1 the pueblo revolt, 1680 kevin m. gannon (2013) issue

1. 1
The Pueblo Revolt, 1680
Kevin M. Gannon (2013) Issues and Controversies in History.
Were the Pueblo Indians Justified in Rebelling Against the
Spanish?
The Issue
The 1680 Pueblo Revolt in the Spanish colony of New Mexico
was the first—and only—
successful rebellion of Native American peoples against the
Europeans who ruled them by force
during the colonial period of American history. Spanish
colonizers and their Pueblo subjects
embraced diametrically opposed beliefs about the world and
their place within it; the tensions
that sprang from this opposition would culminate in an
extraordinary outbreak of violence and
insurrection in the summer of 1680. The Spanish believed that
their colonial presence in New
Mexico was eminently justifiable, and that Spanish colonization
was a mandate from God. To
the Pueblo, the Spanish used religious conversion as a vehicle
of oppression, abused the native
population, and were powerless to protect the Pueblos from the
numerous threats they faced to
their very survival.
• Arguments that the Spanish Presence in New Mexico Was
Legitimate and Just: The

2. Spanish justified their conquests in the “New World” by arguing
that the conversion of
Native Americans to Roman Catholicism was of paramount
importance—the true Word
of God was being spread, and Indian souls were saved. Inherent
in this view was a belief
that indigenous Americans were inferior to Europeans. By
demonstrating the proper ways
to exploit the bountiful resources of the Americas (including
plentiful amounts of silver)
and to worship the Christian God, the Spanish were undertaking
a mission to “civilize”
what they saw as backwards, ignorant, and savage Indians.
• Arguments that the Spanish Presence in New Mexico Was
Intolerable and that the
Spanish Must be Expelled by the Pueblo: For decades, the
Pueblo had seen their land
and people mercilessly exploited by the Spanish. The Spanish
had forced the Pueblo to
give them a share of their crops and other goods, leaving them
with scant provisions to
sustain themselves and their families. The efforts of the Spanish
Franciscan priests to
convert them to Catholicism also meant the often violent
suppression of their native
religious practices. The Franciscans’ message of a loving and
merciful Christian God did
not match the harsh and violent reality of Spanish colonization,
which seemed to grow
worse over time.
Background
For Pedro Hidalgo, August 10, 1680, started out as probably
most days did. A Spanish soldier,

3. Hidalgo served as a one-man security detail for Fray Juan Pío, a
Franciscan missionary to the
Indians of the Tesuque Pueblo, one of many native pueblos in
the Rio Grande region claimed by
the Spanish as part of the colony of New Mexico. Early in the
morning, Hidalgo and Pío had set
out from the capital of Santa Fe toward Tesuque, where the
priest was to say mass. At dawn, the
two Spaniards reached the pueblo, only to find it empty; even
the livestock was gone. Baffled,
the soldier and the priest decided to search for the villagers, and
a quarter-league from the
2
pueblo, they found some of them—armed and wearing war
paint. Pío approached the pueblos.
“What is this, children,” he asked, “are you mad? Do not disturb
yourselves; I will help you and
die a thousand deaths for you.” Pío’s imploring produced no
discernible effect. Hidalgo and Pío
split up in an attempt to flank the main body of Pueblo, who
were headed toward a nearby sierra,
and convince them to return to the village. As Hidalgo would
later testify, he soon encountered
two Indians called El Obi and Nicolás by the Spanish; El Obi
was carrying the shield which Fray
Pío had originally possessed, and Nicolás was menacingly
painted and “splattered with blood,”
presumably Pío’s. These two, and other Pueblo who quickly
came up from behind them,
“assailed” Hidalgo,
grasping the reins of the horse he was riding; they surrounded

