ÁCOMA IN THE PUEBLO REVOLT
_Souls made of fire and children of the Sun_
_With whom Revenge is Virtue._
—DR. EDWARD YOUNG, _Night Thoughts_.
Between Fray Juan’s departure for New Spain and the great Pueblo Revolt
of 1680, we have such unsatisfying scraps of information about Ácoma
that the hope is ever present of making some discovery of additional
manuscripts in the archives.
The same scarcity of detail applies as well to the whole Province of New
Mexico for the period between 1598 and 1680. Everywhere in this part of
New Spain the work of a whole century was blotted out by the uprising of
the latter year. All records in local archives, civil or religious, were
publicly burned and every symbol of the Christian Faith obliterated. The
visible token of this was exemplified by the cleansing in the Santa Fé
River of all Indians in the vicinity ever baptized by Christian padres.
The story of the Revolt, one of the most bloody and thoroughgoing this
country has ever seen, had important consequences not only upon the
Indians, but also upon the expansion of European civilization in this
country. The researches of Hackett have changed in some details the
accepted essentials of the uprising and therefore I have followed his
narrative. The reader is referred as well to the more easily attainable
books.[79]
The Spaniards had attempted to suppress not only the religious beliefs
and practices of the Indians, but also their ancient customs of daily
life so as to make something like Europeans out of these aborigines,
a custom we have heard not a little about in recent years among other
conquering nations. This resulted in New Mexico, as might have been
expected, in a steadily cumulative discontent which broke out in
rebellion several times between 1645 and 1675. All these abortive
attempts were quickly, and harshly, overcome. No punishment, however,
availed to make the Indians amenable to rule, and in 1675 Governor
Treviño determined to stamp out their evil practices for all time. Taking
prisoner forty-seven medicine men alleged to be guilty of sorcery, three
were hanged as an example to the rest, and the remainder were imprisoned.
After a time these latter were released. Among them was one from San
Juan, Popé by name. Embittered still further by what he considered
persecution in his own pueblo, he betook himself to Taos, northernmost of
all the villages on the Rio Grande.
According to Bandelier the rebellion was more easily incited because of
the disappointment the Indians felt in the failure of the new magic,
Christianity, to do better for them than their old creed had wrought.
No greater protection from their enemies, no more rain for their crops,
no less wind and blight for their fruits had resulted from the new
religion. Consequently Popé found it no difficult matter to make the men
of Taos believe him one given supernatural knowledge by three infernal
spirits in one of their _kivas_. In the _kiva_ Popé plotted the wholesale
destruction of every Spaniard in New Mexico, and afterward of every
symbol of their rule, so that the Indians might return to their own
methods of life and rituals of religion.
Popé was no ordinary Indian malcontent. He must have been a character of
unusual force, with keen understanding of his fellows, and with a real
gift for leadership. Let us even admit in him a sincere patriotism for
his ancestral heritage. Thus he imposed his supernatural claims no less
easily than his practical plans for the elimination of the conquering
people. At the time of the outbreak the Christianized Indians were
estimated at about sixteen thousand. To these Popé proposed to add a
large number of tribes occupying districts lying more than a hundred
leagues to the westward. This would include Zuñi and Hopi. By means of
secret council meetings Popé stirred up a general sentiment of revolt
over this great area and even succeeded in winning to his support the
Apaches,[80] up to now age-long enemies of all pueblos. The Indians had
learned through experience the necessity and the strength of unity,
through which, indeed, their success was accomplished. Only the chosen
leaders were allowed to know any details of the carefully systematized
plot until all was ripe for its operation. Popé’s chief assistants
were Jaca of Taos, Catití of Santa Domingo and Don Luís Tupatú of the
Picuris tribe, men speaking the same language and wholly in each other’s
confidence. Popé took such precautions not to be betrayed that when he
suspected his son-in-law, the Governor of the pueblo of San Juan, of
friendliness to the Spaniards, he killed him there in his own house.
At last all seemed to be ready. The Piros nation, being the only one that
refused to join the movement, was left in ignorance of its arrangements.
