Pueblo Revolt | Adam James Jones

The American Southwest during the late Spanish colonial period was home to one of the most precarious family systems in the world. Beginning late in the 17^th century and continuing all throughout Mexican rule and into American conquest, settlers within these Spanish borderlands built their homes, haciendas, and communities on a slavery-based political economy. Such a foundation was hardly unique in the New World, although the system’s origins, motivations, and outcome were wholly Southwestern. The Southwest gave birth to a different kind of slave, the Genízaro – a captive Indian without a tribe who, if not in the minds of their captors then at least in the vernacular – was considered not a slave but a servant. More than that, quite often did the slave become an integrated member of the family.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain1786 - 1821 — The Viceroyalty of New Spain
1786 – 1821

Considering the isolation and cultural makeup of the Southwest in the 18^th century, it is little surprise that such a unique economy came to be. Given its distance from the central governing body in Mexico City as well as the Eastern influence of a young United States, New Mexico enjoyed a certain level of autonomy. Spain managed only a weak economic control over this area, allowing for the evolution of complex arrangements made between the different cultural groups in order to serve mutual economic needs.

During the Spanish colonial period, these needs included marketplaces for trade, trade routes, buffer zones between hostile tribes, labor, and, perhaps most importantly, wives and children. And so it was that for centuries slave raiding and trading acted as perpetual solutions. Indian tribes raided the Spanish, as well as amongst one another, capturing women and children who would then become Genízaros for sell or trade. The Spanish raided similarly, forcing their captives to work on their haciendas or else convert them into soldiers. Just like weapons, livestock, and pottery, “…captives simultaneously embodied real value in the exchange economy” (James Brooks, Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, p74) On top of this, the act of raiding regional tribes for slaves and then conducting counter-raids coincidentally established a network of trade routes and established marketplaces where various groups could meet to trade or ransom slaves, as well as exchange other items.

Yet whatever the initial purpose for acquiring a slave, more often than not that captive would eventually evolve into an extended member of the family. And this is perhaps what makes the Southwest borderlands system of slavery so unique.

“Unlike chattel slavery elsewhere in North America… captive women and children in this system often found themselves integrated within the host community through kinship systems – adoption and marriage in the indigenous cases or compadrazgo and concubinage in the Spanish colonial cases – they participated in the gradual transformation of the host society” (Brooks, 34).

Thus, Genízaros took a vital position in the Southwestern political economy, for not only did they provide labor in the burgeoning settlements, but they also served as wives and child-bearers for the otherwise male-dominated population. Captive children often became godchildren. Servitude gave way to kinship, and colonial law and custom regarding slavery and mixed-marriages grew ever-convoluted in this stark, Northern territory.

Nonetheless, despite earning valued places in Southwestern society, Genízaros remained at the very bottom of the region’s caste system – lower both in the eyes of the Spaniard and the native, for at least members of enemy factions had a people to call their own. But in 1821, a change swept the territory. Mexico had won her independence from Spain, and a new constitution was drafted seeking to banish the lines between ethnic classes. It was an admirable and bold ambition, and nowhere would it prove so difficult to implement than Mexico’s northernmost province.

Under Spanish rule, Mexico’s native people were widely looked down upon as second-class citizens. Following Mexican Independence however, according to the newly-signed Treaty of Cordoba, all Mexican-Indians were henceforth to be considered equal citizens of Mexico. The word, ‘Genízaro,’ was even removed from official government usage. Unfortunately, by the time the treaty was enacted, New Mexicans had not only honed the practice of slave raiding and ownership, but come to rely upon it. So it was that the raiding of slaves and their designation at the bottom of society, despite their regular integration into families, died hard in New Mexico during independence.

Beginning in the 1820s and continuing well through American occupation, networks of cross-national trade routes opened up throughout New Mexico, and cultural divisions in the territory blurred further. With the opening of the St. Louis–Santa Fe–Chihuahua trade route, French, Scottish, Canadian, English, and American entrepreneurs poured into the territory. Settlements expanded deeper into the perimeters of the territory with Anglo migrants quickly adopting New Mexico’s unique brand of commerce and striking out upon raids of their own. As they did the territory’s slave-based economy rooted deeper, and its cultural and family make-ups grew ever more complex.

And unnofficial caste system persisted among the population, one which seemingly grew more defined with the arrival of self-entitled white trappers and speculators. This is not to say the Genízaros quietly accepted their given social statuses. Quite the opposite. In 1837, after more than twenty years of widening social and economic gaps combined with much political infighting, poor and mistreated New Mexicans – the Genízaros at the forefront – revolted against Governor Albino Perez in Santa Fe. The rebels decapitated Perez, and soon after replaced him with José Angel González, a native Genízaro from the Taos Pueblo.

While González’s election marked a historical cultural achievement in New Mexico’s history, the Chimayo Revolt of 1837 ultimately did not expel the slave system from New Mexico entirely. In fact, despite Mexico’s initial efforts at a free society “The 1820s would inaugurate a ferocious expansion in the New Mexican slave trade that would last until the defeat of the Navajos in 1864…” (Brooks, 250). In 1846, New Mexico Territory fell under American control. And while America would finally face its own slavery affliction not long after, the society the Genízaros helped create would live on in New Mexico for generations to come.

