The Pueblo Revolt

Spanish conquest of the Pueblos began in 1540, and in 1598 Juan de Oñate led colonists north from Mexico to establish a permanent settlement, accompanied by Franciscan missionaries. Spanish rule was notoriously oppressive. After putting down a revolt at Acoma Pueblo in 1599, Oñate condemned all males over twelve to twenty years of servitude and ordered that men over twenty-five have a foot cut off. Santa Fe, founded in 1607, became the capital in 1610. Under the encomienda system, Pueblos had to hand over part of their crops each year; under repartimiento, they were forced to work in Spanish households without pay.

Spanish authorities and Catholic missionaries tried to wipe out Pueblo religion, and Spanish priests sexually abused Pueblo women. Drought and famine in the 1660s and 1670s deepened the suffering. In 1675 the authorities arrested forty-seven Pueblo medicine men for “sorcery”; four were sentenced to death and the rest whipped and imprisoned. The Pueblos forced the prisoners’ release, and one of them, Po’Pay, immediately began organizing a coordinated uprising.

According to later testimony, runners carried a knotted cord of maguey fiber from pueblo to pueblo; each town that joined untied a knot, and the remaining knots counted the days until the rising. The Spanish learned of the plot on August 9 after capturing two messengers from Tesuque, so the Pueblos struck early, on August 10, 1680, killing priests, colonists, women, and children and burning churches. Survivors fled to Santa Fe, which the Pueblos besieged until September 21, when the governor withdrew south to El Paso.

For twelve years, New Mexico was free of Spanish rule. Po’Pay ordered the Pueblos to return to the law of their ancestors: kivas were rebuilt and ceremonies restored, and those who clung to Christianity were punished. Unity proved hard to maintain once the common enemy was gone.

In 1692 a new governor, Diego de Vargas, marched north from El Paso with an army and cannons and reclaimed Santa Fe without a fight after negotiations. Further revolts in 1694 and 1696 were crushed. Yet the Pueblos endured as distinct nations with their languages and ceremonies intact. In 2005, New Mexico placed a statue of Po’Pay in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.