All the other tribes were informed of the day for the uprising by the
clever device of knotted cords carried from pueblo to pueblo by relays
of the swiftest runners. There has been some confusion about the full
significance of these knots but Hackett is convinced that each knot
merely signified a day. At each pueblo one knot would be untied[81] and
the number of intervening days indicated by those still in place.[82]
When the last knot should be straightened out, the Indians, wherever
situated, were to rise as one man, and descend upon their unsuspecting
prey, with the absolute order that no one—woman or child, priest or
soldier—should be spared. All the pueblos were to be surrounded by their
warriors, the mountain paths guarded and defended by Apaches, and if a
few Spaniards should escape, the Mansos, living near El Paso, were to
finish the slaughter as the Spaniards fled toward Mexico.
The moment chosen was particularly auspicious because the greater part of
the Spanish soldiery had been sent to El Paso to meet there the supply
train coming from Mexico under the leadership of Father Ayeta, with the
result that the colony was comparatively undefended.
The Spanish population was distributed in two districts—Rio Arriba
and Rio Abajo. The governor of the whole province, Don Antonio de
Otermín, lived at Santa Fé, the capital, situated in Rio Arriba, but
the larger number of the colonists were living at this period in the
southern district where the second in command, Alonso García, served as
lieutenant-governor.
Popé’s runners had met with a refusal, though the penalty was death, from
certain chiefs of San Marcos, La Ciéñaga and Tanos, three towns a little
south of Santa Fé. Two messengers, Catua and Omtua, were arrested and
brought to the governor. They confessed the fact of the general uprising,
but said they knew nothing of its causes, having taken no part in the
councils of the leaders of the northern pueblos.
Enraged by this treachery, the news of which spread like wildfire,
the Indian leaders were nothing daunted, and showed astonishing
resourcefulness in bringing about the attack prematurely. Those who
travel to-day over this wide, rough land by modern conveyance can hardly
credit the truth that the scattered pueblos were so quickly informed
of the nearly defeated conspiracy that they were able to rise almost
simultaneously by daybreak on August 9, two days earlier than was planned.
Those colonists living near the Taos and Picuris settlements were the
first victims; only two escaped and they eventually fought their way to
where García’s band of refugees were halted below Isleta. From tribe to
tribe, from settlement to settlement, the hideous slaughter was carried
forward according to program.
The very day of the outbreak General Otermín heard from three different
sources that a revolt of the tribes was under way, but he did not try
until the twelfth to “roll back the tide of rebellion,” being up to that
time unaware of the magnitude of the plot. By the thirteenth he and his
comrades realized how critical was their situation. Many of the Indians
were equipped with the guns of Spaniards whom they had already slain.
Completely cut off from the outside world, a fight was inevitable. The
Indians had successfully divided the Spaniards of Rio Arriba and Rio
Abajo and each of these divisions had been assured that their friends
were already dead.
All the Spaniards within the environs of Santa Fé, numbering about one
thousand persons, were collected within the precincts of the Palacio
Real. Otermín now told the religious adviser Father Gómez, to “consummate
the Holy Sacrament,” and bring to the governor’s house all church vessels
and adornments. For five days, between the fifteenth and the twentieth,
the Spanish colony was besieged within the royal precincts. There were
only about a hundred men capable of bearing arms, whereas the warriors
amounted to at least two thousand. At daybreak on August 20, the small
Spanish force rushed out from the Palacio Real, taking the Indians by
surprise. A few hours’ struggle accomplished their conquest. Three
hundred were killed, forty-seven captured, and the rest escaped by flight.
García, unable to reach his chief, rescued a large number of colonists
in Rio Abajo, very few of whom, however, were able to bear arms. Just
as Otermín was assured that none of those in the other division had
survived, so was García deceived about the true fate of his friends, and
after consultation with his subordinate officers he had decided that a
retreat to Mexico was the wisest course. His colony of refugees started
in that direction on August 14. By the twentieth he learned that he had
been duped concerning the fate of Otermín’s contingent, and called a halt.
Meanwhile, by August 21st Otermín learned from captured Indians, not
only that the whole region from Taos to Isleta, fifty-one leagues, was
devastated, but what was more cheerful, that García’s colony had not
been sacrificed.
By this time Otermín also realized that the condition of his survivors
was hardly less critical than when they were besieged, and gave the order
to march toward Isleta, where he hoped to find García, who, as we know,
had already moved on. It was not until September 13 that they joined
forces at Fray Cristóbal, and after some further marching and conferring
a place called La Toma del Rio del Norte[83] was agreed upon for a
temporary settlement from which tidings of their terrible reverses might
be sent to the viceroy in New Spain.
