Pueblo Revolt

In 1680, the Pueblo peoples of what is now the southerwestern "United States" succeeded in kicking Spanish colonizers out of their New Mexico territories or some twelve years. The revolt involved anti-authoritarian peoples such as the Hopi, and the revolt itself was relatively decentralized. After their victory, however, the New Mexico Pueblos adopted a highly centralized governance structure that perhaps enabled the Spanish to more easily reconquer the territory in 1692.

The Tewa Pueblo medicine man Popé had spent five years building alliances across the Pueblo towns that had never before united in warfare. By 1680, his vision of a pan-Pueblo confederation materialized, as Indians blamed devastating drought and disease on the brutal Spanish colonizers' ban on indigenous religious rituals. The alliance united some seventeen thousand Pubelos who resided in over twenty-four towns and spoke at least six languages. Lacking the militaristic discipline of the Spanish, they organized a relatively decentralized resistance, coordinated by messengers running from town to town with strings of knots representing the number of days until the revolt. Rising up in August, the Pueblo militants captured Santa Fe and cut off settlers' water supply. After nine days, the Spanish retreated southward, “[b]ewildered by the scale and success of the uprising.” The Pueblos had kicked the Spanish out of New Mexico. It was a victory born of confederation.

When Popé took power, however, he erred by establishing centralized authority over the formerly autonomous Pueblo towns. The historian Robert Silverberg calls this centralization “the most alien concept [the Spanish] had brought”. As the Pueblo governor, Popé moved into the Spanish governor's former palace. He enslaved Pueblos who had refused to join his rebellion, and he enslaved Pueblos who disobeyed him. Popé banned Christian rituals with a fervor rivalling the Spaniards' persecution of indigenous rituals. As drought and disease persisted, the Pueblo population quickly grew disenchanted with the new regime. “To some it seemed that things had been under the Spaniards,” Silverberg writes. One of those Pueblos was named Juan. A twenty-eight year-old, he provided a confession of sorts to Spanish priests in 1681. He complained that Popé banned Christianity, and he said that many Pueblos felt the Spanish “must come and gain the kingdom” of New Mexico.

When the Spanish finally did reconquer the territory in 1692, they encountered little resistance. By centralizing political power, Popé destroyed the fragile alliance he had helped establish among the Pueblos.