“The God of the Christians is dead. He was made of rotten wood.”
These words, allegedly uttered in his native language by Tewa holy man Popé, marked the beginning of the Indian renaissance in North America.
For some time, Popé had been telling his fellow Pueblos that the source of their woes was the Spanish: If the Indians drove these bearded interlopers from their homeland, rejected Christianity and returned to their ancestral ways, their life would again be good.
In 1680, the holy man finally united the independent Pueblo communities to his cause. Rebelling against Spanish cruelty, the natives revolted, driving their conquerors out—at least temporarily—and launching a massive change in Indian culture.
Bowing to the “Yoke of Christ”
Decades before Popé’s declaration, Spanish conquistadors, led by Juan de Oñate, had introduced Christianity to the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande watershed. In 1598, Oñate, the newly appointed governor and captain-general of New Mexico, led a force of eight Franciscan friars and about 130 soldiers (plus their families and servants—around 400 people, altogether) into the valley of the Rio Grande, home to an estimated 50,000 Indians, who lived in 60 villages or pueblos, as their communities were called.
In 1610, Santa Fe—the city of Holy Faith—became the capital of the New Mexico colony, igniting a land rush of retired Spanish soldiers, who received large land grants for their former service. The soldier/settlers built haciendas on their new rancheros and pressed the Pueblo Indians who had been living there into servitude. Of course, other soldiers were always on hand to see that the Pueblos complied with the wishes of their Spanish masters.
Catholic priests also “taxed” the Pueblos for their labor, requiring them to build churches and tend clerical farms. The friars’ demand for native labor often put the priests at odds with the Spanish settlers, who felt the Indians’ time would be better served working for them, writes historian Geoffrey C. Ward in The West. The Franciscans further angered the Pueblos by ordering them to put aside their traditional religion and instead bow to the “yoke of Christ.” Publicly, the Indians paid lip service to Christianity, while within their kivas—underground rooms used for native ceremonies—they continued to worship their traditional gods.
In addition to planting corn and melons for their Spanish masters, the Pueblos also tended the Spaniards’ enormous herds of cattle, sheep and horses (called “sacred dogs” by some of the Plains Indians because they looked like magical dogs that could carry heavy loads).
The Spanish livestock caught the attention of the Apaches, who had begun moving into the region from the East in the late 16th century. Although the Apaches traded with the Pueblos, they also raided them for plunder, particularly horses and mules. Initially, the Apaches ate most of the animals they captured, but they soon began bartering their surplus to the Kiowas and other neighboring tribes. Before long, Spanish horses and their offspring were being swapped from tribe to tribe through a vast Indian trading network that extended north to the Missouri River and into Canada.
From the West, Navajos, like the Apaches, also raided the New Mexico rancheros for horses. From the Navajos, horses passed through the Utes to the Shoshonis and on to the Nez Perce and other tribes of the Northwest plateau country.
Rather than chase the horse thieves, the Spanish replaced their losses by importing more stock from their rancheros in central Mexico. A typical small Mexican ranch of the period had over 150,000 cattle and 20,000 horses, reports Ethno-historian Alfred W. Crosby in The Columbian Exchange.
Although stolen horses filtered through the Indian trading network, their numbers were too few to alter native life on the Northern Great Plains. For the most part, tribes such as the Blackfeet, Crows and Assiniboines continued to be pedestrian nomads who used dogs as their beasts of burden. But all of that was about to change.
The Great Pueblo Revolt
During the 70 years after