The Spanish Southwest: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 or the First True American Revolution

He said that what they had done had been because of a Tewa Indian named El Popé, who had made them all crazy and was like a whirlwind. He had told them and given them to understand that the father of all the Indians, their great captain, who had been such since the world had been inundated, had ordered the said Popé to tell all the Pueblos to rebel and to swear that they would do so; that no religious and no Spanish person must remain, and that after this they would live as in ancient times.

Declaration of Diego López, December 22, 1681, 16 months after the Revolt.

In February of 1677, three and a half years before the Revolt, soon to be appointed governor of New Mexico, don Antonio de Otermín would leave El Paso along with a thirty four year old Spanish Father Francisco de Ayeta, fifty convict soldiers and their leaders, one hundred more arquebuses, one hundred more sword and dagger hilts, fifty each saddles, bridles, & spurs, and one thousand horses… and they were all headed for that far flung colony to the north. That colony that so desperately was waiting for the right moment to explode and set off the chain of events that would forever cement it in the history books as the only successful, if for however brief, but New Mexico and its indigenous population were biding their time for the moment to strike against their overlords and become the only successful Native rebellion in the New World. That time wouldn’t be for another 3 years but the writing was on the wall and many colonists could see it. Many, but not all…

The following year, in 1678, Fray Francisco de Ayeta returned back to Mexico City with pleading words of more soldiers and supplies, hoping they would not fall on deaf ears. He was apparently, one of the Spanish that could see the growing discontent of the Native American Puebloans and he being a priest, meaning he was out among the Puebloans all the time remember, Ayeta would have been in his duties as a priest, one of the only Spanish to be among the natives, but Father Ayeta could clearly see the pot was already boiling. John Kessell in his 1978 Kiva, Cross, & Crown writes of the friar, quote:

The indefatigable Ayeta was back in Mexico City urging another fifty men armed and outfitted as the previous ones but, he’s now quoting Ayeta, quote, omitting the thousand horses that went then and applying the three thousand pesos of their value to the maintenance of the men. End Ayeta’s quote. Moreover, a fifty-man presidio, like the one in Sinaloa, should be established in Santa Fe at royal expense, at least for a decade. When the viceregal government forwarded Ayeta's new proposals to Spain, he loaded up the next shipment of mission supplies and headed north for a third time. Reining up at El Paso in the heat of mid-summer 1680, he found the great silty-brown river in flood. It was here on August 25 that the strong-willed friar received news from New Mexico that would have caused an Old Testament prophet to cry out in anguish and rend his garments. It had finally happened, quoting Ayeta again, the disaster that has threatened so many times. End quote. Father Ayeta fell on his knees in prayer. End all quotes.

In the previous episode, we covered the entire history of the Spanish in New Mexico from the moment the washed up Cabeza de Vaca crew passed through the area and right up to the moment before the leader of the forthcoming revolt, Popay, would send out his knotted cords of Yucca to the participating pueblos which told them exactly when they would unite, probably for the first time, but exactly when they would unite together to shuck off the yoke of Spanish religious and civil dominion… If you haven’t listened to it or the previous entries in this series about the history of the Native Americans since before the end of the ice age, I know, that’s a lot of history… but I suggest you go back and take a listen if you’re not caught up. But for everyone else… let’s finally dive into this tale of what’s been called the first true American Revolution.

We should start the episode about the Revolt talking about the Revolt’s main author and leader. And that man’s name is Popay. Popay seems to have been a very important person in his pueblo, that pueblo being Ohkay Owingeh or the Pueblo of San Juan as it was known back then. And you’ll remember that that pueblo was the original capital of the Spanish before it moved to Santa Fe. And that Pueblo was filled with Tewa speaking Puebloans who had only in the last couple hundred years or so travelled from Mesa Verde to the Rio Grande. A theme which Popay will borrow… but before the events of the Revolt, it appears Popay’s hatred of the Spanish and religious was a lifelong hatred since he never did take a Christian name. Also, I read somewhere he was probably the head of the summer moiety of the pueblo.

I haven’t talked much about the moieties of the Pueblos, mostly because I don’t know too much about them, and partly because I focused instead on the Kachina aspect of Puebloan culture instead of the moieties but just know that the two are kinda sorta similar, kachinas and moieties, and the two ways of setting up the society have similar functions and histories… The Summer moiety is one of two moieties in the pueblo, especially Tewa Pueblos, and the head of the summer moiety was most likely, among many other things, the cacique or the tribal chief. He was probably also the War Chief. That of course, was a very condensed and quick version of the moieties which I am now wishing I had covered a little in my previous episode about the Kachinas but again, the idea and practice is quite similar to the Kachinas except again, the moieties mostly come from the Tewa speaking pueblos which came from the Mesa Verde area and the Kachinas are mostly Hopi which would have been left over Anasazi / Ancestral Puebloans so there is a difference going back from before the civil war… anyways, all of that is to say Popay was a popular and powerful man at the San Juan Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo!

Which would help explain why so many of his brethren marched on the governor’s palace, Governor Treviño’s palace in 1675 to demand the release of not only Popay but all of the other respected Puebloans who had been captured, if you’ll remember the end of the previous episode. In reality, since that boiling over of hostilities and the Puebloan march on the palace, instead of reading the room and cooling things down, the Spanish and Catholics ramped up the persecution in the colony or as Kessell puts it, quote, church and colonial officials continued to advocate a policy of unforgiving repression against acts of nativism in the Pueblo community. End quote. And that didn’t stop when the new governor, Otermín came into town. Most of that is because the author of Treviño’s policies, a Francisco Javier, who was both the ex and new governor’s secretary of government and secretary of war, but this Francisco Javier cracked down hard on the Puebloans for their beliefs and practices and he’d inspire Popay to act violently, or at least to believe that violence was the only answer. We’ll talk more on Javier later, he was quite well known among the Puebloans, it turns out.

So Popay was probably head of the Summer Moiety of his Pueblo which made him somewhat of a warrior leader, he did not take a Christian name, and he was viewed as a holy man by his people. After the Treviño event where he was humiliated, he found San Juan to be too close to the Spanish and the capital of Santa Fe so he hightailed it outta there and went up north and up into the mountains to the pueblo of Taos where for the next few years, he’d plot and plan the Pueblo revolt. And he was deadly serious about this revolt. Serious enough to have his very own son in law, the leader or governor of the Pueblo of San Juan, the pueblo he grew up in and had just fled from, but Popay was so serious about this plan actually working this time that he would have his own son in law killed, the governor of San Juan, Nicholas Bua. It seems Bua would have been more than happy to turn his plans over to the Spanish so, okay… justified. But… you’ve got to wonder how his daughter felt about the murder.

Up at Taos, away from the prying eyes of the Spanish and the doubtful Puebloans like his late son in law, the legend goes that Popay planned the Revolt from the Kivas of that often forgotten and far off pueblo in the mountains. Taos was one of the most northerly pueblos in all of the Rio Grande Valley and even though it really wasn’t that far from Santa Fe, it felt like a world away to the Spanish and just on the other side of the Sangre de Christo were the much feared and hated Apache. And the Utes. And the Navajos. At Taos, in these Kivas, the legend says that Popay met with both the Kachinas and with three figures who never left the kiva and together with the kachinas and these possibly real possibly not real legendary men, Popay planned the revolt. One of these legendary kiva men was said to have been a giant black man with yellow eyes which I read may have been a real figure, that of an escaped black slave from Mexico who had married a Taos woman. Again, the story is uncorroborated.

After the revolt, an elderly man named Pedro Naranjo would be captured by Otermín and would give this description of what was going on at Taos with Popay and his kiva:

At one point there appeared to the said Pope three figures of Indians who never came out of the estufa. They gave the said Popé to understand that they were going underground to the lake of Copala. He saw these figures emit fire from all the extremities of their bodies, and that one of them was called Caudi, another Tilini, and the other Tleume; and these three beings spoke to the said Popé. End quote. He goes on to say that these beings told him to turn the clock back to before the Europeans showed up because, quote, the God of the Spaniards was worth nothing and theirs was very strong, the Spaniard's God being rotten wood. End quote. More about this captured Naranjo later.

So being careful to select puebloan leaders who were both sympathetic to the cause and who had enough influence over their people to make this thing happen, Popay began to carefully and with the threat of death if word got out… but Popay began to carefully spread word of the coming revolution. He would have secret meetings with war captains and shamans from Pueblos around New Mexico, mostly on Saint Day Festivals so as not to arouse suspicion. A Tewa war chief from San Ildefonso, a prominent Keresan leader, Picuris Pueblo chiefs, as well as chiefs and leaders and war captains from Santo Domingo, Teseque, and Santa Clara, and a host of others were all on board, and by the summer of 1680, it had been decided, and the date had been picked. That date, was August 12th, 1680, weeks before the resupply caravan would arrive with food and possible reinforcements, because remember… some Spanish could see the writing on the wall. Some, but not all.

