Some settlers thought the punishment was too harsh, and the viceroy was notified of what had taken place, leading to an investigation.59 Oñate, in the meantime, left on another mission to search for the Pacific Ocean. On his return to the Pueblo region in 1605, he carved his name on a rock outcrop now known as El Morro, not far from the modern New Mexico–Arizona state line, with the inscription: “The Adelantado Don Juan de Oñate passed by here from the discovery of the South Sea, on the 16th day of April 1605.”60 While this sounds as if he were returning from a successful venture, he was hundreds of miles away from the Pacific, having reached only the lower part of the Colorado River.
Oñate was recalled to Mexico City and gave up his governorship in 1607, having spent an estimated 400,000 pesos of his own money, with little to show for it.61 He returned to Zacatecas around 1613, but in 1614 he was charged and found guilty by the viceregal court in Mexico City for the violent suppression of the Acoma. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to clear his name, traveling to Spain in 1620 to make his case. He was appointed the mining inspector of Spain in 1624 and spent his final years on the peninsula before his death in 1626.62 The poet Villagrá, too, faced banishment for his involvement in the brutalities and was exiled from New Mexico for six years.63 His Historia de la Nueva México ends with a detailed account of the attack on the Acoma, with Villagrá concluding:
Of all that is total misery,
Grief, sadness, ultimate destruction.
Let’s leave the histories, so full
Of thousand sad events, now done,
And let us look at this ruined heathen,
Loosed, unshielded, now abandoned
By so holy, divine, and lofty hand.64
BY 1610 A new governor, Pedro de Peralta, was in charge of New Mexico, and its capital had been moved from San Gabriel to a settlement founded in 1608 where the Río Grande and the Río Chama meet, now known as La Villa Real de la Santa Fé, or the Royal Town of the Holy Faith. The Spanish population in New Mexico remained small in the early seventeenth century; twenty years after its founding, Santa Fe was little more than a frontier outpost, with only about 1,000 settlers—250 Spanish, 750 mestizos, and about 25 friars.65 Although some priests were in the new capital, the official spiritual center, or custodia, was elsewhere: by 1616 it was in the Santo Domingo pueblo, about twenty-five miles to the south.66 Missions spread out across the region, though the friars often had trouble placing them in the center of Pueblo life, in either a physical or a spiritual sense. Because the pueblos were towns with existing buildings and plazas, the new missions were pushed to the margins.67 In a similar vein, although many people agreed to conversion, Christian beliefs did not easily supplant existing ones. Broadly speaking, Pueblo religious practices had much in common with those of other Mesoamerican cultures, drawing from the weather and seasons, using medicine men or healing priests, with rituals devoted to the fertility of people and the land. Some of the indigenous and Catholic rites overlapped, such as the use of water in baptism and singing during services. Likewise, certain symbols could have multiple meanings; for instance, a cross was interpreted as an important type of prayer stick.68 Priests tried to root out Pueblo beliefs, but many people continued to conduct their own ceremonies, though they were forced to do so away from the prying eyes of the missions.69 Modern archaeological research has uncovered physical evidence of this, such as Pueblo idols hidden under church altars.70
Missions had another, more secular, dimension: harnessing the economic power of the Pueblo people through their labor. As had been the case in Florida, at times the survival of the priests depended on it.71 Most of the food was produced by Pueblo hands, and the churches and other mission buildings were built by them, too. From roughly a dozen churches in 1616, by the 1650s the friars had fifty churches and conventos (priests’ quarters).72
A typical day at a mission would begin with the tolling of the church bells, calling people to Mass and then on to work. Later there might be religious instruction. As missions grew, some Pueblo took on nonreligious roles in the church, for instance as fiscales, a job that involved helping to maintain the church while also disciplining those people who fell afoul of Christian doctrine.73 Aiding this was often the whip—at times administered by a fiscal trying to police his own people.74 Through this, the Franciscans were able to incorporate many of the Pueblo people into mission life. Some priests, indeed, had quite personal ties to the mission: mestizo children were living proof that the friars were not necessarily keeping their vows of celibacy. One priest reported in New Mexico “all the pueblos are full of friars’ children.”75
