The Spanish Southwest: The Last Conquistadors of San Felipe del Nuevo México

In consideration and appreciation of your personal quality and merits and of the services that you rendered for twenty years in the war against the Chichimecan Indians of the Kingdoms of Nueva Galicia and Nueva Vizcaya ... I appoint you as my governor, captain general, caudillo, discoverer, and pacifier of the ... provinces of New Mexico and those adjacent and neighboring.

Don Phillip, King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, & Sicily to future adelantado Don Juan de Oñate

By the mid 1500s, the Spanish colonial empire was enormous and powerful. It sprawled from the southern tip of South America to the northern mountains and deserts of Mexico. Parts of the Mediterranean, Italy, and southern France were under Spanish domain. They’d explored parts of California, they’d sailed through Maine and into the New York harbor. They’d landed at the Philippine Islands. The Spanish claimed Florida, Cuba, Hispañola, Puerto Rico, and more in the Caribbean. The Incas were no more. The Aztecs were destroyed. There were islands in the Atlantic under their control and there was nothing stopping the military and naval powerhouse that was the richest kingdom on earth at the time. No other European power would rival Spain’s territory until Napoleon. It seemed they were the first Kingdom to say the sun never set on their Empire. But there was just one more place they needed to go, just one more blank spot on the map that had yet to be conquered, or really even explored, by Europeans, but more importantly the Spanish. That place obviously, was the American Southwest.

In reality, out of the entire Spanish empire of Central America, no land was more difficult to get to from its capital Mexico City than Santa Fe. It was one of the farthest reaches in all of the Spanish Empire, Period! To get there from D.F., it would take six months and over 2,000 miles of harsh travel through rugged, thorny, hot, dangerous to life and limb terrain. To send a letter from Santa Fe to the capital of New Spain and then expect a response, would take a year. Madrid? Forget about it. That was considerably longer. It’s no wonder then that the colony experienced the turbulent and seemingly lawless period of time between contact and the Pueblo Revolt. But especially after the conquest. Those 80 years would prove to be tough for both the conquering settlers and the conquered puebloans as abuse, civil unrest, murders, fear, starvation, plundering, and worse were rife throughout the land. As the late author and adventurer, David Roberts in his fantastic book titled cleverly and conveniently, the Pueblo Revolt, the secret rebellion that drove the spaniards out of the southwest, in that book, Roberts, whom I’ve quoted quite a bit for many episodes now… but Roberts says this of New Mexico before the revolt:

As Castile preoccupied itself with threats and troubles nearer home, the remote colony luxuriated in an anarchic autonomy that spawned grotesque abuses. Settlers routinely ignored Spanish laws promulgated since the 1570s to protect natives from the excesses of the first conquistadors. More than one governor of New Mexico set himself up as an absolute despot, growing rich off the labor of Indians reduced to virtual slavery. More than one friar in the colony arrogated to himself the right to punish native "heresies" with torture and execution. Sexual exploitation of Puebloan women, including rape, was commonplace, even on the part of priests sworn to celibacy. As if all this were not burden enough for the Pueblos, for eighty-two years after the conquest church and state in New Mexico waged a relentless struggle against each other. There was no possible way for a "good Indian" to serve both masters. End quote.

That’s essentially what this episode is about, but of course, in typical T-Wayne fashion, we start well before the conquest. Before I even play the intro music though, I’ve got to say; For the Pueblo Revolt, it was surprisingly difficult to find sources, which… truly surprised me. I kinda assumed that the pueblo revolt, THE major recorded incident in the American Southwest among the Native Americans and Spanish that truly changed the trajectory of not only the southwest but the trajectory of all of the north American continent… I had assumed that there would have been more scholarly or historical sources for it. I mean… the pueblo revolt resulted in the puebloans, Apaches, comanches, and very shortly the crow and Blackfeet, as well as a bevy of other tribes obtaining and utilizing with extreme intelligence, bravado, cunning, and lethality, the horse! One could argue the Apache had already stolen a few from Mexico, but for the area that would become the Untied States, the Indians greatly benefited from the Pueblo Revolt’s freeing of the horse, as well as other technologies. If you think about it, the Indian that pop culture brings to your mind, wether it’s correct and or PC or not, but the image of the horseback riding, feather headdress wearing, buffalo hunting stoic noble savage figures is only possible because the native Americans received the horse from the Pueblo Revolt. And then before long, wild horses roamed freely around a continent that birthed their evolution in the first place! It’s almost as if the horses came back to their own promised land and once set free among the infinite grasslands of the American Great Plains and the West, they flourished and they and their various riders went on to become THE enduring symbols of the American west.

Without horses, the plains tribes wouldn’t have been able to wage the war that they did in the 1800s that I talked about in my buffalo soldiers episodes. There would have been no buffalo soldiers at all! I had a professor once describe the Indians getting the horse as equivalent to the Soviets gaining the atomic bomb after America’s monopoly on its world ending power… the playing field was leveled. For a time… The pueblo revolt and the freeing of technology, sheep and other livestock, and most importantly, horses had a profound impact on the North American continent. But then there’s the sweet taste of freedom the Peubloans would feel that no other peoples in the Americas would feel… anywhere. They beat their conquerers and for a while, secured freedoms that seemed unimaginable to the countless other tribes and peoples of the Americas. That’s why the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is so important! That’s why I wanted to cover it so badly, but of course I had to set it up first. Hence, the previous 8 episodes over the amazing and awe inspiring ancient ones of the American southwest who would become these storied puebloans.

But even despite that importance… there are very little sources for this monumental topic. Besides David Roberts The Pueblo Revolt, there’s the University of Oklahoma Press, Boomer Sooner, but the 1995 OU Press book by Andrew L Knaut titled, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, conquest and resistance in seventeenth century New Mexico. Which, oddly enough, I bought a signed copy of from a bookstore in Milwaukee on a date with my now wife almost two years before this episode airs. It was months before I even dreamt up this podcast. I just wanted to learn about the revolt. But beyond that book, from 1995 by Knaut, and Roberts book, there was only one other publication that I relied heavily upon and that was John Kessell’s 1978, Kiva, Cross, and Crown. Thankfully I would find some other articles and research papers that helped but… I consistently ran into inaccuracies. A brand new book I will not name but one that I was excited to read and which covers the Indigenous perspective of the founding of the various American nations… well, I ONLY read the parts pertaining to the American Southwest and it was consistently wrong. Just flat out incorrect. Thankfully, I was able to return it but… shame on those writers for getting basic information wrong. I make zero money… so far, from this podcast but I try and make sure everything I say is factually correct. If I’m guessing, i say so, at least! So I only quote from a few authors on this one.

But the difficulty in sources makes sense if you remember the Pueblo Mystique I mentioned so many times in previous episodes. But not just Pueblo Mystique, you’ve got to remember the centuries of important society altering changes and events, aka fault lines, which lends itself to Pueblo Mystique like the civil war and the migrations and so much more… I even talked about that in the last episode’s intro… but you’ve also got to understand the secretive ways of the Puebloans themselves… which, again, lends itself to pueblo mystique… AND you’ve got to understand the exaggerated and incorrect recordings of the Spanish chroniclers. Sure, I imagine a lot of the time they’re telling the truth but a lot of the time, the chroniclers are not even present for the events they’re writing about.  And finally you’ve got to rely on the English translations of the Spanish documents. All of this combines into an incredibly difficult setting of historical unknowns that is the Pueblo Revolution.

And to perfectly sum up all that I just said, here is Andy Knaut in his Pueblo Revolt of 1680:

Modern-day ethnographers are forced to contend with the fact that centuries of intervening history have clouded the collective Pueblo memory of the early years of contact with European intruders, distorting to an indeterminable degree the folk tales and ceremonial practices handed down from generation to generation. At the same time, the documentary record for early colonial New Mexico reflects all too faithfully the biases of Spanish observers rarely concerned with conveying an accurate sense of the lives of their Pueblo vassals. Compounding the problems of relying on this type of evidence, many of the documents generated in New Mexico during the seventeenth century burned in the revolt itself, as Pueblos eager to erase all vestiges of the Spanish presence in their land torched mission chapter houses across the province and the government archive in Santa Fe. End quote.

Interestingly… and quite tantalizingly… in terms of them records being burned by the Puebloans during the revolt… In Roberts other oft cited book by me in previous episodes, that book being The Lost World of the Old Ones, he says quote, recently Bill Whatley, the Anglo who serves as Jemez tribal archaeologist, startled me with a revelation. The Pueblos themselves, he said, still keep and guard Spanish documents from the seventeenth century, seized during the Pueblo Revolt. "Not everything was destroyed in 1680," he pointed out. Scholars would give much to see these records. End quote.

So maybe one day researchers will know more when the puebloans themselves are more willing to give up their documents and sources… if that claim is even true. Remember, that was a white man saying that tidbit of information about stored away Spanish documents from the Revolt. But until the day the Puebloans open their vaults, which… let’s be honest, it’s been almost three hundred and fifty years so don’t hold your breath. And probably they shouldn’t, they certainly don’t have to. But because of all of that, it is startlingly difficult to get to the bottom of anything Puebloan related. In Robert’s Pueblo Revolt, he says of that difficulty of fact finding, quote, pursuing my research on the Pueblo Revolt, I read everything I could get my hands on, from the eyewitness Spanish accounts to modern histories of New Mexico to archaeological site reports to the many scholarly articles about the Revolt, as well as a novel based upon it, published in 1973 under the by now very un-PC title, Red Power on the Rio Grande. I also visited today's pueblos, and spoke to as many Puebloans as I could--not very many, as I was hardly surprised to discover -who were willing to share their thoughts about the Revolt with an outsider. End quote.

Speaking with native Americans, especially Puebloans, it turns out, is quite difficult indeed. I have found that despite my enthusiasm for the topics of the pueblos, their ancestors, the history, and their current residents, I have found that I am not trusted or even really cared for on res land or on mesa tops. I can’t blame my American Indian neighbors, but at the same time, it’s frustrating.

And that’s all I’ll say of that because this episode is filled with a whole bunch of Europeans who travel to the southwest only to get frustrated with the Native populations and take it out in uh… unfortunate ways. But as the episode title suggests and the intro by Roberts goes into, the Puebloans get their revenge… at least… for a time.

Instead of this episode being about the Pueblo Revolt though… actually, this episode grew in length to be Dan Carlinesque so I had to split it into two and this episode won’t even go INTO the revolt. But this one’s going to start 150 years before and it will cover the Spanish exploration and colonization of New Mexico before talking about the governors, church leaders, and puebloans as the revolt approaches and how they and their actions shape the coming explosion of Puebloan frustration. There’s a lot to cover so… let’s explore, the American Southwest.

A man I called Steven in my second ever episode when I covered his life briefly, very briefly… which, is a crime cause his story is incredible… But the man I called Steven in my episode over Black Explorers in the American Southwest, became a rather famous or infamous man in the Puebloan world some 500 years ago… although, the people of his time, and even the puebloan people now would not and do not call him Steven but rather, Esteban de Dorantes and he was among the first Spaniards to set foot in the Puebloan world… Okay, so Esteban was NOT a Spaniard, but rather he was a Black Moroccan Moor who had been captured by the Portuguese and sold into slavery, but Esteban became the first non native person to meet the Indigenous Puebloan Indians of the American Southwest. And that was his SECOND foray into the Southwest. His first time in the area actually made he and his group the first people from across the ocean to travel through the American Southwest since probably, the end of the ice age… and that first trip was… quite the adventure.

After failing to set up a colony in Florida and then surviving a shipwreck in the gulf of Mexico on the Texas Coast in the year 1528, Esteban and a small band of hearty survivors led by Cabeza de Vaca wandered Texas, the Great Plains, Southern New Mexico, and possibly even Arizona. During their travels they met countless native Americans and tribes who they traded and interacted with and during it all, Esteban was the interpreter. The man learned six or more languages during his travels through north America! He grew quite knowledgable about the Indian customs and cultures that the group came into contact with and the Indians even began to see he and his fellow foreigners as holy men and healers who must have been no doubt, quite important. De Vaca claimed the Indians believed they were angels from heaven but regardless of wether that was true or not, the Indians did indeed seem to revere these strange travelers. Especially, Esteban… who did most of the communicating because apparently the Spaniards wanted to seem more important so they had him, the black slave, do the talking. It also helped that this Moroccan probably spoke many languages already including Berber, maybe some arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. What’s a few more native American languages? He clearly had the ear for new tongues. So after EIGHT years of wandering… Eight years! I’m telling you, the story is incredible. But they do finally make it to Mexico City where the weary travelers who’d been wandering through the Americas for eight long years, finally made it to quote unquote civilization. And once there, they’d sow the seeds for the future rumor of the seven cities of cibola with their tall tales of a place where the inhabitants, the strange travelers were told by Buffalo hunting natives, but at the city, the inhabitants had no use for gold yet had so much of it… that they painted their houses with it.

The ONE thing you do not do to the Spanish in the age of exploration is mention gold… but the Indians who had tantalizingly hinted this to the Spanish travelers didn’t know this yet… or maybe they did and they wanted their northern Puebloan friends to feel some Spanish wrath. That’s probably not true… but I don’t know. For whatever reason though, the tribes these travelers came into contact with in southern New Mexico and northern Mexico, and even in West Texas, but these native Americans told the adventurers of many rich and fat Indians who sit in warmth year round surrounded by their corn fields and their gold and they’re just up this here river… the rio grande.

Unfortunately for Esteban he was indeed still a slave and once he returned he got his butt sold to the viceroy of New Spain himself, one Antonio de Mendoza, who decided he really needed to get some of this gold everyone’s up in arms about to the North. So a party was put together, led by Friar Marcos de Niza with Esteban serving as interpreter… pretty quickly though, Esteban with his knowledge of culture and language he’d picked up during his eight years of wandering would take the lead.

Fray Marcos de Niza was no sissy though. The man had run with Francisco Pizarro during his conquering of Peru in South America. There, more gold than could be looted was scooped up and shipped back to Spain, and de Niza had no doubts that the same fate was waiting for him in the far north that had brightened his life in the far south. But while he may have been no sissy, he definitely had a big mouth.

So the group left from Culiacan, a city I have mentioned before… as in the place where the Anasazi may have ended up just before the Spanish arrived… but the group left Culiacan and headed north and the entire time, Esteban was showered with gifts of turquoise and feathers and it’s possible, women. Obviously, he grew accustomed to this as any red blooded man traveling through a beautiful foreign land would, but according to history, Estebanico, little Steven, got a little too demanding.

Eventually, The Moor would outpace de Niza and the group along with some fellow Indian travelers and interpreters. And it’s at this point, the small group would come across a Zuni Pueblo known as Hawikuh. Today, Hawikuh is just ruins that are not allowed to be visited by outsiders, but at the time, it was a considerable pueblo… but a considerable pueblo made of mud and straw that just LOOKED golden in the setting sun but was not MADE of gold. So Esteban was now in the history books as the first non-Native that we know of to visit the Puebloan world of the American Southwest. What happened to Esteban next is up in the air but the going theory is, it did not end well. Everyone in the party that entered the Pueblo made it back to Fray Marcos de Niza except for the black slave though, that much is true.

The Spanish account has him kidnapped after declaring the place for Spain, imprisoned without food or water, and then killed, only for the other Indians to barely escape and make it back to de Niza to tell this dramatic story which included some arrows being shot their way as they ran. Plausible… Some Zuni stories have him coming to the pueblo with feathers and rattles which pleased the Puebloans but after the man began to demand too much food and too many women, the Zuni killed him and let the other native Americans go. Another Zuni story was written about in Roberts Pueblo Revolt but was originally published by a Puebloan archaeologist and ethnographer named Edmund Ladd. In Ladd’s account, who, again, Ladd is a Zuni Puebloan himself, but he wrote that Esteban approached the city after being asked not to, but was eventually allowed in. He then… maybe asked for too many things, like food and women, but probably erred during a custom, at which point he was brought before the elders where Esteban made his fateful mistake. In front of the Pueblos leaders, he told them that he was in charge of a big group of white men that were coming to conquer them so they better let him go or else… The Zuni chose the or else and they killed him. The Puebloans at the time, according to Ladd, but the Puebloans knew very well who the Spanish were and what they were capable of. They’d heard the stories of slave raiding that came almost that far north, which no doubt happened. They probably had sent scouts to witness these slave raiders. So they weren’t taking any chances. You’ve got to remember, the native Americans of the southwest, and actually all over the americas, were excellent runners and travelers!

