Pueblo Revolt

History is written by the victors. But one big exception to that conventional wisdom is the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, in which Native Americans rose up against Spanish colonists and missionaries at the turn of the 17th century.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson. I'm Holly from so Holly.
How often have you heard somebody say history is written

(00:21):
by the victors? I can't even count how many times
I've said it. I know we've said it a lot
on this podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about a pretty
giant exception to that conventional wisdom, which is the Pueblo
Revolt of sixteen eighty. And in this revolt, Native American
people's who are collectively known as the Pueblos, rose up

(00:41):
in Unison against Spanish colonists and missionaries who had started
settling the area at the turn of the seventeenth century.
These settlers were Catholic and had begun systematically converting the
native population, and had also forbidden the practice of the
pueblos traditional religions. So on August tenth, sixteen eighty, the
Pueblos and multiple villages rose up simultaneously against the settlers.

(01:05):
They threw off the colonial government and lived outside of
Spanish rule for the next twelve years. This was probably
the most successful indigenous uprisings in North American history. But
because the Pueblos were not keeping written records of their
history at the time, it was a largely oral tradition.
Most of the history on this one was actually written

(01:26):
by the losing side. Where we do have written records
of the Native American point of view, it's in the
form of testimony that was given orally by Pueblo peoples
and written down by Spanish priests. So it's clearly not
an unbiased account where we do have the Native American
perspective on things. Since we're going to talk about today

(01:46):
this huge revolt of which we have very little record
of the victor side. Uh So, for background, before the
arrival of European settlers, the part of the world that's
an now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States was
home to several tribes of Native peoples who fit very
broadly into two groups. And one group was the more

(02:09):
mobile hunter gatherer peoples and then included the Navajo in
the Apache, and the other group included the Native Americans
who were living in established permanent settlements that Spanish colonists
dubbed pueblos. So pueblos are communal living situations with terraces
and flat roofs. They are built around a central court
and above an underground ceremonial chamber called a kiva. Once

(02:34):
the Spanish coined the term pueblos, the various peoples who
lived in them came to be collectively known as the
Pueblo Indians, and the Pueblo peoples are most likely descended
from the Anasazi, and they include the Hopie and the Zuni,
among others. Pueblos do still exist today, and one of them,
the Acoma Pueblo, is believed to be the oldest continually

(02:55):
inhabited place in the United States. Uh people have lived
in it since about the year twelve hundred, so although
the Pueblo people's lived in similar looking structures, this wasn't
and isn't one homogeneous group of people. The Pueblo spoke
seven different languages in the sixteen hundreds, although some may
have spoken Spanish as well. Each individual pueblo governed itself

(03:19):
and had its own customs and its own cultural nuances.
Spain made its way to this part of the world
with the intent to conquer land and convert the people
living there to Christianity. At Last, but not least, on
their agenda was finding a bunch of treasure, and some
of that would fold back in to fund their first

(03:39):
and second agendas, and in a lot of vis the
primary agenda was really treasure um, but the treasure there
was in some some components of it, like the the
treasure had an end besides just treasure in itself right,
and that was conquering and converting. Spanish settlers made contact
with the Pueblo people in the early fifteen hundreds when

(04:02):
Marcus Deniza, who was a Franciscan friar, claimed the whole
region for Spain. The infamous conquistador Coronado also made his
way through in fifteen forty, and Conquistador Juan Deonte made
a voyage there with four hundred settlers in Fife. At
that point he established New Mexico as a Spanish colony,

(04:22):
and that's really when Spanish colonization of the area started.
In earnest and the whole vast hordes of treasure idea
didn't pan out for New Mexico, and Spain wanted to
abandon the area, but the Franciscans made a case for
their mission work being far too advanced to just come
to an end abruptly, so they continued on with the

(04:43):
aim of converting the indigenous population and ministering to the
ones that they had already been successful in converting. In
addition to trying to convert the indigenous population to Catholicism,
the Spanish authorities also forbade traditional religious practices. So when
they arrived a Pueblo village, the Spanish would start by
destroying the kiva, which was used for religious and cultural

(05:06):
ceremonies and also it was kind of like a gathering place.
Um sometimes they would build the church directly over the
kiva site. The Spanish also destroyed masks and other items
that were associated with cachinas, and these were spirit beings
worshiped in traditional pit Pueblo religions. The Native Americans who

(05:27):
resisted the Spanish were often subject to imprisonment and torture,
and in a recurring theme regarding the colonization of the America's,
the settlers introduced measles, smallpox, and typhus. Up to eight
of the Pueblo population actually died in the years after
first contact due to disease. Yeah, but this was not