One of those Spaniards who simply could not, or was totally unwilling to see the writing on the wall was the brand spankin’ new governor, Antonio de Otermín. Not much is known today, or at least, I couldn’t find out too much on Otermín’s birth or early life. Although, it’s speculated that he was born between 1620 and 1630 in Spain, where his name may have actually been Otromin. Not really sure what’s going on there with the name change and such. All that’s really known for sure is that he was made governor in 1678 and he took office in 1679. But even those dates of 67-69 are sometimes jumbled with the sources. I suppose his early life isn’t as important as what happens to him during our story… the Pueblo Revolt.

During his first few months of being in the territory, Otermín actually received quite a few warnings from the puebloans that the revolt was coming but, it seems, he ignored them completely. While it was most likely Otermín’s fault that the Revolt was able to take root, a good bit of blame also should land squarely on the shoulders of the aforementioned Javier. At the time, the new Governor seems to have relegated almost all of his authority, while he was settling in, to that man, his Maese de Campo, Francisco Javier who has been quoted as being, quote unquote, a man of bad faith, avaricious and sly. The NPS, or National Park Service Website describes Javier as being a well built man with quote, very gray hair and the scar of an old wound across the left side of his forehead. End quote. The website goes on to describe how his actions had driven the Puebloans of New Mexico to the end of their breaking point with his aforementioned cruel ways which of course, also including some slave raids of Apaches. Naturally… The consequences of those actions and a lot like it are in detail in the previous episode which you should take a listen to, if you have not. But regardless of wether not the blame belongs to Javier or to Otermín, the truth is, 20 days before the Revolt… 20… days… the Pro-Spanish faction of Puebloans at Pecos warned Otermín that the rebellion was coming. Otermín is alleged to have replied with, quote, have them put in prison until Maese de campo Francisco Javier arrives. End quote. By them, Otermín means the two Tesuque puebloan Indian messengers, put the messengers in prison until Javier can come and interrogate them. The two puebloan men who very easily could have been murdered for giving up the game and snitching on the revolt.  Their warnings were not heeded though and the Revolt went on as scheduled… almost… as scheduled.

On August 9th, three days before the Revolt, 17 days after Otermín was initially warned, two runners, men named Catua and Omtua were sent from Popay himself with knotted cords of maguey, an agave type of plant, but Catua and Omtua were sent out with their knotted cords to all the pueblos that were participating in the revolt. They were to run, as puebloans and native Americans in general were so good at doing back then, as we discussed, but they were to run to each participating pueblo where they were to hand over the knotted cords to the leaders of the pueblos and those leaders of the pueblos were to untie one knot per morning until there were no more knots and on the morning when the knots had ceased, the revolt was to commence. And this was on pain of death from Popay himself. He had even decreed about the Pueblo of San Marcos, that if they failed to join in the assault, a horde of puebloans, led by himself, would come down from the north, like they had in days long past, and kill every villager, man, woman, and child, old and young. The day of destiny had been marked and the puebloans had their orders.

The Piro pueblos, those pueblos south of Albuquerque I talked about, the ones that had a seemingly special relationship with the Spanish because it appears the Spanish built their churches next to the kivas and not on top, and the pueblos which were on the hinterland and subject to many attacks by Apaches and Comanches and other bands of Indians which roamed the land, these Piro pueblos were excluded from the Revolt because of this very special relationship with the Spanish, which of course, makes sense, but it turns out, more should have been excluded as well. Because on the 9th, that very same day that the two runners were sent with their knotted cords, on the 9th, the leaders of the pueblos of Pecos, San Marcos, San Cristobal, and La Ciénega, at the last moment and despite the threat of death and destruction, opted out of Popay’s Revolt. These leaders then sent word to Otermín of the coming pain with one of them saying, quote, all the nations of this kingdom were now implicated in it, forming a confederation with the heathen apaches so that, on the night of the thirteenth of the current month, they might carry out their disobedience, perfidious treason, and atrocities. End quote.

Back at the Palace of the Governors, Otermín was already getting an earful from not one, but two friars with news of a coming widespread large scale revolt. And then a mayor from the province arrived with the same news. It could no longer be ignored. Finally, Otermín sent out soldiers to arrest these two runners from Tesuque, Catua and Omtua, and bring them in for questioning. 

But it was too late. At Tesuque, when the Maese de campo, not Javier, but a Francisco Gomez Robledo was there to arrest the runners, the puebloans were counter alerted to the Spanish’ knowledge of their impending actions. So in response, the Puebloans sent out more messengers throughout all the land to spread the word of the new date of the Revolt. The new date of the very next morning. The 10th of August, 1680.

Back at Santa Fe, the two runners were interrogated on the 9th of August, they would reveal to Otermín that the revolt was set for the 12th and there was nothing they could do about it because if they did not revolt the puebloans themselves would be killed by it. All were now on board. Otermín, realizing the seriousness of the situation sent runners and soldiers throughout the land, telling people to beware, a revolt was forthcoming in a matter of days… or so they thought.

That night, the night of the 9th, at Tesuque Pueblo, Cristobal de Herrera, a Spaniard, became the first official victim when the puebloans murdered him. He would be the first in a long line of long simmering death that was to be unleashed upon the Spanish and their religious. It was an attempted genocide. An attempt at time travel. The Revolt was to set everything right and bring the Puebloans back into their state of pre-Spanish life, whatever that may have been.

The next morning, August 10th, a soldier named Hidalgo and a friar named Pio set out from Santa Fe towards Tesuque to give mass to the humble puebloan people. When they arrived though, the town was seemingly deserted. So the two searched the pueblo for any souls who were ready to hear that day’s mass but when they finally found the people, it wasn’t a bunch of church goers they came across. Instead the men and warriors were readying themselves for war. They were painting themselves, arming themselves, and amassing in formation of the coming rebellion. In typical friar fashion, the man, eager to meet god, tried to reason with the puebloans after telling them quote, what is this children, are you mad? Do not disturb yourselves, I will die a thousand deaths for you. End quote. And then he did. Pedro Hidalgo, the soldier on the other hand, barely escaped with his life and rode hard back to Santa Fe to tell Otermín what he no doubt knew already. The Revolt had begun.

In Kiva, Cross, and Crown, Kessell writes of an interaction between two Spaniards on that fateful morning:

Like a brush fire in the wind, word of the planned uprising had spread from San Cristóbal to all the Tano pueblos, and to Father Custos Juan Bernal. Bernal had alerted Alcalde mayor Nieto and the other Spaniards, who gathered up their families and made for Galisteo. The next day, (the 10th of August) while Pedro was chopping weeds in a plot of maize on the Nieto estancia, he looked up to see Bartolomé, cantor mayor of the pueblo of Galisteo, coming toward him, his eyes filled with tears. "What are you doing here?," asked Pedro. The hysterical reply, if Pedro's memory served him, went something like this: The Indians want to kill the custos and the other Fathers and Spaniards! They say that the Indian who kills a Spaniard will get an Indian woman, whichever one he wants, as his wife. He who kills four Spaniards will take four, and he who kills ten or more will have that many women for wives. They say they have to kill all the servants of the Spaniards and those who speak Spanish. And they have also ordered that everyone take off their rosaries and burn them. Hurry, get going with your wife and the little orphan girl you have, and perhaps you will be fortunate enough to make it to where the Spaniards are gathered and escape. End quote. Like a brushfire in the wind is a good description.

In a beautifully bound and illustrated set of books my wife and I recently picked up Called the Old West from 1980, the book on Spanish West says this of that morning, quote, as Otermín sent soldiers to verify the report, other couriers raced in. The missionaries at san Ildefonso and Nambe had been slain. The church at San Juan was ablaze. Outlying haciendas had been attacked, and the toll was great: Doña Petronila de Salas and her 10 children- dead. The entire family of General Pedro de Leiva- dead. 38 persons at the Dominguez de Mendoza hacienda- dead. End quote.
Outside of Santa Fe, where Otermín sat, horrified by the news, there were approximately 17,000 angry puebloans. Well, not all of them were angry, but enough of them were to have sparked the revolution. Otermín’s first thought, was probably on the couple hundred to a thousand Spaniards that resided there and that he had just taken control of as their protector. His first thoughts were probably on keeping those still alive, alive. His second thought though, was apparently to protect the churches, because he sent word out that the men in every pueblo should gather around the church to protect them from being defiled. His third thought was to find his Lt. Governor Alonso Garcia who was down south. All the while, the reports of violence and death continued to flood in. Now Pojoaque and Cayamungue had fallen. And the violence was spreading.

In Santa Fe itself, Otermín ordered all weapons and people to be brought to the governors palace and the casas reales, which was the old thick walled government buildings on the north side of the Plaza that bordered the palace. Once gathered, he distributed the weapons to any man or boy, any male who could fight and that could use them, which was the low number of only about 100. He then set up a guard at the church, and guards around the palace. It was time to hunker down for a possible siege.

Meanwhile, over the next three days, word of the revolt would pour into Santa Fe and Otermín’s ears like blood from an open wound. Taos and Piquris were rebelling. The Jemez Pueblos, the Tewa speaking people’s pueblos were also in open rebellion. Santa Clara, all of the pueblos from Tesuque to San Juan. Captains, wives, children, friars, sympathetic puebloans, all who stood in the puebloan’s way were being killed. La Cienega, San Marcos, Pecos Pueblos were rebelling. The puebloans were using arquebuses and even more troubling, horses and all the while, they were stealing more weapons and horses. Not to mention, word from his second in command had not been returned. It didn’t look like the soldiers and horses he desperately needed were coming from Alonso Garcia.