Quick tangent but after releasing the episode of the Anasazi migration down south and talking about the Tarahumara, I read a quote that basically said what I did at the end of discussing them… which was that while the Raramuri are indeed amazing runners, they weren’t quote unquote born to run anymore than any other native American. Well, I said human, which is still true, but it’s indeed especially true with Native Americans. Here’s a quote from 1643 all the way on the other side of the continent, by a man named Roger Williams, who was the founder of Rhode Island:

I have known many of them run between four score or a hundred miles in a summers day. End quote. A score back then is 20 so he’s saying the northeastern native Americans could run 80 or 100 miles in a single day. To modern ears, that’s incredible, yet the Indians used to be the greatest travelers in the world at this time. Remember the breakdown of the D4 Receptors… But unfortunately, colonization and assimilation took it out of most native Americans… just like it probably took it out of europeans who no doubt used to could also run 4 score and a 100 miles, like… thousands and thousands of years ago. So with their ability to travel quickly and for great distances on foot, the Puebloans no doubt were hearing and seeing things that were going on down south with their cousins and neighbors. That makes Esteban declaring that these existential threats were headed this way and that he was an important leader of them… not a smart play.

There is though, one final theory I read that says the Kachina figure, Chakwaina, is based off of Esteban because yet another story has it that he urged the Zuni to help him fake his death so he could be a free man, at which point they obliged him and set the other Indians running to tell the Spanish they’d killed him. But in reality, he lived the rest of his life as a native enjoying all the corn and bison and women he could tolerate. There’s no way to corroborate this without a time machine so for now, it’s anyone’s guess what happened to Esteban. I will say though, that later puebloans do have residents, like in the 1600s, that are descended from Black slaves. Regardless, what happened to Esteban is a fun mystery… but what happened to the rest of the party and de Niza, is not a mystery.

As soon as Fray Marcos de Niza got back to New Spain after abandoning the adventure once word came of Esteban’s death, but as soon as he was back, he quickly forgot the truth and not long after his arrival, he was spreading rumors that not only did the Indians savagely kill Esteban, but they did it right there in their enormous, even larger than Mexico City shining and shimmering gold plated palatial northern Tenochtitlan with its golden walls and golden road and golden everything city! For some reason, possibly by corrupting the Zuni word for Bison, which is ciwolo, but for some reason de Niza began to weave the tale of Esteban’s murder and his brave escape from the golden city of Cibolo. It could have also been a bastardization of the Tewa place of origin, the Lake of Copala, but regardless… De Niza hadn’t been to this Cibolo AND there was no gold. But wait, there’s more! Not only is there one city of Cibolo, according to de Niza, but there were seven! Don’t worry about the fact that there were only 5 Zuni Pueblos.

Interestingly, in Sott Ortman’s Winds from the North, which I used a lot in the last episode and which describes the movement of the Mesa Verde Anasazi into the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere in the Pueblo world, but Ortman brings up the origins of the Cibola legend that I had not yet read. Ortman’s discussing the origins of the Mexica peoples, like the Aztec, and their mythical homelands that the Spanish wrote down from oral tradition. Like Aztlan which I mentioned some time ago. But the Spanish became obsessed with these places and finding them. They were seemingly just as curious as modern researchers but also… hungry for those places of possible wealth. Well one Spanish chronicler in the 1500s wrote about these homelands and the myths and Ortman summarizes it:

These Legends refer to Aztlan, Huehuetlalpallan, and Tlalpallan as places in the north from which these peoples came down into Mexico. One group lingered at a place called “Seven Caves” on their way down. Tlalpallan came to be identified with Seven Caves, and then merged with “The seven cities” of a Portuguese romance to become “the seven cities of cibola” that Marcos de Niza and Coronado searched for in 1539-1540. End quote.

The Spanish really did care about where these people that they had conquered, like the Aztecs or Mexicas, had came from because they believed that the places of myth were filled with riches beyond their imagination just as Tenochtitlan or modern day Mexico City had been. And since the peoples all had stories of them coming from a land in the north, usually a body of water, the Spanish were forever on the lookout for ancestral homelands rich with gold and warrior peoples by a body of water northward. Unrelated fact but eventually, the Spanish would see the great salt lake and the salt lake city area as the homeland of the Mexica peoples and even of the Puebloan peoples of the Rio Grande through a series of misinterpretations and misunderstandings that were probably conflated purposefully by the indigenous peoples who were always ready to get rid of the Spanish. I mentioned this lake of Copala vaguely in the northwest that the Tewa people call their homeland in the previous episode. This vaguely to the northwest lake where they may have emerged from is quite possibly the Great Salt Lake. This is talked about a good bit in Ortman’s Winds From the North…

But de Niza’s lies or fabrications or if you want to be fair, maybe, exaggerations.. but these stories by the man of cloth that is de Niza mixed with already fantastic satires of distant wealth and treasure and… they were enough. The next thing the region knew, Spain was launching, according to Roberts, one of the most ambitious entradas in all of the Americas into the Southwest. This entrada or what we would call exploratory party but… it’s more than that it’s like an exploratory party with instructions to also conquer the land and it’s peoples for Spain. The east India trading company comes to mind, or even the original British colonies of the Americas, now that I think about it… But this entrada was led by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado. He began his journey in that city of Culiacan with 350 Spaniards,1,300 Mexican Indian allies, quite a few slaves and servants, 4 friars, including the exaggerating Marcos de Niza, 559 horses, and 1,500 heads of sheep, cattle, and pigs. It was an army, and it was so large that the Spaniards who remained in Mexico City actually feared for their own safety with so many soldiers and Indian Allies leaving. But they had their orders, and their desires, and those included the directive to loot the land and claim it and the natives for Spain and for God.

But who exactly were the natives on the land? What did Nuevo México, which it was not even called that yet, but what did the area look like? Well obviously, I hope you listened to my previous episode which answered, or attempted to answer, just this. But if you haven’t listened, you should, but if you haven’t, you can head to the website where I have a few maps I made myself to help y’all out. But for a refresher…

At the time of Coronado’s entrada in the 1500s, there were at least 110 Pueblos with possibly 80,000 residents. There were pueblos all along the Rio Grande starting south of current day Albuquerque and going north to Taos. There were pueblos in the Jemez mountains to the west of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and there were pueblos south of the Sangre De Christo Mountains, which are to the east of Santa Fe. Then there’s the Acoma Pueblo to the west of the Jemez and the Zuni are west of Acoma. And then all the way out in northeast Arizona are the Hopi mesas. Among the 80,000 possible peoples were four distinct language families. And some of these language families are separated by mountains or by completely other language families. As Steve Lekson, a favorite author and archaeologist of mine says of the whole Rio Grande Pueblo area and how its distribution of people came to be, he says, quote, It’s one of the most intractable problems in all of Southwestern prehistory. End quote. Words like intractable, baffling, perplexing, and more are used to describe the Puebloans layout upon the land of the Rio Grande Valley by the more than four authors I used for this and the last episode. Naturally I attempted to untangle the web but only at the surface level in my previous episode so listen if you haven’t. Otherwise, I suggest you open some books written by infinitely more knowledgeable men and women than I.

Another reason why it is not overly imperative to lay out completely the language map of the people as they speak it now, is because researchers aren’t even sure what languages the Puebloans spoke at the time of contact. Again, those fault lines that I mentioned in the intro. But also because of how much movement, destruction, and suppression actually happens over the next 80 years, well more actually, but all these years that I’m about to discuss. Sadly, the Pueblos population by the Revolt of 1680 will number less than 20,000. Certainly though, the linguistic makeup back then was if not the same in richness and differences, possibly even more so. Which that fact alone, as Robert’s puts it, quote, If it does nothing else, however, the patchwork of languages underscores just how remarkable an event it was that in 1680 most of the pueblos united in a common cause, and executed Popé's plan on a single day. End quote. We’ll get to Popé way later but he’s right, it is incredible that the plan was ever pulled off. It’s also amazing the Spanish were ever able to reign over so many puebloans with so few people. But as we’ll see, it wasn’t as ironclad a ruling over as they’d have liked.

And of course… at the time of the Spanish arrival, the Kachina culture was all important to many of the pueblos. As was discussed deeply in the last episode. But the Kachinas were about to face the dark reality of being driven underground for almost a century which as I hinted at the end of the last episode, helped to fuel this Popé’s Pueblo Revolt. But we’re way ahead of ourselves.

On July 7th, 1540, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, the ex governor of Nueva Galicia and the youngest of six boys with no hopes of gaining wealth from his family but all the hopes of gaining it by being a conquistador, well in the summer of 1540, Coronado and his army of what I’m assuming was around 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians… I say assuming because he didn’t record the number of slaves, servants, women, and children, but let’s assume the number of foreigners entering the Land of Enchantment is about 2,000. But on July 7th, a forward party of Spaniards reached the very first golden city of Cibola, which was the pueblo of Hawikuh. That same city that disappeared Esteban. The fact that he’s never heard from again though, is probably sign enough that that man was toes and nose up to the sky. Then again… as we will learn, the Puebloans are mighty good at keepin’ secrets. But with this forward party, their elation at reaching the golden city, had to have turned into furious frustration which must’ve only grown as they waited on the rest of the party to catch up. And once they did… the massive trail of immigrants found that the golden city was made of… mud. Mud and straw. And maybe if the sun hit it just right?

Coronado himself said of the situation of discovering that the place was made primarily of adobe mud, quote, this distressed the men at arms not a little, especially when they saw that everything the friar had said to be… was the opposite. End quote. That friar, remember, was Marcos de Niza… and he was there, with them. And by not a little, he does’t mean how I would say it. Coronado means, it distressed them not a little, but A LOT.

Can you imagine the scene? Think of all of the years of preparation, the excitement, and then finally leaving, and then the stories around the nightly campfires as they made their way through what had to be quite a frightening and exciting landscape with dark and distant mountains and forests and deserts filled with spikes and cactus and canyons and thorns and lions and panthers and bears and snakes and hostile Indians, and all the while keeping your spirits up with laughing and drinking with your buddies, or family members, or fellow soldiers, or strange new indigenous friends as you all collectively imagine the horde of gold you’re going to get. They thought they could just peel the gold straight off the walls and roofs. They were going to be richer, they thought, then the conquistadors who had come before them. Richer than those who had conquered the Incas, and even the Aztecs! Richer than Cortez! They followed the paths probably long etched into the landscape from millennia of natives, including the Anasazi, of course, but they followed these paths up the Sierra Nevadas and the coast of the gulf of California up into the American southwest in search of these not one… but SEVEN cities of gold and then…. Once they were in sight, they could clearly see it was just… mud. Like the no doubt countless buildings they’d come across built by countless other Indians on their journey. And on top of that, there were only 5 of ‘em anyways. This place to them, was no different. Not to mention, they were hungry and tired and had used up a lot of supplies…

I can understand their anger and desire to kill the very man who’d seemingly made up this whole story, friar Marcos de niza who was unfortunately for him, as I mentioned earlier, among the enormous party. According to Coronado himself, he feared for the Friars life at one point when the Conquistadors among them were itchin’ for a scapegoat to murder. Apparently Coronado personally saved HIM, de Niza, from the group of conquerors… but someone had to get murdered at this betrayal. Which is why this anger eventually translated, despite having explicit orders to NOT harm the natives… but the anger would eventually cause a pitched battle with said natives.

Not immediately though. At first Coronado approached a group of bow and arrow carrying Zuni, announced in Spanish that he came in peace, and laid down his weapons. At this point, the armed and angry Zuni from Hawikuh made a line of Maize in the sand… apparently in the hopes that the Spaniard wearing this silver armor and on horseback and loaded with lances and guns and swords, and who was leading this army… uh, in the hopes that he would not cross the corn line. But he did. The Zuni then fired their arrows, even hitting Coronado himself. He was actually severely injured but, in the end… the Spaniards and their harquebuses killed 12 of the Indians. And then they looted the city for food and treasure as the Puebloans fled north.

The Pueblo of Hawikuh would actually last for quite some time after this brutal sacking and after the people had returned from the hills, although it would ultimately be destroyed and left abandoned only four years before the revolt in the year 1676. Not because of the Spanish mind you, but because of Apache raiders… actually it isn’t quite fair to say not because of the Spanish as you will later learn. The Spanish policies before the revolt absolutely helped spurn violent Indian attacks on the Puebloans. But… we’re getting ahead of ourselves and you’ll learn about at the end of this episode.

After the sacking of Hawikuh, the Spaniards would build a massive church above the all important circular kiva to prove the dominance of the Christian religion over the Indians own Kachina culture. And because of this particular colonization and conversion feature, happening all over the Southwest, David Roberts was told by a Zuni woman named Tsethlikia, that because of this church on top of the kiva business, the puebloans turned their subterranean circular kivas into above ground rectangular ones to fit into the architecture of the pueblo, thus escaping the eyes of their Spanish and Catholic overlords. It would work, too.

Although, if you’ll remember from the previous episode, the ancestral puebloans after the 1300s were already beginning to turn their kivas into rectangles… it’s hard to ever tell what’s fact and fiction with the puebloans. And you can’t blame em. And remember, if I ever get anything wrong, let me know!

In 1540, as winter approached, Coronado and the enormous expedition decided it needed to hole up for the coming cold weather so they chose a place they called the Province of Tiguex, near modern day Albuquerque. Once in this colorfully named province, they chose a pueblo, a place they called Alcanfor, which modern researchers cannot quite pinpoint the location of… But once at Alcanfor, the expedition expelled the natives and took the entire pueblo over… all the while demanding the Puebloans feed & clothe them, and help keep them warm since the Spaniard’s resupply train had inexplicably turned around 500 miles south. I can only imagine this supply train must have ran into some trouble, just like future supply trains would, even one hundred and fifty years into the future supply trains, but I imagine these people ran into some hostile locals or terrible weather and decided to heck with this crazy Coronado, but regardless of why, this left the Spaniards up north in a pickle.

While Coronado and his men waited out the winter in the the Pueblo of Tiguex, their demands grew until the Puebloans began refusing them, which in turn angered the Spanish enough to cause the Spanish to burn down and depopulate many of the pueblos of the Tiguex region. The number I read was that 13 more pueblos were destroyed and many of the inhabitants were roasted at the stake.

Things were not getting off to a great start and the Puebloans were over it. As well they should have been.

Tired of this tyranny from the foreigners, the Puebloans at the time got together and hatched what a historian who shares my last name, Carroll Riley calls, the Pecos Plot. The Pecos Plot involves a Pawnee Indian nicknamed The Turk by the Spanish because apparently he reminded them of an Ottoman Turk, but the Pecos Plot involves Turk and his grand plan to lead the Spanish and Coronado out onto the great plains in search of the for real this time golden city of Cibola. He told them of fish the size of horses. Huge canoes with 20 rowers. And lots and lots of Gold. The Turk also told Coronado that the leader of this giant city napped under an enormous tree which quote, were hung a great number of little gold bells. End quote. The Spanish, REALLY loved their gold. And their bells. And the native Americans from Chile to the US would all come to know that fact intimately.

If the Turk was indeed Pawnee though, he would have known all too well that the Great Plains are not filled with neither gold nor cities made of said gold. Nor are there fish the size of horses. But the Spanish absolutely did NOT know that. So in April of 1541, Coronado and 1,700 Spanish and enslaved Tiguex Puebloans set out for the GORgeous and beautiful, thorny, windy, treeless, bison covered, rolling hills, and endless sweeping vistas where you can see the back of your head if you squint into the distance, plains of the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Kansas. If you haven’t been to the area and you’re interested in what it’s like, not only will I very shortly have an episode over the Llano Estacado but I actually ALREADY have quite a few episodes which give you a good idea. My buffalo soldiers series and my very first episode over the buffalo should give you a semblance of an idea of what the place is like. Not to mention my episodes over the Cowboys and the explorers.

Personally, I lived for 11 years in Oklahoma and even a few months in Manhattan, Kansas. For a bit after college, like… over 10 years ago, I owned a company that took me all over the state of Oklahoma. Before that though, I worked for an oil company that also sent me all over the Sooner state so I’ve seen it all and let me tell you, I ain’t never been to heaven, but I’ve been to Oklahoma… I’m kidding, in reality it seems like God took that seventh day of rest a little too soon cause it appears he forgot to finish building the map that is the American Great Plains.

Well after 5 months wandering around where the winds come sweeping down the plains, and a whole bunch of fruitless traversing through a seemingly empty landscape and a good bit of buffalo eating, Coronado realized he had been duped. So, naturally he tortured the Turk, who again, was a Pawnee Indian from the area, but he tortured the Turk who probably with a painful smile, admitted he’d made the whole thing up. Coronado had him summarily garroted. Then the whole group headed back to the Pueblos. But on their way back, in a fitting turn of events that sums up the whole failure that this entrada into north America would become, Coronado fell off his horse which left him permanently disabled.

Back at the Santa Fe Valley Pueblos they would stay for one more winter before heading back down to new Spain. Obviously, the Puebloans were elated. Although they didn’t lose all the Spanish. Two suicidal friars decided they were going to stay behind to teach these humble natives of the Lord’s love. And no, Marcos de Niza was not among these two. Which, maybe if he had had any honor, he would have been. These two friars though… clearly wanted to see God cause, probably immediately after Coronado and his men were out of sight, the Puebloans murdered both right.