4. him, taking away his sword and
hat, whereupon he grasped his harquebus, and, making good his
escape, spurred his horse down
the hill, dragging along those who had hold of him. He broke
away from them and descended to
the plain, where they followed him, discharging many arrows,
none of which reached or harmed
him, and he escaped safely.
Hidalgo assumed Pío was dead, and thus sped off toward Santa
Fe to deliver the news that the
worst nightmare of the Spanish colonists was now a reality: The
Pueblo Indians were rebelling.
How did things arrive at this point, where the Pueblo decided to
conduct a coordinated assault
and violently expel the Spanish out of New Mexico? Almost as
soon as it was clear that the
Pueblo were indeed engaged in a full-scale uprising throughout
New Mexico, the questions and
recriminations among the Spanish began. What had driven the
Pueblo to revolt? Why were the
Spanish, almost a century after their arrival, being visited with
the scourge of native rebellion?
For the Pueblo, the answer to that question was simple: The
accumulated weight of Spanish
oppression had become unbearable. For the Spanish, though,
there had to be another reason; after
all, they were the “civilizers” of the Americas, who had saved
Pueblo souls by introducing
Catholicism into the previously “benighted” societies of New
Mexico. The rebellion they were
faced with had to come from opposition to that divine mandate.
By this logic, their presence
among the Pueblo was not the problem; it was the Devil—
manifested through Pueblo deities and

5. religious practitioners—that had to be at the root of this
unnatural uprising.
Spanish North America
The Spanish presence in New Mexico dated from 1598, when an
expedition led by Juan de
Oñate entered the northern Rio Grande Valley and claimed the
land for God and the Spanish
King. Previous expeditions had passed through the region, and
either traded for or stole
foodstuffs from the native Pueblo peoples. The most notable
was led by Francisco de Coronado,
who was searching for the fabled “seven cities of gold” that he
was sure existed in what is now
the southern Great Plains region of North America. Oñate had
mineral wealth in mind (he was
heir to a large Mexican mining fortune), but unlike Coronado,
he also envisioned a permanent
Spanish settlement to the north. He had been appointed
governor by the Spanish viceroy in
Mexico City, who was the King’s direct representative in
Spanish North America. Thus, the New
Mexico colony had a mandate from the Spanish crown to extend
the authority of both Spain and
the Roman Catholic Church into the northern hinterlands of
New Spain.
3
Members of Order of St. Francis—probably the most powerful
religious order in colonial
Mexico—had themselves been looking at New Mexico by the
1580s. The Franciscans realized,

6. though, that only with financial and military support would an
expansion of missionary activity
into the Rio Grande region be feasible. Future Spanish ventures
to the region would thus be joint
undertakings between the Franciscans and colonists who
operated from more worldly
motivations—particularly a desire for land and mineral wealth.
Brief expeditions into the
northern frontier of New Spain in 1581 had laid the groundwork
for the permanent, proprietary
colony established under Oñate’s leadership in 1598.
Emphasizing the royal Laws of Discovery,
the viceroy enjoined Oñate’s expedition of colonists to make
sure they carried plenty of supplies
and provisions, to prevent clashes with natives over Spanish
seizures of foodstuffs and other
commodities (as had occurred in previous Spanish entradas—
military and/or exploratory
expeditions—to the North). Accompanying the expedition were
some 20 Franciscan friars and
lay brothers. Oñate’s force arrived at the Rio Grande in April
1598, and he “repossessed” the
province of New Mexico in the name of God and King Phillip
II.
Figure 1. Routes of Major Expeditions of Juan de Oñate.
As for the Pueblo, memories of previous encounters remained
strong enough to condition their
response to this latest Spanish incursion into their lands. The
first villages the expedition
4

7. encountered were abandoned, the inhabitants having fled rather
than face what they believed
would be bitter depredations from the Europeans. Once the
Spanish were able to interact with
some of them, Oñate ascertained that the Pueblo were indeed
loath to impede the Spanish,
having experienced retaliation for such efforts previously,
during Coronado’s entrada. This lack
of resistance remained consistent as the expedition began to
create settlements; several Spanish
would record their amazement at the apparent docility of the
Pueblo. They “are so peaceful and
obedient,” wrote one official in amazement.
Not all of the Pueblo were as willing to tolerate the Spanish
presence as these early impressions
might have conveyed, however. There were challenges to the
Spanish that occurred in areas on
the periphery of their colony, but these were quickly met and
put down, often violently. [See An
Earlier Pueblo Rebellion: The Battle of Acoma, 1599] Except
for the suppression of indigenous
resistance, though, the colony of New Mexico was unsuccessful.
As they established their
authority over the Indians, the Spanish had instituted a system
of tribute obligations whereby
Pueblo villages were to produce a certain amount of maize and
cotton blankets for the Spanish
every year. But this set of obligations did not provide nearly
enough to sustain the Spanish, while
its burdens destroyed the Pueblo’s ability to produce an
agricultural surplus to carry families
through winters or seasons of lean harvests. The hoped-for
deposits of mineral wealth failed to
materialize, food supplies dwindled, and Spaniard and Indian

