. The abuse of women and sale of slaves to work the silver mines of Mexico made it seem that the moral as well as the physical universe was collapsing. Calls were made to return to the old ways.

In 1675, forty-seven Puebloans were arrested for practicing their religion. All were whipped, three were hanged, and one committed suicide. One deeply resentful survivor was a Tewa medicine man for San Juan Pueblo named Popé. Incensed by this oppression, he began planning retribution, but his task was formidable.

The Spanish label “Pueblo” obscured the fact that these people were not of one tribe, but members of a collection of autonomous villages that cherished their independence and rarely acted in unison. Although they shared many cultural features, three major language families were represented in the Rio Grande area alone: Zuñi, Keresan, and Tanoan. The latter had three distinct dialects of its own: Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa. Hopi villages of Uto-Aztecan speech lay farther west. Previous revolts had been localized affairs and were suppressed quickly.

In hiding at Taos Pueblo, fifty miles north of the Spanish capital at Santa Fe, Popé began building a multilingual coalition. He enlisted the great Picuris leader Luis Tupatú, a Tiwa speaker who was influential in the northern Rio Grande pueblos; Antonio Malacate, a Keresan spokesman from pueblos to the south; the Tewa war leader Francisco El Ollita of San Ildefonso; and many others. His role becoming more messianic, Popé claimed inspiration from spirit contacts. Gradually, a plan emerged to expel the Spanish from Pueblo territory entirely.

The Revolt

The time came in August of 1680. Runners were sent out bearing knotted maguey cords, each knot representing one day. The uprising was to begin the day the last knot was untied. Governor Antonio de Otermín was told by informants that that day was August 13, but Popé had advanced it to August 10 and the Spanish were caught completely by surprise. Just nine miles north of Santa Fe, the citizens of Tesuque killed Padre Juan Pio early that morning as he came to gather them up for Mass, and upheaval soon swept the countryside as eighty years of frustration came to a boil.

Lieutenant Governor Don Alonso Garcia led soldiers on a sweep to the south of the capital and encountered such destruction that he organized the survivors for evacuation south. They left for El Paso del Norte (now Juarez) on August 14. The next day, Governor Otermín found himself besieged in Santa Fe by five hundred Puebloans who demanded that he free any slaves and leave the territory. He responded by attacking, but when the opposition increased to more than two thousand warriors and Otermín’s water supply had been cut, he abandoned the capital. On August 21, Otermín led more than a thousand settlers south, meeting Garcia’s group on September 13, and the whole bedraggled column reached El Paso on September 29.

Four hundred civilians and twenty-one of thirty-three priests had been killed. To undo their conversions, baptized Puebloans had their heads washed in yucca suds. A new kachina entered the pantheon of Pueblo spirit figures known among the Hopi as Yo-we, or “Priest-killer.” In the years following the revolt, the coalition began to unravel, as drought, disease, and Apache raids continued to plague the tribes. Popé, who had become something of a tyrant himself, died in 1688. In 1692, Spain reconquered the area, and the new governor, Don Diego José de Vargas, entered Santa Fe on September 13.

Consequences

The Pueblo Revolt did much more than dispel the stereotype that Puebloans were unassertive and peaceful farmers who could not unify. It also was much more than a twelve-year respite from colonial oppression. It catalyzed transformations in American Indian cultures in many directions. Large numbers of Spanish sheep came into the hands of the Navajo, forming the core of a new herding lifestyle. Weaving skills, possibly passed along by Puebloans fleeing Spanish reprisals, soon turned the wool into some of the world’s finest textiles. Previously forbidden horses, now freed by the hundreds, became widely traded. Within a century, tribes such as the Nez Perce, Cayuse, and Palouse to the northwest, Plains Cree to the north, and Sioux, Cheyenne, and others to the east became mounted. With the mobility to access the great bison herds of the Plains, the economic complex that became the popular image of the American Indian evolved.

The continued importance of the Pueblo Revolt to all American Indians was demonstrated during the tricentennial of 1980. Cultural events celebrating the “First American Revolution” were held all across the United States. The revolt was seen as a symbol of independence and religious freedom. It was also recognized that some Puebloans who chose to settle with Otermín at El Paso in 1680 subsequently had lost most of their language, arts, and customs. After three centuries, the Puebloans see their ancestors’ revolt as a key reason for their survival as a distinct people.

Bibliography

Hackett, Charles W. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682. Trans. Charmion Shelby. 2 vols. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1942. Print.

Hait, Pam. “The Hopi Tricentennial: The Great Pueblo Revolt Revisited.” Arizona Highways 56 (1980). Print.

Hill, Joseph. "The Pueblo Revolt." New Mexico Magazine 58 (1980). Print.

Liebmann, Matthew. Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2012. Print.

Page, James K., Jr. “Rebellious Pueblos Outwitted Spain Three Centuries Ago.” Smithsonian 11 (1980). Print.

Silverberg, Robert. The Pueblo Revolt. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print.