2. The First Spanish Explorations of the Southwest
Your text does a
fine job of covering
this topic in general,
but the lack of
maps is frustrating,
and there are some
minor particulars
that for me are also
worthy of mention,
if not in there, then
certainly here. The
first of the men that
needs mentioning is
Alvar Nunez Cabeza
de Vaca (and, yeah
– ‘head of horse’?
Say WHAT?) who
was part of a big
expedition of exploration assembled by Panfilo de Narvaez in 1527, their agenda: explore Florida, maybe find the Fountain of
Youth, definitely set up trade relations with the Indians. Narvaez enters himself onto the list of History’s All-Time Losers by losing
a lot of his men in their first encounter with Indians in Florida; then losing about half of the rest in a series of huge ocean storms;
then, after stupidly splitting his party and making their way down the Mississippi River on a flotilla of rafts, a hurricane hits them
and half are lost, including Narvaez, for good. And remember, History Lovers: Panfilo de Narvaez was the chump who was sent to
arrest Cortes in 1520 and instead got bushwhacked, captured, and thrown in jail by the cat for several years, all the while Cortes2
4. Estevanico, Granger, date unknown
carried out his happy plan of crushing
the Aztec Empire and winning the ‘All
the Gold You Could Ever Imagine In
The World’ Sweepstakes – yeah. So
when I say Narvaez was a loser – well,
you be the judge.
De Vaca, on the other hand, was some
sort of winner. Not only would he (at
one of the expedition’s worst points)
convince the men to slaughter their
horses for food, and then use all of
the stirrups, horseshoes, and other
unnecessary metal items they had with
them to be melted down in a deer-hide
fire stoked hot enough to smelt metal
in order to make NAILS so that they
build really sturdy little boats with
which to navigate the coastal waters in
order to make their way south to the
populated areas of New Spain; not
only would he rally the survivors of the
hurricane-battered flotilla of boats
(only 18 of 80 men!) into a cadre of
overland explorers who penetrated the
interior of what is now Texas, being 4
5. alternately enslaved, and then traded, and then freed, from one Indian group to another as they traveled
across Texas and northern Mexico, and then down the Pacific coast and finally, after eight years of
wandering, back to Mexico City with only four of them having survived; not only was he able to transform
himself into a healer and magician, using the gigantic (possibly) Malinke or (possibly) Moroccan Berber
slave Esteban as an evidentiary figure of his magical powers, thereby easing the passage of he and his
fellow travelers as they made their way from one Indian community to another during the eights years of
their movements through the wilderness of the far north of Mexico; not only would he return to Spain and
write an account of all of this, revealing an extraordinary memory and eye for the small details of native
life, as well as a degree of respect and sympathy for the Indians that surpassed almost any of his
contemporaries of the time; but he would also win the plum position as adelantado, or governor, of the
Rio de la Plata, an important region of colonial Spanish America that comprised what is not a large part of
northern Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Compared to Narvaez, this is what I call a winner.
In 1540, the character on the next slide, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, would lead an enormous
expedition north, consisting of several thousand men at the outset, inflamed both by de Vaca’s accounts
of the regions and the tales told by a priest, one Marcos de Niza, of a ”city of gold” in the distant north
called Cibola – that de Niza happened to be a survivor of the Narvaez expedition which de Vaca had
ended up leading lent credence to his story. Coronado chased this tale all the way to and through
Arizona and New Mexico, and ultimately to the far side of Kansas, but it was just as much a fantasy as the
Land of Oz would be for Dorothy Gale and Toto centuries later. He discovered nothing of note, and
accomplished little, and at about the same time Hernando de Soto would explore the Southwest of what
is now the United States, from what is now Florida to the Mississippi.
5
8. While his explorations also yielded
nothing of any immediate value to
the Spanish, his discoveries did
contribute to the Spanish changing
their attitude toward the far
northern areas of their colonial
holdings, and it was after this time
that the Empire would begin to put
greater effort into establishing
colonial outposts in the north to
consolidate their hold on the more
distant regions of their American
empire.
8
10. Tenamaxtle and the
Mixton War
In 1529 Nuno Beltran
de Guzman was sent
with an army of
between 5-8,000
men to prepare the
Indians of the
southern area of
Nueva Galicia for the
10
11. advent of rapid Spanish
settlement, but his actions
were really inhumane, and
often unprovoked,
involving the indiscriminate
abuse, torture, and killing
of thousands of Indians.
He established Guadala-
jara and tried to impose
encomienda on the
Indians in the face of stiff
resistance, the most
11
12. strenuous under the leadership of
Tenamaxtle of Caxcanes.
In 1540 Coronado took 1600 of the
best soldiers for his entrada into the
north – the Indians seized the moment
of weakness to rebel against the
Spanish occupation and kill, roast,
and eat the encomendero Juan de
Arze. Then they set about reinforcing
the mountain fort of Mixton.
Tenemaxtle, Artist unknown
12
13. The death of Pedro de Alvarado, directly below the ‘1541;’
right image,Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza
A Spanish force, led by none other than Pedro
de Alvarado, attacked Mixton and was defeated;
in this loss Alvarado finally met his maker when
he was crushed by a horse; the Indians attacked
Guadalajara, arousing a general concern spreads
for the future of the entire colony. The Spanish,
alarmed, bring an army of 50-60,000 under the
leadership of Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza,
and they are able to defeat the Indians and
capture Tenamaxtle, who later escaped and led
13
14. a guerilla resistance war from the mountains until 1552 when he
voluntarily surrendered, and was sent to Spain for trial, where
he met Bartolome las Casas who prepared the defense for his
case, based on:
1) Tenamaxtle as the rightful tlatoani of the cabildo
(town) of Nochistlan and therefore had the right
to defend it from aggression
2) a demonstration that the Caxcanes had received
the Spanish in peace and should be treated as
loyal vassals of the King
3) Guzman and his officers were exploiters and
murderers of the Indians
4) the Caxcanes’ war was “natural justice” because of
the abuses of the Spanish.