Then, for the next 39 years, the Puebloan world was graciously and blissfuly untouched by the Spanish.

The Puebloans must have slowly become complacent in their belief that maybe, just maybe, the Spaniards weren’t coming back. At the same time, I’m sure the Puebloans still had a little bit of contact, just the slightest bit with pueblos and peoples down south in Mexico and probably beyond and they no doubt could see the very slowly moving tide of foreigners creeping northward throughout the land. These foreigners were treasure hunters, gold seekers, slave raiders, and brown robed friars. But the Puebloans didn’t have any of the gold stuff. All they had was the turquoise stuff and the Spanish didn’t seem all that interested in that gorgeous green stuff so maybe they’d leave em alone after all. Right?

Of course, the Spanish eventually did return. The next set of Castilians to enter New Mexico weren’t looking for gold but rather, souls. There was a convent in Chihuahua, pretty far south of the Pueblos of the Rio Grande, but not far south enough. Maybe because the local Indians wanted to save their northern brothers or maybe because they wanted the church leaders that were lording over them to leave, either way, Fray Augustin Rodriguez was told about the godless heathen puebloan cousins to the north and he had no option but to go and save them.

In 1581, Rodriguez and a military man, Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado along with nine soldiers, three friars, and nineteen Indians headed north. That’s such a tiny number compared to the… almost 2,000 that Coronado came up with. And speaking of Coronado, it’s suggested by researchers that this Rodriguez and Chamuscado group may not have even KNOWN about Coronado’s visit to New Mexico and they thought THEY were the first to arrive up there! Hard to believe, but from the expeditions writings, it seems to be true.

Everywhere these Spaniards went though, the Puebloan people would flee at the first inkling of their arrival. They’d run to the hills, no doubt remembering Coronado. This is also exactly what the Raramuri did when they saw Spanish as well, if you’ll remember the end of the Anasazi migration episode. This Rodriguez Chamuscado group though, spent 10 months in the greater New Mexico region where they encountered 60 pueblos although according to modern historians, none of the 60 listed Pueblos can be correlated to living Pueblos or even ruins of today. The longest lasting impact of this expedition then, would have to be what they named the area… San Felipe del Nuevo México. That San Felipe part was in homage to king Philip of Spain. No one wanted to say that mouthful so it was soon shortened to Nuevo México… which… in English means… New Mexico.

Another interesting occurrence in this expedition was the death of the third friar in Nuevo México. To really prove to the Spanish that the Puebloans do NOT like the brown robed cross bearing guys, a Juan de Santa Maria, against the wishes of his entire party, decided he was going to head to New Spain to tell the good Spanish people there all about the crazy things the puebloans were doing. He didn’t make it much further than the Sandia Mountains north of Albuquerque though before he needed to take a little snooze in the beautiful Galisteo Basin. But this friar’s luck ended when he woke up dead. I know… how you gonna wake up dead?!

The local Puebloans had already decided this guy’s gotta go so they crept up above the sleeping spaniard as he slept before they let loose a boulder which fell on him, and crushed him. They then covered his looney tunes looking limbs that were sticking out from under the boulder with other rocks before no doubt walking away while whistling with their hands in the their pockets. Roberts says of this death that, quote, dropping a big stone on a sleeping man, ethnographers would later learn, was the prescribed pueblo fashion for dispatching a witch. End quote. And ethnographers are just anthropologists who record cultures, stories, legends, religious practices, and so on and so forth of modern peoples in the hopes that it’ll shed light on the past. That accusing the friars and priests and christians of witchcraft will also be a lasting thing… but so will visa versa.

At the end of this expedition two more friars, including Rodriguez decided that martyrdom is probably pretty cool so they stayed behind. A later expedition learned that they were, you’ll be shocked to know, murdered.

And speaking of that later expedition, it was one of four more that was sent but this one was specifically sent to retrieve those two friars. Mission failed. This was the Espejo expedition which was led by a wealthy fugitive from the law who’d come up from D.F. to Chihuahua, a man named Espejo. To aid in the legality of this mission, the Friars bypassed the necessary paperwork with some documents of their own and then off they went to bring back their left behind brethren. 14 soldiers, one friar, and Espejo is all that headed up north. His real reason was to search for wealth which he’d do all over the land but only after the small party learned of the two friars deaths. At that news though, they decided to met out some frontier justice. At the Pueblo of Puaray, they imprisoned some Puebloan men, locked them in their kiva, pulled up the ladder, and set the entire pueblo on fire. The ones who weren’t burned either fled or were taken to some cottonwoods, where they were quote, garroted and shot many times until they were dead. End quote. That quote was from a Spanish chronicler who finished the story with quote, this was a remarkable deed for so few people in the midst of so many enemies. End quote. Having horses, arquebuses, and shiny armor really does come in handy.

The next Spanish expedition was an illegal gold hunting foray. The third expedition after Coronado was a lawful one sent to arrest the previous unlawful treasure hunters and the fourth and final expedition before the big colonization of a man we will soon talk about, ended according to Roberts, quote, somewhere out on the buffalo plains, when one of the two leaders stabbed the other to death. The Indians then wiped out the rest of the party. End quote.

So in Nuevo México, we have Coronado and his massive army and their destruction and death. We have a smaller party after a short break and this party does a whole lot of nothin’ except name the place and allow a bunch of friars to get to heaven. The next group burns yet another Pueblo to the ground with people still in it before slicing throats and shooting the dying Puebloans. Then finally you’ve got some treasure hunters, some lawmen, and some poor souls who murder each other before being murdered themselves… It’s not hard for me to understand why the puebloans want nothing to do with the Spaniards and their soldiers and their brown robed witches. But the Puebloan’s desires don’t amount to much if the King of Spain has decided it’s time to colonize the place. It also doesn’t help when the man who chooses himself for the job of colonizer has been called the Last Conquistador.

It’s here in the story where we really set the stage for the coming Pueblo Revolt. The next 80 years are going to be very tough for the Puebloans. It’s going to be tough for the Spanish conquerers and their descendants as well but the Puebloans truly suffer… pretty brutally… and they suffer directly from the many Spanish rulers and governors and friars and priests. But they don’t only suffer from the Spanish, their new neighbors, the Navajo, Apache, Utes, & Comanche also throw their spears and arrows into the mix to make life as difficult for the Puebloans as possible. And even beyond the Athabaskans and the Spanish, one man in particular, a man who is from the Iberian Peninsula but a man who is not Spanish, but rather is Basque, a man named Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar, or Oñate for short, but Oñate really shows the Puebloans what life under God and Spain is really all about.

First off, who or what is a Basque, you may ask? The Basque are an Indigenous European people on the border of Spain and France in the Pyrenees Mountains who herd sheep, fish on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, make cool cheese in caves, and have generally tried to be left alone by foreign invaders, which makes what Oñate is about to do seem somewhat counterintuitive.

The Basques are for real Indigenous to the area I just mentioned. They’ve been there a very long time… it’s possible that they’ve been in that part of Europe beyond… 12,000 years. They could be the descendants of the cannibalistic group of people known as the Magdelanians of western Europe who made cave art and drank from human skulls. And these people were probably the first to arrive since the Solutreans, way back when it was still very cold and icy… I’ve mentioned the Solutreans before in the Mammoth Eaters episode if you’ll remember. Some genetic research suggests that the Basque are a mix of these Magdelanians and then later farmers who arrived during the Neolithic period. When these farmers arrived, even before the Indo-European Celts, but when these neolithic farmers arrived and mixed with the local skull cup hunter-gatherers they became a distinct and isolated people for thousands and thousands of years after that.

The Basque language is what’s known as a language isolate which means it is related to no other language alive. Not just no language in the area, but no other language as far as linguists can tell. Kinda like the Zuni in the Southwest. Some theories about the Basque language still exist though. A bunch have been rejected but some still remain plausible. One theory relates Basque to Chechen or other languages from the Caucus mountain regions. Another theory has it related to a large group of languages called the Dene-Caucasion superfamily of languages. This curious hypothesis suggests that both Athabaskan and Basque, as well as a few others, but Athabaskan, spoken by the Navajo or Dine in the new world in the four corners and by Indigenous groups on both sides of the pacific in the arctic of Siberia and north America, that language, and Basque all the way in Spain and France, are descended from the same parent language whose speakers spread out at the base of the glaciers throughout the Eurasian continent. Which… yeah, sure. I’m down.

Apart from those cool facts about Basque, my mom’s DNA ancestry results suggests she is part Basque! Which I also think is pretty neat. My mother’s family is from Louisiana and she has a wild and exciting ancestry. My mother never met her biological father so who knows what his story is but my mom’s got Native American, Black, Basque, French, and English ancestors. My father’s ancestry is like 99% white and I take after my father quite a bit but like I’ve been saying for months now, migration, migration, migration. Last side note about the Basque; one of my best friends is Basque for real. We call him el Basco. He’s in Spain right now but he lived in Milwaukee where I met him. On New Years day 2021 my wife and I had one of the best meals of my life with him in Paris. Frog legs, escargot in these airy pastries in a wine sauce, boar pate, Andouille sausage, Cheesy potatoes, lamb in a cream sauce… it was phenomenal. Anyways. Where are we?

Oh yeah! Oñate! In New Spain! Cuase his father had moved the family there from Europe in 1524. Oñate himself was born in Zacatecas, which was a hard and a tough land surrounded by those Chichimecas I talked about a couple episodes ago. The story goes that by ten years old, Oñate was taking up arms against the angry native Americans he called barbarians. 10 years old is a very young age to be fighting and or possibly even killing… but even witnessing such brutality must have had an effect on the young Basque in New Spain. He would later say he heard stories and saw evidence of the Chichimecas roasting and eating captive Spaniards and Basques… it was a hard life in conquered territory surrounded by a people who did not want you there. But he would survive and prosper, actually.

At 40 years old, so kinda late in life, after finding a silver mine and boom town called San Luis Potosí and then becoming its mayor… Oñate decided it was his duty to head on up to New Mexico and colonize it for Spain. 6 years later, the government in D.F. granted him his permission and gave him his chance to make history.

Interesting quick side note about Oñate, as if his life wasn’t and won’t be interesting enough. He married into Aztec Royalty! His wife, Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma was the great granddaughter of Emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin or Moctezuma the Second. He was the king of the Ecatepec Altepetl and the emperor in charge of the Aztecs when the Europeans showed up. He died during the fighting with the Spanish. Historians aren’t quite sure how he died though. Oñate’s wife, as her name suggests, is ALSO the grand daughter of Hernan Cortes, THE Hernan Cortes, who overthrew the Aztec empire. Oñate definitely married up, but, in reality, his ancestry is also full of incredibly wealthy and important families during the middle ages. Still, knowing who his wife’s recent ancestors were may have made him a little hungry for power and greatness and with a desire to also make a name for himself to equal that of her family’s. But I’m just speculating.

Here’s a quote in Roberts, Pueblo Revolt about the character of the man who would go on to conquer the Puebloans and set a precedent of brutality for the far flung colony to follow for almost a century.

In his biography, The Last Conquistador, Marc Simmons makes what is probably the shrewdest assessment of Oñate's character to date. The constant vigilance and fierce combat against the Chichimecas that circumscribed his youth in Zacatecas may, Simmons suggests, and now he’s quoting Simmons, have contributed to an air of melancholy that seemed to mark his adult years. Certainly, there exists nothing in the written record to suggest that humor softened his speech or lightened his mood. End all quotes.

So Oñate was a tough and a sad hombre. And after 12 years of setbacks, violence, trials, and tribulations in New Mexico, it turned him a hard and a cruel. Another quote from Roberts:

Oñate's treatment of the Puebloans sowed the field from which would spring the Revolt of 1680. And despite the passage of more than four centuries since Oñate's entrada, among the pueblos today a bitter sense of having been wronged serves as the conquistador's enduring legacy in New Mexico. End quote.

So let’s dive into this entrada, or conquering expedition that would shape the region forever.

Don Philip ... to don Juan de Oñate, resident of the city of Zacatecas: In consideration and appreciation of your personal quality and merits and of the services that you rendered for twenty years in the war against the Chichimecan Indians of the Kingdoms of Nueva Galicia and Nueva Vizcaya ... I appoint you as my governor, captain general, caudillo, discoverer, and pacifier of the ... provinces of New Mexico and those adjacent and neighboring, in order that, in my royal name, you may enter them with the settlers and armed forces, baggage, equipment, munitions, and other necessary things that you may provide for this purpose.

You will endeavor to attract the natives with peace, friendship, and good treatment, which I particularly charge you, and to induce them to hear and accept the holy gospel; you will explain our holy Catholic faith to them through interpreters, if they can be obtained, so that we may have communication with them in the various languages and seek their conversion;

Let it be done at the opportunity which the friars find most suitable. You will see to it that the latter are respected and revered, as ministers of the gospel should be, so that, with this example, the Indians may attend and honor them and accept their persuasions and teachings.

Experience has demonstrated this to be very important, and also that all the people in your company act gently and kindly, without committing excesses or setting bad examples, or irritating those we seek to attract lest they adopt an unfriendly attitude toward the faith. You are to direct everything to this principal aim.

I think Oñate only read the first paragraph of this letter from the King of Spain which gave him the go ahead to enter his rightful name into the history books and PEACEFULLY conquer and convert the peoples in the area of what would become today’s New Mexico. For if you read the letter again, or rather listen to my reciting of it, you’ll notice the words kindly and gently and peace and friendship and quote, good treatment, which I particularly charge you, end quote and all of those words are in connection with how Oñate and his conquistadors should treat the natives. I think he only read that first paragraph because as you’ll hear, Oñate’s campaign against the Puebloans, especially at Acoma will not end well. But at the same time, how exactly does one conquer peacefully?

And speaking of the word conquer, you’ll notice that word was not once mentioned in the letter of the King to Oñate and that’s because, the use of the word when it came to… colonizing the lands of the Americas had been outlawed by the Spanish crown in 1573. At that time, King Philip II created something called the Laws of Discovery which forbade quote unquote conquests of the bloody variety and even outlawed the use of the word in conjunction with colonization. Gone were the days of conquistadors, subjugation of Indians, the torturing, and the blood baths… and now a more, Christian means of taking over a people were to be employed… or at least, in theory.

Truthfully, the Crown in Spain and the Viceroy in D.F. or Mexico City implored Oñate to withhold all violence as hard as he could and to rely on the Catholic faith and the friars and on God and peace. They said it was imperative that he not resort to pillaging of food stores or clothing like previous expeditions had done. And to not take women or burn pueblos as had others done as well. They really stressed that the outnumbered colonizers could not anger the Puebloans so much so that they murdered the entire lot of them before a colony could even be set up or souls be saved. And the King really did want a colony set up in the territory. Not only for the riches, which surely must have been hiding under the ground there (spoiler alert, the Spanish don’t find them), so not only for material wealth but also for the treasure of souls converted unto god. When you read the documents from the crown and the Spanish leaders they’re really not liking the news of the previous expeditions and they seemingly genuinely worried about how the natives were being treated… The Viceroy even told Oñate to find and arrest the renegade man who they thought was still out there, the one who’d been killed by his own men before the rest of them had been killed on the great plains. The Viceroy, a personal friend of Oñate’s, believed arresting this possible tyrant would send a good message to the Puebloans. But the Puebloans memory hadn’t faded of all the previous wrongs the Spanish had so far wrought on their lands.

By now it’s 1598 and at the head of the largest expedition into the American Southwest since Coronado… sat, Oñate. Behind him were 560 future colonists with 129 soldiers, a lot of Indian quote unquote servants, numerous women and children, including his 8 year old son Cristobal, whom he made a lieutenant, and whom will later go on to become an interim governor of New Mexico… but all of those people were with him as well as 7,000 cattle, sheep, goats, oxen, donkeys, mules, and horses. He also brought 13,500 nails, three cannons, 18 barrels of gun powder, plenty of precious arquebuses, lances, saddles, shields, and all manner of weapons. Also to trade with the locals, he brought 80… thousand… glass beads, plenty of rosaries, and quite a few tin crosses. This colonizing caravan must have been a sight to see as it strung itself out along the Sonoran desert, no doubt alerting every native American within a hundred miles or more of its presence. These people clearly meant business. Coronado hadn’t been there to stay, but to pillage. These people on the other hand, had come to stay. And they may have been the first ones to do so in a thousand years since the Southerner Anasazi Ancestors had come up much the same route to spread their culture and knowledge and religion in what was probably much the same way. It isn’t hard for me to see the parallels between the ancient Anasazi from the south coming up and ruling the land… and the Spanish, I mean ultimately from across the sea but in this important moment, they too were coming up from the south to rule over the land with their god and their architecture and their form of government. In the end, history’s informed us that neither were meant to stay and rule but both would leave their indelible marks.

