Popé's Rebellion

Pueblo Revolt

Part of Spanish colonization of the Americas

Date	August 10–21, 1680
Location	New Mexico, New Spain
Result	Puebloan victory, expulsion of Spanish settlers

Belligerents

Spanish Empire

Puebloans

Commanders and leaders

Antonio de Otermín

Popé
see list below for others

Casualties and losses

400, including civilians

over 600

Puebloans

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680—also known as Popé's Rebellion—was an uprising of most of the indigenous Pueblo people against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, present day New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt killed 400 Spanish and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. Twelve years later the Spanish returned and were able to reoccupy New Mexico with little opposition.

For more than 100 years beginning in 1540, the Pueblo Indians of present-day New Mexico were subjected to successive waves of soldiers, missionaries, and settlers. These encounters, referred to as the Entradas, were characterized by violent confrontations between Spanish colonists and Pueblo peoples. The Tiguex War, fought in the winter of 1540–41 by the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen pueblos of Tiwa Indians, was particularly destructive to Pueblo and Spanish relations.

In 1598 Juan de Oñate led 129 soldiers and 10 Franciscan Catholic priests plus a large number of women, children, servants, slaves, and livestock into the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico. There were at the time approximately 40,000 Pueblo Indians inhabiting the region. Oñate put down a revolt at Acoma Pueblo by killing and enslaving hundreds of the Indians and sentencing 24 men to have their right foot cut off. The Acoma Massacre would instill fear of the Spanish in the region for years to come, though Franciscan missionaries were assigned to several of the Pueblo towns to Christianize the natives.

Spanish colonial policies in the 1500s regarding the humane treatment of Indians were difficult to enforce on the northern frontier. With the establishment of the first permanent colonial settlement in 1598, the Pueblos were forced to provide tribute to the colonists in the form of labor, ground corn and textiles. Encomiendas were soon established by colonists along the Rio Grande, restricting Pueblo access to fertile farmlands and water supplies and placing a heavy burden upon Pueblo labor. Especially egregious to the Pueblo was the assault on their traditional religion. Franciscan priests established theocracies in many of the Pueblo villages. The priests converted the Pueblos to build the Spanish empire in New Mexico. In 1608, it looked as though Spain might abandon the province, the Franciscans baptized seven thousand Pueblos to try to convince the Crown otherwise. 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) outlawed Kachina dances by the Pueblo Indians and ordered the missionaries to seize and burn their masks, prayer stick, and effigies. The Franciscan missionaries also forbade the use of entheogenic drugs in the traditional religious ceremonies of the Pueblo. 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.

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Wikipedia