14
15. Tenamaxtle asked that his family and lands be returned to him. The
objective had not been to rebel, per se, but to resist inhuman
abuses. Of the Spanish. The outcome of this trial is lost in the
annals of history. One year later is the last news on the matter, at
which point the matter was still being considered…
The survivors were deported to distant mining works and haciendas,
but not before many were executed in horrific ways in order to teach
object lessons to those left to live. The accounts of these
executions were so grim that an investigation was launched by the
Council of the Indies into the conduct of the war by the Viceroy.
The victory in the Mixton War consolidated control of the
Guadalajara region and opened entry to the silver-rich deserts of
the north; the Caxcanes were absorbed into Spanish society, many
serving as soldiers in the move northwards.
15
16. 16
THE GREAT PUEBLO REVOLT
A Brief Overview of Pueblo Society and Culture
The Pueblo Indians arrived in the Southwest circa 9000 BCE.
By 2000 BCE corn had reached these hunter-gatherers, traded
north from Mesoamerica, but not for another 2000 years did
they acquire beans and squash. By 300 BCE three regional
culture groups had developed, each in its own particular
ecological niche.
In the piney mountains of the southern state corners where AZ
and NM meet there were the Mogollon. The Hohokam settled in
along the Salt and Gila river drainages in southern AZ, and in the
Four Corners region, there were the Anasazi, the probable direct
ancestors of the modern-day Pueblo peoples.
Around 1250 AD the Anasazi villages were deserted, probably
due to soil erosion as a direct result of population growth. They
spread south, to Acoma, and east and west, further into AZ and
NM, becoming the Zuni and Hopi Pueblos. This would ultimately
be fortunate for the western tribes, as they occupied arid
steppes and (often fortified) mesas; their eastern brethren,
lacking such protection and living in the more desirable river
valleys, would later bear the most direct brunt of the Spanish
entrada.
17. Hohokam community, AZ 17
Perhaps because they were the only farming peoples in this region, the Pueblos valued hospitality and generosity, best
exemplified in two contrasting practices: on the one hand, they valued the exchange of gifts, and on the other they also
associated the conspicuous acquisition of material wealth with witchcraft and other unwholesome practices.
The Pueblos were
matrilineal, and
matrilocal, in that the
women built the
houses out of stones
set in charcoal ash and
dirt mortar, which they
saw as the entrails of
Mother Earth. When
daughters were
married, rooms were
added to expand the
home, and the young
husband came to live
with the extended
family of his bride.
Towns were an
aggregation of
households, anywhere
from 50 to 500 pop.,
18. Gila Cliff Dwellings, Mogollon, NM 18
grouped around a central plaza
where there were one or more
sacred kivas, or male ceremonial
centers. During childhood, boys
stayed with their mothers, and at
adolescence moved into a kiva to
learn the magical lore of men; once
masters of this, they were free to
find a wife, at which time they would
move into their wife’s family’s
residence.
Aside from feeding, the most
important cultural activity of Pueblo
women was sexual intercourse.
Through sex, women received
power, bearing the children who
would give them labor and respect in
their old age. Through sex, women
incorporated husbands into their
maternal households and expected
labor and respect for both them
and their mother.
19. 19
Through sex, women bound and controlled the katsinas, wild
and often malevolent spirits of nature and transformed them
into benevolent household gods. Sexual intercourse was the
symbol of cosmic harmony for the Pueblos, because
whenever the katsinas visited, these Cloud-Beings brought
life-giving rain that allowed seeds to germinate, animals to
multiply, and humans to survive.
The katsinas were the spirits of dead Pueblos, and in death
they had become potent rain spirits tied to the living in bonds
of reciprocity. They could be summoned to bring rain, food,
and fertility. They had come originally through an opening in
the roof of the underworld, as indeed had men
and the animals, and now they lived in the clouds,
on mountaintops, and underneath lakes.
In the time of beginnings, many gods, or katsinas,
had lived amongst the people and taught them all
they needed to know about their new world.
Patterns and procedures, sanctified by
generations of ritual, had survived to the present
and formed the source of ultimate authority for
the Pueblos:
20. 20
“Thus [from the
katsinas] the Indians
got their culture – their
houses, weapons, tools,
and cultivated plants,
their clans, priests and
societies, their songs,
prayers, ceremonies,
and paraphernalia.
That is why they live,
work and worship as
they do: because their
way of life was
established by the gods
long ago. To ignore or
violate, to lose the
customs of the old
days…[would be] to
bring misfortune or even
extinction upon
themselves.”
The symbol of the rain chiefs was an eagle on a cactus devouring a snake – the
eagle the most powerful bird in the sky; the snake a water deity; and the cactus
a source of life-giving water in the desert. (one of many reasons to suggest this
area of the Southwest as the place of origin of the Mexica, or Aztecs.)
21. 21Canyon de Chelly, Anasazi, AZ
Additionally, the “leaves” of the cactus were symbolic of human hearts upon which the katsinas were believed to feed, and when the
rain chiefs prepared for their rain dance, they flagellated themselves with the leaves until they drew blood (a lot of it, according to
Spanish observers) as an offering, a giving of their own “hearts” in humble obeisance before the gods. Modern scientists know that
a loss of blood to this degree can lead to hallucinatory visions, which for the Indians, was a way of coming closer to the gods.
The Pueblos also saw the earth as sacred, and all
natural objects as worthy of respect, whereas the
Spanish and other Europeans saw it as an
economic resource to be done with as they liked.
