Pueblo Revolt - Background

Background

In 1598, Juan de Oñate led 129 soldiers and 10 Franciscan Catholic priests plus a large number of women, children, servants, slaves, and livestock northward to colonize the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico. There were at the time approximately 40,000 Pueblo Indians inhabiting the region, a number that would decline to 15,000 by the time of the Pueblo revolt. Most of the Pueblo offered little resistance to the Spanish occupation, although Oñate put down a revolt at Acoma Pueblo by killing and enslaving hundreds of the Indians and sentencing 24 men to have one of their feet amputated. Franciscan missionaries were assigned to several of the Pueblo towns.

Spanish rule in New Mexico over the next 80 years had some benefits. The Spanish introduced livestock and new crops, such as wheat, peaches, and watermelon. Iron plows facilitated Pueblo agriculture. The Spanish also afforded some protection from raids by nomadic Apache and Navajo, although Spanish slave raids on those Indians may have provoked the raids. Spanish rule, however, was "harsh and generally uncompromising" and European diseases introduced by the Spanish took a heavy toll. Especially egregious to the Pueblo was the assault on their traditional religion. Franciscan priests established theocracies in many of the Pueblo villages. Although the Franciscans initially tolerated manifestations of the old religion as long as the Puebloans attended mass and maintained a public veneer of Catholicism, Fray Alonso de Posada (in New Mexico 1656–1665) "forbade Kachina dances by the Pueblo Indians and ordered the missionaries to seize every mask, prayer stick, and effigy they could lay their hands on and burn them ... In matters regarding their religion, the Pueblos of the seventeenth Century were not that different from those of today. To give up their religion would have been like giving up life itself." Several Spanish officials, such as Nicolas de Aguilar, who attempted to curb the power of the Franciscans were charged with heresy and tried before the Inquisition.

In the 1670s drought swept the region, causing famine among the Pueblo and increased raids by the Apache which Spanish and Pueblo soldiers were unable to prevent. The unrest among the Pueblos came to a head in 1675. Governor Juan Francisco Treviño ordered the arrest of forty-seven Pueblo medicine men and accused them of practicing "sorcery". Four medicine men were sentenced to death by hanging; three of those sentences were carried out, while the fourth prisoner committed suicide. The remaining men were publicly whipped and sentenced to prison. When this news reached the Pueblo leaders, they moved in force to Santa Fe, where the prisoners were held. Because a large number of Spanish soldiers were away fighting the Apache, Governor Treviño was forced to accede to the Pueblo demand for the release of the prisoners. Among those released was a San Juan (called "Ohkay Owingeh" by the Pueblo) Indian named "Popé".