Father Ayeta, custodian and _procurador-general_, was one of the great
figures of the place and period. For a long time priest at the famous
church in Cholula, he had been transferred to the New Mexican diocese.
At this time he had been absent from the missionary field for nearly two
years, having gone back to get help for the priests in the province.
They were in sore need of men and horses, food and ammunition, to
defend themselves against constant raids by the Apaches. Father Ayeta
left Mexico City, September 20, 1679, with twenty-eight wagon loads of
supplies and a goodly contingent of men and horses. Almost exactly eleven
months later he arrived at El Paso (August 25, 1680), to be met by the
disastrous tidings of the revolt and of the supposed fate of all the
Spanish colonists.
Otermín had sent, some weeks earlier, a troop of thirty men under Pedro
de Leiva to meet Ayeta at El Paso and give him necessary convoy for his
supply train up river. Under the changed condition of affairs Ayeta
hurried Leiva off with a part of the train to succor such fugitives as
might be yet alive. Also an Indian runner was sent ahead with a letter
to García informing him of the coming of the relief train. García was
found at Fray Cristóbal on September 4, and sent the runners back the
same day with messages for Father Ayeta. While these men were resting on
a mountain off the main road they espied Leiva coming up the river. After
signalling to him that the lower camp was but nine leagues farther on,
the messengers went on their way and carried to Ayeta his first news that
not all the settlers in the north were dead. Ayeta was the real savior
of the refugee colonists. As soon as he had despatched the messengers to
Otermín, he busied himself “at El Paso in making meal, hardtack, cocinas
and bullets.”[84] In response to further requests from Otermín he, a
little later, attempted to go to El Paso. The river was in flood and to
cross it at “the ford” was impossible. The slow progress of the mule
wagons on the west shore of the river was a discouragement, and on the
morning of September 18, Ayeta determined to risk the supplies by fording
the swollen tide. But the water was deeper and more dangerous than was
foreseen and in mid-stream the wagon stuck fast. Ayeta, whose very life
was in danger, cut loose the mules, and they gained the shore. Otermín’s
men, by now arrived upon the east bank, saw the desperate plight of the
heroic Father, swam out to the wagon and bore him on their shoulders to
safety. This was at a halting-place named La Salineta.
Hackett says Ácoma at this period was the largest of all the Keresan
pueblos, having a population of about fifteen hundred Indians, but
“too far removed from the sphere of activity of the valley pueblos to
exert much, if any, influence upon them,” and, according to the Spanish
documents of 1680, it was also too far to coöperate successfully in the
revolt. However, “Otermín learned from the Indian besiegers of Santa Fé
that all the Spaniards there were dead.”[85]
We may be sure that although the Ácomas, because of their remoteness from
the centre of the great revolt, played no very conspicuous part in it,
they were in full sympathy with the movement, for we are told that they
burned all the emblems of Christianity, putting to death in some nameless
fashion, their priest, a Franciscan padre, Lucas Maldonado.[86]
During one of Otermín’s unsuccessful attempts to win back the territory
of Spain he was told that Ácoma and Jémez were in arms and organizing an
attack upon the granaries of Isleta, with the further purpose of killing
the Indians there because they were friendly to the white men. Mendoza,
_maestro de Campo_, had arrested Catití, one of Popé’s associates, and
endeavored in public assembly to win his surrender to the pacific terms
offered by the governor. But the listening throng of Indians, in which
every tribe but Moqui was represented, made such warlike protest that it
was futile. A few days later, however, pacts of peace were formulated and
messengers were sent to Ácoma with this news.
Many of the Rio Grande pueblos were utterly destroyed while others
were weakened beyond any recovery of their early strength. Bandelier
says that of the forty pueblos in the eastern part of the Rio Grande
valley, the only ruins that can be identified are Ako, Galisteo and Gran
Quivira; and of sixty pueblos of the southern section, not one is in
existence, though there are a few of later date. Because of his failure
to reorganize the province Otermín lost his post as governor. Others
who followed him had no better fortune, or did not attempt the task,
with the result that the ancient pueblo rule held its supremacy for the
following twelve years. No doubt the Indians believed themselves forever
freed from foreign domination, but they did not long keep peace with each
other, and inter-tribal wars broke out almost immediately. After the
_débâcle_, Popé assumed powers and demanded honors almost identical with
those the Spanish governor had employed, with the inevitable result that
his rule became in its turn oppressive and was resented by his whilom
followers.[87] Deposed, then re-elected, Popé soon died.
