Pueblo Revolt

The Pueblo Revolt of August 1680, also called Popé's Rebellion, was a coordinated uprising by most of the Pueblo peoples of the upper Rio Grande against Spanish colonial rule in the province of New Mexico. The rebels killed about 400 colonists and drove the surviving settlers south to El Paso del Norte, ending Spanish rule in the region for some twelve years. Scholars see it as the first Native American movement to revive traditional religion in the face of colonial rule.

Spanish expeditions entered Pueblo country from 1540 onwards, often violently. In 1598 Juan de Oñate founded a permanent colony among an estimated 40,000 Pueblo people, and the following year Spanish forces destroyed Acoma Pueblo, killing many of its people and enslaving hundreds more. Under the colony's rule, Pueblo communities owed tribute in labour, maize and cloth, and settlers took land and water along the river.

Religion became the deepest grievance. Franciscan missionaries tried to stamp out traditional worship, banning kachina dances and burning sacred masks and objects. In the 1670s drought brought famine and more frequent Apache raids. In 1675 Governor Juan Francisco Treviño had 47 Pueblo religious leaders arrested for sorcery; three were hanged and the rest whipped, until an armed Pueblo delegation forced their release. One of those freed was Popé, or Po'pay, from Ohkay Owingeh.

From Taos Pueblo, Popé and other leaders spent five years building an alliance among towns speaking several different languages, using Spanish as a common tongue. Runners carried knotted cords to each town: one knot was to be untied each day, and the last marked the day of revolt, set for 11 August 1680. The Spanish population, about 2,400 people, was thinly spread and could arm only around 170 men.

On 9 August the Spanish learned of the plan and seized two of the messengers, so the revolt began a day early, on 10 August. Pueblo fighters took the colonists' horses, cut the roads and attacked missions and farms across the province. Around 400 people were killed, including 21 of the 33 Franciscan missionaries. Within days Santa Fe was under siege and its water supply cut. On 21 August Governor Antonio de Otermín broke out and led the survivors south. The Pueblos let them leave, and about 1,946 refugees, among them some 500 Native American servants and slaves, regrouped at Socorro before reaching El Paso.

Popé and his allies called for a return to the old way of life, ordering churches and Christian images destroyed and Spanish livestock, fruit trees and wheat given up. Unity proved hard to keep: each town governed itself, drought continued and raids increased. Within roughly a year Popé had lost his leading position, and he is thought to have died before 1692. An attempt by Otermín to return in 1681 was abandoned in January 1682.

Concerned about French expansion in the Mississippi valley and raids on the frontier, New Spain sent Diego de Vargas north. In September 1692 he reoccupied Santa Fe without bloodshed after persuading its defenders to accept Spanish rule. When he returned with settlers in December 1693, however, he retook the town by force, executed 70 Pueblo fighters and handed some 400 of their relatives to colonists as servants. A second revolt in 1696 was harshly suppressed, and many Pueblo people fled to live among the Apache and Navajo.

After the reconquest, the Spanish granted land to each Pueblo, appointed an official to defend Pueblo rights in the courts, and the returning missionaries no longer tried to suppress traditional religion so forcefully. In 2005 a statue of Popé was placed in the United States Capitol as one of the two statues representing New Mexico.

Our 1650 map shows Santa Fe de Nuevo México as a Spanish province beside New Spain, part of the wider Spanish Empire, and our 1700 map shows it again after the reconquest of 1692.