It took the 2 mile long caravan 5 months to reach their new homes, and by that time Oñate had been, according to Roberts, stretched to his breaking point. But he didn’t break yet. At first as they arrived to each pueblo, the same thing happened that had been happening since Coronado. The puebloans knew of Oñate’s approach for weeks before they’d arrive to the actual Pueblo and by that time, all of its residents had fled for the hills. But they would slowly trickle back down as peace, beads, and other goods were offered. At this point, Oñate would claim the Pueblo for Spain and move on up the river.

It’s understandable why they fled. The Puebloans had no doubt heard about the other Indians down south that were constantly being enslaved by men with guns who would kidnap them and sell them. I mean, the Puebloans themselves had been enslaved, some of them at least, but they had been enslaved when Coronado was there. Remember the over a thousand Tiguex Puebloans who accompanied him to the Great Plains? Certainly these stories stayed in the Puebloans collective memory. Not to mention the other puebloans killed during the other forays. We actually know they remembered because later Puebloans would tell Oñate and his men, after being asked why they had ashen crosses on their foreheads that, earlier white men with beards had arrived and told them that if other white men with beards arrive in the future to be sure and have the cross on their head so they won’t treat them badly… But thankfully for the Puebloans, they weren’t yet treated badly as the newcomers attempted to peacefully make their way to the swampy area around Santa Fe to build the capital, temporary capital, of the new Spanish colony.

I was actually kind of surprised to learn that Santa Fe sits on a swamp because you wouldn’t know it if you travel their now. Totally unrelated but I was just there this last New Years Eve for pleasure and for research while traveling back to Southern California from Wisconsin with my wife and my dog and… I love that city. It is a gorgeous city in a gorgeous basin and you can check out pictures of it on my site.

In a rather dramatic scene that almost seems unbelievable, once Oñate and his caravan arrived to the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, or Kewa as the Puebloans call it. It sits not far from Santa Fe in a Southwestern direction, but once Oñate got there, he managed to gather the leaders of some 33 different Pueblos together inside a large kiva. Inside the cramped space he spoke to them, using four different interpreters, about why he was there and what his mission was and that he had come in peace. He then gave them a Sunday school lesson on there being only one God, on heaven and hell, and briefly on the Pope. He then told them in no uncertain terms that they were now part of Spain and vassals of the Spanish crown.

But…just think about that scene for a minute. These silver plated, arquebus carrying, horse riding, Iberian Peninsula European people with their crosses and brown robed holy men gathers your family, friends, enemies, and frenemies all together and speaks in a language you don't understand, I mean some of these puebloan people couldn’t even understand each other! But these Spaniards and Basques declared to the people through interpreters from Northern Mexico which probably only a few of the Puebloans even understood. But they told them, they tell you, that you are now subject to a king who resides across the ocean who you will never meet and who will never come over here and through his authority I, Oñate, am now your ruler. Oh, and then he told them that they all have to kneel, which they did… twice… with the second time only ending after they also kissed the friars hand. Then he told them they all have to get baptized cause otherwise they’re going straight to hell and that’s a very bad thing, even if you’ve never heard of it.

According to Oñate, all of the Puebloan leaders of these 33 some odd pueblos agreed that this was cool and good and they were totally happy and accepted this with, in his own words, with quote, great rejoicing. End quote. Oñate would consistently prove to be completely delusional when it came to how the Puebloans felt about himself and the other Iberians. And he wouldn’t be the only one over the next 80 years to be wrong about the elation with which the Puebloans felt towards their conquerers.

After the people pledged their loyalty to Spain and God, Oñate would set up his home base at the pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, practically on top of the old site and he’d name it San Juan de los Caballeros. Or really, his poet captain would call it that, which in Spanish means, St. John of the Warrior Knights. This warrior poet who will be brought up again later, but he named it that, quote, in memory of those noble sons who first raised in these barbarous regions the bloody tree upon which Christ perished for the redemption of mankind. End quote. The Spanish really did think quite highly of themselves. But, you can’t blame em, really. Their invasion was like an alien force landing on earth and decimating us with ease today. Although, as the US military knows quite well, and Oñate and later Spaniards will soon know, insurgencies are a difficult thing to conquer completely. At the new capital though, which would only be the capital until 1610, when it would move to Santa Fe, but at this new capital, Oñate had the first church built and as far as he could tell, the people were more than happy to be sharing their homes with the new conquerers, or I mean friends.

According to local legend though, the arrival of the Spanish did have some good things for the Pueblo when it joined two rival clans who’d been fighting for some time, since one family was from the north and the other family was from the south… sounds like a hangover from the Anasazi Civil War, if you ask me. It just so happens, the later leader of the Pueblo Revolt himself, Popay, was born at San Juan de los Caballeros. And no surprise, Popay, who you will learn a lot about in the next episode, but Popay belonged to the Tewa northern faction. Obviously.

Once he’d established the new capital and ordered the building of churches and homes, Oñate set out on a five month long reconnaissance mission of his new territory to introduce himself to the other pueblos and to look for any and all traces of any precious metal, but especially gold. Please Dios, let there be gold! He’d go north to Taos, east to Pecos, south into the Galisteo Basin, that area north of the Sandia mountains, and he’d travel west to the Jemez mountains and the Jemez Pueblo, that future hotbed of anti Spanish.

In September he faired much better on the great plains then had the last few Spaniards to wander them as he hunted bison in the far east for his hungry colonists. Then in October he decided to also explore the far southwest. Part of this exploration was to get to the Pacific Ocean which Roberts says was feasible on account of bad maps and rumors. In reality, the Gulf of California was about 600 miles to the southwest, with the Pacific Ocean being much further than that. This excursion into western New Mexico would prove to be a turning point for the colonial expedition though. A turning away from the peace and friendly attitudes the Castile Crown commanded, and towards that all too familiar story of historical colonial violence.

This violence would begin at a place called Acoma, or the Sky City Pueblo. Acoma lays claim, along with two Hopi Villages we will also talk about: Walpi, and Oraibi, but the three of them lay claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the US. All are pretty formidable, sitting as they do on top of mesas but Acoma takes the defensive cake. Knaut sums up Sky City well when he writes that it sits atop a quote, rugged and isolated sandstone mesa 360 feet above the surrounding desert floor. The mesa is massive, with two segments- a southern, uninhabited half joined to its northern counterpart by a narrow and treacherous bridge of natural outcropping- covering an area of seventy acres. Its walls are forbidding, the smooth sandstone bluffs not only sheer but in many places overhanging. End quote.

Up at the top of the fortress, the Sky City contains about 500 adobe rooms, many of them two or three stories tall. The streets are narrow and winding and can become maze like. Their description reminds me of the old section in Menton on the Mediterranean coast of France or really any old section of a European city or town. Back in the day, or who knows, it could still be this way today, but when Oñate visited Acoma, there were even tunnels beneath the city that connected the kivas. The drinking water is only obtained by collecting rain or snow up top or by bringing it up from the mesa’s base. And to climb those sheer or overhanging mesa walls? There weren’t any guard rails or foot paths, but only finger and toe holds that were hand carved by ancestral puebloans… who knows how long ago. Anthropologists say Acoma was built in the 1200s, but the Acoma puebloans of today say it’s much older than that. There’s really no reason to doubt them. I’m sure if you were to dig below the current pueblo, an archaeologist would find even older patterns of settlement, just like at so many other places in the southwest that have been used over and over again.

Today, there’s a road that was paved in the 40s in order to facilitate the filming of a John Wayne western but back in the day… it was as one Spaniard put it, quote, the best situated Indian stronghold in all christendom. End quote.

So it was here, at the base of the Acoma Pueblo Sky City mesa that Oñate decided to camp on his way to the sea that he would not reach in October of 1598. Instead of me cobbling together a patchwork story from the various sources I read, I would like to just read you the words of Roberts himself on what transpired or… possibly? Transpired? Anyways, here’s Roberts from Pueblo Revolt about Oñate’s visit to Sky City:

The record of what happened next remains highly ambiguous, but a plausible scenario can be cobbled out of the Spanish documents. The spies who had visited San Gabriel had reported back to Acoma. A chieftain known as Zutacapán resolved to make war upon the invaders, but other leaders took a contrary view. Even as Oñate, with only thirty soldiers, slept at the foot of the butte, the Acomans were in the midst of a strenuous debate about how to deal with the interlopers.

The peace party, it would seem, prevailed. Acomans swarmed down from their stronghold to offer gifts to the Spaniards. Oñate was convinced that these credulous natives thought that the neighing horses were speaking to each other, a fancy he encouraged in order to inculcate further "fear and respect.” End quote.

At this point, after the gifts and introductions, the Acoma puebloans invited Oñate who brought some soldiers with him, up to the pueblo along that difficult hand and toe hold route. And… apparently, I read that once up on the mesa walls, the Spanish conquistadors who had followed, in a pre-determined signal that they had made it up safe, fired their arquebuses into the air for the ones remaining down below. That may have been mistake one. Or mistake two… mistake one being showing up at all to Acoma. But, after this possibly accidental show of force, one of the aforementioned Zutacapán’s buddies led Oñate away from his soldiers and towards a kiva… filled… with angry armed puebloans… apparently 12 of them… although, that could be some sort of allegory to the apostles later written by the Spanish, it isn’t clear… but apparently within the dark smoky kiva, surrounding the base of the ladder were 12 puebloan warriors ready to kill that invading conquistador leader. For whatever reason though… and honestly this entire scenario cannot be corroborated with any sort of accuracy, but according to legend, at the last moment, which I can almost see… cinematically, with Oñate realizing it’s a trap as he’s about to climb down the ladder, he grabs the top of the wooden support posts of the lashed ladder, about to step onto the rungs but stopping abruptly after he notices some slight movement or noise or some sideways sneer of a smile he sees out of the corner of his eye by this Zutacapán lieutenant. Maybe he could smell a trap from his years fighting the Chichimecas, as Roberts suggests. Regardless of why or if this happened at all, Oñate survived his tour of the Sky City, climbed down to his basecamp… followed by the Pueblo’s leaders, and then proceeded to give them the oath of submission and subjugation.

Thanks for not murdering me and congratulations, you’re now part of Spain and you’re all Spanish subjects and very shortly we will ask for taxes in the form of food and goods and oh yeah, we will absolutely build a church over top your kiva which will ring its bells every hour and morning and for mass and for anything we see fit, you’ll love the bells, and the friars that go along with them. Have a nice day, Adios!

If the plot to kill him in that kiva actually existed and Oñate narrowly escaped death, then the frustration the puebloans felt at missing the opportunity and then being humiliated… that missed opportunity definitely boils over shortly.

From Acoma, Oñate and his men head towards El Morro, a place I have been to and love. It’s a big rock mesa butte that juts out into a valley that sits just ever so northwest of Acoma on the other side of the volcanic blackness of El Malpais. It is a big sandstone wall with a spring of water that’s always flowing. The coolest things about El Morro though are the awesome Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ruins on the top and, more importantly for our story, at least, the inscriptions that are carved into the side. There are English ones from more recent explorers and ranchers and army units. There are Anasazi petroglyphs. There are ancestral puebloan kachinas. And there are Spanish inscriptions, with one of them being Oñate’s very own. I have seen it! I have taken a picture of it, I recognized that it was old and in Spanish although I did not know the significance of the inscription until reading for this episode. I then went back and looked at the pictures I had taken back in 2018 and lo and behold, I have a picture of Oñates inscription, which has been emboldened by the past NPS ranger activity of darkening it. On that ancient sandstone wall though, Oñate carved, which again, it’s pretty cool that I’ve seen it, but he said in the third person and translated to English:

There passed this way the Adelantado Don Juan de Oñate, from the discovering of the South Sea, on the sixteenth of April, 1605.

the first thing you may notice is the word Adelantado which is really a nice way of saying conquerer. The second thing you’ll notice is that date of April, 1605, which is… well after our current story that is taking place in December of 1598, so let’s get back to the plot.

At El Morro, Oñate was waiting for his nephew and maestro de campo of the expedition, which was basically his second in command, but Oñate was waiting for his nephew Juan de Zaldívar who had been exploring the Great Plains. Zaldívar though, had fallen short of the necessary supplies in the cold weather and decided he’d liberate some from the Puebloans at Acoma. Once at the base, he had eight soldiers follow the Acoma guides up to the mesa top to retrieve some food and water. The eight soldiers were led by a Captain Gerónimo Márquez who… in hindsight was not the right guy for the job, it turns out. After requesting the supplies at the Pueblo, Marquez was… less than thrilled at what he was given so he did the logical thing and had his men kidnap a few leaders in order to pressure the puebloans into bringing down the for real, goods.

As you can imagine, at the base of the mesa, Zaldívar freaked out and immediately released the hostages, but the damage was done. The following morning, the puebloans would indeed bring down some supplies but it was only a meager few tortillas and three or four bushels of maize. Which, truly wasn’t enough. Zaldívar and his men did actually need some wood and food so this time he attempted to trade with the Puebloans by offering them hatchets and various other metal trinkets for more goods. The puebloans seemed to accept them and claimed they needed around 2 days to grind the corn for them. This relieved Zaldívar who thanked them and then took his men six miles away to a watering hole to camp for the two days. Two, probably, restless and hungry days.

As brutal as the Spanish can be, it is pretty remarkable how brave and sure of themselves they were. I mean… they were truly surrounded and outnumbered by a lot of people who did not want them there. With every mesa or butte top, every mountain peak, behind every boulder or black volcanic rock outcrop, it must have felt like they were being seen, being watched, plans of their murder being hatched. And they probably were.

When the time was up, Zaldívar and 17 of his men traveled the short distance back to Acoma to collect the goods. Unfortunately for them, the Puebloans had decided not to give into the Spanish demands after all, the demands which they desired were just too high. On December 4th, Zaldívar and 14 of his men, with three staying behind to look after the horses, but the 15 of them and some Indian servants headed up the treacherous and dangerous toe and finger hold path to the top of the mesa where he told his men to stay close, stay in sight, and stay cool, honeybunny. But the puebloans had other plans… After greeting the Spanish, they began to wind The invaders through the narrow maze like streets. Every home they passed pulled up their ladders and refused to give up their maize flour. Frustrated and hungry, Zaldívar made his final mistake and split his men up and marched them in different directions across the sprawling pueblo to ask if anyone had any food or anything they could spare for the soldiers. After the Spanish were thoroughly separated, the Indians let out a signal cry, and the entire Pueblo erupted in violence as the Acomans set upon the split up Spanish groups… all at the same time. They stood no chance.

A letter, written shortly after the incident by the Treasurer of New Mexico to an official in New Spain suggests of the incident that maybe it wasn’t premeditated but instead a Spanish soldier, named Vivero took two turkeys from the Puebloans which brought on an argument and maybe he killed a puebloan before he got himself killed and at which point, the murderers let out a fearful war cry alarm which everyone had been trained to respond to.

Regardless, when the dust had settled, Zaldívar, two of his captains, eight soldiers, and two Pueblo servants were dead. The remaining Spanish only survived by throwing themselves off the mesa walls. Obviously, that didn’t work for all of them, but a few of them did indeed, miraculously, actually, but six did survive because they landed on sand dunes.

One of the survivors recounted later that as he laid on the sand after surviving the fall, he saw, quote, the Indians jumping from rock to rock, carrying swords and hats and mocking us, while others hurled the bodies of the dead down the cliff. End quote.

This was all obviously, terrible news for Oñate who would head back to his capital as soon as he’d heard the news of the death of his nephew and the soldiers. He knew regrettable, retribution must follow. But, the decision for retribution, while unwanted, wasn’t unwarranted. If the Puebloans got away with this without any punishment, what kind of message did that send to the many other Pueblos that would no doubt follow suit? At Pecos, as soon as they heard the news, the Puebloans burned down their church, which was being built and used the timbers and adobe to construct a new kiva. It would take 20 years for the Spanish to reoccupy that Pueblo. What if that happened at every single pueblo in all the land? This whole venture would be over before it even started.

The Spanish were vastly outnumbered in a land they knew very little about surrounded by a people they didn’t understand. The only way for this colony to work was if a show of force to put down the rebels was swift and vicious. Letter from the King be damned. It was collectively decided that they had to truly punish the Acomans. Many called for the entire place to be leveled to the ground, like the idiot Marquéz who’d kidnapped the village leaders that probably started this whole mess. Although, I’m sure a testing of the Spanish waters was sure to happen eventually, somewhere, sometime soon. Other Spanish leaders around the area were hearing the Natives ask what The Spaniards were going to do about this uprising, surely with the understanding that, if no retaliation occurs, then uh, it may happen again. Certainly, the Spanish would have never known peace and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 no doubt would have been instead, the Pueblo Defense of 1600. Then there’s the problem of spreading the gospel, if the Spanish appeared weak, so would their God, and that would truly be unacceptable. But they couldn’t appear too strong and immoral or no one would respect their God. A careful and dangerous balance had to be found.