(05:49):
a wholly a one sided thing. There was there were
also diseases brought back to Europe from the colonies, but
not not nearly with the lethal ramifications has happened in
the America a lot huge. The Spanish also implemented taxation
in their colonies, and the rates of taxation were so

(06:11):
high that over about a decade, the Spanish went from
asking the Pueblos for food to help them get started
with their colony, to instead the Pueblos asking the Spanish
for food that had been taxed away from them. And
to add to all of this, a drought started in
sixteen sixty six that lasted for four years before the

(06:32):
arrival of the Spanish. The Pueblo people survived drought by
keeping stockpiles of food and trading with one another. It
was very cooperative, but the Spanish had taxed them so
heavily that no one had a stockpile, and trade among
the pueblos was prohibited. Raids by the apaches on the
remaining meager stores made things even harder, so basically all

(06:52):
of their resources were stripped from them right and then
there was an epidemic of an unknown and deeply deadly
disease in six seventy one, and and all of this,
of course had a measurable effect on the Pueblo population.
Over the seventy five years between the real start of
Spanish settlement and the revolt, the number of pueblos dropped
from about one hundred to about forty existing today are

(07:16):
about twenty. In the minds of many Pueblo peoples at
the time, life was getting harder and harder, specifically because
they were not being allowed to perform their religious observances.
Like a Western idea of this might be that God
was exacting vengeance because he was not being worshiped enough,
but this was more a worldview that that those observances

(07:39):
were crucial to maintaining their quality of life and the
way that the world was supposed to work, and without
those observances going on, that things were going off the rails. Well, yeah,
their entire culture had been upended and most of their
traditions stripped away. So yes, that will pretty much ruin
your life. Your structure has been completely taken away. UH.

(08:03):
Spanish authorities cracked down harder on descent after the Acoma
revolt in and in this revolt, the Acoma Pueblo attacked
a party of Spanish people who asked them for supplies.
So UH, Spanish authorities had cracked down harder on Descent
after an event that actually took place some time before

(08:24):
in and that was the Acoma Revolt. And in this revolt,
the Acoma Pueblo attacked a party of Spanish people who
had asked them for supplies. The Spanish then burned down
the town and massacred every male living there who was
over the age of And in the aftermath of this revolt, floggings,
public executions, and sentences of slavery became more common. So

(08:47):
after that whole thing had happened, the Spanish basically their
approach to anything was going to be swift and cruel,
pretty hands yeah yeah, um so over the development of
you know, the diseases and taxation that we just talked about.
Other revolts were also going on, but because the pueblos

(09:09):
were so spread out, most of them were really too
small to be effective. And in some cases Native Americans
who were loyal to the Spanish had tipped them off
to what was happening. So there was resistance going on
through this whole time, but it wasn't really strong enough
to gain a foothold. There was a little piece meal yeah. Uh.
In sixteen seventy five, Spanish authorities rounded up forty seven

(09:31):
Pueblo religious leaders and convicted them of sorcery and conspiring
to rebel. These leaders who were beaten publicly and they
were sentenced to slavery. Four were sentenced to execution, though
one of them committed suicide rather than be executed. One
of the imprisoned holy leaders was a man named Pope,
and he was from San Juan Pueblo. Pope and the

(09:53):
other leaders were released that same year. Pope went to
the northernmost pueblo, Taos Pueblo. There he reported being visited
by three spirits who gave him a prophecy abundance would
return to the pueblos if they purged their world of Spaniards.
So the Spanish described this event as having had a
conversation with the devil, and most of the Spanish writing

(10:15):
about the revolt from the time characterizes it as the
work of the devil, not as a result of Spanish
oppression or of the pueblos grievances against the Spanish colonists. So,
over a period of years, Pope started to organize the
Pueblo people, who were living in villages that spanned up
and down the Rio Grande Valley, and they sprawled out

(10:35):
over more than three hundred miles of territory from east
to west. So to address the language barrier that we
referenced earlier, which was one of the things that had
prevented all these different pueblos from uniting in the past,
Pope gave each of the villages a knotted chord, which
he delivered to them using runners, and the villages were

(10:56):
supposed to un not one knot from the court every day,
and on the day that the last knot was untied,
that would be the day that everyone was to rise
up against the Spanish. And also given to the runners
were pieces of deer skin that were marked with pictograms.
Pope rehearsed their meaning with the runners before they left.
So the plan was to simultaneously attack the Spanish and

(11:18):
all these different villages using weapons that people had stockpiled
and hidden, and then to destroy the churches and kill
the priests, and then to kill the Spanish or drive
them out of their towns. From there, the pueblos planned
to converge to turn their attention to the Spanish capital
at Santa Fe. Two of the runners that Pope sent