From all these occurrences we may be sure that the firm intention of
at some time permanently conquering and ruling New Mexico was never
abandoned. At length there arose the man ambitious, capable, dauntless
and resourceful, a soldier and a leader of men, Diego de Vargas, who
carried to victory the thorny task of establishing the over-lordship of
Spain in the disrupted province. It was in 1692 that Vargas, with a small
force of eighty-nine men, entered the country. If he met on the whole no
very serious resistance from the pueblos, to whom the result of their
great struggle for independence had been well-nigh as disastrous as to
the invader, he likewise found it no pastime, for it was not until late
in 1696 that Vargas could really say he had attained his goal. Hence we
see that the Pueblo Revolt was actually a matter not of one year, 1680,
but of continuous hostility and struggle for sixteen years.
As the general approached Santa Fé it was Tupatú, the third firebrand of
1680, who, dressed in Spanish clothes, rode to meet Vargas upon a Spanish
horse. The chieftain brought promise of submission from his own tribe,
the Tewas, but warned the General that the Keres, Pecos, Jémez and Taos
people were rebellious and prepared to resist. From Santa Fé, Vargas
proceeded westward to Isleta. On the third of November, 1692, he and
his little army marched along a “bad bit of road” from a watering place
called El Pozo (The Well) where they had camped, to a spot from which the
hill of Ácoma was pointed out to him. Shortly afterward he writes, “We
descried the smoke made by those traitors, enemies, treacherous rebels
and apostates of the Queres tribe.” These epithets suggest that Ácoma had
given evidence once more of peculiarly recalcitrant behavior. From this
time on the Peñol appears to be the hotbed of sedition until its complete
subjugation was achieved.
Five squadrons of soldiers were called up while Vargas halted “in view
of the other great Rock, on the right side of the road and slope which
appears to be higher.” Could this be Katzímo? Arrived within musket-shot
of the Crag, the cry of “Hail” was exchanged between the Spaniards and
the Indians on the mesa. Through an interpreter Vargas endeavored to
persuade the Ácomas that he had come for no other purpose than to pardon
them for past offences. But they were unconvinced, though friendly
Indians were sent to tell the Keres how genuinely their forgiveness had
already been granted to other pueblos. At length the Spaniards were
permitted to mount the sandy slope, only to find at the top that the
entrance to the village was barricaded and made impassable.
[Illustration: EL MORRO, OR INSCRIPTION ROCK
SOUTH SIDE, LOOKING EAST
_Bolton_]
[Illustration: THE INSCRIPTION OF DE VARGAS ON EL MORRO
Aquí estaba el Genl Dn. Do. de Vargas quien conquisto a nuestra
Santa Fé y la real corona todo el Nuevo, Mexico, a su costa de
año de 1692
“Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas who conquered for our
Holy Faith and for the Royal Crown all New Mexico at his own
expense [in the] year of 1692.”
_Courtesy of the A. T. and Santa Fé Railroad_]
After long delay the messengers of peace returned to the point where
the Spaniards were impatiently awaiting news. One of them, a Zuñi, named
Ventura, and called “the Wolf,” brought as gifts watermelon, cooked
pumpkin and cakes, but also the unwelcome message that the Ácomas would
hold council that night and send their answer next morning. In vain
Vargas used arguments to hasten affairs. The Ácomas warned him that the
Apaches were lying in wait to kill him and all his force. There was
nothing for it but to camp that night at the watering place, a league
distant.
Next morning, the 4th, the Wolf was despatched with fresh offers of peace
and the Holy Cross, only to return about ten o’clock with the verbal
reply that the Ácomas would talk with the general on his way back from
Zuñi! Exasperated by this subterfuge, Vargas reconnoitred to see whether
there was enough available water near by “to subdue the enemy on said
Great Rock, the strength of which is unassailable.” Finding no water,
Vargas made the ascent of the sand-ramp a second time, only to find the
face and trenches of the mesa crowded by a multitude of its inhabitants.