Works Cited:

Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, by James Brooks

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a rebellion more than a hundred years in the making. The persecution of the Puebloan Indians is traceable to 1541 and the misguided expedition of Francisco Coronado. En route to the fabled golden city of Cibola and ill-equipped for the stark New Mexico deserts, Coronado and his army promptly began requisitioning food and supplies from the native people – brutalizing all those that resisted.

Fifty-seven years later Don Juan de Oñate and 200-some Spanish soldiers marched northward into New Mexico with orders to colonize the territory and Catholicize its inhabitants. A half-legal form of Spain’s barbarous encomienda system was introduced that forced natives to pay tributes from the crops they yielded and in some cases subjected them to slavery. During his tenure as New Mexico’s first governor Oñate would oversee numerous atrocities against the Puebloans, including the infamous 1599 massacre, dismemberment, and enslavement of the Acoma tribe as extreme retribution for their insurrection.

While the violence persisted, so too did Spain’s war on the native religion. Puebloans were imprisoned and oftentimes executed for their resistance to Catholic beliefs and for clinging to their own. In 1675, New Mexico Governor Juan Trevino arrested 47 such Puebloan “hold-outs,” and deemed them witches. Three of these prisoners were hanged and the others severely whipped before Trevino, under intense pressure by the natives, finally released them. Unfortunately for Trevino and the other Spanish settlers living in the territory, one of those recently-freed was the fearsome leader Popé.

Most of what is known of Popé (pronounced Po’pay) and his personality come from oral tradition or reports made by the Spaniards who encountered him. He has been described as “fierce,” “charismatic,” “scheming,” and “intelligent,” all of which must have been true for Popé to unite so many different tribes that spoke so many different languages and then lead them to a decisive victory over the militarily-superior Spaniards. It is also safe to say Popé held a well-rounded hatred for the Spanish and all their customs. This hatred was undoubtedly honed while Popé and his 46 fellow Puebloans endured the torment of their Spanish captors.

Prohibited by the Spanish from using guns or horses, in early August of 1680, Popé sent runners carrying deerskin strips tied with knots to the distant pueblos. At every sunrise each pueblo was to untie one knot until, with the untying of the last knot, the revolt could begin. The Spaniards learned of the plot, but the tribes preserved their element of surprise by attacking two days early. The Puebloans swarmed Santa Fe and, with their occupiers huddled inside the Palace of the Governors, Popé banished the Spanish back into Mexico.

Popé exhibited a staunch opposition to Christianity and European custom. After expelling the Spaniards to El Paso, he declared, “The God of the Christians is dead. He was made of rotten wood.” Unfortunately for him however, not all of his people had remained devout to the old ways, and after more than a century of interaction with the Franciscans many had converted to Christianity. It was Christian Puebloans such as these that, in the twelve years following the 1680 Revolt, came to yearn for the return of the Spanish and the Church.

Following their successful revolt of 1680, the Puebloan people of New Mexico found themselves suddenly in power of a vast and changed territory. Normally separated by language, religion, ideology, and geographic distance, never before had these tribes been so united as they were while fighting their mutual enemy the Spanish. More than that, never before had they known a more unifying and charismatic leader than that of Popé.

But with the Spanish vacated, abruptly the Puebloans lost their source of unity. Fierce infighting promptly ensued amongst the tribes as to who would remain in Santa Fe and rule New Mexico. On top of this, there occurred a surge in raids by nomadic bands like the Navajo. Then there were the frequent attempts made by those fuming Spaniards huddled in El Paso to exact revenge over their insurgents and regain the northern territory. On the nine-year anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt, Spaniards stalked up the Rio Grande and attacked the Zia Pueblo, killing some 600 Zias before retreating back to El Paso. Finally, a severe drought fell over the southwest, and did not leave for seven years.

The details of Popé’s life during this time vary. Some accounts claim he attempted to assert himself as something of a dictatorial leader of all the Puebloan people, striving to eradicate all Spanish influence from Pueblo society through sometimes severe punishment until finally the Puebloans rejected their former leader. Conversely, other oral traditions describe Popé retreating from politics and leading a quiet life incognito in Taos before dying anonymous. Whichever the case, without a common enemy and devoid of their once-leader, the Puebloan people soon enough divided, and despite thwarting a couple prior campaigns the Puebloans eventually relented to Spanish reclamation in 1692.

In 2005, a statue of Popé was placed inside the National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C. as one of two profiles picked to represent New Mexico (the other being the late senator Dennis Chavez). Sculpted by Cliff Fragua of the Jemez Pueblo, the seven and a half foot marble rendition depicts the Puebloan leader gripping the knotted strip of deerskin in one hand and a bear fetish in the other to symbolize Puebloan religion. Popé is the earliest American figure to be featured in the collection, and also the 100^th and final one to be submitted.

Tag: Pueblo Revolt

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