The Pueblos cared most about their place in the
world, which was the center (any village or nearby
place of emergence), and sacred space radiated
out from there; as the center it was their duty to
live in balance with the harmony of the earth’s
orderly environment, controlling what they could,
yet always with the knowledge that they were
part of a single sanctified life system.
Elements of the natural world were intimately
associated with sex and reproduction, e.g., the
corn ear represented the female’s magical
powers, associated with corn, earth, and
childbearing powers; conversely, the flint
represented the male’s magical powers,
associated with rain, hunting, fire-bringing, and
semen.
22. 22Zuni berdaches, late 19th century
One of the most interesting
aspects of the struggle between
the sexes for control and
influence over Pueblo life was the
existence of a ‘third sex,’ the
‘half-men/half-women’ referred
to as berdaches by the Spanish
(from the Arabic bradaj, meaning
“male prostitute;” the commonly
accepted term amongst modern-
day Native Americans is “two-
spirit”). These were men who
were believed to possess both a
male and female spirit, and had
assumed the dress, mannerisms,
and occupations of women due to
a vision or community selection.
There were always four in a
village, never less nor more, four
being a sacred number for the
Pueblos, due to the four cardinal
directions and the four seasons;
there were also four days to
rituals, and four areas to
Wenimats (afterlife).
23. Mesa Verde, Anasazi, CO
23
The berdache were available for sex to any unmarried man, but not women, did a great deal of heavy work, and could take freely
from any home whatever they needed for day-to-day survival; they seemed to symbolize the struggle between men and women
for control in one body, and so served as a constant reminder that without both men and women, society could not function.
While sex was central to the culture of the
Pueblos, war and gifting were also of great
importance. Warfare was at one end of the
reciprocal spectrum of human interactions, and
gifting was at the other – in broad terms, “I give
you a gift to enhance your existence, or I take
your life to end it.” War was avoided through
successful gifting, in the form of food and
hospitality represented by sex with women –
violence was domesticated and tamed through
female power, and the end result of this –
children – represented the uniting of natives
and foreigners, peace, incorporation, and unity.
When an enemy was killed, their scalp was
taken, as head and scalp were representative of
the power of an individual. The women of the
victors would simulate having sex with the scalp,
lying down on it and referring to it as their
second husband; by doing this, they robbed
the scalp of the power of its former owner, and
took it for their own. They also tamed it in this
way, and thus the scalp became a fetish of
24. 24
power for its new possessors, and would be hung in the home of the warrior who had
taken it.
It was not only agriculture, the province of the women, but hunting and gathering that
formed the basis of the Pueblo economy. When it came time to hunt the Pueblos
would go out in search of specific animals, garbed in the skins and accoutrement of
said animal. They would form a large circle and close in on those creatures caught
within. Deer were the largest and so most valuable meat-bearing animal, so they
could only be held down and suffocated, in order to allow their escaping breath to
help produce more deer in the world. Their stomachs would be removed, and the
reproductive organs placed within; then these organs would be dried, ritualized, and
kept as fetishes to assist in the deer spirit’s reproductive abilities.
Each community was governed by the Inside Chief, who was lawgiver, peacemaker,
war chief, and high priest. He was surrounded by other men with expertise in various
areas who held great influence, but he was the one responsible for the main kiva, at
the center of the community, inside of which was the navel of the world from which
men had entered the world above from the world below. The Inside Chief’s primary
task was to maintain the harmony and equilibrium of the community through the
prevention of conflict. His antithesis were the Outside Chiefs, who were responsible
for and protectors from violence, external, natural, and supernatural.
The Outside Chiefs were seen as avatars of the Twin War Gods Masewi (Wren Youth)
and Oyoyewi (Mockingbird Youth), who were the sons of Father Sun. As young men,
these twins had terrorized everyone in the world with their violent ways, and were
finally pushed to the “outside” boundaries of society to put limits on their ability to
do harm – there they perfectly embodied the thinking of the Pueblos, which was that
The Twin War Gods
25. 25
warfare was marginal, young, and outside the community, whereas the sacred peace
was at the center, old, and inside the town. This, then, was the perfect summary of Pueblo
life – a constant striving of many oppositional forces – the authority of Inside vs. Outside
Chiefs, center vs. margin, male magic vs. female magic, old vs. young, native vs. foreign, law
vs. force.
One final point – there are “God Twins” in many North American myth cycles some reason
to believe that as maize (corn) traveled north from Mesoamerica along trade routes, so too
might the Mayan tales of their Hero Twins.” Maybe, maybe not.
At right and left are katsinas of the Twin War Gods, and in the center an image of the Mississippian Hero
Twins by Herb Roe – all drawn from the same Mayan source?
26. 26
The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico
In 1539, as the Zuni prepared to summon
the katsinas for rain, a black katsina came
from the west, accompanied by Indians of
many tribes – they called him Estevanico.
He did all the right things to convince the
Zunis of his supernatural status, and told
them that white katsinas called the
Children of the Sun would arrive soon.
Not long after his arrival the Zuni executed
him, concluding he was a false katsina.
But the Children of the Sun did come –
and they rode great monsters, controlled
the violent powers of nature, and were
bedecked in the sun’s glittering radiance.
The Indians did not initially believe that
they came from the sun, for the sun never
stopped moving, so how did they come
down to earth? Where it touches the earth
in its setting, in the west, explained the
katsinas – that is where we were made and
given our power. But the Zuni were
dubious, so the issue of their legitimacy
came to force.
27. 27
The Spanish made war upon
the Zuni and conquered them,
and the neighboring peoples
feared for their own imminent
conquest. In 1540, Francisco
de Coronado’s troops arrived
in the Pueblo of Alcanfor, and
due to the harshness of that
winter took blankets and food
from the Tiguex Indians, and
had sex with their women –
and all of this without giving
anything in exchange.