Again the Ácomas were assured of the peaceful intent of the visitors.
Their chief, Matthew, an educated Indian, made answer that his people had
been warned of quite different designs. Vargas now dismounted, followed
by his secretary and the military chiefs. They seated themselves upon
flat stones near the fortified entrance. Rising to his full height he
proposed that Matthew should swing himself down over the barricade,
while Vargas and his few attendants would go on foot up the “impossible
part of the approach.” The Indians seem to have agreed to this and there
was general embracing when the two companies came together. Vargas then
describes the flat top of Ácoma as divided into three sections, and along
“the side of the Square a large race-track.”
Here was enacted one more of those picturesque ceremonies that we should
like to visualize. Vargas stood upon the arena of that sanguinary
struggle for possession of the Rock in Oñate’s time, almost a hundred
years before, the memory of which we may be sure had been transmitted in
fadeless colors through the generations. Only half convinced as yet that
more disaster was not in store for them, tremulous and all unknowing what
such forced submission might entail, the dusky throng of primitive folk
knelt before the royal standard of Spain and watched the captain of the
post of El Paso as he planted the Christian Cross in their midst.
Chief Matthew, acting as interpreter for these invading strangers, told
them, as he was bidden, of the great sovereign so far away that they
would never see him, yet so all-powerful that he claimed their land,
their allegiance, their very lives for his own, while at the same time
professing to advance their own best welfare.
Bewildered, supine before their leader, they made no protest when
Matthew raised aloft the standard and pledged their fealty to this
unknown Spanish king. Here, too, where only twelve years before the
last Franciscan father had met his martyrdom in some unconfessed horror
of revengeful hate, these native people, some of whom were doubtless
participants in that crime, saw two other padres, garbed even as the one
they had foully done to death, bidding them repent and promising them
absolution of all their misdeeds. By a rite they understood somewhat
better, the little children were next given baptism. No doubt the general
in his handsome accoutrements was an awesome figure as he stood godfather
to Matthew’s child and later to various other infants. Strange and moving
scene, fraught with pregnant possibilities!
This business finished, De Vargas once again became the practical
director, and in haste to make up for the delay these suspicious people
had occasioned him, he wheeled about with a brief command that crosses
should be erected at the pass and that prayers be said by the people
before the cross now in the square, each day at sunrise and at sunset.
Before he might descend to the plain a visit must be paid to the church
and the titular saint of the pueblo. Vargas describes St. Stephen’s
shrine as of great extent with walls “almost a yard and a half in
thickness which stand firm in spite of the heavy rains that break the
windows and skylights.” This controverts the ordinary statement that the
church had been entirely destroyed in the Revolt of 1680, and makes it
probable that in 1699 the ancient edifice was only restored and did not
have to be entirely built anew.
De Vargas gives hearty thanks to God that he with “barely fifteen
men,”[88] including his secretary and officers, had succeeded in the
conquest of this most difficult of all pueblos. He mentions the cisterns
on the summit, from which Ácoma is supplied with water. He was evidently
impressed by the contrast of their abundance with the plight of his own
force, for he says that as he made his way back to camp he felt no little
anxiety as to how he should find them. When he arrived he found that his
men during his absence had cleared out a nearly dry spring sufficiently
to give their animals some water. Next day Vargas went on towards Zuñi.
All through 1693, though some Keres villages aided Vargas, Ácoma was
insubordinate, and early in 1694 made an alliance with Moqui, Zuñi, and
certain Apaches.
By the end of 1694 New Mexico was believed to be once more pacified.
The Franciscans busied themselves with the erection of new churches and
other needful buildings. The Indians, however, continued restless and
mutinous—a condition according to the padres due to Vargas, who had
created hostility by appropriating for the use of the Spaniards fertile
lands belonging to the natives.
At the beginning of 1696 the missionaries were once more appointed to
their several charges, but in a rather long list the name of Ácoma does
not appear. Everywhere in the region the Indians were growing sullen
and hostile because of a famine that was decimating their population.