8. alike found the times extremely
difficult. By 1607, many Spanish settlers were ready to abandon
New Mexico. Ultimately,
though, Franciscan pressure on both the viceroy and the Council
of the Indies (the king’s council
for colonial policy) kept the colony alive by producing
additional royal support for the venture.
A new governor was appointed, and New Mexico began to limp
along into an uncertain future.
But the initial phase of permanent Spanish settlement in New
Mexico was of crucial
significance; it set the patterns that would decisively shape the
colony’s development through the
1600s and ultimately converge in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
First, Oñate’s tactic of rendering
the Pueblo docile by intimidation and force became standard
operating procedure for subsequent
Spanish administrators. When faced with resistance, the first
inclination of the Spanish would be
violence. Second, the establishment of the encomienda (a grant
of control over designated lands
and the produce of the natives who resided upon them) created a
class of Spanish landholders
who—though technically prohibited from doing so—held
Indians (both Pueblo and members of
tribes further north and west) in a state of de facto slavery. The
expectations and demands of this
class would be powerful elements in shaping the policies of
future governors, who were
themselves landowners and aspirants to the control of native
labor. Third, the expropriation of
labor, goods, and even people begun in New Mexico’s early
colonial period would, as it
continued and increased, profoundly disrupt trade networks
between the Pueblo and the

9. Athapaskan peoples (nomadic Apache and Ute) to the north. The
Athapaskan depended on this
trade to augment their restricted food supply; when Spanish
demands upon Pueblo agriculture
diverted these foodstuffs away from the established channels of
indigenous trade, the northern
tribes would be forced to resort to such desperate and disruptive
tactics as raids and plundering.
Finally, the Pueblo, already inclined from experience to expect
the worst from Spanish colonists,
were stretched to the breaking point by pressures upon their
resources and by harsh treatment
and cultural prejudice at the hands of the Spaniards. During the
period of the Oñate entrada, this
Spanish pressure—though still high—had been kept to at least
manageable levels because of the
5
paucity of colonists (less than two hundred). In later years,
when the number of Spanish settlers
increased, this pressure would prove unmanageable.
The Struggle for Control
New Mexico’s Spanish population through the bulk of the 17th
century was an unwieldy
combination of a small, dedicated core of Franciscans (and a
few associated lay brothers) and a
larger number (approximately 1,100 by 1670) of settlers
concerned with matters more of this
world. The two groups often worked at cross-purposes—but not
always. The Franciscans were
not above accumulating wealth and labor as they spread the

10. word of God; documents from the
colony’s records are rife with complaints from civil officials
about the friars’ abuse of
indigenous labor. Of course, these complaints were motivated
not by concern for the Indians’
own welfare, but from resentment over the Franciscans’ use of
labor that the governors and other
colonists sought to employ themselves. This is the issue that
splintered the Spanish into opposing
factions throughout the 1600s: The battle to control and exploit
Indian labor and tribute. And it is
here where the divergence between the stated goals of the
Franciscans and the other settlers
became more evident. For if natives were to be converted into
good practicing Catholics, they
could not be bound to labor on the hacienda of a secular
colonist. Rather, the Franciscans wanted
the Indians to reside in their own communities, with the friars
enjoying full access to them and
other colonists being left out of the matter altogether.
This ideal came into direct conflict with the wealth-producing
goals of the other settlers,
dependent as they were upon Indian labor and produce for their
fulfillment. If the physical
conquest of the Pueblo was harsh, then the attempts at spiritual
conquest by the Spaniards were
even more so. The Franciscans’ initial efforts at conversion
undertaken during the Oñate entrada
were only marginally successful. In the early years of the 17th
century, those Indians that
accepted Catholic baptism seemed to have done so more out of a
desire to have access to
missions’ food supplies during times of famine or to avail
themselves of Spanish military
protection in the face of raids from the Athapaskan peoples to