Another priest who was in New Mexico around this time, a Portuguese Franciscan named Alonso de Benavides, wrote a long memoria to the Spanish crown in 1630 about his travels in New Mexico. He revised his account in 1634 and this time sent Pope Urban VIII a copy, which was later translated into Latin, French, Dutch, and German.76 Benavides arrived in Santa Fe in January 1626, after a long journey from Mexico City. His report, like many of this time, glossed over some of the complex realities of mission life on the frontier, but it also presented a surreal and often mystical picture of the people and the landscape. This was especially the case in his description of the miraculous appearance of María de Ágreda, later known as the Blue Lady, who was a member of the Order of the Immaculate Conception, which has a special devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Benavides claimed she “visited” some of the pueblos in the early 1620s through bilocation, or divine translocation—not in the flesh. According to his account, there were reports of Pueblo people seeing this “lady in blue,” who urged them—in their own languages—to convert to Christianity.77 He made estimates, no doubt generous, of the number of converts but pointed out that much work remained. At one pueblo, a man Benavides described as a “sorcerer” confronted him, saying: “You Spaniards and Christians are lunatics. You live like crazy people, and you want to teach us to be crazy as well.”78 Benavides dismissed his words, putting them down to the “devil who was fleeing, confused by the virtue of the Holy Word.”79
In addition to their own sustenance, the friars had to contend with other matters of the world, including their often troubled relationship with the colonial officials. New Mexico had not produced much of the abundance that had been expected, leaving the two groups squabbling over what few resources they did have.80 Colonists, meanwhile, were often not pleased by the small tribute they could exact, usually paid in cloth or corn.81 Despite being on the fringes of the Spanish empire, New Mexico was still part of the wider imperial economy. Settlers had begun to raise sheep and livestock and there was some trade with the capital, in part because the Spanish had no access to imported foodstuffs such as wine. Goods had to travel from Mexico City northward for some fifteen hundred miles along the Camino Real, or Royal Road, and back again.
The fractures between Spanish officials and the clergy widened throughout the 1600s. There were disagreements at times over quite fundamental issues, such as the treatment of the Pueblo people. The Franciscans felt they were acting in line with the king’s dictates and converting nonbelievers using peaceful means. Officials wanted their encomienda and were eager to enslave unwilling converts, and even the willing were not immune from occasional raids on mission workers, despite the royal orders prohibiting this behavior.82
In terms of administration, a governor was in control of the territory, though for quite a long time he had few subordinates, with only two lieutenant governors being posted to jurisdictions about twenty miles to the north and south of Santa Fe before 1680.83 Although the Franciscans did not have much civil authority, they were in charge of the local Inquisition and thus could charge colonists, though not the mission Indians, with all manner of offenses, including blasphemy, bigotry, and heresy, which could lead to trial in Mexico City and the loss of all property and perhaps even life. It gave the thirty or so friars crucial leverage against the colonial authorities.84 At the same time, officials could make friars’ tas
ks more complicated, as when Governor Juan de Eulate (1618–25) refused to provide military guards for priests who wanted to visit new pueblos looking for converts. Eulate even encouraged the Taos people to ignore the priests and took little interest in indigenous idols or practices. He was far more concerned about gaining the trust of the Pueblo in order to later exploit or even enslave them.85
The Church and state were not able to put up a unified front, and as the seventeenth century wore on there was a growing resentment among the Pueblo at both administrators and friars. Then, by the 1660s and 1670s, a situation developed that no one could control: drought.86 Around this time the Franciscans had some sixty mission estancias—farms of arable land—in the Río Grande valley where grain was grown and stored.87 In general, during times of shortages when there was a need for distribution, a bell would toll to signal the handing out of rations.88 By the 1660s and 1670s, however, the missions had little to spare. At the same time there were increased raids by the Navajo and Apache, who were also experiencing famine. The Apache, in particular, had proved adept at learning to use a tool introduced by the Spanish: the horse, which transformed them into an even more fearsome enemy.89
