The Pueblo Revolt - Case Study Example

A Puebloan Perspective on What Caused the Pueblo Revolt By Candi s FACULTY OF ARTS, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY (This page intentionally left blank) The Pueblo Revolt was an attempt to purge the world of the Pueblo of foreign influences to return to the traditional ways of life that had existed prior to the arrival of the Spanish (Liebmann, Pp. 3). The first encounters between the Puebloan people and the Spanish were mostly fractious and at times bloody at the time of the very first contacts as Francisco Vázquez de Coronado marched into the interior of New Spain to search for Cibola and the remaining seven cities of gold with an elaborate European expedition (Folsom, Pp.10 – 15). Spain’s search for seven rich cities said to be filled with gold north of the Mexican frontier appears to have begun with the childhood memories of Tejo, an Indian slave owned by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, the brutal first governor of New Spain (Smith, Pp. 107).The Puebloan were to soon learn their lessons about the Spanish psyche as the Spanish proceeded to claim everything that they desired in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and in the name of the most Christian king, Don Philip, our lord, the defender and protector of the holy church (Desert USA, “The Colonists”). Spain’s colonization of Central and South America had demonstrated that the meeting of Europeans and Native Americans had unimaginable and deadly consequences as Europeans unleashed deadly diseases, including smallpox and measles that devastated Indian communities (Mancall, Pp. 5 – 8). Indian resistance to the Spanish Catholicism, demands for food tributes and forced labor presented a Spanish response to Pueblo noncooperation in the form of beatings, mutilations and deaths, with Pueblo villages were becoming more attractive to nomadic bands of Apache Indians, who attacked for food and livestock produced partly as a tribute for the Spanish (Page, Pp. 32 – 33). According to the previously mentioned author, the result of all the misfortunes that the Pueblos had to endure as a result of the colonization by the Spaniards resulted in the deaths of about a third of the population of an estimated 25,000 Indian, who had inhabited the southwest. In their zeal to find new souls for the Church, the Franciscan missionaries and the civil leadership of New Mexico found a unity of purpose at the expense of the Pueblos as traditional Pueblo religious services in the Pueblo kivas were outlawed (Salisbury, Pp. 250 – 255). According to the previously mentioned author, the Franciscan missionaries received official support as they entered underground chambers to destroy sacred objects and the Pueblo holy men, the medicine men, were arrested, subjected to corporal punishments, whippings and jailing. Pueblo medicine men were hanged after being accused of sorcery. Thus, the Spanish had made an attempt to subjugate the Pueblo, destroy their traditional way of life and to replace their religion with Christianity by force. Oral history of the Navajo Indians who had lived close to the Pueblo indicates that after the revolt, the Spanish had resorted to the systematic destruction of crops and food stores to harm the Pueblo and this is a further illustration of their psyche (Sinkey, Pp. 162 – 166). The clerical efforts of the Catholic priests to make ecumenical advances in areas inhibited by the Pueblo were considered as the highest form of cultural transmission that could not be restricted by the civil authorities of Spain because of the power of the Church (Gutierrez, Pp. 375). However, the combination of Spanish technology and authority had influenced Pueblo life and horses together with other farm animals which the Spaniards had introduced to the region had provided an opportunity to the Pueblo to extend their geographic reach and capabilities (Page, Pp. 32 – 36). According to the previously mentioned author, prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the Pueblo had maintained a capacity for withstanding the periodic draughts of the southwest by maintaining reserves of excess food and bartering with other Pueblo people, but because of the Spanish acquisition of the surplus as a tribute, no reserves could be maintained. Many Pueblo died of hunger, lying dead across the roads, in ravines and in their huts when a four year drought struck in 1668. Thus, the traditionalists among the Pueblo complained that the new God of the Spanish and their representatives were not taking care of the Pueblo (Page, Pp. 33). With a large number of single Spanish men in New Mexico, Pueblo Indian women were constantly being wooed, seduced and sexually assaulted despite pretences to Catholicism by the Spanish (Gutierrez, Pp. 376 – 377). The illegitimate children born of such liaisons were immediately shunned and exiled from Pueblo Indian towns and were often left abandoned at a church. Thus, it was clear that the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish could never intermarry and live together in dignity as equals. The lot of the Pueblo Indians was to be exploited by the Spanish and to serve them to help them remain a superior class in New Mexico despite the presence of the church and its religious zeal. The illegitimate children born of the liaisons between Spanish men and Pueblo Indian women were registered in the baptismal books as “child of the church, parents unknown” and ended up as servants in Spanish households to remain at a status less than that of Spaniards. Many women of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry were accused of witchcraft to try to maintain the social boundary that separated the Spaniards and the Pueblo Indians (Gutierrez, Pp. 376 – 377). Thus, it was clear to the Pueblo medicine men who had witnessed the Spanish attitudes, that unless the Pueblo tried to remove the yoke of Spanish colonialism, they were going to live out their lives as exploited second class people who would always be serving their Spanish masters to maintain Spanish superiority (Weber, Pp. 41 – 53). Pope of San Juan, a Pueblo Indian medicine man, provided the leadership needed to commence a revolt after five years of effort to inspire the Pueblo Indians (Page, Pp. 33 – 34). According to the previously mentioned author, Pope had personally witnessed the atrocities committed by the Spanish after the arrest forty-seven Pueblo medicine men that ended in the release of forty-four survivors, including Pope, only after Pueblo warriors threatened to attack the Spanish governor. Thus, the Pueblo Indians revolted because they did not want to remain a second class people in their own land, and because they wanted to survive as proud and free people instead of being used as subjugated animals for the benefit of the Spaniards. (This page intentionally left blank) Bibliography / References Desert USA. “Pueblo Rebellion”. Desert USA, 2010. October 4, 2010. http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/P_rebellion.html Folsom, Franklin. Indian Uprising on the Rio Grande: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680. University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Gutierrez, Ramon A. “Women on Top: The Love Magic of the Indian Witches of New Mexico”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2007. October 4, 2010. EBSCO. Liebmann, Matthew Joseph, Robert W. Preucel. “The archaeology of the Pueblo Revolt and the formation of the modern Pueblo world”. Kiva 73(2), 2006: 195-217. October 4, 2010. EBSCO. Mancall, Peter C. Envisioning America (Bedford Series in History and Culture). Palgrave Macmillan, 1995. Page, Jack. “The Pueblo Revolt”. American History, February 2002, Pp. 30 – 36. October 4, 2010. EBSCO. Salisbury, Neal. Embracing Ambiguity: “Native Peoples and Christianity in Seventeenth-Century North America”. Ethnohistory, Spring2003, Vol. 50 Issue 2, p247, 13p. October 4, 2010. EBSCO. Sinkey, Leslie-lynne. The Pueblitos of Palluche Canyon: An Examination of the Ethnic Affiliation of the Pueblito Inhabitants and Results of Archaeological Survey at LA 9073, LA 10732 and LA 86895 New Mexico. Brigham Young University, 2004. October 4, 2010. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd390.pdf Smith, Tom. Discovery of the Americas, 1492 – 1800. Facts on File Inc, 2005. Weber, David J. What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. Read More