Outraged over this imbalanced
“gifting,” the Tiguex rose
against them, and in the
ensuing conflict, the Spanish
killed several hundred of the
Indians; of these, 100 warriors
were burned at the stake. All
through this winter there were
skirmishes with the Indians,
and then, in 1542, when word
that the Indians of Sonora
were in rebellion against the
Spanish colonists, Coronado
led his men south, thus closing the
first chapter of the Spanish
penetration of New Mexico.
The impetus for the next northern
expedition was provided by the
Church. So different was it in
intention and organization that in
order to properly promote it, the
Crown passed the Ordinance of
Discovery, making it clear that
they did not wish for these
expeditions to be thought of as
“conquests,” but as entradas of
discovery, colonization, and
conversion, to be led by Catholic
priests, who were to be protected
by Spanish soldiers. The
colonization of what would become
New Mexico then began in earnest
in 1598 with the arrival of the
expedition under the direction of
Juan de Onate.
28. Juan de Onate 28
The Pueblo peoples were very different from any Indians that the
Spanish had yet encountered in the New World. Nothing had
prepared the Spanish for the close connections between the sacred
and the sexual in Pueblo culture. Many physical landmarks, cliffs,
mesas, mountains and rivers were named after body parts with sexual
connotations. It was common for women to offer their bodies to
persons deemed powerful, especially if the power was related to the
supernatural. The Franciscan priests were disgusted by this, and
rejected all overtures, but the Spanish soldiers were willing
participants. However, from the Pueblo point of view, in having sex
with the Spanish their women were engaged in the practice of
transforming and domesticating the malevolent power of these foreign
katsinas – but the Spanish had no inkling of this, all they took from it
was that in conquering the Pueblos, their women were theirs for the
taking. This would mark the beginning of the essential
misunderstanding between the Pueblos and the Spanish – what the
former thought they gave willingly as gifts, the latter saw as their
rightful tribute as the new rulers of the Pueblos. Indeed, one of the
most popular arguments for the reasons behind the 1698 revolt of the
Pueblos has to do with the meaning of Indian gifts and how they
should be understood.
One of the many reasons the Pueblos were convinced that the
Spanish friars were katsinas to be taken seriously was that the priests
timed their arrival with the start of the wet season, knowing that they
could then claim to have brought the life-giving rain.
29. 29
They also arrived with large
numbers of livestock, which
doubled in number every fifteen
months or so, escorted by men
astride even larger beasts –
clearly Spanish animal magic
was superior to that of the
Pueblos, because the only
animal they had been able to
summon and domesticate was
the turkey, and the deer was
the largest meat-bearing animal
they knew. The amount of meat
introduced into the Indian diet
in New Mexico was simply
astounding, and that it was
dependable year-round and
uncontested by their neighbors
and enemies – this was even
more remarkable.
The priests quickly absorbed
the basics regarding the Pueblo
worldview and capitalized upon
them.
30. 30
It was a lucky coincidence that the
Pueblos used prayer sticks fastened
into a cross to summon katsinas – they
greeted the first padres with these
powerful religious artifacts in their
hands, and were not surprised to see
the Franciscans with “prayer sticks” of
their own. Recognizing that the sacred
was at the center of Pueblo life, they
built their churches in the middle of
villages, and erected crosses atop the
kivas; and as force was the province of
the Outside Chiefs, at the periphery,
they mandated that the settlers and
soldiers, who might prey upon the
Indians, live outside of the villages, yet
not too far away that they would be
unable to assist the friars in time of
need.
The Franciscans utilized theatrics to control the Indians. At one point, three horses were taken and slaughtered for consumption
by some Pueblos; they were caught and sentenced to death by the Spanish. The Franciscans had the idea of “saving” the
Indian’s lives at the last minute, charging forth and rescuing the Indians from the chopping block, and in this way, the Pueblos
came to see the priests (sacred, “Inside Chiefs”) as those who were in control of the soldiers (violent, “Outside Chiefs”).
The priests also used stage plays to teach the Pueblos about Christianity, but the lessons intended were not necessarily the
lessons learned. At Christmas a full-blown production of the story of the birth of Christ was staged, but the nativity cycle ended
31. 31
New Mexico Landscape, Georgia O’Keeffe, date unknown
up seen not as the birth of the Prince of Peace,
but a war epic that culminated in the birth of a
new warlord, so powerful that even as a child,
mighty kings came before him, humbled, and
bearing gifts. This had to do not so much with a
poor production on the part of the Spanish and
their neophytes, but with the similarities between
the nativity and the Pueblo story of the
aforementioned Twin War Gods, the sons of
Father Sun, conceived miraculously when a virgin
ate two pine nuts. The War Twins were rowdy and
troublesome boys, equated with the forces of
nature (mainly lightning and thunder), and always
symbolized astronomically as comets or as the
Morning Star. They were worshipped at the
winter solstice, only four days ahead of
December 25th. Christ, too, was the son of God
the Father, his birth heralded by the Star of
Bethlehem. His warriors possessed lightning
(gunpowder) and monsters (horses) ready to kill
those who did not submit to Christ as their new
lord.
Another thing that impressed the Pueblos was the
fact that the friars did not engage in sex. The
Pueblo men temporarily abstained from sex when
practicing ritual magic, but to swear off sex for a lifetime – this was
astonishing, and when combined with the priests’ ability to control sacred
power, mobilize force, conjure rain, heal the sick, and provide the
community with meat…little doubt could be entertained that the Spanish
priests were indeed very, very powerful Inside Chiefs.