(11:39):
out were captured, giving the Spanish advanced warning of what
was going to happen. Additional runners were dispatched to tell
all the pueblos to move the revolution. Earlier news didn't
make it to all the outlining pueblos in time, and
a few pueblos appeared to have declined to participate in
the plan. Yes, there are some descriptions of this that
make it sound as though this is a completely you

(12:00):
unanimous action on the part of the pueblos, and for
a lot of reasons it wasn't was. Some of them
seemed not to have gotten the news from the runners
in time. Others seemed to have consciously made the decision
for whatever reason, either because they were sympathetic to the
Spanish or were allied with the Spanish, decided not to

(12:22):
to attack the people who were living there at that point. So,
regardless of all of that, on August tenth, sight many
of the pueblos, along with allies from the Apache and
the Navajo, attacked in more than twenty villages. Together, they
killed four d and one Spanish soldiers and civilians, including
twenty one Franciscan priests, and that was about two thirds

(12:44):
of the ecclesiastical force living in New Mexico at the time.
We have absolutely no casualty count on the Native American side.
We have no idea how many pueblos died during the fighting.
At least one priest, who was Father Juan gray Robe,
a Zoomi Pueblo, reportedly survived by putting aside Catholicism and
taking up Pueblo practices, and he eventually married a Zuni wife.

(13:08):
There's a lot that's actually unclear about this story, though,
since it's pieced together from multiple testimonies that were given
orally by Native Americans and then written down by Spanish priests,
so the veracity of any element of it is a
little bit questionable. Yeah, we've sort of established that this
is probably what happened. Um later in a part that

(13:30):
we will get to in a bit, the Spanish did
return and apparently found this, particularly this particular pueblo still
practicing a lot of elements of Catholic religion um led
by Father Juan gray Robe, who had kind of assimilated
into the Pueblo culture. Fascinating. That could be a podcast

(13:50):
in of itself, I would imagine if we had better record,
if we had enough records to do that, which we
really don't. Once the fighting was done in the villages,
of warriors attacked the colonial headquarters at Santa Fe, and
survivors in Santa Fe and from the surrounding villages all
fled to the Governor's palace and there uh they were

(14:12):
laid siege to. Eventually the pueblos cut off the water supply.
Another group of refugees fled to the Isletic Pueblo, which
was seventy miles to the south and apparently had not
taken part in the fighting. The Lieutenant Governor was there
with a group of survivors, and eventually, on August twenty one,
the governor decided to abandon New Mexico. He and the

(14:35):
survivors who had taken refuge in Santa Fe managed to
flee down the Rio grand And exactly whether this is
because they were allowed to go or we're just strong
enough presents not to be messed with is still a
matter of some debate. Uh. The Lieutenant governor decided to
abandon New Mexico as well. Yeah, we pretty much know
that they all left and the Native Americans allowed them

(14:57):
to leave, but we have no record of the rationale
for uh why everyone was allowed to leave. At this point, Yeah,
they cut a deal, or if they just were strong
enough that they were like, we're just gonna let this happen.
Along with some of the Pueblo peoples who were loyal
to Spain, everyone went to El Paso del Norte which
today is Warrez, Mexico, and for twelve years the pueblos

(15:20):
were actually free from colonial rule. And before we talk
about um sort of how this all played out for
the next twelve years, how it affected life in New
Mexico for the next while. Well, let's take a moment
and talk about our sponsor. That sounds grand to the
aftermath of the Pueblo revolt. Yeah, So after the revolt,

(15:42):
Pope toured the pueblos and instructed people to really throw
off all Spanish influence. Many people underwent a ritual bathing
that was meant to wash away their baptism. Christian marriages
were also avoided until a traditional pueblo ceremony could be performed,
and the pueblos burned down the ledges that the Spanish
had built, including Spanish built pueblos that the native people's

(16:04):
had been living in. They basically wanted to eradicate anything
the Spanish had touched, They burned down mission churches and
smashed the bells, They whipped statues, gouged out the eyes
of religious paintings. But this really didn't happen in every
single pueblo. This is another thing that a lot of
times in modern accounts you will see this as a
universal thing that happened in every single pueblo to the

(16:26):
same extent. But there's really a lot of variety and
exactly how much each pueblo village did or did not
reject Catholic influence at this point, and some of their tribes.
Some of the tribes actually moved their pueblos to more
defensible vantage points to better defend themselves in case the
Spanish returned. Many of the new pueblos that were built