All of this took place against a backdrop of rising infectious diseases. The Pueblo, like most of the Amerindian people who encountered Europeans, suffered at the hands of unfamiliar microbes. By 1638 the Pueblo population was around forty thousand—by 1660 it had fallen to twenty-four thousand, and twenty years later to seventeen thousand. However, the deadliness of new diseases was somewhat mitigated by the arid climate, high elevations, and sparse settlement of Spaniards. The Spanish and mestizo population had grown only from two thousand to three thousand in the twenty years leading up to 1680.90 Few settlers could be enticed to this remote region, and much of the population rise resulted from intermarriage.91
As the drought worsened, so did relations between the Spaniards and Pueblo. The Spanish were failing to live up to their end of the colonial pact. A Franciscan missionary wrote that in New Mexico “in the past year, 1668, a great many Indians perished of hunger, lying dead along the roads, in the ravines, and in their huts.”92 Catholicism could not bring rain, nor could these settlers offer adequate protection from raiding enemies. The Pueblo people began to return to their own religious customs in the hope of ending their suffering, but the Spanish intervened and punished them, only provoking more anger.93
Governor Juan Francisco Treviño, in an attempt to assert his authority over the missionaries and further repress Pueblo religious practices, had forty-seven medicine men from the Tewa arrested in 1675. They were tortured and admitted under duress that they were involved in “witchcraft,” a common charge leveled at indigenous practices, such as ceremonial dances.94 Three were hanged and the rest were sold into slavery after being flogged. The incident outraged the Tewa and a group of them marched to Santa Fe to demand the release of the prisoners. The Pueblo had run out of patience.
One of the men who had been involved in the original incident, a religious leader named Po’pay, became a key organizer of a mass uprising in 1680 that united most of the pueblos against the Spanish.95 Po’pay wanted to bring other Pueblo leaders together in what would later be called the Pueblo Revolt, and unite the six thousand warriors they had among themselves—they still outnumbered the Spanish five times over—as well as involve the Apache.96 In addition some mestizos, as well as people of Indian-African origin—a small number of enslaved Africans came with the Spanish to New Mexico—were also involved.97 The plan was fraught with challenges, not least communication across the diverse pueblos. Po’pay and other leaders found ways around this problem, for instance by transferring messages about when to attack in the form of knotted cords.98
The plot was almost uncovered at various points, for example on August 9, 1680, when messengers carrying knotted string were picked up by Spanish soldiers and tortured until they confessed, though the Spanish did not anticipate the scale of what was to come. Antonio de Otermín, then governor of New Mexico, later explained that “there was some negligence in that no one really believed the uprising was going to happen.”99 As soon as the Pueblo leaders heard about the capture of the runners, they sent out another message, and the next day around five hundred Indians attacked Santa Fe, later reinforced by the arrival of another twenty-five hundred, laying siege to the town for nine days and killing 380 colonists and 21 missionaries.100 Priests were not spared; indeed, they were often targeted. Many of the Pueblo tore down churches in their villages with the intention of replacing them with their own religious kivas.101
With around five hundred people dead, the Spaniards were forced to retreat south of the Río Grande, around modern El Paso/Ciudad Juárez.102 The Pueblo emerged victorious, though not every pueblo had decided to join in the fight; some opted to remain loyal to the Spanish. When the Spanish left, members of the Piro and Tompiro people, who lived southwest of Santa Fe, went with them.103 El Paso del Norte would now serve as the Spanish base for New Mexico and a small presidio was built for defense, as was a later mission church, Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur, by the Tigua Indians in 1682.