As early as March the priests became aware of serious danger, through
outrages perpetrated in the churches. Though appealed to for help Vargas
would do no more than grant them permission to go to Santa Fé, if
afraid to stay at their posts. Some went, but more of the missionaries,
resenting the thinly veiled implication of cowardice in the curt refusal,
stayed where they were and paid the price with their lives. On June 4,
came the crisis. Five pueblos of the Rio Grande rose, killed the padres
in residence and twenty-one other Spaniards. Abandoning their homes the
Indians fled to the mountains. Ácoma was deeply implicated. Neither
baptism nor kneeling at the cross morning and night had much availed to
change the nature of this wily and treacherous tribe. Four days later the
general received a letter from the senior captain of the Keres, governor
of the village of Santa Ana, in which he described a meeting held at
Ácoma where the warriors were waiting reinforcements from Moqui, Zuñi and
the Utes. A little later Fernando de Chaves, senior judge of Bernalillo,
sends the confirmatory intelligence that “a multitude of people and the
trail of women are seen going toward Ácoma, wherefore we are taking every
precaution.” Rebel smokes were watched by the Spaniards to see from
what points the attack would come. On the twelfth Vargas heard from
Don Felipe, governor of the Pecos, and certain friendly Indians, that
throughout all the previous winter emissaries had gone from village to
village, “not omitting the remote friendliness of Ácoma, the provinces of
Zuñi and Moqui, to instigate a general revolt.” Two informants, men taken
at Pecos, though one was from Nambé, were made prisoners and put through
a grilling examination. In course of their confession it developed that
“the Zuñis, Moquis and Ácomas were expected in their village of the Pecos
to join the others and march upon Santa Fé. Furthermore, these three
backed by the Apaches had advised the killing of all grown Spaniards,
sparing only little children.” The priest of Jémez, Fray Francisco de
Jesús, some Spaniards at San Juan and Nambé and certain friendly Indians,
had already been massacred. The Indians from Ácoma and other villages
had now fortified themselves at Chimayo, where a steep mountain ridge
made approach on horseback impossible. As soon as the fields should be
sowed all the nations were to unite, led by the Apaches, whose first task
was to get possession of all the Spanish horses. Hunger had driven the
Indians from San Cristóbal (one of the villages taken by Vargas from the
natives) and they had sought refuge at Ácoma and at Zuñi.
On June 13 the second Indian prisoner, in course of a searching
examination, confessed that the Keres of all the villages, and Ácoma,
were already joined on the ridge of Sandía to attack the Spaniards who
lived at Bernalillo, and from there were to go to Los Cerrillos. “They
said to the young bucks, this day is already dawned and all must fight
like men.” When asked how often he had been to Ácoma, the prisoner denied
ever being there more than once, and then not for the purpose of any
discussion.
Apparently the attack upon Santa Fé was halted by the rise of the river;
but the General had further information that although “the Moquiños,
Zuñians and Ácomas had now returned to their pueblos, in one hundred days
they would come back,” when all the nations would unite in the uprising.
A few days later Vargas learned from a woman of the Keres village of
Sía that the Indians were trembling with fear because of the discovery
of their plots. Consequently no renewal of this concerted action seems
to have been undertaken. A fierce fight partly in San Diego Cañon and
partly near San Juan, in which eight Ácoma warriors were killed, no doubt
daunted their confidence in their own immunity, for the alliance between
Ácoma, Jémez, and Zuñi was soon after dissolved. Ácoma still unsubdued,
Vargas marched once more against the fortress city, but being unable to
storm it, retreated, after taking prisoner five warriors, and destroying
the crops.[89] Just as happened after the great revolt of 1680, the
Ácomas, because of their remoteness and inaccessibility, were treated
with less severity than was the case with most tribes, so again no
further punishment appears to have been meted out to the Peñol.
Throughout the year there was need of constant watchfulness and active
defence by the Spaniards, but this revolt of the summer of 1696 was the
last serious one that occurred. Henceforth the more peaceful occupations
of colonization were resumed with but little interference. The mutinous
Keres of the Sky City, seeing all the other pueblos submitting to white
rule, could do no otherwise, and on July 6, 1699, they yielded to General
Cubero. Thereafter peace reigned in Ácoma, although in 1702 Captain Juan
de Uríbarri and L’Archeveque[90] were sent there to investigate a rumored
conspiracy.