32. 32
The Spanish priests had learned many valuable lessons already about how to make
Indians Catholic, going back to the days of the Conquest. In order to ensure the
complete conversion of the Pueblos, the first order of business was the utter
destruction of every physical reminder of the traditional religious practices, and so:
kivas were entered, profaned, and had crosses erected on top of them; and
katsina “dolls” were burned, as many as a
thousand at a time. Every other
ceremonial artifact was destroyed as well.
Sex had always been a way of ensuring
social and cosmic harmony for the
Pueblos, and as has been noted, it was
evident in nearly every aspect of their
culture and belief system; for priests
sworn to lifetimes of chastity, non-
procreational, out of wedlock sex was sin,
pure and simple, and had to be
controlled, if not eliminated entirely. So
the Pueblos were informed that the oh-
so-appropriately named “missionary
position” was the only approved position
for intercourse, and those who engaged
in “bestial” activities, or sex before
(Christian) marriage were whipped, had
their heads shaved, and were put in
stocks in the center of the village.
The next alteration in the fundamental
structure of the lives of the Pueblos was
the driving of a wedge between the older
33. 33
and younger generations; this was done by
publicly humiliating the adults, then plying the
children with many gifts to endear the priests
to them. One favored strategy of the Spanish
was to grab and twist a man’s genitals until he
collapsed to the ground in pain; thus
emasculated, he became, in symbolic terms, a
woman. In addition, the fact that the Spanish
reversed many of the labor roles of the
genders, and had the men do the home
building instead of the women, had the women
doing the weaving rather than the men, and so
on, served to further diminish the men in the
eyes of both women and children, and to
continue the disruption to the traditional
patterns of Pueblo society. The abundance
of Spanish livestock also made the Outside
Chiefs of the hunt superfluous, reducing their
necessity and thus, their authority amongst
the Pueblos. Women were reduced as well
through the elimination of most fertility rituals,
and by way of alterations of sexual behavior
(the source of female power), etc.
34. 34
The Franciscans were ultimately successful in distancing the young from the old, in the ways
described above, and also through the elimination of the carefully calculated system of gift
exchange whereby elders gained the labor, respect, and obedience of juniors – the young
people, rather than standing ready to respect, protect, and provide for their elders, instead
became their enthusiastic critics, denouncing them as sinners in the eyes of God. The friar’s
greatest allies in this were the policia spiritual, native assistants who served the priests as
“spiritual police,” eagerly reporting all infractions of religious law.
Purple Hills Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1934 The Rain Chiefs and the Franciscans
were at odds over who had the
greatest rain magic (the most
important magic of all). The priests
would not hesitate to engage in acts
of self-flagellation and reenactments
of Christ toting the cross up Golgotha
in order to impress upon the Pueblos
the sacrifices and immense physical
suffering they were willing to endure in
order to control their great magical
powers; indeed, their devotion to their
beliefs was such that they also
mutilated their own penises in pursuit
of this same end. This explains the
New Mexican crucifixes with their
bloody loin-cloths, unique in all of
Christendom. It is of interest to note
that in these acts one sees the “Talion
Principle” (retaliatory punishment,
from latin lex talionis) at work – an eye
for an eye, the offending organ or
agent harmed, “snatched out” as
punishment for the sin – it’s clear that
in their actions the priests are also
attaching the paramount association
of sinfulness to the act of sex, or at
least certain kinds of sex.
35. 35
Apache, late 1800s
So the question must arise -- how legitimate were the conversions of the Pueblos? Were
they “legitimate” Catholics, or only half-converted, believing in a syncretistic blend of their
own and Spanish beliefs? Based on the evidence, it seems fairly evident that whether they
offered corn and feathers to the cross as they had to their prayer-sticks, honored the
Christ child on Christmas as they had the Twin War Gods during winter solstice, or flogged
themselves on Good Friday as they had called the rain gods every spring, the meanings
attached to these “Catholic” acts were firmly rooted in ancient Pueblo concepts.
The Path to the Great Pueblo Rebellion
In 1637 Governor Luis de Rosas arrived in New Mexico. Ruthless, fearless, and anti-clerical,
he had twin missions in mind upon arrival – place the civil government securely in control of
the colony, and profit directly from his power as governor. Rosas believed the best way to
accomplish his ends was to drive a wedge between the friars and the colonists (Spanish,
castas and Indians), and this strategy began with his policy towards the Apaches.
In 1638 Rosas sent his soldiers to attack the Apaches on the Great Plains in the eastern part
of present-day New Mexico, killing over 100 and enslaving more, forcing them into service in
his obraje (small manufacturing center/workshop) in Santa Fe and selling some as slaves to
the miners of Sonora. Retaliatory raids by the Apaches followed in 1639-40, during which
time a great deal of livestock were killed, and 52,000 bushels of corn were burned, leading
to widespread hunger throughout the colony. Trade relations in place between the Pueblos
and Apaches since the 1520s were disrupted, and so was the productivity of the Pueblos,
which interfered with their ability to meet the demands of tribute placed upon them by the
Spanish colonial government and the Church.
36. 36
The above coincided with a time of great population loss.
In 1636 a smallpox epidemic killed 20,000 Indians, reducing
their overall numbers by roughly one-third, and then in 1640
some unidentifiable pestilence took an additional 3,000
lives. At this time, faced with a loss of their trade relations
with the Apaches (which had guaranteed peace with those
fearsome warriors), and no reduction of their burden of
tribute in spite of their loss of population, the Pueblos
began to resist the control of the friars, thinking that the
priests had lost their power over the sacred. If God the
Father was with them, why had they not saved the sick?
Why had the rain been so thin of late? Why were the
Apaches attacking the Pueblo herds and granaries with
impunity? Were the priests katsinas, or not?
