Pueblo Revolt

Revolution

After his release Po'pay, working alongside several other Pueblo leaders named elsewhere, began plotting the uprising that would become known as the Pueblo Revolt. He settled in Taos Pueblo, roughly 70 miles north of Santa Fe, where he devoted five years to rallying backing for an insurrection among the region's 46 Pueblo towns. Eventually the Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Tano, and Keres speaking communities of the Rio Grande Valley threw in their support. Since these six groups spoke mutually unintelligible languages, Spanish itself became the shared tongue through which the rebellion was coordinated. Pecos Pueblo, situated 50 miles to the east, committed itself to joining as well, and word of participation also came from the Zuni and Hopi, located 120 and 200 miles west of the river respectively. Holding back from the movement were the four southern Tiwa, or Tiguex, settlements near Santa Fe and the Piro communities south of the main Pueblo territory close to what is today Socorro; both groups had become far more assimilated into Spanish ways than their neighbors.

At that time roughly 2,400 Spaniards lived in the province, a population in which mixed-blood mestizos formed the largest share, and this group, together with native servants and dependents, was spread thin across a wide area. Only Santa Fe could be called anything close to a town. Armed Spanish manpower amounted to a mere 170 men, whereas the Pueblos preparing to rebel could likely field 2,000 or more grown men skilled with bows and arrows and other traditional weapons. Some Apache and Navajo may also have taken part.

In character, the uprising resembled the millenarian movements common to colonized societies elsewhere. Po'pay assured his followers that once the Spanish were driven out or killed, the old Pueblo deities would restore health and abundance to the people. His scheme called for each Pueblo to rise against the Spaniards in its own vicinity before all converged on Santa Fe to finish driving out or destroying whoever remained. August 11, 1680 was chosen as the day for action. To spread word, Po'pay sent messengers bearing knotted cords to every Pueblo. Two young men, Pedro Omtua and Nicolas Catua, carried out this task; on the morning of August 8, they left Tesuque bound for the Tano villages, or Tanogeh, making their initial stop at Pecos. There, misfortune struck the plan almost immediately, since Christian Indians alerted Fray Fernandao De Velasco that two Tewa youths had been seen entering the war chief's residence. Undeterred, the runners pressed onward from Pecos toward Galisteo, San Cristobal, and San Marcos.

The knotted cords were meant to be read one knot at a time each morning, with the final knot marking the moment for a coordinated attack. Yet on August 9 the plot unraveled when southern Tiwa leaders tipped off the Spanish, who then seized the two Tesuque messengers and tortured them until they explained what the knots meant.

Faced with this, Po'pay moved the date of the revolt forward by a day. News of the change never reached the Hopi villages on their distant mesas in Arizona, so they rose according to the original timetable instead. On August 10 the Pueblo peoples struck, driving off Spanish horses to prevent escape, blocking the routes into Santa Fe, and ransacking Spanish settlements. In total, 400 people lost their lives, among them men, women, and children, along with 21 of the 33 Franciscan friars then serving in New Mexico. Among the Hopi at Tusayan, the mission churches of Awatovi, Shungopavi, and Oraibi were torn down and their priests killed. Those who survived fled toward Santa Fe or to Isleta Pueblo, about 10 miles south of Albuquerque, one of the communities that had refused to join the revolt. Within days, by August 13, every Spanish settlement across New Mexico lay in ruins and Santa Fe itself was under siege, encircled by Pueblo forces who cut off the town's water supply.

Cornered by this pressure, Governor Antonio de Otermín, who had taken shelter in the Palace of the Governors, led a desperate sortie on August 21 with every man he could muster, pushing the Pueblo fighters back with heavy losses on their side. He then evacuated the Spanish population southward along the Rio Grande toward El Paso del Norte, trailed but not attacked by Pueblo warriors

Spanish attempt to return

In November 1681, Antonio de Otermin set out to reclaim New Mexico for the crown. Gathering 146 Spanish troops alongside an equal number of native soldiers at Paso del Norte, the settlement now called Ciudad Juarez, he pushed his column northward along the Rio Grande. The Piro pueblos were the first he came upon, and he found them deserted, their churches torn down. Reaching Isleta Pueblo, his forces clashed briefly with the residents before receiving their submission. He remained there and sent out a detachment of soldiers and native allies to reassert Spanish control over the region.

The next year, still 1681 by the old reckoning, Otermin moved swiftly through Pueblo territory, hoping to uncover why the uprising had happened and who had directed it. Some of his prisoners gave him answers, and those answers have endured as a piece of legendary humor. When the governor pressed several captured Pueblo men, demanding to know who led the revolt, a Keresan prisoner told him it was Payastiamo. Asked where this leader lived, the man simply gestured toward the mountains and said, "Over that way." A Tewa or Tano captive, faced with the same question, gave the name Poheyemo, adding that he dwelled up in that direction, pointing north toward the peaks. A Towa man offered yet another version, calling him Payastiabo and likewise pointing to the mountains. The humor lay in the fact that all these names belonged to deities the Pueblos invoked to intercede for them with the being above, beyond the clouds, not to any human commander.

All the while, the Pueblos were only pretending to yield, secretly massing a large force to confront Otermin. As signs of an impending Pueblo assault mounted, Otermin chose to withdraw to Paso del Norte on January 1, 1682. He set pueblos ablaze on his way out and brought the people of Isleta along with him. Spain's first bid to recover New Mexico had come to nothing.

Some of those Isleta captives eventually made their way back to New Mexico, though others stayed behind at Paso del Norte, settling into what became Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. The Piro likewise relocated to Paso del Norte to live among the Spaniards, and in time they merged into the Piro, Manso, and Tiwa tribe.

Certain Pueblos could never again be persuaded to fall under the authority of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, and Spanish expeditions frequently came back not to reconquer but simply to seek peace. The Hopi, for instance, never faced a Spanish reconquest at all, though the Spanish did make several peaceful overtures toward treaties and trade, none of which succeeded. For a number of Pueblos, the Revolt had achieved exactly what it set out to do by pushing out Spanish influence. Yet there was little celebration once the Spaniards were gone. Food supplies dwindled, hunger became inescapable, and raiding grew more frequent. Great effort went into protecting what food remained, along with the women and children of the Pueblos. Around 1691 or 1692, representatives from Jemez, Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Pecos, and various Tanos communities journeyed to Guadalupe del Paso to open negotiations with the Spaniards who had been driven out. Tribal accounts hold that it was the Pueblo delegation itself that asked the Spaniards to come back.