11. the north. As the Franciscans
continued their efforts, more Pueblo accepted conversion,
though they seem to have done so with
less of a wholehearted embrace than the friars would have liked.
From the Pueblo perspective,
accepting the teachings of Catholicism was often a strategic
choice. The appearance of
embracing Catholicism brought access to Spanish food reserves
and military protection, while
still offering enough wiggle room for those so inclined to
covertly practice their own faith
traditions. The Franciscans, however, were all too aware of this
set of motivations. Scholars
disagree over the extent to which the Franciscans tacitly
allowed the Pueblo to practice their own
religious rituals and observances, but even if the clergy winked
at some token remnants of the
Pueblo’s “idolatry,” the documentary record suggests that to a
significant degree, the Franciscans
not only sought to suppress expressions of indigenous religion,
but often did so forcefully and
even violently.
Seeds of Rebellion
As the burdens of the physical world became heavier, the
Pueblo turned increasingl y to the world
of their native religious traditions for solace. The 1660s and
1670s were disastrous ones for many
Pueblo. This 20-year span saw rising average temperatures
combined with dramatically lower
6

12. amounts of rainfall, even by the meager standards of arid New
Mexico. These climatic changes
led to waves of poor harvests—or no harvests at all in some
years—resulting in famines that
devastated the Pueblo population. The Athapaskan peoples to
the north—especially the
Apache—were also stricken by famine, and resorted to violent
raids on Pueblo villages to take
by force what they otherwise did not have. In this unsettled
state of affairs marked by drought
and warfare, the Pueblo turned increasingly toward their ancient
religious rites and rituals to
restore balance to their world. This entailed significant risk,
however. In the atmosphere of
renewed repression and strife that pervaded the 1660s and
1670s, assertions of native religious
traditions on the part of Pueblo were bound to bring forceful
responses from the Franciscan
clergymen.
In 1675, a major Pueblo religious revival spread throughout the
Rio Grande Valley. Dancing of
the kachina, and gatherings in the villages’ sacred kivas (below -
ground ceremonial rooms that
were the functional center of the Pueblo faith tradition)
multiplied, as the Indians sought to find a
way to reassert control over an increasingly dangerous
environment. From the Spanish capital of
Santa Fe, Governor Juan Francisco de Treviño issued a decree
banning all forms of native
religious expression. To enforce the measure, he dispatched
soldiers to the Pueblo with orders to
arrest those identified as religious leaders. Forty-seven shamans
were rounded up, charged with
witchcraft and sorcery, and brought to trial. The verdict in these
proceedings was foreordained;

13. the purpose of the trials was to extract and isolate these
religious leaders from the native
community. To reinforce the point, four Pueblo accused of
“bewitching” a Franciscan priest
were sentenced to death. Three were hanged in Santa Fe’s
central plaza; the fourth committed
suicide in his jail cell before the Spanish could carry out the
sentence. The other 43 were publicly
flogged and then jailed while arrangements were made to sell
them into slavery.
Figure 2. Interior of a Reconstructed Kiva at Mesa Verde
National Park
The Pueblo’s response to these proceedings was a powerful
tipping point in the balance of power
in New Mexico. A large, armed band of Tewa Pueblo came to
Santa Fe and demanded that
Treviño release the captives, promising to kill him and every
other Spaniard in Santa Fe if their
people remained imprisoned. The governor attempted to
negotiate, offering pardons if the
Indians swore to “forsake idolatry and iniquity.” The Tewa
refused to bargain and restated their
demands. Treviño thus faced the choice of freeing the captives
or triggering a slaughter of the
outnumbered Spanish. He freed the captives. With this
confrontation, there was a seismic shift in
the balance of power between the Spanish and the Pueblo. The
myth of Spanish superiority was
7

