New Mexico History | The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

On August 21, 1680, Pueblo Indians took possession of Santa Fé in the New Mexican Province, from the Spanish. An excerpt from the article:

"The Pueblo Revolt
On August 10, 1680, Tewa, Tiwa, and other Keresan-speaking pueblos, and even the non-pueblo Apaches simultaneously rose up against the Spanish. The Zuni, Hopi and Acoma were a day late. In Santa Fe, Governor Otermin marshaled the city’s resources to defend the capital. Pueblo warriors destroyed all of the Spanish settlements in the province by August 13th and converged on the capital. Otermin sent heavily armed relief parties to escort stranded colonists to the relative safety of Santa Fe. Almost a thousand people sought sanctuary in the Governor’s Palace by August 15th, surrounded by an army of 2500 Indian warriors. The Spaniards had no water and limited food. In the meantime, over one thousand Spanish survivors from the Rio Abajo, under the command of Lt. Governor Alonso Garcia, had gathered in Isleta, seventy miles south of Santa Fe. However, neither group was aware of the other.

On August 21 the Spanish broke out of the Governor’s Palace. They launched a costly counter attack to drive the warriors from the city, which allowed the refugees time to flee. They began the long trek south. The refugees in Isleta were also heading south when they got word about the other survivors. They paused in Socorro, waiting for the refugees from Santa Fe to arrive and then traveling together on September 27th to El Paso. The Puebloan warriors shadowed them the entire way, essentially escorting them to the border, but they didn’t attack. The goal was not wholesale slaughter, because it would have been easy to eradicate the remaining Spanish as they traveled south. The goal was expulsion; a violent rejection of Spanish oppression. The revolt cost 400 Spanish lives, including 21 of the 33 priests in New Mexico; however, 2000 Spaniards survived.

Pueblo Alliance
After the revolt Po’pay became the leader of the Pueblo Alliance for a brief period of time. Po’pay and his two lieutenants, Alonso Catiti from Santo Domingo and Luis Tupatu from Picuris, traveled from town to town ordering a return “to the state of their antiquity”. They ordered all of the pueblos to destroy crosses, churches, and Christian images. The pueblos restored the kivas. They ordered the people to cleanse themselves in ritual baths, to use their Pueblo names, and to destroy all vestiges of the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including Spanish livestock and fruit trees. Po’pay forbade the planting of wheat and barley. He commanded those married in the Catholic church to dismiss their wives and to take others based on native traditions.

Many of the pueblos, unaccustomed to cooperative political action, and accustomed to autonomy, ignored his orders. They resented his effort to rule and he was considered a tyrant by many. Additionally, there were Puebloans who had sincerely converted to Christianity and many had family or friends who were Spanish.

The Pueblo Council deposed Po’pay about a year after the revolt, though he was reelected shortly before his death in 1688. The confederation between the pueblos fell apart after he died. Opposition to Spanish rule gave the Pueblos the incentive to unite, but not the means to remain united once their common enemy was vanquished."