Pueblo Revolt

August 10, 1680 was the start of a little known episode which became the most successful American Indian revolt against European settlers in what is now the United States.  It took place in what is now the State of New Mexico.

Nuevo Mexico was founded as a province of New Spain in 1598 with its capital at Santa Fe, years before the English settlements at Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620). In the 1520s Cortez had conquered the Aztec empire based in Mexico City and by the 1540s Coronado was leading an expedition to the Southwest and Great Plains searching for the mythical cities of gold.  It was the further search for gold that brought the Spanish to the Rio Grand valley at the end of the century.  Nuevo Mexico became an isolated outpost for the Europeans with several hundred miles separating its southernmost settlement from the northernmost towns in the rest of New Spain.


The Spanish found two types of Indians in the area.  The first were the settled Indians of the Pueblos, living in towns often constructed on the top of buttes. The Pueblos were independent of each other like the city-states of ancient Greece except they were much more peaceable towards each other.  The second were the nomadic tribes, primarily Apaches and Navajos (joined in the 18th century by the Comanches).

The original occupation was accomplished without much fighting. While the Spanish provided some protection to the Pueblos from slave raiding by the Apaches and Navajos (mutual slave raiding between the nomadic tribes and the Spanish continued into the 19th century) they also imposed Catholic religious practices through the Franciscan missionaries.  These practices and the restrictions and outright prohibitions on traditional Indian religious practices became more onerous during the course of the 17th century. Added to this was a long drought in the 1660s and 1670s which brought Indians and Spaniards into conflict over food.

In the late 1670s, a number of Pueblan religious leaders centered around the Taos Pueblo, led by Pope', began plotting a revolt.  At that time there were only about 2,400 Spaniards (including mixed blood mestizos) in the province and the only real town was Santa Fe.  The revolt was originally scheduled to begin on August 11, but indications that the Spanish had discovered the plot prompted the Indians to move it up to August 10.

On the 10th, attacks began in Santa Fe and in other places in the province.  Over the next ten days about 400 of the Spanish were killed.  The provincial governor and many of the settlers were barricaded in Santa Fe but they could not survive for long. On August 21 they broke out of Santa Fe and headed south.  They were not pursued by the Pueblans and they left the province.

The governor, Don Antonio de Otermin, wrote a letter on Sept 8, 1680 to his superiors explaining what happened which starts:

"The time has come when, with tears in my eyes and deep sorrow in my heart, I commence to give an account of the lamentable tragedy, such as has never before happened in the world, which has occurred in this miserable kingdom and holy custodia, His divine Majesty having thus permitted it because of my grievous sins."

It's a very long letter.

For the next twelve years there was no Spanish presence in Nuevo Mexico.  As often happens after a successful revolt, dissension broke out among the victors.  Some, like Pope', wanted to destroy all traces of Spanish influence including their livestock and fruit trees and to stop the planting of wheat and barley which they had introduced to the Pueblos.  Most of the Pueblos resisted and there never was a unified Pueblo government.

In 1692, the Spanish reentered the province and conducted a bloodless conquest (Pope' had died by then).  However in 1693 and 1696 there were unsuccessful revolts by the Pueblos.  These were crushed but as part of the long-term settlement the Spanish agreed not to impose their religion on the Pueblos and they issued large land grants to each individual Pueblo.  The Pueblos maintained this semi-autonomous status through to the end of the Spanish occupation in 1821 and many aspects of their culture remain intact today.

It is also interesting that the 1680 Pueblo revolt occurred only five years after the start of the largest Indian revolt in the area of the English settlements - King Philips War (1675-76) which took place in New England (and which will be the subject of a post next month).

There are two excellent books dealing with later aspects of the American Indians and the history of New Mexico.  The first is Blood And Thunder (2006) by Hampton Sides which tells the tragic story of the Southwest Indians in the 19th century, particularly the Navajos, through a biography of Kit Carson.  The other book is Empire Of The Summer Moon (2010) by SC Gwynne, the story of the Comanche nation.  The Comanches dominated a wide swath of eastern New Mexico and the western two-thirds of Texas for 150 years defying the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans and driving the Apaches out of their territory.