(16:47):
after the revolt were built immediately adjacent to other villages
that dated back to the twelve or thirteenth century, So
it sort of seems as though that in addition to
going back to their traditional ways, they were also going
back to the places where their ancestors had lived. But
Spanish influence was not entirely destroyed. Some Spanish introductions to
Pueblo culture, including raising cattle and sheep, had become part

(17:11):
of the way of life there, and Pope decreed that
people should go back to planning corn exclusively, but some
continued to plant wheat and barley, which had also been
introduced by the Spanish. There were also Pueblo people at
this point who identified as Christians and who didn't want
to give up their religion. Uh These people would salvage
and hide what they could or incorporate Christian themes into

(17:35):
their traditional spiritual practice, so you can see some kind
of merging of the two influences in the archaeological record.
In some places, the Spanish started to attempt to retake
the Pueblo area in sixteen eighty one. There were skirmishes
and sieges that went on for years. Pope died in
six and there really wasn't another charismatic leader to take

(17:59):
his play us and try to unite all the people
of the different pueblos, And even before his death his
leadership had really weakened. He wound up dying in disgrace. Um.
There's some suggestion in the testimonies that was taken orally
from the Pueblo peoples that there were Pueblos that went
along with Pope because they were scared of him, and
not because they actually wanted to rebel. It's kind of

(18:24):
hard to to figure out whether that is really what
people thought or whether that is sort of an addition
um of the Spanish translators. But the fact that he
did die in pretty much not a state of respect
or reverence makes it seem like maybe there was some
merit to that, Yes, some merit to that part of it. Also,

(18:44):
the sort of back to the old ways that he
was advocating did seem like and sometimes that it was
sort of back to the old ways as envisioned by Pope.
Some of the pueblos that were rebuilt after the revolt
have more in common with Pays particular people then with
the pueblos that they were replacing. And weakened by years

(19:06):
of fighting and a loss of a central leader to
coordinate their efforts, the Pueblo peoples once again fell to
the Spanish, and that was in Sixteo. At this point, though,
the evangelical policy of the Catholic Church did become somewhat
less oppressive in terms of religious expression, so there were
still missions and churches being built. Missionaries still tried to

(19:27):
convert people, but they didn't really stand in the way
of the Pueblo people's free religious expression at that point.
So while there was still a whole colonial system going on,
the Pueblo people's did have more of an ability to
to carry on their their historical traditions and their spiritual traditions.
But unfortunately that did not stop things from uh being

(19:51):
bloody and the reconquest process. So while there were some
peaceful surrenders in other places, the Spanish actually went house
to house and burned people in our homes. It's pretty
bloody all around. Historical archaeologist Matthew J. Liebmann frames this
whole revolt as a revolution and not a revolt, and
he draws some parallels between it and the American Revolution. Basically,

(20:14):
in both cases there were farming people who were unhappy
with the leadership, who organized at night to rise up
and get rid of an oppressive colonial government that they
were unhappy living under. And today there are about seventy
five thousand people of Pueblo descent still living. Yes, we're
not talking about people who existed only in the past.

(20:35):
As we said earlier, one of the pueblos is one
of the most or one of the oldest, continually inhabited
places in the United States. So the culture endures to
some degree UM and indoors, and a lot of the
pueblos that still exists are still inhabited in a way
that's similar to how they were inhabited at this point
in history. UM. A lot of them are places that

(20:57):
people can visit if they're interested in learning about. There
a lot of resources online to kind of get a
sense of what the etiquette is of going, like what
people can, what visitors can and cannot witness, and can
and cannot do and participate in. UM. We can add
that to our list of History Podcast road trips. Yes,

(21:18):
the Pueblo trip. That would be very cool. There's a
statue of Pope in the Statuary Hall in the United
States Capital. It's one of the seven Native Americans who
were represented in the Statuary Hall. And as we've talked about,
there are nuances to this story, so you know, for
that reason, it was a pretty controversial addition to the

(21:38):
statuary Hall. It was carved by Cliff Fragua of him
as Pueblo and it depicts him he's uh, he's holding
the knotted chord that was used to help time everything correctly,
which is really a pretty ingenious timing device. Yeah, simple
but effective. I I also watched a video that pointed

(22:00):
out that it's kind of weird where it's position because
where where the statue of Pope is you can see
over his shoulder this, um, this big mural of Columbus
quote discovering. But because of the way the statue happens
to be positioned, he's his face has kind of turned

(22:20):
away from that. Interesting. Yeah, I don't think that was
a deliberate I think it just worked out that way. UM. Fascinating,
But yeah, do you also have some listener mail for
us to enjoy? Do you have some listener mail? This
listener mail is from Hallie and it's about our laur
Angles Wilder podcast. Um. He starts by wishing us happy holidays.