By the 5th day, the plains around Santa Fe and even the houses and buildings on the outskirts of town had been occupied with Puebloans, awaiting their Apache allies, and ready to make war with the Spanish. On that day, the 15th, an emissary from the Puebloans was allowed access to Otermín. Once in the presence of the governor, the Indian told him everything he was hearing was true and in fact soon, the Indians were bringing him two crosses. One red and one white, and he, Otermín must choose which cross to bear. If he chose the white one, the Indians would allow them to leave peacefully, but only if they did so… forever. If he chose the red one, he chose war. War and death. Otermín countered with the declaration that everyone who surrendered now would be pardoned and no one would be punished as long as they laid down their weapons and reaffirmed their submission to Christianity and Spain. At this, the Indians laughed and returned to their people, where they began preparation for the destruction of the Spanish.

All around the Casas Reales, the Indians set fire to the grand buildings. The Spanish watched as their lavish and rich houses were burning to the ground with all of their possessions in them. Thankfully, they’d at least made it out alive, for so many other Spanish weren’t so lucky. Next, the Puebloans set fire to the church of San Miguel but this… was the final straw.

In response to the defiling of the church, Otermín, rather courageously and valiantly gathered up his 100 able bodied warriors and told them it was now or never. They either stayed there and burned alive or starved to death or slowly the Puebloans tore down the walls with their hands OR… they go meet the Indians in battle in the middle of the city with surprise on their side. The survivors chose the latter and the battle would last the day and Otermín would later write, quote, many of the enemy were killed and they wounded many of our men, because they came with the harquebuses and the arms which they had taken from the religious and the Spaniards, and were very well provided with powder and shot. End quote.

At darkness, the Spaniards retreated to the Governor’s Palace since the Casas Reales, where they’d been holed up, was overrun with Puebloans who were now able to fire directly into the Governor’s home. Not only that, the water source to the Palace had been shut off by the Puebloans. And with each new sacking of a pueblo, the warriors were gaining more weapons, shot, powder, and horses. Weapons, shot, and powder they’d already proven themselves quite adept at using. The situation was looking pretty dire for Otermín and his Spanish survivors.

On the 18th, with the warrior’s numbers continuing to swell, and with the Spanish beginning to grow crazy with thirst, it was decided that it would be better to die fighting to escape than of hunger and thirst while cowering in their surrounded place of refuge.

Meanwhile, the LT. Governor, Alonso Garcia, alive and well, probably not well, but alive, Alonso Garcia had heard that everyone north of him, including in Santa Fe had been killed. He felt his only course of action, as the world erupted in fiery revolt around him was to take the survivors who now saw him as the leader of the Territory and head south to El Paso where he knew a resupply wagon was coming up from Mexico. Once in El Paso, Garcia figured, he could regroup, resupply, and run back north to confirm if the rumors were true. So that’s what he did, he headed south with all the Spanish and puebloan allies he could find.

Back in Santa Fe, on the morning of August 20th, 10 days after the revolt had started, and days after the battle, with no more water, and probably long after the food had run out, Otermín and his 100 or so bedraggled army of soldiers, boys, and old men, in a daring and bold and brave move, burst forth from the palace gates and totally surprised the Puebloans. In the ensuing rather astonishing battle, that really shows the difference in technology and armor playing a role, but also the element of surprise, but in that ensuing daring attack, the Spanish would kill around 300 Puebloan warriors, take 47 prisoners, and cause the rest of the couple of thousand of Indians to flee to the hillsides. The counter attack would be over by noon but it took its toll on the Spanish of whom 5 died and even Otermín gained two wounds. One to the face and one to the chest.

After interrogating the 47 captives and finding out what he already knew, he had them all executed… for treason. It seemed what the Puebloan messenger had told him days before was coming true… that the Spanish God and Santa Maria were dead and the Puebloan God, whom the Indians had never ceased to obey, was alive and thriving.

Roberts would write of the immediate aftermath of the revolt, quote, all told, in a single day August 10, 1680-the Puebloans killed twenty-one of the thirty-three Franciscan friars in New Mexico (or, more precisely, nineteen friars and two assistants). The carnage did not end with the priests. From Taos all the way to Hopi, the Indians killed 380 settlers, sparing neither women nor children, virtually all of them on August 10. In an official letter written three weeks later, from the safety of El Paso, a shell-shocked Governor Otermín would characterize that fateful day as a "lamentable tragedy, such as has never before happened in the world. End quote. Things like this had definitely never happened in his world, at least.

Back at Santa Fe, on the 20th, in a hurry to get the heck outta dodge and not knowing that he would indeed make it to El Paso, Otermín divvied up his own belongings amongst the 1,000 or so Spanish, Mexican, & Indian survivors under his care and had them quickly march in formation out of the city and down to Isleta Pueblo where he hoped Garcia was waiting for them.

Like I’d already said though, Garcia had heard the rumors and fearing for the lives of those around him, he had begun walking south towards El Paso, out of the line of Puebloan fury and fire. Neither Garcia knew that Otermín was alive, and you can’t blame him for thinking Otermín and the Santa Feans WEREN’T alive, I mean the place up north was clearly in disarray, but neither Garcia nor Otermín knew the other was alive. But that would change soon.

As the refugees fled southward, Otermín would write about how they constantly saw the Puebloan warriors amassed at the top of mesas, arquebuses, spears, bows, and arrows at the ready but they never did fully attack. Occasionally they would send out smoke signals after poking and prodding the fleeing column with minor skirmishes, but the Indians never full on attacked, which is curious because they probably could have obliterated the refugees had they have attacked them for real. This thought would haunt the Spanish and their allies the entire march. Roberts suggests the Puebloans didn’t attack head on because of the sheer number of warriors, if the accounting was accurate by the Spanish, but the sheer number of men they lost, the Indians lost in the battle on the 20th. That large number of dead warriors may have given the Puebloans a second thought on attacking again. That many dead warriors would have been devastating to the already small population of Puebloans. There was also the possibility that they didn’t want to lose anymore because they no doubt feared a swift reprisal and attempt from the Spanish to retake the territory and they were going to need every warrior for that impending battle. In other words, the Indians may have been playing it safe.

While heading south though, the survivors also saw countless Spanish plantations burned and looted with the bodies of women and children inside. Otermín would also write on his embarrassing retreat south that he felt like he was at fault for not believing the revolt was real and he truly believed it was God punishing him for his many sins. And he was probably not wrong, at least about believing it was his fault… remember all the warnings he ignored? They’d been coming in for months, after all. Especially from Pecos Pueblo. He really had ample opportunity to do something, anything about the impending doom of the Spanish in New Mexico. Of course, its isn’t doom for the Puebloans, who were probably celebrating every step south the conquerers took. A leery celebration, no doubt. In fact, one captured puebloan on August 23rd, on the third day of the march told Otermín that the Indians were glad to see the Spanish fleeing and that the loss of life for the puebloans was worth it because from then on, they were going to live how they like, worshiping their gods… free from the tyranny of the Spanish.

At the pueblo of Sandia, north of Albuquerque, the Spanish saw the church half burned and filled with human excrement smeared images of saints and religious relics. A carved crucifix even had its paint and varnish stripped off by repeated lashings and one witness said quote, there was also excrement at the place of the holy communion table. End quote. Being raised LDS I imagine that’s the equivalent of discovering poop smeared on the sacrament table. That’s quite the message the Puebloans were sending these much hated Spaniards. You really can’t blame ‘em. I came into this episode expecting to side with the Puebloans on this revolt while also maybe finding some form of understanding from the Spanish perspective but… story after story of 80 years of horrible Spanish rule made it very difficult to find much common ground with the invaders. I almost immediately found myself rooting for the indigenous puebloan rebels. It also helped that I’d been reading about the native Americans in the southwest for a year. I was rootin’ for the home team indeed.

I know that previous statement about trying to understand the Spanish invaders sounds strange in this cultural landscape of today but the reality is people migrate and conquer and get conquered and have religions forced upon them or convert others all the time throughout all of human history. Full stop. The Spanish coming into the southwest and conquering the local people was no different than the Anasazi’s ancestors coming up from Mexico in much the same way and imposing their form of rule and religion on the Indigenous southwesterners. Then once the Anasazi fled south, the Puebloans immediately adopted, or readopted, the kachina culture, which is exactly what they will do once the Spanish leave! The Spanish themselves spent 700 years kicking out the Muslim Moores in their very own homeland. Before that the Huns had driven a group of Germanic peoples into the Iberian Peninsula, especially the northwestern part of the country where they fought with the locals before creating their own Kingdom. Before that the peninsula was a bastion of heated civil discontent for the Romans who had to constantly send now infamous generals to squash rebellions. Before that the Phoenicians had colonies and ports. The Basques of Spain predate all of these peoples and long before them the Neanderthals were watching cannibalistic Humans flood the valleys and coastal areas of what we call Spain and Portugal. Migration, migration, migration…

The big difference in the New World of course was the unseen weapon the Spanish and all of the Europeans brought… disease. If not for the wiping out of countless warriors, elders, children, families, villages, priests… almost entire peoples… if it weren’t for the diseases that had plagued Europe and Asia for millennia, the story of the European conquest would look quite different. It might have gone the way of the Vikings on the Eastern Canadian coasts who, in the 1200s, were driven out or wiped out by the local native Americans before establishing a foothold in the new world. Although I did recently read that they came back to the eastern seaboard for centuries to gather wood… which… I’d have to look into that further, but is very interesting… not to mention the stories of surviving vikings who populated the interior of North America… anyways. That’s for someone else’s podcast to explore.

