Pueblo Revolt — Indigenous Uprising in New Mexico
The Pueblo peoples of New Mexico rose against Spanish rule on 10 August 1680, killed about 400 colonists including 21 of the 33 Franciscan missionaries, and drove the survivors out of the province. Spanish rule had lasted eighty years and rested on the encomienda and repartimiento — tribute in maize and cotton, and forced labour — and on the suppression of Pueblo religion. Kivas were filled in, masks and prayer sticks burned, and ceremonies punished. In 1675 the governor had forty-seven religious leaders arrested for sorcery, hanged three, and flogged the rest. One of those flogged was Popé, a Tewa from San Juan. Drought, famine and Apache and Navajo raiding through the 1670s had already discredited both the Spanish and the missionaries who had promised protection. Popé organised the revolt from Taos over five years, across some two dozen autonomous towns speaking at least six mutually unintelligible languages, which is the achievement. Knotted cords were carried by runners to each pueblo indicating the days remaining; when two runners were captured the rising was launched early. Santa Fe was besieged and its water cut, and the roughly two thousand survivors were allowed to walk south to El Paso. The Pueblos then reinstated their ceremonies, destroyed churches, and washed off baptisms in the river. They held the province for twelve years, longer than any other indigenous rising in North America. Diego de Vargas reconquered it from 1692, and the restored regime abandoned the encomienda and largely stopped attacking Pueblo religion. Spanish horses dispersed by the revolt reached the Plains nations and transformed them within two generations. The Pueblos remain on their own land, which almost no other people east of them can say.
- Year: 1680 CE
- Category: Military