(22:42):
We are just back from these holidays. I was here
for most of them, but I say we, it was
really me. I was gone far away and and so
it is. It is our first recording session post holiday,
So happy holidays to everyone. Belatedly, thank you so much
for your recent podcast on Lara Angles Wilder in the
Long Winter of eight one which I am eagerly awaiting.

(23:06):
I think she had not heard that one yet when
she wrote this letter. I am a huge Lara Angeles
Wilder fan. I was introduced to her books at age four,
and my senior history thesis topic this past year was
inspired by Laura's stories. I'm one of those people who
has not yet gone on a Lara angles Wilder road trip,
but would absolutely love to you. I have been to
three sides plus al Manzo's New York farm on different occasions. Though,

(23:29):
considering how much there is to say about Laura, I
think you did a great job condensing it to forty minutes.
Just one correction. Al Manzo's name was pronounced like it
was spelled, not Almonso, so that I have no idea
where I picked up the pronunciation Almonso. I know either,
but I do. I mean, if you had woken me
from a dead sleep and said, how do you pronounce this?
I would have said Almonzo. Yeah. I think maybe that

(23:50):
was how they said it on the TV show. Perhaps
I could not confirm that before we came in here today,
but so my bad. I don't know where I picked
up the wrong pronunciation for his name, but appearly I did.
Um then to say that would explain why she called
it manly. It does it sounded a lots more sense,
It's less of a jump. Yes. Uh. I'd like to

(24:10):
suggest eight related podcast topic, Women in the Homestead Act.
You mentioned Eliza James homestead. There's so much to talk
about on the subject of women, particularly single women and
the Homestead Act. This is what I actually focused my
thesis on. There is really interesting struggle and gender slash
power play that went on with allowing single women to file.

(24:30):
As you mentioned in the podcast, women were confined largely
to the house but filing a homestead claimant working the land.
And although the government allowed women to do this, the
language that was used to talk about homesteading completely left
out women. Because of this, You've got some women using
masculine language to talk about themselves. I don't know if
you remember the term batch ng from the Long Winter

(24:51):
to describe how al Manzo and Royal were living. But
some women, namely one who called herself Bachelor Best, started
using words like that to refer to females. E j
is also fascinating as she had trouble proving up her
claim and wrote a really long letter regarding her experience
during those five years. Carry too was a homestead a homesteader,

(25:12):
though she did it after the five year law was changed.
I could go on and on about this, perhaps a
collaboration with stuff Mob never told you. I also think
a podcast on Rose would be wonderful, with her reporting libertarianism,
fascination with Albania, and difficult relationship with her mother. Lastly,
I wanted to draw your attention to a few things
you might find interesting in case you didn't come across

(25:32):
some my near research. There is a research organization devoted
to Laura Angles Wilder, the Laura Angles Wilder Legacy and
Research Association. At their first conference, a physics teacher presented
on the science behind Cap and Almanzo's winter trek In
the Long Winter. You can see many land patents on
the website of the Bureau of Land Matt Management, including
the timber claim patents for Eliza, Jane and Royal Wilder. Oh,

(25:55):
and remember the Bloody Vendors episode from last year. Laura,
on several occasions claimed that her father had run ins
with the family, but historians generally agree that this embellishment
was suggested by Rose to add more excitement to her
mother's childhood. Then, Holly gives us a completely unnecessary apology
for how long this email is. This is so full
of it's so full of good stuff. Thank you so much, Hallie.

(26:18):
The Homestead Act is there's so many layers and nuances
to the Homestead Act that we definitely did not scratch
the surface of in that particular episode. Um, I don't
we have maybe talked about this in our prior podcast
pot Stuff. But one of my favorite reality TV shows
was called Frontier House, and it was about three families

(26:41):
who are sort of sent to two basically pretend that
they're going to be on the frontier food through the winter,
and and some historians who came in to say whether
they could survive or not. And one of the families
is an interracial couple who at the time period, Uh,
that would have been a potential option for a mixed

(27:01):
for an interracial couple to be able to make a
life for themselves without so much interference from the rules
of society around them who would have said that their
relationship was not okay. Um, So we have potential opportunities
for women, for interracial couples, for other people who were
not living in like the social standard that was acceptable

(27:22):
at the time. But at the same time, it was
a devastating act for the Native American population who were
being removed from their homes and put on reservations to
make room foreign settlers. So lots of layers to the
homes that act. It was simultaneously an opportunity and absolutely
devastating and horrible. Uh So, thank you Hollie for writing

(27:45):
us that letter so good. It is very good. So
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(28:06):
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(28:28):
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