Traditionally, if the Inside Chiefs were unable to deal with
whatever troubles beset their people, then that pueblo
would disperse, the people would divide and head in
separate directions, and new pueblos would be established
at a distance from the original settlement. But the friars
(the new “Inside Chiefs”) had failed to take care of the
people and now would not allow them to leave – they had to
stay within close proximity to the mission. So the Pueblos
did the only thing they could think to do – they turned
back to their traditional religious practices, and the
Franciscans did the only thing they could see to do in
response, which was to try and suppress this reversion to
paganism.
So the priests, colonists, and governor were divided, all blaming one
another for the disruptions of the colony. The friars argued that Rosas’
greed, slave raids and the ensuing Apache attacks, and excessive use of
Indian labor and extraction of tribute had forced the Indians to revolt.
The colonists argued that the governor’s seizure of control of most of
the local commerce and that his taking a third of their livestock to feed
his slaves had ruined them financially; in addition to this, he had filled the
cabildo of Santa Fe (town government) with his own cronies in order to
legitimize his control of land, water, and pasturage.
37. 37
Hill, New Mexico, Georgie O’Keeffe, date unknown
Rosas countered that the friars had tyrannized the colony,
controlling the land, livestock, and labor for their own power
and glory since the colony’s founding, and he was now there
to set things right. The bulk of his argument was that the
missions were so rich as a result of the Franciscans control of
the colony and its productivity that the later immigrants to
New Mexico had never been able to rise above the lower
class (it certainly made it difficult for the cronies of the
governor to grow rich off of the colony), and furthermore, the power
that the priests had over the religious lives and destiny of the
colonists, not to mention the Holy Inquisition and the threat of its
punishments, kept the people cowed and easily controlled. As the
rift between civil and religious authority grew (during one sermon a
friar made a point that irritated Rosas, at which point he stood, called
the priest a liar and, flanked by his soldiers, stormed out, shouting
curses, from the church), the unity of sacred and secular power, so
essential to the success of the conquest, visibly crumbled before its
Indian audience.
As the governor increased his attacks on the power of the Church in
New Mexico, the friars deserted their missions and banded together
at Santo Domingo Pueblo, issuing statements regarding their loyalty
to the Pope, and their denunciation of Rosas, in the form of letters to
Mexico City, Madrid, and Rome. In their absence, the governor
staged plays for the Indians satirizing Christian ritual and the rule of
the priests; he also exiled the bishop of the colony. This year-long
stand-off was ended in 1641 with the arrival of a new governor, Juan
Flores de Sierra y Valdez, and bishop, Fray Hernando Covarrubias.
The new governor died shortly after his arrival, and in the midst of all
of this the colonists imprisoned Rosas who himself was killed soon
thereafter by a soldier who believed the governor was carrying on an
affair with his wife.
Soon yet another new governor, Fernando de Arguello, arrived and
peace was restored with the Franciscans once again in power as the
undisputed masters of the colony. But the seeds of rebellion had
38. 38
been planted. Many of the Pueblos had found too much comfort in a return to their traditional
religious beliefs – there was no going back. Many of them, at odds with their more fully converted
brethren, deserted the colony for a free life among the Apaches, who were still making raids upon
the Pueblos and Spanish supply trains.
Then came another predatory governor in 1658, resulting in yet another open conflict between the
Franciscans, the secular government, and the people. Governor Bernardo Lopez de Mendizabal
outraged the friars by openly tolerating, even encouraging, Pueblo religious practices. The Indian’s
faith in the priesthood had also faltered in the last two decades because after years of colonial
settlement, many of the priests had slipped in their vows and partaken of the forbidden fruit of sex.
It would have been astonishing had they not, given that sexuality was such an essential, and public
aspect of Pueblo culture, but that did not change the fact that this shift in behavior, so at odds with
the public pronouncements of the Franciscans, further eroded the Indian’s faith. One report from
Fray Nicolas de Freitas stated that “all the pueblos are full of friar’s children.”
Governor Bernardo Lopez de
Mendizabal
By the 1660s it had become clear to the Franciscans that even though they had been preaching the gospel to the Indians for more than a
half century, the majority had only become half-hearted Catholics. As a result, many of the most devoted friars decided to make the
ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their flock by becoming martyrs to the cause of conversion. The written records reveal that many of the
priests had considered this sort of “glorious” death for years, and even decades; many, having come to the notion fairly recently, were
perhaps seeking to atone for their sins with Indian women. The most common form of martyrdom was in seeking to confront hostile
Indians, who were usually only too happy to kill the priests who arrived in their territories, irritating them and virtually asking for the
release of death. By offering their lives in this way, they hoped to show the Pueblos (and those who would kill them) that in the love of
Christ there was no fear of death. They spoke the word of God even as arrows pierced their bodies, and war axes descended on their
heads. It is also of interest to note that as members of the religious leadership of the colony sought death in this way, it left smaller and
smaller numbers of priests to tend to the needs of their followers – by the 1660s there were only thirty-three priests for a population of
some 17,000 Pueblos Indians, not to mention the Spanish and castas Catholics populations as well.
39. 39
At this same time, between 1667 and 1672, there
was an extended drought and great crop failure.
Much of the population were reduced to eating
boiled hides mixed with herbs and roots, and in
1671 a great illness took the lives of many people
as well as much of the livestock. The Pueblo
population, 40,000 in 1638, dropped to the aforementioned 17,000. The Navajos and
Apaches, in similarly dire straits, attacked the pueblos and Spanish settlements
harder at any time in the past. One of the primary promises of the Spanish since the
beginning of colonization had been to protect their converts from their traditional
enemies, but by 1675 six pueblos had been entirely wiped out.