John Kessell in his 1978 work, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, wrote about the careful balance the colonizers had to make with this tricky Acoma situation. Quote:

The governor next called upon Father Commissary Alonso Martínez for a definition of just war. The friar, dutifully citing scripture, church fathers, philosophers, and legalists, concluded, now quoting Father Martínez, Finally, if the cause of war is universal peace, or peace in his kingdom, he [i.e., the Christian prince] may justly wage war and destroy any obstacle in the way of peace until it is effectively achieved. End quote. The five Franciscan priests on hand, including Father San Miguel, affirmed their superior's "very Christian and learned" opinion.” End quote.

The people and the pueblo must be punished but… it must be done in a compassionate way so that the missionary Catholic Friars could successfully do their duty of bringing the puebloans souls unto God. That was their thinking. So, with that tenuous balance decided, Oñate appointed the late Juan de Zaldívar’s younger brother, Vicente, as leader of the punitive expedition against the Acomans.

Vicente had actually, just been out in the far east in the Buffalo Kingdom attempting to see if the bison could be tamed. He would find that they indeed, could not be. On the open land, he and his soldiers constructed a corral in an effort to trap a couple thousand bison but instead, he ended up getting three of his horses killed and 40 more of them injured! No wonder Oñate keeps asking New Spain for more settlers and horses. Vicente also captured a bunch of calfs but all of them died in captivity. Eventually he and his men gave up and just killed hundreds of them, bringing back what they could of the animals. He did claim though, that the Bison meat was superior to beef. And he’s not wrong.

But now, Vicente Zaldívar, brother of the slain Juan Zaldívar and nephew and second cousin to Oñate, the governor, captain general, and adelantado of the kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico and those adjacent and bordering, their pacifier and colonizer for the king our lord, etc, Vicente was to lead 70 soldiers to quote unquote tame the Acomans.

70 soldiers, by the way, was more than HALF of Oñate’s entire army in all of New Mexico. That was quite a gamble sending that many, because if they failed and were killed, then very few soldiers were protecting the rest of the settlers and again, this story would be over.

While on the path of righteous retribution though, Vicente and those 70 soldiers were to adhere to the explicit orders of Oñate, of which Knaut in Pueblo Revolt sums up: Zaldívar the younger was to, quote, offer the natives of Acoma the opportunity to surrender peacefully, but he was to proceed brutally with the conquest should that offer be rejected. End quote. Oñate then said to Zaldívar the most important part of his plan and that was, and now I’m quoting Oñate himself:

If you should want to show lenience after they have been arrested, you should seek all possible means to make the Indians believe that you are doing so at the request of the friars with your forces. In this manner they will recognize the friars as their benefactors and protectors and come to love and esteem them and to fear us. End quote.

To Oñate, the holiness of the Church and the respect of God were vital to his success of conquering New Mexico for Spain and this careful balance of punishment and compassion would have to be executed perfectly. Considering that no revolt happened for another 81 years, I’d say they… ALMOST, pulled it off. Almost. And really, there would be countless small revolts and murders and uprisings throughout the next eight decades so…

On January 21st, 1599, Zaldívar and his soldiers arrived at the Sky City Pueblo of Acoma. There, no surprise, they did NOT find a penitent and peaceful band of Puebloans waiting to receive them. Instead, The Acomans had dug holes in the ground around the mesa with which to break the Spanish horses’ legs. The Acomans, being up in the air as they were, according to some Spanish sources including a warrior poet, a bad poet but the poet who named the first capital city San Juan de los Caballeros, but according to some Spanish soldiers, The Puebloans were quite afraid of the horses. They even believed their neighing was a language that the Spanish could understand. They understandably did not want those beasts anywhere near their mesa. So the Acomans had set booby traps. But they were also wearing the armor of the dead Spaniards. They were aiming the arquebuses and raising the steel swords of the Spaniards into the air. War clubs, bows and arrows, killing stones, and all manner of weapons were brandished from the top of the mesa as Zaldívar inquired why on earth they’d attacked and killed his brother and fellow soldiers. The answer came back loudly and angrily, and according to the Spanish’ own official report, the Indians, quote, all shouted loudly, raised their swords on high and boasted that they had killed ten spaniards and two Mexicans, and that we were all a pack of scoundrels and whoremongers. End quote.

Roberts does make a very good point after giving that quote I just said when he wrote: One wonders what the Keresan word for whoremonger might be. End quote. I imagine though, that the Catholic Spanish may have blushed at the actual translation that they were given by their interpreter. I’m sure the Puebloans said a word more akin to, oh, something John McClain might quip to a terrorist before sending him back to god… Yippee Kiyay.

Eventually, Zaldívar and the Spanish retreated a safe distance away from the mesa top for the evening, all the while the Acomans spent the night a hootin’ and a hollerin’ and dancing and taunting and apparently quote unquote, hissing. Although I think the Spanish can be a little dramatic sometimes. But drama or not, that had to have been a restless night and the prospect of scaling that mesa must have been nightmare inducing.

I don’t think there’s really any way that this upcoming battle doesn’t happen. I think the desire to punish the Acomans for their, I guess the Spanish would have seen it as treachery, but what the Puebloans no doubt saw as their survival… but the desire of the Spanish for justice, the necessity for justice for their own survival, was too high. As I mentioned earlier, the Sky City pueblo may have been THE most formidable pueblo in all of New Mexico. If anyone stood a chance at repelling the Spanish with strength and force, it’s these puebloans. And if the story is true that they wanted but weren’t able to kill Oñate when he was there, I’m sure they were itchin’ to take out the next group that arrived. AND if the story’s true that a Spanish soldier under Zaldívar took two turkeys and killed the owner before he was killed, wether in an exchange gone wrong or just flat out through theft and murder, that would have been the perfect reasoning behind the slaughter.

I can see quite clearly the actions as justified on both sides as a whole. Of course I don’t condone theft or murder or plundering or war but the Spanish are on the Continent. They are going to explore and to expand their colony. They’re going to Manifest Destiny their lands to the north as the United States will later to the west. It just so happens those lands are the same lands. On the other hand, this is the Puebloans home. It has been since the altithermal thousands of years before and it probably was before that as well when it wasn’t too hot to support mammalian life. The people who we call the ancestral puebloans and puebloans have been in North America since the ice wall thawed enough to allow them to pour into the continent. Some of them were here long before that after they’d arrived on their boats on the coasts. These people had survived the giant beasts that had once roamed the land. They had survived excursions from down south before with the mesoamericans and their Chaco Aztec Altepetl. They’d survived a civil war against their northern neighbors near Mesa Verde. Those same cousins who lived north of the San Juan River but who now live near Rio Grande and at Jemez, which is not too far from Acoma. They may have thought the Spanish were another in a long line of foes they could defeat and were destined to defeat because, after all, this was their land. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work out that way though.

After a volley of arrows from atop the Mesa which killed two Spanish horses, the die had been cast. At 3 in the afternoon on January 22nd, The Spanish attacked. The battle would last two days but the Acomans didn’t stand a chance. Although, the first Spanish attack would fail to penetrate the top of the extremely fortified mesa. But the second attack, after nightfall, found Zaldívars men separated into two throngs. One pushed up the northern fortified front while Zaldívar the avenger led 11 other soldiers up the southern uninhabited side to flank the Acomans. Once dug in, they hoisted up, with what must have been great strength, two cannons. I mean, by now the puebloans know they’re on the mesa and dug in so they’re sending arrows and stones and taunts in the direction of these men who must defend themselves while simultaneously hoisting up two heavy cannons. And from the puebloans point of view, this must have seemed absolutely imperative that they block these Spaniard invaders from holding a position on THEIR mesa! The mesa they’d been on for 400 years or, more.

But those two cannons, which began firing on the morning of the 23rd, were capable of throwing 200 balls per volley, like a scatter gun. They absolutely obliterated the Acomans who were defending that side of the town. After the cannon blasts the northern side of the pueblo became easier to overtake as the Puebloans ran to the south to defend. And then, the Spaniards in the north took up positions on the mesa and set fire to the northern end of the pueblo.

As night fell on the second day of the battle and the cannons blasted and the pueblo burned, the Acomans asked for peace. Zaldívar called for an end to hostilities. But that end of hostilities included a gathering of captives, which included the leaders of the pueblo, who would be held within the kivas, ladders up. This, did not go over well with the remaining puebloans and yet another, final battle ensued. Kessell wrote of the end of the battle, quote, according to Spanish sources, the Ácoma men, sensing defeat, began to kill one another and their families rather than surrender. End quote.

Again you cannot blame either side. History is full of ambiguity and compromise that is always easy to judge from the future. After the second call for peace erupted, Zaldívar acquiesced and allowed the fighting to yet again stop, despite him having previously commanded to give no quarter or take no prisoners.

The devastation was total. Acoma was, as Marquez had suggested it should be, nearly leveled. Possibly 800 Acomans were dead… which most assuredly can be chalked up to grapeshot cannons and the fire which spread through the pueblo. Every survivor, all 500 of them, were taken prisoner and escorted to San Juan where they arrived on the 9th of February, 1599.

The trial of the quote unquote murderous rebels was led by Oñate who as Roberts puts, met out conquistadorial justice. Roberts goes on to write of the rest of the trial, quote, every man over the age of twenty five had his right foot cut off and was sentenced to twenty years slave labor. All the women above the age of twelve, and all men from twelve to twenty five likewise earned two decades of penal servitude. The children were taken from their parents and distributed as servants in Mexico. Two Indians from the distant pueblo of hopi who had fought with the Acomans had their right hands cut off; they were then sent home as a lesson to other potential rebels. End quote.

Brutal and painful conquistadorial justice that intimidated and showed the rest of the Puebloan world, just like they’d intended, but it showed the puebloans that the Spanish meant to stay. And by show the Puebloan world, I mean there were thousands of puebloans and as many leaders as the Spanish could muster were brought into watch the trail. Kessell again, quote, they probably did not understand the formalities of the trial the Spaniards recorded so diligently, but they saw the brutal results. End quote.

30 years after the destruction and punishment of Acoma, the pueblo was allowed to be rebuilt by the Acoma survivors and their descendants. You do have to wonder how much the survivors could really help being rather old by this point and missing their right foot. Although, in Oñate’s journal he does mention a technicality that may have been overlooked by future historians. He mentions the toes of the right foot were cut off, not the entire foot. This, of course, is of no comfort to those who lost those precious digits. I also saw that it wasn’t all the men over 25, but possibly only 24 of those men… but again, the number wasn’t recorded properly… the only thing recorded was that they had the toes of their right foot removed.

The rebuilding of Acoma was obviously accompanied by the construction of a grand, beautiful, and enormous church. This church, San Estevan del Rey, is one hundred feet long and thirty five feet tall and it was built with massive forty foot roof beams that were cut down from the slopes of Mount Taylor, which sits across I-40 from Sky City. While the Puebloans hoisted the wood to the spot of the church, the friars, under the command of a Fray Juan Ramirez, did not allow the Puebloans to let the beams touch the ground for the entire journey, some 30 miles or so. Which, kind of reminds me of the legend that the kiva and great house roof beams at Chaco and other places were carried without ever touching the ground.

This pattern of sending out the Friars and priests to the Pueblos while the Spanish and the army stayed near the Rio Grande in Santa Fe is replicated at every pueblo in the region. The goal of this pattern was to separate the people and strengthen the intimidation factor of the Spanish rulers. Oñate demanded this separation himself and he explicitly refused any settler from living too far from the center of power and certainly not among the natives. He didn’t want any intermarrying, mingling, or mixing. The Spanish had to sit at Santa Fe and act from, as Knaut wrote, quote, the dominant, more aloof position of patriarch, judge, and punisher among the Indians. End quote.

In March of that year, after the trial, Oñate would request from New Spain, more horses, and settlers and quote, married men, who are the solid rock on which to build a lasting new nation. End quote. He had conquered New Mexico, now it was time to rule it.

Unfortunately though, Oñate was a cruel and a harsh and a tough leader or as one of his biographers puts it, a quote unquote, Petty Despot. The next 8 years of his reign as governor are tinged with failure, conflict, and for him, deep troubles. Well, he and the entire colony. And the Puebloans… just deep troubles for the whole of New Mexico, really.

To begin with, the land of Enchantment can be… quite disenchanting. Especially to these first few settlers. The winters were unbearably harsh and cold, especially for a people who came from a more temperate climate down south. One man Ginés de Herrera Horta wrote that the winters lasted 8 months and it was so cold that, quote, the river freezes over and the Spaniards are always shivering by the fire. End quote. And wood for those fires were not close at hand but had to be carried in from the hills and mountains or brought up from the riverbanks. The riverbanks were closest but that meant you were burning cottonwood, and that meant smoke, and that meant misery. A Fray Alonso de Benavides would later write about the cold that, quote, every winter a great number of Indians out in the country are found frozen, and many Spaniards have their ears, feet, and hands frozen. End quote. I believe he’s referencing frostbite.

The land was also rugged and thorny and the crops were stubborn to grow when they grew at all. Not to mention the lack of gold, silver, and any other precious ores disheartened many that believed they were going to strike it rich. In reality, the land was filled with as Knaut put it, abysmal poverty. Even the Puebloan tributes left something to be desired. They mostly brought corn and blankets and not even enough for the Spanish, while at the same time, it was far too much for the Puebloans who very much could have used every string, shred, and crumb they gave up.

Actually, this problem of food goes back to before the Spanish ever even left New Spain. It turns out, Oñate may have raided other settlers on their way north to New Mexico because they waited so long at the northern frontiers for actual permission that they ran dangerously low on supplies, which… would have a profound effect on them and ultimately the puebloans. For the first three years that they were in New Mexico The Spanish depended heavily on Puebloan food and clothing which helps make more sense of why Zaldívar and his men were so violent in their begging for food at Acoma. There was such poor planning and so much bureaucracy, the true hallmarks of government of course, but there was such poor planning and so long of a wait that the settlers showed up with FAR less than they should have which ultimately, doomed the relations between the settlers and the puebloans. The Spanish being unprepared forced them to essentially steal, and do so weekly!

And to add insult to starving injury, the settlers, once they’d arrived either didn’t work hard enough in the beginning or it really was as difficult as the settlers wrote about to actually get anything to grow. Knaut says of this hardship, quote, as a result, both the amount of tribute and the ruthlessness with which the Spanish settlers ensured its collection quickly escalated. End quote. That ruthlessness sometimes included taking the clothing directly off the backs of the puebloans themselves. One friar even wrote of this terrible practice, when he said quote, it will suffice to say that during the winter when the inclemencies of heaven strike here more suddenly than in other inhabited countries . .. our men, with little consideration, took blankets away from the Indian women, leaving them naked and shivering with cold. Finding themselves naked and miserable, they embraced their children tightly in their arms to warm and protect them, without making any resistance to the offenses done to them, for they are a humble people, and in virtue and morality the best behaved thus far discovered. End quote. Literally taking the clothing off the Puebloans back isn’t a good look for the Spanish. It’s amazing the revolt doesn’t happen sooner. But that goes to show the strength, despite their lack of… everything except violence, that the Spanish had.

Also, I do love that phrase, during the winter when the inclemencies of heaven strike here more suddenly than in other inhabited countries… what a way to say, the winters here are harsh and cold and snowy and unpredictable and they suck.

Remember in the last episode when I talked about how hard it was to grow food in the Rio Grande valley? That didn’t change just because the Spanish arrived. And when they couldn’t grow it themselves like I just mentioned, and after they essentially legally stole maize and other foods from the puebloans, the Spanish almost destroyed the balance that nearly three thousand years of difficult cultivation had accomplished for the people. And that great drought of 1300 or so hadn’t really let up. The Southwest had become more arid and the climate fluctuated a whole lot more than it had during the heyday of chaco and Aztec. The valley barely produced enough food for the puebloans. It definitely didn’t produce enough for them AND the Spanish invaders. Thankfully, at first in these few years after the conquest, the Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan practice of keeping dried maize in quote unquote granieries, that very famous masonry structure that inundates the four corners area, but that practice of keeping stored corn grains practically saves the peoples, all the peoples, European and the local puebloans, it saves all their bacon in 1600. But once those stores had dried up, things were going to turn even more sour…

By the following year, things would get so bad for the Spanish that Captain Diego de Zubia, the purveyor General of Oñate’s forces, would later confess to plundering and stealing food from puebloans just so his soldiers wouldn’t perish from hunger. Not just steal and loot though, he’d also confess to as Knaut wrote, quote, he was so desperate to find food lest the army perish that week that he tortured some Indians. The torture, inflicted with exquisite pain, led an Indian to confess where he had buried some maize in holes. End quote. In Pueblo Revolt, Roberts quotes a Friar who would later abandon the territory, quote, a Franciscan averred that, as the colony fell on lean times, Indian chiefs had been tortured and killed to force them to confess the whereabouts of secret stores of corn. Thousands of Indians, the friar went on, had already died of starvation. "They had been reduced to such extremity," he (the friar) reported, "that he had seen them eating branches of trees, earth, charcoal and ashes.” End all quotes.