Otermín attempted to take back the territory in 1681, when he and his men set fire to eight pueblos and captured more than three hundred people, but it was a brief retaliation, not a sustained recolonization. However, at the same time, the pueblo communities were fracturing. For instance, the Tewa and Picuris were allied against the Jemez, Taos, Zia, Santo Domingo, and other Keresan-speaking communities. This was happening while the Apache were attacking a number of the pueblos, and the Ute were fighting the Jemez, Taos, Picuris, and Tewa.104 Leadership tussles continued in the aftermath of the revolt. Po’pay remained in charge after the rebellion but was later ousted by the Keres, Taos, and Pecos after he tried to exact tribute.105
The next governor, Domingo Jironza Petrís de Cruzate, spent much of his time shoring up the El Paso settlement before venturing north to see if some of the Pueblo people were willing to resume relations. In August 1689, he led an expedition along the Jemez River, a tributary of the Río Grande, where they attacked the Zia Pueblo, killing six hundred people and taking some seventy prisoners. A fragile peace was then brokered, but the Spanish were still unable to reassert their authority until the next governor, Diego de Vargas, arrived in 1691.106 Vargas succeeded where the others had failed, but not without fights and compromises. By the autumn of the following year, Vargas reported to the crown that Santa Fe and a dozen other pueblos were once again under Spanish rule. That September, he had made an entrada in Santa Fe, carrying a standard with the Virgin Mary on it, confronting the Indians there:
After sunrise, I approached about twenty paces closer with the interpreter, my secretary of government and war, and the captain of the presidio, telling them I had come, sent from Spain by his majesty, the king, our lord, to pardon them so they might again be Christians, as they had been, and the devil would not lead them astray.107
Soon afterward, people from neighboring pueblos arrived and he had trouble communicating his message, writing, “I come to pardon them, as I have told them. They were rebellious and did not heed my kind words.” They opted instead to make what Vargas interpreted as war preparations, as more Pueblo people continued to arrive, while some were held under siege in the town’s fortress. Eventually, they agreed that if the Spanish would take their weapons and leave, they could negotiate a peace, which they did. As Vargas described it: “The Indians, although frightened, began to come out to give me the peace, which I gave them all, with all my love.”108
In this way, and also using any lingering divisions among the Pueblo to his advantage, Vargas visited the pueblos, negotiating with leaders while the priests baptized children and offered absolution.109 It would not last, and matters once again turned violent, with another large rebellion breaking out on June 4, 1696. The fighting lasted for months, with priests killed and missions attacked, including those in Tewa, Tano, and Jemez pueblos.110 Eventually, the Pueblo capitula
ted in November 1696.111
These years of violence left the region transformed. Some towns were abandoned, which was a strategy often employed to put distance between the Pueblo and an enemy, be it the Spanish or the Apache.112 In one case, the Jemez left their land and moved to live among the Acoma, Hopi, Zuni, and others. The Zuni, for their part, had seen their six pueblos reduced to one. The Piro, Tompiro, Southern Tiwa, and Southern Tewa people were absorbed by larger towns.113
As the eighteenth century began, a racial casta hierarchy had also emerged in New Mexico: the elite colonial officials sat on top, followed by landed peasants who were mostly mestizo, though they often called themselves españoles so as not to be identified as Indian. Below this sat the genízaros, detribalized people who were treated little better than slaves. A genízaro could be a Pueblo person who refused to submit to Spanish rule or Christianity and was subsequently pressed into domestic service; the term could also signify a non-Pueblo captured by the Spanish, such as an Apache.114 The Spanish also bought enslaved Indians from among Apache captives and other non-Pueblo, all of whom were considered to be justly enslaved, so the Spanish would barter or pay a ransom for them.115 From 1700 to 1850, some three thousand ransomed people were brought into New Mexican society.116 Although Indian slavery was no longer permitted by the crown, local officials often turned a blind eye to what was taking place in this remote frontier.
The Pueblo people represented a fourth group.117 After the rebellions, they were permitted to continue in their own communities, with less interference than before. The Franciscans could not wield as much power so they reduced their “civilizing” activities, such as trying to teach trades like blacksmithing or forcing the Pueblo to work in the fields planting European crops.118 After more than a hundred years of attempting to settle this region, the Spanish in New Mexico remained on the fringes not only of their empire but of a world still dominated by Native Americans.119
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