14. decisively punctured, and the Pueblo’s decision to collectively
challenge the Spanish yoke had
produced the desired results. For the Spanish colonists, this was
an ominous precedent.
Figure 3. Popé
The roots of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt were within this struggle
over spiritual and cultural
dominance. One of the medicine men arrested and whipped in
Treviño’s campaign was Popé, a
shaman from San Juan pueblo. Those Pueblo caught in the 1675
dragnet doubtlessly carried their
share of resentment away from the experience, but Popé’s
animosity toward the Spaniards was of
a surpassing degree. The events of 1675, despite the eventual
Tewa “victory” that had released
him from Santa Fe’s jail, convinced Popé that the time had
ended when the Pueblo people could
maintain their traditions yet coexist with the Spanish. Still
suspicious in the eyes of the Spanish,
Popé relocated from San Juan to Taos, on the northern fringe of
the colony, far from the main
centers of Spanish population. Popé was already a man of
significant spiritual power among the
Pueblo, and the pronouncements issuing from the kiva in Taos,
where he spent most of his time,
only added to that reputation. Caudi, Tilini, and Tleume were
katsinas (Pueblo divine beings)
who resided in the Taos kiva, who came out into the open after
prayers, offerings, and summons
from Popé. According to Spanish accounts of subsequent Indian
testimony,
it happened that in an estufa [kiva] of the pueblo of Los Taos

15. there appeared to the said Popé
three figures of Indians.… They gave the said Popé to
understand that they were going
underground to the lake of Copola. He saw these figures emit
fire from all the extremities of their
bodies.… They told him to make a cord of maguey fiber and tie
some knots in it which would
signify the number of days that they must wait before the
rebellion.
8
The knotted cord was taken from pueblo to pueblo throughout
the Rio Grande valley, as Popé
and a few trusted lieutenants gathered allies in their planned
expulsion of the Spanish. The
uprising of 1680 would not be a series of unconnected attacks
on specific individuals, it would
be a simultaneous uprising on a scale and scope that woul d have
simply been impossible a
generation before. Disparate Pueblo groups were united—and
even some Apache groups as well,
antagonized by Spanish slaving raids—in what would be a
concerted effort to not just retaliate,
but to eliminate the Spanish from their lands. Popé, as the
carrier of the sacred katsinas’
message, promised the Pueblo rebels that after they eliminated
the Spanish oppressors, they
would be able to live “free from the labor they performed for
the religious and the Spaniards.”
This message of liberation was coupled with threats of dire
consequences for those Indians who
did not undertake this sacred work of rebellion and restoration.

16. Rebellion and the Expulsion of the Spanish
In August 1680, as runners fanned out from Taos bearing the
knotted cords counting down the
days to rebellion (which was to begin on August 11, the first
night of the new moon), foreboding
rumors began to reach the Spanish at Santa Fe. While these
reports created a sense of anxiety
among the Spanish, initially there was not enough specific
information to allow for preventive
measures. That changed on August 9. Three leaders from
pueblos close to Santa Fe and loyal to
the Spanish notified Governor Antonio de Otermín (who had
replaced Treviño in 1677) that they
had been approached by two messengers from the Tesuque
pueblo with orders from Taos for the
villages to participate in the uprising; the messengers also
carried the knotted cords that served as
the conspiracy’s timetable. Otermín immediately sent a
detachment to Tesuque and had these
two couriers arrested. They confessed to carrying the cord to the
three villages, and that one town
refused to participate in the rebellion, despite Popé’s threats of
death for those who did not rise
against the Spanish. The messengers pled ignorance of anything
further about the plot, averring
that they were not from the northlands where the councils had
been held and thus knew nothing
more about the plans that had emanated from Taos.
While the Spanish authorities in Santa Fe spent the afternoon
and evening of August 9
attempting to discern the outlines of the apparent plot, the
Pueblo of Tesuque sent a host of
messengers speeding toward Taos and the other villages alerting
the Indians that their plans for

17. commencing their uprising on August 11 had been
compromised. In the flurry of communication
that ran between the villages, a consensus to begin the attack as
soon as possible emerged. Thus,
at daybreak on August 10, the Pueblo began their war of
extermination against the Spanish. And
Pedro Hidalgo and Fray Juan Pío, on their way to Mass at
Tesuque that morning, rode directly
into it.
When Pedro Hidalgo rode into Santa Fe and reported what had
befallen him and the now-
martyred Fray Pío, Governor Otermín knew that every Spanish
settler in the entire New Mexico
colony was in mortal danger. Slightly less than 1,000 Spanish
men, women, and children were
several hundred miles north of the more settled portions of New
Spain, over 1,100 miles from the
viceregal capital of Mexico City, and surrounded by over
17,000 Pueblo Indians who were now
acting in almost complete concert with one another to
exterminate them. Otermín immediately
dispatched messengers to the alcaldes mayors (the heads of the
Spanish towns in the colony) to
muster their male residents into militias to defend their
settlements, especially the churches.
9
Otermín then ordered a detachment of troops to attempt to
verify some of the reports he had
already received through a reconnaissanc e of nearby pueblos,
and took measures to establish
contact with his lieutenant governor, who was in one of the