In that same year of 1601, Captain Luis de Velasco accused Oñate himself of going, and here’s Knaut again, Oñate went, quote, in person to another pueblo to seize their maize, and as the Indians had concealed it in some small rooms, he ordered the walls torn down. When an Indian reproved the act by a word in his native tongue, the governor gave him a thrust and pushed him down the terrace. He fell on his back and was killed instantly, never moving hand or foot. End quote. So… Oñate pushed a Puebloan off his own roof, which broke his back, and killed him.

Velasco would also write, quote, the Indians fear us so much that, on seeing us approach from afar, they flee to the mountains with their women and children, abandoning their homes, and so we take what we wish from them. End quote. It seems, Oñate and all his men had forgotten the entreaties of the King to NOT harm the Puebloans. By the fall of 1601, Velasco said of the Puebloans that they could be seen near their precious river water’s edge, quote, making holes shaped like cups and filling them with tomatoes mixed with sand and dirt and using it for food, as they had nothing else to live on... We had taken away from them by force... what they had saved up for many years. End quote.

The puebloans were so hungry… that women would follow the carts that the soldiers used to transport the stolen tribute back to the capital… in the hopes that a cob or even a single kernel would fall off the back.

Other Indians, especially the mighty Tewa, who had come from Mesa Verde and who would later initiate the Revolt… but many Puebloans would offer themselves up as slaves… so that their families could eat.

New Mexico was proving to be a terribly difficult and heart-breaking land for the newly conquering Spanish and the conquered Puebloans.

Not to pile on here, but then there’s also the problem of the previously promised ocean. Oñate and many other Europeans believed the Pacific Ocean was just right there over the horizon, which would have helped facilitate more trade and settlers. If there was a port there, I mean… there were endless possibilities. In reality… I live less than 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the Santa Ana Mountains, and Santa Fe is over 800 miles away through some of the harshest Mojave landscapes and steep rugged mountains you can imagine. Oñate would himself go in search of the Pacific like I said earlier when I quoted his signature on the rock at El Moro but he would only find the Gulf of California. He’d travel from Santa Fe to Zuni, then to Hopi, and then to the Little Colorado River, over to THE Colorado River, which means he would have been traveling alongside that amazing Grand Canyon, before taking that amazing river all the way down to the Gulf of California. At which point, he’d proclaim that he found a great harbor for Spanish ships and then turn around and come home.

At the Gulf of California though, he mistakenly thought that he was in fact at the Pacific Ocean, which is why California is drawn as a massive island in those early days and which is why it’s called California at all.

Quick aside about the state I live in, for now at least, but the state was named after a mythical island that was in a popular novel at the time. The island in the novel was full of people led by a woman leader named Califia, as in the arabic word, where the term Caliphate, comes from, as in leader or kingdom. There are actually multiple theories on the origin of the name of the state, which are pretty interesting.

Before that expedition to the Sea of Cortez though in 1601, Oñate actually headed out onto the great plains, another place I know very well as I spent 11 years in Oklahoma. If you know the Great Plains or the area you know it has its beauty but… well, to drum up further colonists and money from the Crown, Oñate told the Viceroy of New Spain and the King of all of Spain that… well, he told them some flat out lies. Kessell writes of this exaggeration like this, quote, On the plains to the east were untold multitudes of Cíbola cattle [bison] and great settlements of natives. "It would be an endless story," he avowed, and now he’s quoting Oñate, to attempt to describe in detail each one of the many things that are found there. All I can say is that with God's help I am going to see them all and give to His Majesty more pacified worlds, new and conquered, greater than the good marques [i.e., Cortés] gave him . . . if your lordship but gives me the succor, favor, and aid I expect from such a [generous] hand. End quote. That’s quite the exaggerated request.

On that trip to the Buffalo Kingdom, Oñate would take 130 Spanish Soldiers,12 friars, and 130 Indian warriors and servants, which is quite the large party. Why was he scouring the great plains? To look for gold of course. The seven cities of Cibola turned out to be bogus but surely the grand city of Quivira was true, right? That place that Coronado was looking for before realizing he was duped and had the Turk garroted…

Oñate wouldn’t find that city of gold either but he would run into quite a few Native American tribes, including the fierce Apache. He’d also praise the as tall as a horse prairie grass and comment on how much better the soil was out there than in New Mexico. He’s not wrong but, he’s still just trying to sell the land northwards to anyone, anyone at all who feels like colonizing it.

In Oklahoma, Oñate would run into a group called the Escanjaques before running into another group called the Rayados. He liked the Rayados better he wrote, but he kidnapped their leader anyways, a man named Caratax. Although he would say he treated him well. Man, the cojones on these guys. Eventually he would turn his expedition around as the various peoples began to amass armies on the horizon… I wonder why! You took their leader! Oh and he took some women and children as well. Most likely to sell or use in Santa Fe.

On their way back to New Mexico, the Escanjaques would attack them. Those warriors would free Caratax and the Spanish would let the women and most of the children go. The battle lasted only two hours.

It’s believed today that the Escanjaques and the Rayados were probably Caddoan Whichita Indians of Oklahoma and Kansas.

But this series of events of running into native Americans and kidnapping a few women and children before skirmishes broke out, that would happen for oh, the next 80 years or so and it would be a contributing factor to 1680.

During this Great Plains expedition, the aforementioned new settlers that Oñate had asked for, which had arrived and which counted 73, well a bunch of them and a bunch of original colonists as well, they collectively decided to heck with this place. They probably, rightfully so, felt like they had been lied to and nothing was as advertised so while the big guy was out gallivanting around the buffalo kingdom, they, numbering a full 2/3rds of the colony, packed up and headed down to Mexico, despite the accusation that could be leveled against them of desertion. A steep accusation at that. Which… I guess I’m not sure how this style of colony works if leaving because it sucks can get you in trouble for desertion with the law, but they chanced it. Once in a place called Nueva Galicia, which is now a bunch of states in central west Mexico, but once at Nueva Galicia they told the ex governor about all the bad stuff including the provisions, water, wood, and food.

The ex governor of Nueva Galicia then wrote to the Viceroy of New Spain to convey these hardships which included the fact that the land of enchantment was, quote, lacking people and silver, it lacks woods, pastures, water, and suitable land…. He later writes, Your lordship should take pity on them, for their lack of clothing, food, and horses forces them to seek relief. End quote. One of the friars that had come down with the refugees, oh I forgot to mention, every single friar actually came down with the refugees except three… only three stayed behind in New Mexico which means every single pueblo was abandoned by the Church. Every mission and church sat empty which further confused the Puebloans. Were the Spanish really that strong? Why’d they leave if they were our conquerers? And think about the puebloans who had been baptized! They must have felt truly betrayed. And fearful of losing their lives, which we’ll get into later.

One of those friars who had fled wrote, quote, The suffering of their women and children, the plagues of bedbugs and lice, the unbearable cold of winter, the sullen looks of the Indians—how they despised this place. They had a saying about New Mexico: Ocho meses de invierno y cuatro de infierno! Eight months of winter and four of hell! End quote. Obviously it’s better in Spanish because winter and hell rhyme. He could be referring to the heat or he could be referring to the fact that the place sucked. Or both! Another friar told the Lt. Governor of New Mexico at the time quote, If we stay any longer, the natives and all of us here will perish of hunger, cold, and nakedness. End quote.

As would be expected, when Oñate returned and found the place nearly empty of Spanish, he was PISSED. After he learned of these settlers betrayal, he sent his loyal Vicinte Zaldívar and some soldiers down south to catch the deserters… and when they caught them, to kill them. Not just kill, but behead the quote unquote traitors. Thankfully, the soldiers were too late. They never did catch them.

At this point, Spain actually thinks about shutting the whole enterprise down. The reports coming out from deserters and priests and from spies that the Viceroy of New Spain had amongst the camp were all pretty damning towards Oñate and his merry band of conquistathugs. Not to mention the whole affair was costing just… so much money. Sure, the Americas were supplying the Spanish Crown with boucoup gold but they were also spending ungodly amounts. They were losing a bunch to pirates, the rest of Europe was beginning to encroach… and frankly, New Mexico wasn’t making them a cent. There were no seven cities of gold, heck, there weren’t one cities of gold! Not amongst the Pueblos, not amongst the infinite grasslands, nowhere was there gold to be found in the territory of New Mexico. The only thing worth saving at all or that made the endeavor worth it to continue was the treasure of souls that the church had converted. And surprisingly, that was the deciding factor. Even if that number was embarrassingly small.

Eventually, the Spanish Crown decided that they could not, in good faith or conscious leave the converted puebloans without the presence of the church. They couldn’t allow the convert’s souls to rot. That, and a few intelligent friars noted that as soon as the Spanish were gone, all the baptized Puebloans, who were absolutely in the minority, would most likely be killed by their Indian brethren. And… you’ll see in the next episode, that, was quite the prescient assumption. Actually, in 1601, a rumor that the Spanish were going to indeed flee the scene began to spread among the Puebloans, which caused quite a few of the baptized Native Americans to head for the hills in fear.

The strategic position of New Mexico also played a role though. The vast territory essentially acted as a barrier to the ever encroaching other European powers as they advanced towards the quite prosperous mines of northern Mexico. Plus, the area might eventually be a nice jumping off point to explore even FURTHER into North America. So, ultimately, in 1609, it was reluctantly decided, that the Spanish had to hold on to the fledgling and seemingly failing Colony of New Mexico. But something should probably be done about Oñate.

For his part, Oñate realized in 1608 that his time was up and that he’d probably, most certainly, failed at following the King’s commands on how to act towards the people there. And… the fleeing of 2/3rds of the Colony certainly helped persuade him of his mistakes. So, in February of 1608, he resigned. But instead of a two week notice, it ended up being a two year notice. Eventually, he would finally be replaced as governor and that replacement’s name was Pedro de Peralta, but… more on him in a bit because… Oñate’s troubles aren’t over. Once back in New Spain, the Viceroy hit him with thirty formal charges of misconduct and law breaking. Roberts writes this of the court’s findings:

Of the thirty counts, Oñate was eventually convicted on twelve. These included the murder of several deserters, robberies committed by his soldiers, the giving of "glowing accounts of the land when it was really poor," living "shamefully with women in the colony," and, most damningly, the brutal treatment of the Indians of Acoma. End quote.

After all that Oñate had sacrificed and bled for and fought for and surely damned his soul for. After all the hard work and the murders and the pain and frustration. After all the time and money he spent… Oñate was sentenced to banishment from New Mexico and four years of exile in Mexico City. At 80 years old, Oñate asks the king of Spain to lift his banishment and exile… I don't believe his request was granted. Roberts says of Oñate’s end, quote, The last conquistador died in obscurity, back in Spain, in 1625. End quote.

Obviously the Puebloans were glad to see him go. The Puebloans of today actually STILL want him gone, for his presence is continuing to haunt the land… well, maybe not anymore. In 1992, a statue of him, a pretty cool statue of him, honestly, but before I get taken out of context, I do not condone Oñate or his actions and I think the term petty despot is particularly accurate. But a cool and an expensive statue… expensive for the tax payers of New Mexico, by the way. But the statue of Oñate was erected and placed in 1992 not far from where he set up his home base… but in 1998, on the 400th anniversary of the conquering of New Mexico, a group of Indian activists who called themselves the Brothers of Acoma, in the dead of night, rather fittingly cut off Oñate’s right foot. For 10 Grand, he had a new one a week later, again, at the expense of the tax payers, of course. That new right foot was painted red in 2017 with the words, Remember 1680 written at the base of the monument.

In 2020, during the horrific riots and fiery violence that swept the United States during that troubling summer, Red Nation, a group of Indian activists called for a demonstration against that very hated Oñate statue. So, to avoid the fate of too many other ill-led cities around the country at that time, the county of Rio Arriba just removed it to an undisclosed location, where it sits today.

There is no doubt, Oñate’s crimes were many and I don’t blame the Puebloans for wanting all traces of him gone… but history cannot, and should not be erased. It’s always better to learn from it than to ignore it. Hopefully… I’m helping y'all learn some of that history.

Before we leave this early time period of the initial conquering in the New Mexican dust, we should point out one more failure of that last conquistador that was Oñate. Other than gold and silver and food and ports and beasts, Oñate promised a ton of souls. He promised the church and the king that the puebloans would convert en masse but instead, baptisms in 1602 in all of New Mexico were 60 to 70 native Americans. Period. By 1605, that number was a paltry 500. In 1607, it was 700… still, nowhere near the number the last conquistador had sworn would convert. I mean, when the Spanish would reach a Pueblo, one of the first things they would do was build a mission or church directly over the Pueblo’s Kiva, very often, destroying the old kiva in the process. Roberts wrote, quote, Usually, the new mission obliterated the villagers' most important kivas, thus stamping the superiority of the Catholic over the kachina religion into the very architecture. End quote.

It’s no wonder only a few converted at first but that number would slowly rise, which probably had to do with the fact that the converted puebloans were awarded with the food stores that the Spanish had stolen from their very own pueblos. Also, if you were a baptized Puebloan who worked for the church in bell ringing, cooking, tending field, or any other myriad of jobs the friars dished out to the Indians, if you were working for the church, you didn’t have to pay tribute. So some puebloans chose the church for food and protection and the avoidance of paying tribute. All of this though, helped lead to the destruction of the Puebloans to be able to feed themselves. And this destruction of the Puebloans ability to feed themselves also destroyed their ties with their northern Athabaskan neighbors, primarily those Navajo and Apache Indians who were increasingly encroaching. And violently so.

Not only would the Puebloan neighbors attack the Indians who converted, but also Indian neighbors within one’s own pueblo were quite hostile to those who were baptized and converted. Which pushed them into the protection of the Spanish even further.

Throughout the next 80 years, even the Puebloans who did not convert or get baptized were punished for practicing their own religions, and those that were baptized were punished severely. Remember, the only Spaniards at the Pueblos were the friars and priests and them friars saw everything and they didn’t mind dishing out some spiritual justice. It’s amazing that the people’s culture and religion and the kachinas survived the Spanish at all. But it also makes more sense why it survived so much better at the Hopi mesas than the Rio Grande Pueblos. The more Spanish there were and the closer to Santa Fe the Pueblo was, the more their culture was suppressed… and the more the Puebloans would paradoxically become dependent upon the Europeans for survival. Which is why, after many raids from their neighbors, in 1608, 7,000 Puebloans would get baptized by the Spanish. Now, that number may have been made up for the sole purpose of persuading the crown to keep the colony alive…

Still, many puebloans would refuse to get baptized or convert or as one Jumano Puebloan put it, turn crazy. The strange self flaeggelation, the kissing of the friars hands and feet. The sentencing to death or dismemberment only to be pardoned by the friars at the last minute. These things were quite unattractive to the Puebloans. I again, cannot help but think they had a civil war against the Chaco Aztec Altepetl over these very same things. The puebloans after the Anasazi would leave, would seemingly, although as I mentioned last time, it’s more complicated than it appears, but after the great Migration, the Puebloans seemingly abandoned hierarchy and adopted the Kachinas and extreme humility in order to bind the people together and also as a direct reaction against the Altepetl they’d forced south. The altepetl that ruled over them. Yet now, with their church and their hierarchy and their punishments and their thieving, the Spanish were doing the same thing. Just, with less taking of hearts.

Oh, and the bells… the church bells rang so much, all the time, for everything. The Puebloans hated those bells. During the revolt, with the exception of one at Acoma, every single bell is seemingly smashed and dashed into hundreds of pieces.

Many of these people who rejected Catholicism would flee from the closer Pueblos near Santa Fe and head out to the periphery or to the rugged mountain Pueblos like the Jemez where the Spanish had much less control. Or to the newly rebuilt Acoma or even way out west at the Hopi Mesa. But also at the Zuni pueblo… More on that in just a little bit.

After Oñate was kicked out of New Mexico, the new Governor, Pedro de Paralta would bring with him a dozen more soldiers and 8 more friars which would bring the number of Spaniards in the territory to a paltry two hundred and 20 and 1 people… or there abouts. Which, truly surprised me. That’s just so few Spaniards. It’s amazing they maintained control over the territory at all.

Roberts account of Peralta’s governorship, is filled with fantastic details of a rivalry he had with a rather oily and shady liar of a friar named Ordóñez. A man who had twice already been in the territory of New Mexico and was there this time, to ultimately keep control of the land and its people in the clutches of the church once and for all. The story’s complete with Peralta regulating the mistreatment of puebloans to hinder the church being able to work, which sounds nice but, it was purely for selfish reasons for Peralta. There’s also Ordóñez the friar forging documents and comparing himself to the Pope. During a scuffle, Peralta would accidentally shoot a friar and a soldier, probably on accident. This would result in the excommunication of Peralta, who, again, was the Governor and leader of the territory of New Mexico. He would also, on order of the friar, be arrested! Ordóñez would have him imprisoned for nine months, which as Roberts put it, made the friar Ordoñez the supreme leader of Nuevo Mexico.