It’s true the distrust of the Native Empires by the local peoples, the local peoples tired of having their hearts ripped out by priests wearing the skin of their loved ones, but it is true the distrust helped the Spanish, especially in Mexico, and it would help them again during the reconquest of New Mexico later. The Spanish horses, and their steel armor which would break obsidian points, those too will help the Spanish. And their physical weapons! The arquebus may be a primitive firearm but it was extremely effective. Especially the Spanish version of the gun. And especially in Spanish hands. But I think conquering the new world would have looked a lot different if it hadn’t been for the hand of old world domestication helping the invaders.

History is so much more interesting and exciting when the people and cultures and leaders and movements, when all of that, are relatable, or even remotely relatable, to the person studying it. That’s why I tried to see things from the Spanish perspective… but I found very little with these first 80 years worth of Spanish in New Mexico, or the land of entrapment, as my sister in law who is from Farmington, calls it. I am absolutely positive that there were some good and noble and kind spaniard family men, or governors, soldiers, probably a few religious leaders as well. But the vast majority of information that’s been passed down to us today, at least in English, and which survived the Revolt, tells a tale of a pretty one sided exchange of vile Spanish actions being thrust upon the Puebloans. You hate to hear about the refugees finding dead families on their push south to flee the revolt and it’s painful to know that people lost loved ones but… I was rooting for the rebels in this story… for the most part.

The Puebloans had after all, survived the Anasazi and their Mesoamerican ways, and now they’d survived the Spanish. Unfortunately for them though, the Puebloans had more hardships coming. More violence and hardships from a whole new set of foreign invaders that the Spanish had been keeping at bay. But more on that story in just a minute. Let’s get back to Otermín…

While I may have wanted the Puebloans to gain their freedom, it doesn’t make it easier to read passages such as this one… quote, All along the valley, similar scenes of carnage greeted the forlorn column. They halted at the narrows south of San Felipe, not far from the home of swaggering Cristóbal de Anaya Almazán, who had risen to the rank of sargento mayor despite his trial by the Inquisition. His naked body and those of his wife, six children, and several other persons were heaped up at the front door. The revolt had wiped out the entire Anaya clan, save one. End quote.

Once at the Pueblo of Isleta, Otermín discovered it had been abandoned by both Puebloans and Spaniards. As I mentioned earlier, Popay had not included this Piro pueblo in the revolt because of its loyalty to the invaders so once the revolt broke out, the Pueblo’s inhabitants and the Spanish had all fled south with Otermín’s Lt. Governor, Alonso Garcia. Actually though, some Isleta puebloans were found later to have been hiding at Hopi with the Jemez so, like most of the Pueblos, there was a split among those who wanted the revolt and those who were loyal to the Spanish.

Otermín had totally expected to meet with Garcia in Isleta as I have mentioned, so after his disappointment of finding absolutely no one left at the pueblo, and during the people’s growing hunger and distress, his disappointment turned into fury. So on September 6th, when he, Otermín, and the caravan of displaced invaders finally ran into Garcia, he had him arrested for betrayal. But, eventually, cooler heads prevailed and Otermín had him released after listening to his side of the story, which, made sense, after all.

While Otermín may have forgiven Garcia, he definitely wasn’t about to forgive the Puebloans. According to his own writings he was going to take that blasted New Mexico back and he said quote, for this purpose, I shall not spare any means in the service of God and of his Majesty, losing a thousand lives if I had them, as I have lost my estate and part of my health, and shedding my blood for God. End quote.

But Otermín would not be granted any of that. In a descriptive passage about what comes next for the fleeing Spanish, Roberts writes:

On September 13, near a southern pueblo called Fray Cristobal, with all 2,500 survivors gathered in a single camp, Otermín called a grand council to discuss what might be done. The eight Franciscans who had escaped martyrdom declared themselves willing to follow any course of action the governor might order. It was the joint opinion, however, of Otermín’s five maestres de campo that sealed the decision.

As Charles Wilson Hackett, the pioneering compiler of English translations of the Spanish documents about the Revolt, paraphrases the lament of the governor's most trusted officers, quote, They agreed that because of the miserable condition of all, and especially of so many women and children, and since there was little prospect of any alleviation of their hunger, or any way to avenge or restrain the taunts of the enemy in that desert place, the retreat should be continued. End all quotes.

So it turns out, Otermín would have to wait for that reconquest.

On September 29th the sprawling camp of 2,500 survivors finally made it to the outskirts of El Paso where they felt much safer. There, they regrouped and pondered the treachery, cunning, and to them, evil vileness of their Christian and pagan Indian subjects in kicking them out.

Meanwhile back in the Pueblo World northward the Revolution was only just beginning. The first part of Popay’s plan was to kill every Spaniard and religious they could get their hands on, and kick out the ones they couldn’t. Well that mission was complete. The next step was to erase all signs that the Spanish had ever been there in the first place. Both on the land, and on the people. That included burning the churches, buildings, trees, plants, even the seeds that the Spanish had brought that did not belong in the American Southwest. In their land. From then on, only maize, beans, and squash were to be planted, but most importantly, maize. Of course, it was noted by Puebloans later that some Indians in fact kept some of the seeds like those of the melons and other useful and helpful products. But in the beginning of the terror of the revolution, all vestiges of Spanish were to be destroyed. No Spanish was to be spoken. Baptisms were to be reversed by wading into the streams and waters, especially that of the Rio Grande and to then rub themselves with yucca root from head to toe. I imagine the waters ran red with the scoured skin of undone baptisms. Names were to revert back to Puebloan tongue names. Images of Christ and the Saints and of Christ’s mother, Mary were to be burned and lashed with a whip or both. Christian marriages were null and voided and the choosing of a mate was now done the old fashioned way, the Puebloan way. Any Christian Indian that refused to participate was killed by Popay or his lieutenants. Or so the legend goes.

And as for Popay himself, after the revolt, rather paradoxically, because remember, the plan was to return to the way it was BEFORE the Spanish, but after the revolution, in a move that later revolutionaries around the world would adopt, Popay declared himself leader of all the pueblos and puebloans. This is a paradox because the people didn’t used to have a singular leader! Yet his whole goal was to return the people to how it was before the Spanish were there. Even more than that, after he declared himself sole leader of all the pueblos, Popay would rule them with an iron fist. As tight as Javier and Treviño ever had. Definitely tighter than Otermín, who again, had only just gotten there. Then, as if he were just straight up copying the Spanish at this point, Popay would go on a tour of all the land… just like the Spanish governors used to do. He even, during this tour, demanded tribute from all the pueblos he visited! At the same time he forbade any catholic or Christian practices and instead forced every puebloan to dedicate hours a day to studying the old ways…. again… paradoxically sounding exactly like the Catholic priests except in reverse. All of this is tough to say happened with 100% certainty but it comes from both Spanish and Puebloan sources. Some authors, focusing on the Puebloans ignore this, others go a little too in to detail, relishing the failing of the Revolutionary leader as a Spaniard would. It’s impossible to know for sure what happened exactly until the Puebloans open their vaults but like I said last time, I wouldn’t, and we shouldn’t hold our breath for that.

It seems like it wasn’t long before one of Popay’s earliest lieutenants, the war chief from Picuris, Tupatu, deposed him after a successful coup. Typical reactionary step in a revolution, really. But Tupatu wasn’t much better it turns out, as he immediately began dividing up all the spoils of the revolt just like Popay had and passing it to his lieutenants and himself.

Once in El Paso, after the dust had settled from their fleeing caravan, the survivors actually began to fear for their lives in New Spain as well. They were afraid the revolt, the Revolutionary action burning the land of New Mexico would actually spread throughout even the land that far south or that far north of Mexico City. So the people, these beleaguered survivors wanted to leave as quickly as they could and began grumbling to the authorities that they were going to do just that. Unfortunately for them though, according to Knaut in his Pueblo Revolt of 1680, quote, a decree by the governor of Nueva Vizcaya, issued at Otermín's request, checked this impulse, expressly forbidding, he’s now quoting the law, forbidding, quote, for any cause, reasons, pretext, order, or excuse whatever, any person of whatever state, quality, or condition he may be, [to] pass from the said kingdom of New Mexico ... except by permission and order of their governor, with whom they should remain until the most excellent señor viceroy shall decide and order otherwise. End quote of the order. Violation of the decree carried an immediate and irrevocable sentence of death. End all quotes.

So these poor people, these poor refugees, under pain of death, could not even leave El Paso without asking Otermín, who was definitely not going to give them permission seeing as how he’s the one who requested the writ in the first place. They were stuck there on the edge of the world, to wait for reinforcements or death if the Revolution spread that far south. It seems like petty despots in both camps continued to make the lives of both the Spanish and the Puebloans miserable… just as they had since 1598.