The Pueblos spoke more openly than ever of rebellion, and from amongst them a
leader emerged: a medicine man named Popé, who moved to Taos, the northernmost
pueblo in the colony in order to be as far away from the government in Santa Fe as
possible while he laid the plans for his revolt. He was a master of organization, and
spoke to the people in language that made sense to them – once the Christians and
their God was dead, then the original katsinas would return bearing gifts of
happiness and prosperity. For every Spaniard killed, an Indian wife was promised.
In Taos, Popé was able to call out the katsinas that had retreated to the underworld
when the Spanish came; they gave him a knotted rope, and told him that he was to
circulate similar ropes amongst the pueblos. Each community that would join in the
rebellion was to untie one knot to show their support, and the remaining knots would
be the countdown of days until the attacks upon the Spanish. The leaders of the
insurgency met on saint’s feast days so their travel to and fro would not attract
attention. Three caciques would not join and told the governor, who arrested Popé’s
messengers and through torture discovered the meaning of the ropes. News of this
got back to Popé, who sent word that the rebellion should begin ahead of schedule,
the next day. By the end of that day, all but three pueblos had risen in rebellion, and
most of the mules and horses, not to mention hundreds of colonists lay dead. Popé’s
plan had been to eliminate the advantage of beasts of burden and horseback warfare
for the Spanish, and to save that edge for mounted Pueblos and Apaches. The
Spanish would also be unable to send south for help, as any Indian could outrun a
Spaniard on foot, and the Indians would have horses.
Popé, Lawrence W. Lee, date unknown
40. 40
settlements were systematically attacked and laid waste, with 401 settlers
dying that day, alongside 21 friars. The Indians laid siege to Santa Fe for
nine days, after rejecting Spanish entreaties for peace. On that last day
the Spaniards attacked with such energy that in one hour Popé lost 350
men, and called for a retreat. Once the Spanish realized they had some
breathing room, they fled south as a group toward El Paso. The road was
a highway of horrors, with every village filled with dead bodies rotting in
the sun. Christian icons were either destroyed or covered with excrement.
It seems that religious conflict was perhaps the single largest cause
behind the revolt.
The priests were singled out for special punishments by their former
parishioners, and were the almost always the first to be killed in any
community. Fray Juan de Jesus was stripped naked, tied to the back of a
large pig, paraded through town, and then ridden by Indians around the
zocalo. When it came time to kill him, an argument arose over whether he
should be put to death, with the Indians attacking each other in anger.
The priest said to them, “Children, I am a poor old man, do not fight, do
not kill each other in order to protect me; do what God permits.” So they
shoved a sword through his body and beheaded him, the head being
found later by the Spanish in some woods near his body.
If any of this seems shocking, think how well the Indians had learned the
lessons of the Franciscans, who had destroyed their holy objects, who
had desecrated their kivas, who had humiliated, tortured, and executed
their holy men – iconoclasm was understood as a valuable public
spectacle.
To make matters worse, the colonists were dramatically
outnumbered – there were appr. 170 Spaniards capable of
bearing arms against appr. 8,000 Indian warriors.
Popé had also planned to cut off the northern part of the
colony from the south. Once done, the northern
41. 41
Once the Spanish had been driven from New Mexico, the Indians
eliminated every last possible remnant of Christianity from their lives; the
children were made to bear witness to it all, to learn the ways of the
ancients and the meaning of respect. To speak of anything related to
Christianity would result in heavy punishment. Christian marriages were
ended, new wives were taken, and Christian names were cast aside.
Ultimately the Indians destroyed nearly every trace of the Spanish
settlements, taking particular care with the churches and their records of
conversions, baptisms, marriages, deaths, etc.
In El Paso, in spite of the fact that Indian informants were very specific in
telling the Spanish government and the Franciscans of the reasons behind
the revolt (labor and tribute, the socio-economic system, and most of all,
religious resentments), the Spanish ignored all and concluded that they
were blameless of everything except loving the Indians too much. The
Franciscans celebrated the martyrdoms of their 21 brothers as something
which gave their “sacred religion such an access of faith and such honor
and glory to God and His Church.” The martyrs were compared openly to
Christ who had also died so that his less enlightened fellow men should be
shown the way to salvation.
In Conclusion
With historical hindsight, it is possible to identify many points of similarity
between Pueblo and Spaniard that facilitated a degree of mutual
understanding in the early 1600s: Each used altars, religious calendars,
aids for prayer, priestly costumes, and a “religious language” somewhat
removed from the language of everyday life.
42. 42
Catholic saints were once normal human beings who had been elevated due to their
piety and good deeds, much like Pueblo heroes who had achieved a supernatural
immortality after their deaths and were now petitioned by the living for favors and good
luck. Both peoples had the tradition of religious visions, and the use of incense and
holy water by the Spanish bore a similarity to the Pueblo use of burnt yucca and sage
in the calling of rain clouds. Additionally, both cultures believed that the universe was
under the control of supernatural forces that dictated the fortunes of weather, war,
personal fate, and national destiny. For both peoples, divine power gave order and
meaning to the lives of men.
However, what was at odds in New Mexico was the Spanish belief in a hierarchy of
nature vs the Pueblo’s belief system based on equality within nature. In the 1600s
Europeans increasingly venerated the individual, their free choice, and opportunity to
distinguish themselves from others – personal merit based on achievement was a prize
to be desired and worked toward. On the other hand, the Pueblos only valued
personal identity in relation to the community, and not at its expense – anyone who
strove constantly to stand out from the rest would have been ostracized and perhaps
even charged with witchcraft, not admired.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile this worldview with that of Christianity which
has, from the start, posited the notion that Christians are a separate, special people,
saved from destruction by a merciful God. There has also always been the expectation
that the better Christian you are, and the less you sin, the more clear it is that you will
be saved, and the “proof” of this is evidenced through good works, public displays of
“goodness.” For the Pueblos, everyone belonged to the group and was certain to
reach shipapu, or the afterlife, regardless of merits or demerits, good or bad acts on
earth. The only qualification on this was that those who had not led a good life would
find it more difficult to make it to the place of emergence/reentry.