Before the scuffle with and arrest of Peralta, Ordóñez would say at the pulpit during church, quote, Do not be deceived. Let no one persuade himself with vain words that I do not have the same power and authority that the Pope in Rome has, or that if his Holiness were here in New Mexico he could do more than I. Believe you that I can arrest, cast into irons, and punish as seems fitting to me any person without exception who is not obedient to the commandments of the church and mine. What I have told you, I say for the benefit of a certain person who is listening to me who perhaps raises his eyebrows. End quote. That certain person, Peralta would soon find that he, Ordóñez was not bluffing.

All of this no doubt confused the heck out of the Puebloans, who already had a strained relationship with the church and which probably further made them lose some faith in their new overlords as the area almost erupted into European civil war multiple times. But on the other hand, the Puebloans, as Knaut writes in Pueblo Revolt, the Puebloans, quote, proved to be quite adept at recognizing the significance of strife within the Hispanic community and manipulating events to their own advantage. In the process, they exhibited a Pueblo heritage with the strength to weather more than three generations of Spanish rule in the seventeenth century, and the patience to await the day when New Mexico would be returned to the hands of its oldest inhabitants. End quote.

Ordóñez would also prove to be a crummy petty despot of a ruler with one colonist complaining about life in New Mexico by saying, quote, Existence in the villa was a hell. End quote. Despite the fact that a new governor had been sent from Spain, Ordóñez would stay in power for another two and a half years. He only left the position of defacto supreme leader when the Catholic Church invented an entirely new position just for him. Roberts sums up the whole sad affair when he writes:

Much of this prolonged struggle between prelate and governor reads today as bad comedy. Yet if Ordóñez's tyranny turned the colony into a veritable hell for the settlers, it had an even more lugubrious impact on the Puebloans. On hearing that a Cochiti man had been murdered by Indians from Jemez, Ordónez sent soldiers to seize the alleged perpetrators and bring them to Santo Domingo. There he had one Jemez man hanged on the spot, and ordered the execution of the others. The latter sentences may not have been carried out, but they set the mold for a fierce resentment of the Spanish on the part of Jemez, which would only grow more bitter over the next sixty-five years. End quote.

These struggles between the government and the church within the community of the Spanish colonists would continue all the way up until the Revolt. Most of the blame for that though, lays with the king and his decision to ultimately save the colony of New Mexico. Once he did that, which he did for mostly religious reasons, it was decided that the land was a vineyard for the lord, not for the king or his treasury. This gave tremendous powers to the friars and the church, with the only check on their power being the governor. Yet, the Governors wanted what power the church had and the church wanted the civil authority, what little it was, that the governor had. The church could investigate catholics intimately and threaten people with excommunication and the withholding of the sacrament and the governor could arrest or fine the citizens. Three governors between 1610 and 1670 angered the church so much that they were excommunicated while governor and two of them actually stood in front of the Inquisition in Mexico City, which could influence whether you continued to breathe or not. And four governors, including the aforementioned Peralta were imprisoned, WHILE governor! It turns out the church leaders also had the ability to jail the civil leaders.

The fourth governor, Juan de Eulate, in 1618 arrived to the region, a region already shaky between church and state and inflamed it even more. Eulate, a lifelong military man, did not care for the church at all. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure he hated it. He called the priests lazy men who only eat and sleep. He claimed there are no witches or sorcerers as the church and the inquisition claimed. They were only saying that there were witches and sorcerers so that the church could be nosy and spy on their fellow men while extracting punishment. Sometimes, he’d say these things in front of Indians and soldiers and other settlers, which humiliated and infuriated the friars. Then, he put a halt to the building of many of the churches that were already underway, including the massive one at Pecos. He did this on the claim that the demands on the Puebloans themselves, who were doing the work, was inhumane. Which, sure, but this was more of a way to get at the Friars than to relieve the burden that laid on the Puebloans backs. Eulate also encouraged the Puebloans to practice their kachina cult! His hate for the church knew no bounds, honestly. At one point he claimed that, quote, the King was his ruler and he did not have to acknowledge the authority of the Pope or the Church. End quote. He also spread word that the Puebloans, citing some obscure Spanish law which helps ease the transition into Christianity, but Eulate spread around that the people didn’t have to go to mass anymore or listen to the priests at all. Did Eulate love the Indians? Well he would later face charges in Mexico City of going on slave raids against the Navajo and Apache. Even more alarming, he was also charged with kidnapping orphaned children from among the various pueblos and either selling them in Mexico or allowing his patrons to use them as house servants. Not exactly a champion of the people.

His actions did encourage the government in New Spain to issue decrees limiting the number of puebloans who could be forced to work at one time and it even said they had to be paid from now on. This power play also further eroded the church’s ability to stamp out the Puebloans cultural practices… especially the kachinas. Eventually, the friars would excommunicate Governor Eulate and threaten to completely abandon the territory and this quote unquote antichrist. All of this helped further the violence that would erupt in the 1620s.

In 1621, Fray Martin de Arvide at Picurís Pueblo was smacked upside the head with a war club and dragged around the pueblo after he baptized a medicine man’s son without the medicine man’s permission. He would survive and flee the area… which wouldn’t see another catholic in the pueblo for seven years… Planting the seed that violence may work to intimidate the priests. Also in that year of 1621, A Fray Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón would reach the Jemez Pueblo, convert quite a few of the Jemez and even build a church in the mountain stronghold pueblo. But only two years later in 1623, the Jemez would burn it down and run back into the rugged mountains around them. At the Hopi Mesas, a Fray Francisco de Porras was poisoned to death in 1633. And then at Zuni, like I mentioned earlier, in 1632, a Fray Fransisco Letrado was also smacked upside the head by a war club many… many times. He would not survive. 5 days later, the aforementioned Arvide who he himself had been smacked upside the head, well he came to the Pueblo of Zuni only to find they’d killed his buddy. After letting the priest in and allowing him to feel comfortable though, the Zuni killed him too by shooting him with a Spanish arquebus… which is… pretty hardcore.

After that murder, the Zuni puebloans would flee en masse to their mesa top refuge known as Dowa Yalanne to escape what they knew would be Spanish justice. It came but the soldiers couldn’t do anything against the natural defenses of the mesa top refuge so they left. In 1635, the people would finally go back to their low lying pueblos. The Spanish wouldn’t return to Zuni until the mid 1640s. Again, violence appeared to get results for the Puebloans.

In reality, most of the Pueblos were left alone on a day to day basis by both the Spanish and the Priests. The year 1656 saw the most number of friars in the entire area at one time and that number is surprisingly low at only 46. The language barrier was also an impediment to the Spanish who frankly refused to learn any of the Puebloan languages. You’d think they’d at least try and learn the language of the people they’re trying to convert.

My father learned Mandarin in a few months in Salt Lake before he spent nearly two years in Taiwan. My brother learned Cantonese before he spent two years in Hong Kong. My childhood friend from Georgia was actually sent to Santa Fe and he preached among the Puebloans speaking Spanish and a few Puebloan words. It’s crazy to think these Friars lived in these places until they died, or at least fled back south as refugees, and they just never learned the language. How effective can that really be? So, for the most part in most areas of the Pueblo world, the Kachina cult and kivas continued to be used.

More violence would periodically erupt though. In 1639, at Taos, the Tiwa Governor by the name of Francisco was caught at a Kachina dance wearing the robes of a priest that had recently been murdered at the Pueblo. Along with the priest, two Spanish settlers had also been killed and the murderers actually made their way to Picurís afterwards to continue the murders but the friar there was warned and got away. Years later, Francisco would again be accused of murdering another Friar also at Taos. The Spanish governor at the time would investigate this second murder but would ultimately not punish anyone when it came to light that the friar was abusive. Francisco was ultimately, at least probably, hanged for his earlier crimes though.

Of course, the reality of Christianity and the Puebloans is a nuanced and layered conversation and history but it is worth noting that Christianity was occasionally appreciated and sometimes, especially during times of plenty and rain, but sometimes it was more readily accepted than at others. The Puebloans had a real appreciation for reciprocal gift giving and it was a hallmark of their culture prior to the Spanish and of course, it would survive the Spanish. And Christianity was one of those gifts they accepted. The Puebloans could see how important it was to the colonizers so their sharing of it was understood as a form of gift giving in and of itself. The Spanish also gave the Puebloans technology and foods that they used even after the coming Revolt, despite Popay commanding they forsake them. But the real problem with the RECIPROCAL part of gift giving is that from the very beginning with Coronado, the Spanish were mostly on the side of taking and not giving. Even Esteban was maybe killed because he asked for too much and gave little more than feathers in return. The Spanish seemed to take everything from food and clothing to technology, themselves. The Puebloans even taught the Spanish how to build adobe type homes. The Puebloan women were the home builders in their society but they taught the Spanish men to construct better homes in the harsh New Mexico environment. They also taught the Spanish about medical care. In the colony, and really, much of Europe at this time, the church, especially the friars were the doctors. And these priests just loved bloodletting. Headache? Bloodletting. Stomach ache? Let’s cut you open and bleed you dry. So when the puebloans were witnessed using plants and the world around them to heal their ailments, the Spanish colonists would sneak away and seek their help. A similar thing happened all over the new world, honestly. You just had to make sure no friars saw you and that no one was a snitch. Even in Europe at this time, or around 1500 to 1660, in many deep valleys or dark woods, in many villages far from city centers and big Christian churches, a lot of townsfolk would go and seek help from the far flung places that held onto the pagan ways of old Europe. Consequently during this time, it’s estimated that some 80,000 witches were executed on the Continent. I’m not sure the Spanish were executed in New Mexico iffin they were discovered, but it was certainly frowned upon and excommunication or the inquisition could await your future.

So, Christianity wasn’t always as reviled as it would come to be at the time of the Revolt but certainly when times were rough for the puebloans, they blamed the Catholic religion and the brown robes.

In 1637, the new governor, Luis de Rosas would take over and further flame the fires of Puebloan and Spanish hardships and strife amongst themselves and each other. But he’d also allow a lot of Puebloan autonomy to slip in as well. For one thing, like Eulate, Rosas hated the friars. He went so far as standing up in the middle of a sermon one time and calling the priest a liar in front of a packed church. What he actually said was, quote, Shut up, father, what you say is a lie! End quote.

At Pecos, Rosas made a deal with the leaders of the Pueblo that if they brought him tribute, instead of to the church and the friars, he’d let them practice their old religion and choose their own kachina captains. The murder of those aforementioned priests at Taos, the Friars absolutely blamed that incident on Governor Rosas. He would go on to close sweatshops being run by the friars and he would disallow the use of puebloan labor at the missions, period. No more Indian slave labor. Obviously, this was unacceptable to the priests.

After some revolts by the Spanish against Rosas which saw over half the soldiers side AGAINST him, he would force all church officials out of Santa Fe. A couple months later, when two priests returned to the city for whatever reason, he whipped em upside the head with a cane. In 1641, the Franciscan Friars drafted a letter and sent it around New Mexico. In that letter they accused Rosas of being a Calvinist and allowing the puebloans at Santa Fe to whip the statue of Jesus. Eventually Rosas was excommunicated, arrested, and jailed but he wouldn't survive his time. He’d be assassinated by being stabbed by a soldier in his cell. The perpetrator claimed he’d found his wife hiding under Rosas' bed after he’d returned from service. Later though, eight other soldiers were also convicted and beheaded.

All of this, did not help the Puebloans trust the church or the state, nor did it bolster the number of converts. But the times were gonna get more rough.

In the 1640s a terrible smallpox epidemic swept through the pueblos and killed an estimated 3,000 Indians. That’s a horrible amount of people, and at the same time, a punishing and prolonged drought settled onto the land, as it so often does in the American Southwest. All of this: the infighting and assassinations and beatings and deals with the puebloans and the hardships, all of it made it incredibly difficult to still believe in the Catholic magic the friars were trying to sell the puebloans. So with the help of Rosas relaxation, the people brought back what they knew and the Kachina cult began to be revived. The Puebloans got so brazen about it, that they even danced and chanted with their masks and costumes right out in the open, in front of the priests and friars. This had… a predictable outcome which left the puebloans severely punished.

One Hopi puebloan was brutally flogged after he was caught quote unquote worshipping idols. He was beat so bad that he was described as being bathed in blood… regardless of the severity of his injuries, the priest poured hot turpentine in the wounds. He would die from his punishment. At Taos, there were rumors of another priest who punished the wicked Puebloan children with castration and sodomy… That same priest would father a child with a puebloan woman and then pull a David from the Old Testament and have that woman’s husband killed. He then had the soldiers who did the murder for him hanged… 40 more puebloans were hanged for blasphemy and idol worship. 29 puebloans were hanged at Jemez during the crackdown agains the kachina cult. Their crime was allegedly aiding and abetting the enemy Navajo and Apache but that may have been pretense.

The Puebloans weren’t happy about the church either, obviously, and a tense feeling was beginning to percolate under the surface between the younger christianized Indians and the older conservative puebloans who were holding onto their old beliefs. Roberts describes this uneasy tension when he writes, quote, there were instances in which the traditionalists seized half-breed children fathered by concupiscent friars and beat them to death. End quote. Concupiscent means lustful. Roberts loved to use big words.

Then in 1659, the 19th Governor would arrive and enact, surprisingly enlightened reforms. That governor’s name is Bernardo López de Mendizábal and long before he was governor he had lived quite the life. He was born in Mexico, studied arts and law and then served as a soldier. When he went back to church law, his family forbade him to continue, probably dodged a bullet there. So instead he rejoined the military where he served as a soldier, judge, and governor. He served in South America. He served on ships at sea. He was a military mayor and a war captain. The man was respected, intelligent, and ready to lead New Mexico.

None of those things made him immune to what the power and position of the leader of that far flung province led men to, though. At first he was active in the slave trade, he enjoyed the fruits of puebloan manual labor, he hunted Apaches, and to top it all off, he would send out Puebloans and Indians with carts full of the fruits of their own labor to far off places after he’d made the sale so that they could be delivered… and then he would just… leave them there. Stranded far to the south in a land they knew nothing about. Yet, at the same time, one of the very first things he did as governor was to pass a law that would double the wage of a puebloan laborer and he further lowered the amount of work that could be hoisted upon them. Knaut writes of Mendizábal’s written justification of his law change by citing the common knowledge, quote, of the tyranny with which the Indians of New Mexico were generally used, end quote, he goes on to write, but an outcry among the Hispanic settlers was inevitable. End all quotes.

This again, wasn’t… maybe, necessarily done out of the kindness of his heart but because he wanted the church to have less control in the territory, but… it is important to know that his mom was half indigenous, which made him a fourth Indigenous so maybe… he had a soft spot for his distant Puebloan cousins. I’m not sure of his true intentions and writings from this later time period are apparently hard to come by. I say apparently because as deep and researched as this podcast over this epic and sprawling event of conquest, ruling, and eventual revolt in New Mexico is, I did not go out and read first hand accounts from the Spanish or the Puebloans. I’m not writing the new definitive history of the event after all… unless a publisher wants to pay me for that.

From what i can tell, Governor Mendizábal came to the region and immediately set out to get some personal gain, like every governor assigned to the area does, and will continue to do, but at the same time, he enacted his changes to the laws and the relaxation on the Puebloans to help ease their suffering. The man had travelled the world, honestly, and what he saw in New Mexico, probably angered and saddened him. Compared to other Spanish outposts in the New World, if I haven’t made it clear already, it was a backwater hell hole to the people who were assigned the territory and the people who were already living there. Constant droughts, fear from the puebloans, civil strife between church and state, it was a nightmare, as many governors before him had also noticed. And it wasn’t hard to equate that nightmare with the stranglehold the church had on its parishioners, their non-believing neighbors, and even the land itself.

The church took all choice farm land. It took choice plots to build the church buildings, it took choice animals sent up from Mexico, and it took choice crops and textiles from the people to keep in storehouses. Sure, the Chaco Aztec Altepetl probably did the same thing in the Great Houses as the church is doing now but… well, we saw how that worked out in the end with the Anasazi Civil War in the 1200s and many of them heading down south… there’s a good chance… that same thing happens in 1680 with the Spanish. Spoiler alert, it does happen.