18. colony’s southern districts. With
these actions, Otermín had basically done as much as he could
to deal with a situation whose
overall scope and contours were still unknown to him. The
Pueblo of New Mexico had the
initiative, and as Popé’s plans unfolded, they were the ones who
would control events. All that
the governor and the townspeople of Santa Fe could do was
barricade themselves in the
governor’s palace (except for a cluster of soldiers defending the
town’s church) and wait;
Otermín knew that it was not a matter of if, but rather when, the
Pueblo would descend upon the
colonial capital.
Over the next 48 hours, piece after piece of bad news for the
Spanish made its way into Santa Fe.
Late in the afternoon of August 10, two Spanish soldiers arrived
in the villa of Santa Fe after
escaping from the rebellious Indians of the Tegua pueblos; they
had come through that region
from further north, where the Taos and Picurís pueblos had also
taken up arms against the
Spanish. The soldiers also carried a message from the alcalde
mayor of Santa Clara, warning of
“a large number of the rebellious Christians [Indians who had
earlier accepted conversion]” from
the surrounding villages who had massed in Santa Clara, using
the pueblo as a base from which
they were “going out in mounted squadrons and gathering up the
cattle and property from the
fields and houses of the Spaniards, committing such iniquities,
atrocities, and robberies quite
shamelessly.”
Otermín’s reconnaissance patrol returned to the villa on August

19. 12, and its commander recounted
the evidence of a litany of violence against not only settlers, but
symbols of Spanish
ecclesiastical authority as well: “all the people of the pueblos
from Tesuque to San Juan are in
rebellion … [and] have robbed the holy temples and the cattle
haciendas of the countryside, and
sacked the houses of the Spaniards.” The soldier described an
encounter with one of the Indians,
where the Spanish had asked him to surrender peacefully,
promising safety in return. The Indian
“said pertinaciously and rebelliously that he wished to die and
go to hell.” The commander, as
well as other Spaniards who straggled into Santa Fe in these
chaotic hours, also revealed that
much of the Franciscan clergy of the countryside had been
killed by the Pueblo. “They were
saying that God and Santa Maria were dead, that they were the
ones whom the Spaniards
worshiped, and that their God whom they obeyed never died.”
For the Spanish, this bloody
rejection of Christian faith and authority must have added a
chilling dimension to an already-
developing feeling of being forsaken in a mortally dangerous
frontier wilderness.
By August 13, Otermín was able to conclude that those Spanish
clergy and settlers from Taos to
Isleta who had not made their way to Santa Fe were dead. Thus,
Santa Fe had become a lonely
enclave of European refugees in a land that was raging with
insurrection. The next day, news
arrived that over five hundred Indians were only one league
away from Santa Fe, waiting to join
bands from several other Pueblo as well as a detachment of
Apache, “so as to sack the said villa

20. all together and kill within it the señor governor and captain-
general [Otermín], the religious
[Franciscan clergy], and all the citizens.” Early the next
morning, lookouts reported that this
army had arrived outside Santa Fe.
10
Barricaded inside the villa, the Spanish were able to see the
Natives’ army move into the
surrounding maize fields, looting and destroying Spanish houses
on the outskirts of Santa Fe. A
squadron of Spanish cavalrymen was dispatched to survey the
proceedings, whereupon they
encountered a native leader who returned with them to parley
with Otermín. Otermín recognized
this Indian; he was a Tagno Pueblo named Juan who had
previously been one of the messengers
sent on August 10 to investigate events in the outlying villages.
He now wore part of the raiment
of a Franciscan priest, and was heavily armed with Spanish
weapons. Juan offered a choice to the
Spaniards by demanding they choose from one of two crosses
carried by the Indians—one red
and the other white; the red meant war, the white meant
surrender and the Spanish leaving New
Mexico. …