43. 43
Black Cross, New Mexico, Georgie O’Keeffe, date unknown
Thus, for the Pueblos, there was no need for atonement, sacrifice, redemption,
because no one and everyone were both sinners and saved, if you will.
The reconquest of New Mexico would take time. The next decade was marked
by drought, and civil war amongst the formerly-united Pueblos. Many felt
deceived by Popé, because the katsinas had not returned to bless and improve
their circumstances.
In 1692 the new viceroy of the colony, Don Diego de Vargas, returned to New
Mexico with 60 soldiers, 100 auxiliaries, and a lot of what the Indians had initially
found appealing about the Spanish: material goods and food; in other words,
gifts. He took the lay of the land and, after smoothing things over with the
Pueblos, returned later that year with 100 soldiers, 70 families – and 18 priests.
Now the Indians were less happy to see the Spanish, especially as their
wintertime return necessitated demands of great quantities of food from the
Indians, who were disinterested in going back to the old ways. Ultimately a
battle was fought for Santa Fe – the Spanish prevailed, and executed the 70
warriors that had surrendered, and distributed the 400 women and children as
slaves to the colonists. Now a base for the reconquest of New Mexico had been
established, and after this second beginning, which would lead to ultimate
victory, the Pueblos would never rebel again.
Information on the Pueblo peoples and their revolt derived mainly from the writings of Henry Warner
Bowden’s, “What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?” of 1975 and When Jesus Came, the Corn
Mothers Went Away, Ramon A. Gutierrez, 1991
44. 44
My apologies for the lack of perfect clarity with this image
folks, but it’s the best I could get out of it. If your eyes can
make it out as well as mine, you should get the idea – it
shows the size, number and location of land grants doled
out by the Spanish government, 1630-1820, then the land
grants given out during the much briefer Mexican period
from 1821-1836 – you can see how aggressively the Mexican
government would pursue development in the region in the
hopes of stimulating economic growth, and how, in the long
run, the revolt of the Pueblos really came to nothing,
unfortunately.
45. Acoma, “Sky City”
45
Some shots here of Acoma where, in
the aftermath of his conquest of it,
Juan de Onate was “forced” to cut
one foot from all men over twenty-
five years of age to discourage any
possible uprisings.
48. 48
Many years later, centuries, in fact, the decision was made by
the government of Texas to erect an enormous statue of
Onate in El Paso (which used to be in New Mexico until the
borders were redrawn), in spite of angry protests by Native
Americans. But they got their digs in later – somebody cut
the foot off of a famous bronze statue of Onate in New
Mexico and later mailed it back for reattachment after issuing
a statement to the press that read, in part:
(And forgive me for this sign’s egregious overstatement of the facts; obviously this woman feels the pain of her own ancestor’s pain and
suffering, but that’s no excuse for stepping outside of the boundaries or common sense and reality and squarely into the Twilight Zone, but you
get the idea.)
50. 50
"We took the liberty of
removing Oñate's right
foot on behalf of our
brothers and sisters of
Acoma Pueblo. We see no
glory in celebrating
Oñate's fourth centennial,
and we do not want our
faces rubbed in it."
51. 51
This next bit of business is strictly for fun, skip it if you like, it’s only three slides…
52. 52
The Hopi are one of the peoples collectively referred to as the ‘Pueblo
peoples’ of the Southwest. Their name means ‘one who is peaceful, polite,
well-behaved and civilized.’ For them, right conduct is integral to their very
sense of being. Consequently, they raise their kids to be well-behaved,
and they do it in a very interesting way. There are particular katsinas called
the Soo ’so’yoktu (the ‘mean Ogre katsina spirits’), and children are given
carved representations of the Ogres at a
very young age. They are also told stories
about these Ogres, about how they love to
take bad children away from their parents,
eat them, etc. At a certain time of the year
during the purification period, men of the
community dress up as these katsinas and
come to the homes of the people, making
outrageous demands for large meals of
extravagant food to be prepared by the
girls, containing meats of animals that have
to be hunted by the boys; none of this is
At left is Nata’aska, Bigmouth Ogre, an Uncle in the
Ogre family, they drag their saws against the earth and
sing songs of eating children and cracking their bones.
At right is Wiharu, another Uncle, who prefers greasy
foods, and so likes fat children, who are richer and
tastier.
53. 53
easily accomplished, and the Soo ’so’yoktu leave
grumbling and disappointed. But later that week
from within the So ‘yok ‘ki (spiritual home of the
Ogres) they will return, insisting on their food.
They say that if the food is not produced, they
will take the children and eat them instead. The
children, understandably, are a bit disturbed at
this announcement – yeah, they’re screaming in
mortal terror. We’re talking kids three to five
years old, who have been taught to believe in
these primal figures of dark punishment for bad
children, and have carried “action figures” of
them around with them for months. The children
ask what they should do to be better, to save
themselves, and as their parents counsel them,
all the while in the background, the Ogres mock and ridicule the people of the community, their homes and kivas, even
as they gnash their teeth, hoot, snarl, and scrape their claws and saws against the ground and walls. After this drama
has been carried far enough, and the children have been scared out of their wits and into a place from which it will be
very difficult to even contemplate even misbehaving again, the Ogres are driven off by the adults and order is restored
to the village.
And thus, the Hopi are maintained and live up to their name: peaceful, well-behaved, polite, civilized.
I guess that’s ONE way to raise your kids, huh?
(Oh, and there’s one last Ogre on the next slide – I gave him his own space, because he really scared me the most – I had a nightmare about him, true story, those teeth…my
wife says I’ve been acting so nicely, too...)