About those choice plots of land the church occupied, Mendizábal absolutely resented that the friars owned and worked those plots with the puebloans labor. Here’s a great extended quote from Knaut which will also quote the governor himself:

He clearly resented the clergy's monopoly over labor in those pueblos in which missions were located, as evidenced in a letter from the governor to Fray Diego de Santander dated July 20, 1660. In response to Santander's charges that he was not cooperating in the effort to Christianize the Pueblos, López de Mendizábal replied that although he did not know the extent to which the Indians understood the Christian faith, he was quite sure that they did know how "to guard and herd an infinite number of livestock, to serve as slaves, and to fill barns with grain, cultivated and harvested with their own blood, not for their humble homes, but for those of the friars.” Later, the governor would offer his opinion that "it cannot be to the interest of divine worship ... that [the friars] should keep the Indians in dungeons and work-shops weaving frieze and sackcloth to be sold there and sent to other provinces for which they maintain the shops right in the convents. End all quotes.

To battle the ease with which the churches used Puebloan manual labor, Mendizábal would next do away with the practice of exempting the Indians who had converted and were baptized from paying tribute. Now, everyone had to pay tribute to the Spanish so instead of working for the church, they had to work to produce enough for themselves and for the tribute that they still owed the Crown and the governor. Mendizábal would go on to call the friars, at best “drunken fools.”  He truly detested the Catholics in New Mexico and was surprisingly harsh and brutal against them. As harsh and brutal to the friars as they were to their parishioners. Mendizábal then went on a grand tour of the pueblo, as all governors did, but this time around it was mainly a fact finding venture of gathering complaints against the clergy, which he actively encouraged the retelling of by the people.

Knaut writes of this tour, quote, during one of these sessions in the pueblo of Alamillo, López de Mendizábal listened to the accusations of a native woman against the resident friar, a man ninety years old, claiming that the priest had engaged in sexual relations with her and then denied the woman a prearranged payment. The governor forced the friar to pay the woman her claims, an event that caused "all the Indians of that pueblo, both men and women, and other persons who went with [López de Mendizábal] and saw the circumstance, to laugh immoderately, as if ridiculing the minister. End quote.

Another oft heard complaint was like that last accusation… many of the puebloan women claimed they stopped going to confession because the priests would solicit for sexual favors from the booth. One friar at the pueblo of Tajique was alleged to have slept with 40 of his parishioners. Another at Taos had slept with a woman, cut her throat, and then had another friar bury her somewhere in the church… which… Mendizábal himself wrote of that crime:

The governor himself told the story of the arrest of Fray Luis Martinez for this friar having committed the execrable crime of forcing a woman, cutting her throat, and burying her in an office, or cell, in the convento of Los Taos. [López de Mendizábal] reported the case to the prelate and asked him to take proper measures, lest Fray Luis Martinez commit another crime, he having returned to those pueblos, or lest the Indians there should kill him and revolt, as they did on another occasion because of an event like this. . .. The investigation . .. of the case was made at the request of the Indians; for Fray Juan Lobato had buried the body of the dead woman in the church, having taken it from the cell, or office, secretly so that it might not be known. End quote. That is some medieval church intrigue if I’ve ever heard any. And also… pretty abhorrent.

Eventually after he learned of the friar who’d slept with 40 women and fathered a child with a married woman and the sham of a trial afterwards, Mendizábal would stop the power of the friars from handing down excommunications. One of their biggest threats and tools. The church would write to new Spain and declare that if they didn’t get help soon, they were leaving. All of ‘em. Indeed, many did actually leave their churches and missions. Which caused those churches and missions to be abandoned by the converted puebloans. At some pueblos, there wasn’t a single Christian showing up to mass. Again, this was great for the puebloans but… don’t be mistaken, Mendizábal was absolutely getting his fill of money and goods and had no qualms using puebloans to achieve it for himself. Even still…

Mendizábal would go on to do the seemingly unthinkable. After receiving many requests from the puebloans to lift the ban on kachina dances and then watching a kachina dance himself and finding quote unquote, nothing devilish, he granted general permission for them to be performed throughout the pueblo world. But only if they performed them above ground in the plaza and not in their kivas.

Almost immediately the pueblo world of New Mexico and Arizona erupted in riotous and happy kachina dances as quickly as the word could spread. Older puebloans returned from exile to teach the old dances. Even Spaniards were seen and witnessed dancing with the puebloans long into the night for many nights by the friars, who… were frankly, appalled. But to make matters worse, some of these quote unquote rowdy Spaniards would head to their own homes afterwards and continue to dance the Kachina dances, except in various states of undress… and right outside in the open! The people, clearly, were elated. And the friars could do nothing about it. At least… for a little while.

In the spring of 1661, a new head friar fray Alonzo de Posadas had been sent up from New Spain and he wasn’t about to let this heresy continue. And then right behind him, in August, a new governor also arrived and he had Posadas back completely.

By November the ban was put back into place, the masks and anything associated with the kachinas was to be collected, church attendance was forced upon the puebloans, and the laws which Mendizábal had written to ease the burden on the Indians were overturned. And obviously Mendizábal was arrested and sent south to Mexico City to stand before the inquisition. On his way to prison he would say, quote, Look, gentlemen, there is no longer God or king, since such a thing could happen to a man like me. No! No! There is no longer God or king! End quote. He would die in his cell still waiting for trial a year and a half later. With everything Mendizábal had done to help the puebloans overturned and the pendulum swinging wildly in the other direction, the stage was set for the people who had ever so briefly tasted sweet freedom to begin to fume at the repression that was again rained down upon them. One historian who shares my last name, Carroll Riley would write that it was here, the friars launched a quote, Franciscan war on native religion. End quote. As if they hand’t been waging that war the entire time. But now they had the ammunition.

Despite the fact that the King of Spain outlawed slavery in his kingdom in the 1660s, the puebloans and their neighbors would still suffer at the hands of the Spanish clergy and state from servitude and slave raids. Sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, these slave raids were the only way for these governors to get any sort of lasting financial or political worth out of the post of being assigned to new Mexico. And their great distance from Madrid and Mexico City made it a whole lot easier to get away with this evil illegal stuff as well. And on top of all that, the Governor’s were sometimes encouraging the Puebloans to do the raiding of slaves for themselves. Not only were slave raids allowed but the kidnapping of children from pueblos and Athabaskans under false pretenses was occurring enough for one Fray Alonso de Benavides to complain to the Governor at the time that it was appalling that the Spanish were allowed to quote, take Indian boys and girls from the pueblos on the pretext that they are orphans, and take them to serve permanently in houses of Spaniards where they remain as slaves. End quote. This had the obvious effect of angering the Athabaskans who would take it out on those pueblos. Especially the pueblos which were furthest from Spanish control.

Historically the Puebloans would trade extensively with the nomadic tribes for buffalo products or things beyond the great plains or down into Mexico. They weren’t always enemies although they had their squabbles. The Apaches and Navajos would sometimes slip into Puebloan communities 3 or 4 at a time and steal stuff in the dead of night. Occasionally a group of 100 or more would come and make war on the Puebloans when it was felt someone had been wronged or to avenge the death of a loved one. Unfortunately though, the Spanish fueled this occasional animosity and complicated the relationship. Part of this is because the Puebloans stopped having things to trade because the Spanish took so much of the community’s goods when they collected their tribute. Another part is the fact that the Puebloans now had metal, horses, and other exotic grains and goods introduced by the Spanish, which were an incredibly appealing target for raids and theft. And then there’s the Spanish counter raids and theft of people themselves.

At first, the Spanish kept the nomadic Indians at bay but pretty quickly into the occupation, their defensive influence wained. Although, they’d still lead war parties against the nomadic tribes as punishment for their encroachment. After all, the Spanish were also there to defend the Puebloans, not just take their stuff and baptize them. And honestly, if Apache raiders took off with a bunch of loot, that’s less loot for the Spanish. Despite that occasional protection, as the Revolt approached, the Navajo, Apaches, and Comanches were all stepping up the number and severity of their raids agains the Puebloans.

In 1677, the largest influx of people into the territory since Ońate’s reinforcements which, remember, ultimately left shortly after their arrival, but the largest influx of newcomers to the territory happened in that year of 1677 when 43 new soldiers arrived fresh from Mexico. Granted, 40 of them were in chains, and were convicted criminals who were only there as soldiers to serve out their punishments… what could possibly go wrong there?

That occasional protection by the Spanish soldiers though, would actually see the Puebloans and the Spanish fight side by side against their nomadic sometimes enemies which meant, although the native Americans weren’t allowed to use the horses or the arquebuses, they were certainly learning HOW to use them. In reality they had to have known how to use an arquebus cause they shot that Fray at Zuni pueblo with one and killed him. Roberts says this in Pueblo Revolt of the side by side fighting, quote, through close observation, the canny war captains learned much about European styles of warfare. Unwittingly, the Spanish were training the fighting force that would soon turn against them. End quote.

And the turning was quickly approaching. Things were somehow, getting even more bleak in the Land of Enchantment for the Puebloans, and this catholic religion with all its sermons and praying and bells, and the governors with their pendulum swinging laws, they wasn’t fixing the problems that beset the Peubloans on all sides. The rain wasn’t coming so the corn wasn’t growing. The epidemics, mostly smallpox with a second one popping up in 1671, continued destroying and killing and inflicting death at a scale we can thankfully only wonder at. Despite the passing of laws, the slave raids from the Spanish down south had returned and the violent raids from the northerner Indians of the Apache and Navajos had intensified, partly in reaction to the slave raids. These raids, especially from the Apache, coupled with a drought that was going on for 5 years in the 70s, and starvation, just massive starvation, would eventually force entire villages, 6 pueblos at least, but probably more, in one year alone, 6 pueblos were abandoned in some parts of New Mexico… like the Salinas Pueblo and surrounding region… a place I have been to over a decade ago and a place that’s rarely visited but sports some awesome ruins and some very unique history when it comes to the Spanish and the Puebloans. I’m getting off topic here but it seems like the Spanish DIDN’T build their church on top of the Kiva at Salinas, but rather next door. And it seems like the two peoples, the Spaniard Colonists and the Puebloans got along a lot better than up north. Probably due to their being cut off and down south.

In the greater context of the entirety of New Mexico though those Salinas pueblos weren’t as cut off from Santa Fe as Santa Fe was cut off from New Spain. The Indians, especially Apaches, after years of raids down south, had gotten great at riding horses and attacks on convoys between the two major Spanish centers forced the convoys to slow and occasionally stop coming altogether. Bureaucratic nightmares also ensued when various peoples along the convoy route from New Spain to Santa Fe, known as the camino real, but the land owners along the route argued over who even owned the major and only artery that led to Santa Fe. Also, Knaut says of the 750 mile stretch from northern Mexico to Santa Fe that it quote, passed through territory reputed to be some of the most forbidding in the New World. End quote. Unpredictable waters that could flood or be completely dried up, a ninety mile journey through incredibly dangerous desert, deep and dry arroyos, rugged and sharp mountains, high winds, sandstorms, thunderstorms, hail storms, snow storms, torrential rains, wild and steep mesas, wild animals, wild plants, and wild peoples made the journey to that land of entrapment all the more difficult and unpleasant and seemingly impossible… unless you went in large, heavily armed, and expensive convoys. And asking for the men, weapons, and money to make the trek became increasingly difficult as time wore on for the colony.

Not to mention the Apaches were becoming increasingly warring and violent against the puebloans and Spaniards in New Mexico in general as they began to strangle the territory. In 1669, a Fray Juan Bernal would write, quote, the whole land is at war with the widespread heathen nation of the Apache Indians, who kill all the christian Indians they can find and encounter. No road is safe; everyone travels at risk of his life, for the heathen traverse them all, being courageous and brave, and they hurl themselves at danger like people who know no god nor that there is any hell. End quote.

The Apache even burned down that Zuni pueblo I mentioned in the beginning that had been around since forever, the Pueblo of Hawikuh. They burned it and the church down and carried away a thousand people and their livestock. Down south of Albuquerque in those pueblos I mentioned above, the Salinas Pueblos, at Abo, the Apaches killed many inhabitants and the friar. But not before stripping him naked, flogging him, and beating him horribly around the head until he died. Then they surrounded his dead body with a circle of slaughtered white lambs.

By this point, and going forward, starvation, disease, distrust, and every other thing mentioned previously had dwindled the number of defenders of the land and especially of each pueblo to a useless number. This is also why so many less pueblos existed 80 years after the Spanish arrived. They were continuously gathering together out of necessity. Gathering together and gathering either south near El Paso, out of the territory and closer to New Spain, or closer to Santa Fe and to the Spanish settlers there. Meanwhile, the entire land was growing more and more isolated from New Spain.

This increased isolation would shatter Oñate’s dream of keeping the puebloans and the settlers separate and by 1670, the line had been so blurred that the coming revolt would truly be a civil war affair. By that time, there were barely any Spaniards who weren’t mixed. Even still, these blurred lines weren’t necessarily a good thing for the Puebloans who would continue to suffer. Not just from the Spanish but also from their fellow puebloans who were slowly siding with the Spanish. At this late of a date before the Revolt, quite a few rebellions were planned but none completed or even really started. Some plans died because of antipathy by the puebloans close to the Spanish. Others died when they were ratted out by those same Indians close to the Spaniards.

So for many Puebloans, it was time for a change and it was time to get these Catholics and spaniards out of their lands that they’d inhabited since at least the end of the Anasazi Civil War but obviously for some of the Puebloans for much much longer than that. Some of these people had no doubt been in the region since the end of the Alti Thermal some 5,000 years before the Civil War, like I mentioned earlier. Their numbers though… were dwindling. According to Roberts, quote, in the course of the 130 years since Coronado's entrada, the total Puebloan population had been reduced by more than 75 percent, from an estimated 80,000 to less than 20,000. End quote. That is just a heartbreaking number… and it’s so high due to the same malice that wiped out most of the entire hemisphere. That unstoppable and evil force of disease… So the shamans and religious leaders did the only thing they knew to do and they began putting hexes and curses on the robed foreigners in the hopes of their swift demise… As Roberts puts it, quote, It is not, perhaps, going too far to see New Mexico in the 1670s as a colony gone collectively mad. End quote.

Five years before the Revolt though, in 1675, after the curses were placed and the seething anger was almost at an eruption point, after the people had suffered tremendously and were still suffering, the last domino fell when Governor Juan Francisco Treviño ordered that all kivas be destroyed. He also issued a zero tolerance policy on all native religions, practices, and the kachinas. He then rounded up a whole bunch of malcontents and miscreants after it was discovered that four friars had had hexes placed on them and more egregiously after seven friars and three Spaniards had been murdered at the Tewa pueblos. Because of the murders and the witchcraft, the remaining friars scoured the countryside and gathered every idol, kachina, powder, and feather they could find. Anything related to the puebloans traditional life was rounded up for burning. At the same time, 47 puebloan quote unquote sorcerers were rounded up and taken to Santa Fe for trial. Four of these men were sentenced to death by hanging and the sentence was carried out… although one of them had already hanged himself. The other 43, were given various sentences of either imprisonment, servitude, flogging, or most likely, all three.

This though, was simply too much after such a troubling time for the Puebloans to bear. In the largest amassing of native Americans against Santa Fe, probably up to this point, the angry puebloans marched en masse to the capital. On the way there, they left many reinforcements in the hills around the town before 70 armed and angry warriors descended on the governor’s own quarters. They were completely intent on killing him if he did not free their holy men prisoners that the Spanish were punishing as sorcerers and they made that very clear.

Kessell, in Kiva, Cross, & Crown says this of the incident:

Sensing the mood of these uninvited guests, Treviño accepted their eggs and other offerings, gave them some woolen blankets, and reportedly said about the prisoners, lamely, quote, Wait a while, children; I will give them to you and pardon them on condition that you forsake idolatry and iniquity. End quotes.

In the end, he would indeed give the imprisoned men back over to the Puebloans who now believed and held a little hope that a rebellion could actually succeed. Force had yet again proven effective.  But one man in particular, a man who had just been arrested, flogged, and then released was going to make the entire Revolt a reality and not just a hope. Roberts says of this man, quote, His very name, as far as we can judge, unknown to any Spaniard, Popé -a shaman from San Juan Pueblo, some forty-five years old-returned to his home and began to brood on the vision that had been forming in his mind even before the flogging he had publicly endured. End quote.

Next time the Revolt will erupt, the Spanish will be kicked out, the Puebloans will be free, but life under Popay won’t be quite as rosy as advertised. And ultimately the Reconquista will occur and the whole dance will begin anew. Stay tuned and I’ll be seeing you again soon… in the American Southwest.

Winds from the North, Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology by Scott Ortman

The Lost World of the Old Ones by David Roberts

The Pueblo Revolt by David Roberts

Kiva, Cross, and Crown by John Kessell

Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest by Steven Plog

A Study of Southwestern Archaeology by Stephen Lekson

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by Andrew L Knaut

Popay's Leadership: A Pueblo Perspective by Alfonso Ortiz

Pope, Pose-yemu, and Naranjo: A New Look at Leadership in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by Stefanie Beninato

https://newmexiconomad.com/esteban-the-moor/