In El Paso, the Spanish fortified the city and waited for reinforcements and supplies that just… never did come. But the people’s restlessness only grew until it spilled over, at least it did for Otermín. Because on November 5th, 1681, just over a year after the Revolt, he decided it was time to fulfill his God given right of reconquest. Or at least die trying. He’d find neither victory nor death though.

With 146 quote unquote soldiers, 112 Piro, Manso, Jemez, and Tewa auxiliaries, 36 Indian servants, and a handful of friars who were under the Fray Francisco de Ayeta I quoted from in the beginning, with these around 300 or so people, Otermín headed north to take back New Mexico for God and for Spain. We know now these soldiers were nothing but boys and raw recruits and Knaut says of the band of reconqueres quote, a muster roll taken by the governor at El Ancón de Fray García three days later revealed the pitiful state of his force. Only twenty-five of the soldiers carried a complete set of arms and cavalry equipment, the others making do with little more than a dagger and shield. End quote.

For the next two months Otermín would travel through the southern pueblos of Tiwa looking for any allied puebloans he could muster and gathering any information he could. As they travelled though, the Otermín reconquest crew found church after church of destroyed alters, burned statues, burned crucifixes, and smashed bells. Smashed bells were actually a big part of the revolt. It appears the Puebloans did NOT enjoy the sound of bells every day every morning every evening every mass... just… all the time. And you know… I can’t blame em.

But also they found a lot of bones… a lot of bones in fields and empty pueblos. And speaking of empty pueblos, every single Pueblo they came across on their way up north to Isleta, was abandoned completely. And that pueblo, Isleta sits just southwest of Albuquerque on the Rio Grande.

In December of 1681, with 70 of his best soldiers, which is probably the same number of qualified soldiers within the reconquest, period… but on that prewinter December morning, Otermín marched on Isleta and completely surprised the puebloans into surrender. The Puebloans weren’t all that upset about the Spanish being there though, since they needed the help defending themselves from their northern neighbors the Tewa Indians who at that moment, and pretty much since the revolution, were kicking the heck out of ‘em. But the thankfulness they had for their protectors didn’t last long once they discovered the despised creator of the anti-Indian crusade, Javier was among the reconquerers. Knaut has a great story about this in his Pueblo Revolt I’ll quote from now:

Word had spread quickly throughout the region that Francisco Javier, hated architect of the persecution of Pueblo nativism in the years leading up to the revolt, was among those now returning to the land. Indeed, as Fray Nicolas López would later recount, when the expedition first entered Isleta many Indians watched in dismay while Javier dismounted and "grabbed an Indian called Parraga by the hair and hurled him against the ground, beating and kicking him before most of the Spaniards," a scene that prompted the Pueblo witnesses to scream, "Why has that devil come? ... already [Javier is] beginning to do what he did before with the protection he had from the governor, for he used to do whatever he wished, and it was he [not Otermín] who governed." As a result, Otermín's forces found each subsequent pueblo abandoned, its inhabitants having fled for fear of their former oppressors' wrath. End quote. So Otermín is a poor learner and the reconquest was getting off to a terrible start.

From Isleta, Otermín sent one of his conquistadors, a Juan Domingo de Mendoza up the Rio Grande to ask for the pueblos to surrender peacefully but as was just explained, every time he entered the towns, they were empty. That is until he got to Cochiti.

At Cochiti Pueblo, the mesa rims that surrounded the pueblo were filled with warriors who hurtled taunts and threats down towards the outnumbered Spanish, which must have been a pretty uncomfortable few days of waiting. And they were waiting because the leader of Cochiti had said they’d surrender in a few days, sure thing. Meanwhile, this man, Catiti had sent word to all the pueblos north to send your warriors because the Spanish were surrounded. Luckily for Mendoza and the Spanish who could sense the trap closing in, they left for Otermín and Isleta, souring the plans for another Spanish defeat by the hands of the angry puebloans.

Back at the pueblo Isleta basecamp, Otermín ripped Mendoza a new one for being so cowardly and retreating but… not long after, Otermín would follow suit. On December 23rd, fifty Puebloans, all on horseback, surrounded Isleta and threatened the Spanish while simultaneously calling for the Puebloans to join them once again. This siege lasted a week and I imagine Mendoza was severely lacking in sleep after two sieges in a row. This siege also lasted through Christmas which had to have disheartened the Spanish catholic conquistadors and their converted puebloan allies. It was no doubt, a truly frightening time for the Spanish who by some Christmas miracle, were spared.

I believe the Puebloans could have and would have annihilated this pretty sad band of Spaniards and traitorous puebloans. The Spanish had after all, burned down 8 MORE pueblos on their failed reconquista. So, they were just asking for it, really. But after that holiday week, as the new year approached, Otermín would decide that fleeing was preferable to suicide. In January of 1682, he would take everyone, including 385 Isleta Puebloans and head back south for El Paso.

The only real accomplishment, if you can call it that, but the only thing this failed reconquest did was let the Spanish know what exactly happened with Popay and the rebellion. Otermín and his little army had captured 9 puebloans, including a man named Pedro Naranjo, whom I have quoted from quite a bit, and all of these men gave up considerable information regarding this quote unquote surprise rebellion, its origins, reasons for existing, and the hope for the people who had carried it out.

I’ve hinted at and mentioned what some of these reasons were but in essence, the revolution took place so the people could return to their true Puebloan ways.

These captured men also explained that it was a good thing Mendoza left Cochiti because while the Spanish men waited for the surrender and while the puebloan men waited for reinforcements, the puebloan women were getting themselves all dolled up and in their prettiest clothing. The plan, hatched up by the quote Coyote of the Queres Nation, unquote, Catiti, the man who had attempted to trick Mendoza, I briefly mentioned him being the one in charge of Cochiti who said they’d surrender in time… but Catiti’s plan was for the puebloan women to sleep with the Spaniards so that the puebloan warriors may steal the Spaniards horses as they slept, after which time they’d steal themselves into the sleeping quarters and kill all the Spanish. This story, told by a 28 year old puebloan man named Juan was corroborated by 4 other puebloan men which makes the story seem pretty legit. It certainly seemed true in the eyes of the Spaniards who were witnessing these confessions.

More confessions, and with them, plans of Popay followed from the mouths of captives. One such thing spoken was the revelation that if any puebloan uttered the name of Jesus, they should be killed on the spot… The Puebloans were also to free all of the horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, just every animal they brought… and to cut down every foreign tree and crop as well. Meanwhile, Popay oversaw new construction of kivas and new manufacturing of kachina masks.

And actually, this hadn’t been his first foray into open rebellion. According to Naranjo, one of the captured, whom I’ve quoted from a bunch, but the revolt had been planned since the early 1650s and the first time around, a pair of painted deer skins had circulated the pueblo world as far as the Hopi mesas! It was there at the Hopi mesas though that the plans were rejected and the revolt never got off the ground.

To Otermín it must have become abundantly clear by the end of the testimonies of the nine puebloans that as Roberts puts it, quote, the northern puebloans would never surrender. Instead, they would fight to the death before once more accepting Spanish rule. End quote.

Before we leave this failed reconquest and these testimonies behind us though, I’d like to focus a little bit on what that 80 year old I keep mentioning, Don Pedro Naranjo would tell Otermín. He’d reveal quite a bit about the reasons for the revolt and Popay’s thinking. Otermín actually writes, at least I believe this is his writing but he writes of what Naranjo says, quote, he said that for a long time, because the Spaniards punished sorcerers and idolaters, the nations of the Teguas, Taos, Pecuries, Pecos, and Jemez had been plotting to rebel and kill the Spaniards and the religious, and that they had been planning constantly to carry it out, down to the present occasion. End quote. He then goes on to say quote, that the resentment which all the Indians have in their hearts has been so strong, from the time this kingdom was discovered, because the religious and the Spaniards took away their idols and forbade their sorceries ... and that he has heard this resentment spoken of since he was of an age to understand. End quote.

The 80 year old Don Pedro Naranjo, using a Spanish word for respect before his first name there, Don, had lived with the Spanish his entire life, which just so happens to be almost the length of time the Spanish had been in New Mexico, period. And Naranjo said he and his people had resented the Spanish the entire time… I imagine this, again, greatly demoralized Otermín… demoralized and confused him.

It’s worth further mentioning Don Pedro Naranjo and his family though. First of all, the Naranjos were possibly descended from a freed black slave and an Indian woman making them appear quite dark to their Indian neighbors, and to the Spanish. Then there’s Pedro’s brother, Diego Naranjo who was arrested in 1632 after it was discovered that he had performed a Kachina dance inside a kiva at the Alameda Pueblo. He wasn’t heard from again, at least in the record. He himself, Pedro, was a quote unquote sorcerer. And then there’s his brother Domingo.

Domingo, I read in one compelling source, or more likely Domingo’s son Joseph, was probably one of four or so important Puebloan leaders during the Revolt and to be more precise, Domingo, or his son Joseph, but one of them was most likely an important military leader during the revolution alongside Po’pay.

