 holy man’s dictates were imprisoned or executed.
As the Pueblos seethed under their new taskmaster, many noticed that the rain did not return as he had promised. The traditional crops of corn, squash and beans that Popé had ordered them to plant withered under the boiling sun just as the Spanish crops of peaches, melons and grapes had done before the revolution.
Popé died in 1688, whether from natural causes or at the hand of the Pueblos is unknown. Four years later, the new governor, Don Diego José de Vargas Zapata Luján Ponce de León y Contreras, led a retinue of 60 soldiers, 100 loyal Indians and several friars back to Santa Fe, arriving on September 13. The Pueblos at Santa Fe welcomed the Spanish, and by December, when Vargas returned to El Paso for more soldiers, over 2,000 Indians had been baptized.
Following Vargas’ arrival in Santa Fe late the next year, a number of Pueblos again sought to drive the Spanish out, but this time, they failed. By December 1696, all rebellion had been quashed.
Although the Pueblos were again under Spanish rule, their rebellion had ushered in a time of prosperity for the Indians of the Great Plains and Northwestern plateau country. As more and more tribes obtained the horses (or their offspring) that Popé had ordered out of New Mexico, intertribal trade increased and living standards rose. The first eight decades of the 18th century were the apex of the American Indian renaissance, a time of plenty that would be abruptly ended by the great smallpox epidemic of 1780-81.