Later, during the reconquest, Joseph would descend from the pueblo of Taos and meet Diego de Vargas the reconquerer, whom you’ll hear all about next time, but when Vargas approached the deserted Pueblo of Taos, Joseph descended the Pueblo and spoke with Vargas. This does lend him some leadership capacity to the Naranjo both by being at Taos, where Po’pay had planned the Revolt and by being the one to talk to the Spanish re-conquistador. That may have also had something to do with the fact that Joseph could speak Spanish well enough for the Taos Puebloans to call him, Joseph Naranjo, el espanol.

Much later though, Joseph would kill his own brother Lucas and switch sides to the Spanish which quote, marked Joseph's rise in the Spanish society to become the first Chief War Captain of the Pueblo auxiliaries. End quote. The Spanish, in their documents, would call Joseph: el negro or el mulato. That quote was by Stefanie Beninato in her paper Pope, Pose-yemu, and Naranjo: A New Look at Leadership in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which shed some new light for me on this complex and exciting topic.

But let’s get back to Naranjo’s words on why Popay had the revolt… In Scott Ortman’s Winds from the North, which I used heavily in my Kachina episode and which discusses the fact that after the Civil War and during the great Migration, the Mesa Verde Anasazi headed to the Rio Grande Valley and became the Tewa speaking Puebloans. In that fantastic and insightful book, Ortman talks about the Revolt and how it relates to the Mesa Verdeans migration to the Rio Grande. He says, quote, it appears that social memories of an ancient homeland in the north were part of the discourse behind the rebellion itself. According to the Spanish account of the testimony of two Tesuque runners who were interrogated by Otermín on august 9th, 1680, quote, they said that the most that has come to their knowledge is that it is a matter of common report among all the Indians that there had come to them from very far away toward the north a letter from an Indian lieutenant of Po he yemu to the effect that all of them in general should rebel, and that any pueblo that would not agree to it they would destroy, killing all the people. End all quotes.

So who is Po he yemu? Well, Po he yemu seems to be a mythical warrior leader figure of the Tewa speaking Puebloans who came from the Mesa verde region of their ancestor’s homelands. But more than that, Ph he yemu or Poseyemu goes back to the Basketmaker culture, you know, that culture that predated Chaco which I have discussed multiple times. For the Basketmaker Ancestral Puebloans, Poseyemu was associated with Coyote and Poseyemu was the son of the Sun and was an original leader of the people when they emerged from their Ancestral Lake, of which I also spoke a lot about. This leader, Poseyemu was known to be the first great shaman for the people and could speak with the heavens, similar to a kachina. His association with Coyote made him also associated with scalps, mist, rain, fertility, hunting, growing crops, bringing people together, and warfare… he really was an original kachina. So it was this Poseyemu that Popay was embodying. He was leading the people with the blessing of the original warrior fertility coyote shaman who led their ancestors out of the lake and into the world. There may have even been another Poseyemu figure for the Tewa when they left Mesa Verde and entered into the Rio Grande region, he’s just been lost to history… and I kind of mention this as foreshadowing in that episode, Rise of the Kachinas if you’ll remember.

Don Pedro Naranjo, after being captured in December of 1681, then goes on to tell Otermín a rather long quote, part of which I have read from before, but this is the entirety of it, quote:

Finally, in the past years, at the summons of an Indian named Popé who is said to have communication with the devil, it happened that in an estufa of the pueblo of Los Taos there appeared to the said Popé three figures of Indians who never came out of the estufa. They gave the said Popé to understand that they were going underground to the lake of Copala. He saw these figures emit fire from all the extremities of their bodies, and that one of them was called Caudi, another Tilini, and the other Tleume.... as soon as the Spaniards had left the kingdom an order came from the said Indian, Popé, in which he commanded all the Indians to break the lands and enlarge their cultivated fields, saying that now they were as they had been in ancient times, free from the labor they had performed for the religious and the Spaniards, who could not now be alive. He said that this is the legitimate cause and the reason they had for rebelling, because they had always desired to live as they had when they came out of the lake of Copala. End quote.

According to Ortman, quote, the planned rebellion was to be a reinstantiating of the mesa verde migration. End quote.

In other words, Popay used the Tewa origin story of emergence from the lake of Copala, or the area known as Tewayó, as well as their migration from Mesa Verde, which itself was an emergence from the Lake of Copala, but he used this story of emerging from an incomplete life at Tewayó to promote the rebellion to the other pueblos. They were going to emerge from this Spanish conquest as a more complete people like their ancestors had emerged from the lake a more complete people. This message would have obviously had much more significance among the Tewa speakers who knew this origin myth and the story of migration well, but it also seemed to unite the other pueblos in their desire to be more complete… and free of the Spanish tyranny.

Furthermore, Popay may have taken on a mythical figure himself. That figure of P’oseyemu, the mythical original kachina I mentioned earlier, who may not have been mythical but rather a historical figure that helped the Mesa Verde Ancestral Puebloans migrate en masse to the Rio Grande Valley and Tewa Basin in the 1200s. Maybe? His name, Poseyemu is clearly a Tewa name but in actuality, all the puebloans of the area have stories of P’oseyemu. Sometimes Christian, Spanish, and even Anglo bits have found their way into his story, but at the time of the Revolt, Puebloans, especially Tewa speaking puebloans would have known about the man who helped lead the people out of their homeland. You can compare him to Moses, really. But he existed during a time when, quote, there were only Indians, no white people, no Mexicans. End quote. That quote’s from a book titled Tewa Tales, first published in 1926.

P’oseyemu’s name in Tewa can mean one of two things, either “He who scatters mist before him”… or fog, it could be the fog that rises from lakes in the morning, which is very pretty and it suggests as Otermin puts it, he is a benevolent person. Or, P’oseyemu could be translated, because P’ose also means scalps taken in war… so P’oseyemu could also mean he who scatters scalps before him… which means he was a powerful warrior. Not so pretty, or benevolent. But that could harken back to the wiping out of the Gallina culture and the remnants of the Anasazi on their way to the Rio Grande Valley. And it seems, this latter definition is the one Popay was adhering too, the definition of one who scatters scalps before him, because he did threaten all the pueblos who did not go along with the revolution… he threatened them all with burning and death.

P’oseyemu was not only a possible military leader but also a religious one. In Tewa songs he’s even called the father of the people. To summarize his many stories and songs and mythical retellings, I will quote Ortman who says, quote, P’oseyemu legends refer to the leader of a religious revolution that resulted in the depopulation of the mesa verde region and the creation of a new society in the Tewa basin. End quote.

Ortman then goes on to say a fantastic quote that ties the beginning of the revolution in with this discussion of P’oseyemu leading his people to the Rio Grande Valley:

Given this, it is easy to see why, some four centuries later, Po'pay and other leaders of the Pueblo Revolt appealed to his memory when the Pueblos found themselves in a situation of oppression similar to what P'oseyemu had endured in Tewayó. In doing so, the present moment was transformed into the first act of a prophetic spiritual drama that, if allowed to play out, would result in a new age of freedom and abundance for the Pueblo people.

Personally, I love it. I love the story and the cleanliness of it and the depth of research and understanding. I love imagining this to be the truth and I do think there’s an enormous amount of validity in it. That being said though, the simple fact remains that you cannot corroborate it… and the Puebloans aren’t going to share with the outside world such privileged information. It is not in the way the Puebloans do things.

As Roberts puts it in Pueblo Revolt, quote, secrecy. Of all the traits that stamp Puebloan culture, secrecy is the hall-mark. And no wonder: in the seventeenth century, when Spaniards hanged and whipped shamans for practicing "sorcery," burned their kivas and kachina masks, preached to them daily about the eternal flames of hell they must endure unless they embraced Catholicism, the Puebloans learned to hide the religion that had sustained their ancestors as in the secret, ordinary rooms at Gran Quivira where twentieth-century excavators found all the paraphernalia normally stored in the kivas. In the view of many accomplished scholars, including France Scholes and Elsie Clews Parsons, the Puebloans developed secrecy as a defense against Spanish oppression. End Quote.

But in reality, not only Spanish oppression but also later American theft. Anthropologists, archaeologists and ethnologists would, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, come and steal both sacred knowledge and even sacred artifacts from the Puebloan world. Some of them did it because they believed the people were going to disappear and they wanted to keep the knowledge preserved but others stole sacred knowledge because they deemed the knowledge too important to keep hidden away. Surprisingly, the thought that the puebloan peoples would disappear is alarmingly more believable when I learned that in the 1890s, only 97 Zia puebloans were alive. Period. 97… 23 years ago, the 2000 census claimed 646 Zia puebloans lived at the Pueblo. Which is a whole lot better… but still.

So the Puebloans have secrecy but also possibly amnesia. Roberts also tells of a San Juan man, the same pueblo that Popay is from, but a San Juan man named Alfonso Ortiz, who back in 1969, wrote a book called the Tewa World about his own people and culture. Unfortunately, Ortiz died in 1997 but not before writing an article for National Geographic about the Puebloan world, but… according to many a San Juan Puebloan, these publishings and betrayal may have lead to his untimely death. As we’ve talked about can happen in the pueblo world…

Here’s author David Roberts, someone I’ve used a lot and will continue to use, but here’s the late adventurer and author with more about the man:

In a Santa Fe library, I bumped into the Anglo historian David Grant Noble. He told me that, some years ago, Ortiz had told him, quote, The Pueblo Indians have an amnesia about the Revolt. It was a very negative, traumatic event, and they put it out of their collective memory. So there aren't stories passed down in the oral tradition about it. End quote from Noble.

Here was the strongest statement that I had yet heard about what I was coming to think was not so much a body of lore carefully guarded from outsiders, but a lacuna in the Puebloan memory- an "amnesia," in Ortiz's well-chosen word. End quotes.

So secrecy and amnesia… but there’s also the fact that these writings passed down to us from Otermín and the Spanish were given under duress, probably using torture, and all of these people were probably killed immediately afterwards since no account is given as to what happened when the Spanish were done with them.

All of that being said, I do think Ortman is on to something when he talks about P’oseyemu, Popay, and the Pueblo Revolt harkening back to a time before with the great migration from Mesa Verde. A time when the Puebloan people could be rid of their oppressors and return to a more perfect world… for whatever reason, it didn’t come to pass.

During the revolt, not all of Popays commandments of destroying the Catholic and Spanish religion were carried out. The puebloans, for some reason  left the church standing at Acoma. That very same church of the San Estevan del Rey which was built by the punished Acomans after their revolt in 1599. That same revolt that saw so many of them have limbs cut off and had many of them spend the rest of their lives in servitude. An Acoma guide for Roberts, as he toured Sky City, named Tsethlikai, told Roberts that they, her ancestors, didn’t burn the magnificent church down as a, quote, memorial to those who died building it. End quote.

Curious side note though, Roberts would return and again ask a different guide why they hadn’t burnt the church down hoping to get a more complete answer and this second guide said quote, we did burn it down. End quote. Secrecy… or maybe amnesia?

Because of the revolt, the puebloan world changed dramatically yet again. But not just the Puebloan world of the Rio Grande but also the outlier groups such as the Hopi. During the revolt, many Rio Grande Puebloan groups fled west towards the sanctuary of what author Craig Childs calls the Hopi mesas. In House of Rain, Childs calls these mesas, quote, castles in a moat of desert. End quote. He goes on to say:

Approaches from the south, east, and west are guarded by barren, difficult ground as far as the eye can see-~-formidable land for any army to cross, with little protective cover. In the seventeenth century, during the Pueblo Revolt, a number of native pueblos in New Mexico were briefly abandoned as residents fled to the Hopi mesas, escaping the wrath of well-armed Spanish troops. Though they had dissimilar customs and spoke languages far different from Hopi, they were given refuge here, offering their ceremonial, agricultural, or military services in exchange. This region has long been used as a strong hold when people were in motion, slipping out from under drought or war, looking for sanctuary or a prophesied center place. End quote.

In between the Rio Grande pueblos and the Hopi Mesas is the vast land of the Navajo which some legends say, adopted some fleeing puebloans despite their occasional animosity, and these puebloans may or may not have taught the Navajo to plant and harvest corn and other crops. They may have also taught them to make ceramics, build defensive adobe structures, and make rock art. This is of course, hotly debated today with the swing of they did or did not going back and forth regularly, like with most theories.

In the Rio Grande area though, after the Spanish had left, Po’pay ordered the tearing down of churches and the rebuilding of kivas which it seems, the people accomplished. Here’s a description from Kessell of the destruction of the beautiful and large church at Pecos:

Firing the roof must have been spectacular. The rebels probably heaped piñon and juniper branches and dry brush inside the cavernous structure. When the roof caught and began burning furiously "a strong draft was created through the tunnel of the nave from the clearstory window over the chancel thereby blowing ashes out the door." It was like a giant furnace. When the fire died down, the blackened walls of the gutted monster still stood. To bring it low, Indians bent on demolition clambered all over it, like the Lilliputians over Gulliver, laboriously but jubilantly throwing down adobes, tens of thousands of them. Unsupported by the side walls, the front wall toppled forward facade down, covering the layer of ashes blown out the door. With an explosive vengeance, the Pueblos had reduced the grandest church in New Mexico to an imposing mound of earthen rubble.

The Puebloans built a kiva, the kiva you can enter today I assume, but the Puebloans built kivas with the stones from the fallen church. Kessell says further, quote, the ancient ones had overcome. The saints, mere pieces of rotted wood, were dead. End quote.

The Puebloans also at Po’pay’s instruction, abandoned mission villages quote, in favor of newly constructed villages where the architecture reasserted traditional worldview concepts. End quote. That’s from Ortman and he says this was actually an echo of the Tewa people’s past when they left the small canyon villages of Mesa Verde and congregated into larger mesa top villages with big plazas and pueblos.

Outside of the immediate area, the tribes that had only recently been drawn to the Spanish held territory like a magnet for trading or raiding now were more easily able to resort to outright raiding. Groups like the Navajo, Apache, Shoshones, Utes, and many others saw the exposed pueblos as easy targets which forced even more of the Pueblos to become abandoned.

Even during the time of the Spanish, the Apaches had been raiding with impunity deep down into Mexico where they were stealing people and horses, bringing them back up north, and wreaking havoc upon the people before hiding in the mountains to avoid retaliation. Once the Spanish were gone… there were no soldiers with gunpowder and excellent horsemanship to protect the puebloans. The ones who became excellent horseman and sharp shooters, were now in fact the Apaches.

It’s here I’ll hark back to the opening of the last episode when I mentioned the importance of the spreading of the horse, which ultimately was able to be so widespread because of the pueblo revolt. Although, I did read a recent paper that suggested the horse burials in places like Wyoming and Kansas from the 1500s suggest they had horses much sooner, but that’s for another time. This spreading of the horse more easily after the Revolution dramatically altered the human geography of the American southwest, the great plains, the black hills, and the rocky mountains. As various tribes, some of them farmers, some of them nomads, gained the technology of the horse, they would drastically alter their lifestyles to become powerhouses for over a century. I don’t mean to bring it up again but some of the information in that paper I just mentioned suggested the people hadn’t forgotten how to use horses in the thousands of years between their disappearance after the ice age when the Native Americans began to spread around north America and their reappearance… again, I’m not sure, but I like it.

In reality, modern people, outside of a privileged few Puebloans probably, really know what happened right after the Pueblo Revolt and before the Reconquest. But that pueblo mystique, that secretiveness, and the amnesia all combine to leave a blank space on the record.

We do know though, that the people, despite Popay’s insistence on abandoning the Spanish ways, the puebloans besides using horses, also continued to use pigs, sheep, they continued to plant melons and other trees, and they even herded cattle. But while they were adopting the conquerers ways into their own traditional beliefs… maybe the people really did find their new Tewayo or peaceful lake. Or maybe things got pretty dang hard for the Puebloans, which is why the inevitable reconquest by the Spanish 12 years after the Revolt wasn’t as messy as it could have been and some of the Puebloans welcomed them back with open arms. Some… of the Puebloans. Ultimately, as we’ll learn, the reconquest isn’t as bloodless as some histories claim.

In reality there was a slow trickling down of information to El Paso from puebloans who would defect and update the deposed conquerers. Some puebloans said Popay was replaced with the Coyote Catiti who was replaced again with Popay. But Popay was possibly now dead and replaced by a new leader who went by Tupatu. The Zuni and Hopi were fighting. The Acoma pueblo split apart and the Laguna pueblo nearby was founded by those who had been expelled. Roberts goes on to say, quote, The keresan pueblos, joined by Jemez, Taos, and pecos, had taken up arms against the Tewa pueblos and Picuris. Meanwhile, drought and famine continued to threaten the Puebloans’ very existence. An old legend has it that the Rio Grande completely dried up at one point during this period. Popay’s vision of a life of great ease once the people had rid themselves of everything Spanish had proved a hollow illusion. End quote.

In July of 1683, after the failed attempt to take back the land northward that he had lost, word reached Otermín that the Puebloans were collapsing even further in on themselves as disease, infighting, and civil strife was running rampant. That and the Navajo and Apache were once again throwing their spears and arrows into the vulnerable fray with relentless attacks. No doubt while hearing all of this, Otermín thought of what a captured Indian only known as Juan had told him in December two years prior during the unsuccessful attempt at reconquest. Juan had told the Spanish, quote, that in the end the Spaniards must come and [re]gain the kingdom, because they too were sons of the land and had grown up with the natives. End quote.

In November of that year, 1683, to investigate the rumors that Tupatu was now in charge, Otermín would send a party north. Knaut in his Pueblo Revolt has this to say of the affair, quote:

Led by Salvador Holguin, the party had barely reached the southern fringes of Pueblo lands when a skirmish with Apache raiders forced it to return to El Paso, convinced that a new entrada would find little welcome in northern New Mexico. The retaking of the province would have to wait. End quote.

After this further debacle, the remain in place order that had been held together with the threat of death, it fell apart and many of the colonist refugees fled to places along the frontier where they wouldn’t have to worry about being overrun… again. Although, that did not always pan out. Still, no one wanted to lead, take part in, or finance an expedition north it seemed. Also, simultaneously, the revolution itself had indeed spread and trouble erupted everywhere along the northern new Spain border, almost following the New Mexico refugees wherever they went.

Those aforementioned Manso Indians felt they too could possibly lead a revolt so they, along with the local Jano, Suma, Taboso, Julime, Concha, and Pima Indians all staged separate revolts starting in the spring of 1684 from Cohuila to Sonora. So, the soldiers that could have been used to go back north into New Mexico to retake it, what few there were, instead, found themselves answering the calls of help from settlements that were neighboring El Paso as those Indians were continuously uprising, pretty much from then on.

Obviously, the New Mexicans grew to hate Otermín and blamed him for the whole affair and for forcing them to stay in the area, again with these petty despotic ways. But certainly not all of the New Mexican Spanish hated him because the last thing we hear about Otermín in the records is that in 1692, the very year of the reconquest of New Mexico by one of his successors, but in 1692, Otermín marries a survivor of the Revolt, a woman named Ana María Ladrón de Guevara and then he disappears. His later life and death are as mysterious as his birth and origins. So clearly not everyone hated Otermín. But indeed, his days in New Mexico were over. Although… I would like to tell one more tale that involves the failed governor that is Otermín. It’s a rather fantastic if true tale and I think you’ll enjoy it.

This tale is about a man named Alonso Shimitihua. Shimitihua was an Isleta Puebloan man who was marching down to El Paso with Otermín only to decide he needed his Christian Indian brethren to come along. So he and two buddies snuck away from the bedraggled caravan and made their way up to the Puebloan world. But, once there they were captured and taken to the Coyote Catiti who… much to Shimitihua’s horror had adorned his person and his home with all the loot and booty he could carry from the Spanish palaces and churches, his lieutenants were even wearing the friar’s robes. Dismayed but undaunted, the brave and maybe crazy Shimitihua, who had now been taken to see Popay, but Shimitihua proceeded to tell the warriors and Catiti and Popay that for real, this was a big mistake to rebel and everyone should come down south to El Paso and repent and ask for forgiveness and all will be well. Obviously, he got stabbed for this and while getting stabbed, Popay screamed to the gathered crowd and the two other captured Puebloans that quote, no such God as the Christians worshipped had ever existed! End quote.

That’s like a reverse Braveheart situation almost, I don't know, it’s gnarly. But Shimitihua survived the stabbing, thankfully. At this point the two comrades were like, no we’re not with him we actually think that guy’s crazy and we think you should arm up and attack the pathetic fleeing Spanish right now while they’re weak. Popay actually liked this idea and did indeed gather up warriors from the Pueblo and from southern tribes that were near El Paso and were going to attack the Spanish until…. The Apache surprised them, killed 5 of ‘em, and the rest fled. Except Shimitihua who made it to El Paso to tell this story… a story which was later written down by a man named Silvestre Velez de Escalante, a man I am mentioning for two reasons.

The first is because he’s going to be the star of the episode after the reconquest and he’s going to be the star of that episode because of the second reason, which is that Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is named after him. Well, he’s not getting his own episode because of that but he’s getting one because of WHY the awesome place is named after him. Which, isn’t important now, but Grand Staircase Escalante is one of my favorite places on the Colorado Plateau and the whole world and it’s where I got married to my awesome wife… the first time. We eloped there… But I digress…

The 1680s proved to be quite busy for the Spanish on the frontier of the American New Spain colony. After the failed reconquest and while the revolution was spreading, even more threats faced the Spanish Empire. These threats though, were from more of a global nature.

The first threat was the Russians who were exploring the Pacific coast as far down as California. The second threat was the English in Florida. They were trying to take the Northern Territory of what was then Florida but what is today the souther territory of my home state of Georgia, that was just too close to the Spanish operations in the Caribbean. Which, of course, the English had been threatening with piracy for years. But the real threat was the French… Now I love the French, mostly, and I love France, but I can understand the fear the Spanish had of those sneaky French closing in on their territory.

At that time, the French were all over North America from Canada to west of the Mississippi and they were increasingly encroaching westward and southward. I actually recently learned, that Yellowstone National Park, or the area around it used to be called, Roche Jaune, which is French for Yellowstone because that’s what the Minnetaree Tribe told them it was called in their own language. Then the English just translated it straight from French. But that happened much later than our story. In the 1680s, for our story, a man named René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, a rather storied and adventurous French fur trapper and explorer, canoed down the Mighty Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682, to be precise. Once he reached the end of the river and poured himself out at the Gulf of Mexico, he went on to declare all of the Mississippi Valley for France and named the area Louisiana after his king, Louis the 14th.

After this exciting and grand gesture, La Salle headed back to France to collect some supplies and colonists before arriving back in the New World two years later, in 1684. La Salle’s plan was to establish a permanent settlement but… as often goes with these things, the expedition suffered one disaster after another. Instead of getting to the mouth of the Mighty Mississippi, the Frenchmen sailed right on past it due to bad maps and the fact that the coastline looked… unchanging. From the coast of Alabama to the coast of Texas, once the white sand beaches disappear, there really isn’t much change or really any landmarks on the coast they were traveling down to suggest that they’d arrived… anywhere at all… So the group ended up on the Texas coast near Matagorda Bay. Unbothered by it being the entirely wrong location though, La Salle went ahead and built a little settlement of 180 people he called Fort St Louis near modern day Inez, Texas. The purpose of the settlement was to be a temporary basecamp so he could go find the Mississippi. Unfortunately for the French, the settlement was doomed to fail as most of the settlers died of starvation or disease, and most of the rest to hostile Indians. Although, as you’ll hear, some of the survivors will end up in our story later. Before the end of the colony though, their luck continued to sour when their final ship slipped its mooring and dashed itself to pieces on a sandbar. With no hope of leaving, the situation looked dire. So La Salle, with the intention of getting to Canada, took his most able bodied men and headed.. in a northerly direction, leaving only 13 people, mostly women, behind.

La Salle would never reach Canada though. He’d instead be killed by his own treacherous men somewhere along the way. The Spanish wouldn’t hear of that part and would send out 11 expeditions from Mexico City to stop that Frenchman from further encroachment. Six of those expeditions were overland and five were by sea. Eventually, an exploratory party led by an Alonso de Leon would find the completely destroyed settlement. Leon would go on to write of what they discovered:

We found all the houses sacked. All the settlers furniture broken. We found three bodies scattered over the plain. One of these, from the dress that still clung to the bones, appeared to be that of a woman, we took the bodies up, chanted mass, and buried them. End quote.

So, because of the encroaching Europeans, and because of the possible one day wealth that may come from New Mexico, and because it may yet be a bastion of conversion, the Spanish decided it was indeed worth it to keep the territory of New Mexico under Spanish control. Also there’s the fact that a revolt cannot go unpunished or the entire hemisphere would most likely erupt in revolution. But pretty much the same debate was had as had been had before and in much the same way as the last time. The souls of those Indians left behind is what really sold the Spanish on the necessity for one day taking back Santa Fe and New Mexico. The reconquest must go forth… in due time.

That due time, wasn’t quite yet though. During these years of 1685 through 1689, the successor governor of New Mexico, a Governor Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate or Jironza for short, took over and found the encampment of refugees from Santa Fe… well, as one would find an encampment of refugees today. They were poor, hungry, destitute, sick, and pissing off the natives. In this case, the natives were the Spaniards at El Paso and the natives that surrounded the city, the Manso Indians. The refugees lived in squalor surrounding the banks of the rio grande and any hopes the new governor had of retaking the land to the north, were nullified immediately. Actually, this was his second stint as governor of the territory, although this time he wasn’t actually IN the territory and this time… his subjects looked a lot different.

But eventually, by 1689, he, Jironza, had somehow whipped the people into a fighting shape. And so he, along with 80 soldiers would head up the Rio Grande from El Paso and attempt the second reconquest of that beleaguered puebloan territory northward. Before he could make it far though, the Zia Pueblo stopped them in their tracks with a 15 hour battle. During the battle, which forced the would be conquerers back to New Spain, Jironza suffered 50 wounded soldiers. But the Zia Pueblo… would lose 600 men, women, and children, not wounded, but dead. The low number of the Zia people 200 years later makes a little more sense now…

Instead of being humbled, Jironza was emboldened by his trip up the Rio Grande and he began planning a massive entrada to, for real, once and for all take back New Mexico for the Spanish. His bravado was also probably fueled by reports they had heard from a captured Puebloan who told them that by now, there was a total and complete breakdown of the unity of the puebloans… that unity that had allowed them to beat the Spanish in the first place, nearly a decade prior… it was gone. Jironza began to plan accordingly.

But in the spring of 1690, much to his disappointment, yet more uprisings and hostilities arose in a place my listeners know well, Casas Grandes or, the area around Paquime. The Anasazi descendants were not keeping the peace. So with resources dedicated to putting that rebellion of native Americans down, Jironza and his entrada to the north had to wait for Jironza’s successor.

That successor would be a man named Diego de Vargas Zapata Lujan Ponce de Leon y Contreras, last legitimate male descendant in the noble Vargas line of Madrid.

https://santafelibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2022/04/History-of-Diego-de-Vargas.pdf

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

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

Notes on the Lineage of Don Diego de Vargas, Reconqueror of New Mexico by J. Manuel Espinosa