The Great White Dawn of the Pueblo: Revolt and Puebloan Worldview in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico

#History: A Journal of Student Research Volume 1 Article 2 12-2016 The Great White Dawn of the Pueblo: Revolt and Puebloan Worldview in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico Martin Norment The College at Brockport Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/hashtaghistory Part of the History Commons Repository Citation Norment, Martin (2016) "The Great White Dawn of the Pueblo: Revolt and Puebloan Worldview in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico," #History: A Journal of Student Research: Vol. 1 , Article 2. Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/hashtaghistory/vol1/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @Brockport. It has been accepted for inclusion in #History: A Journal of Student Research by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @Brockport. For more information, please contact . THE GREAT WHITE DAWN OF THE PUEBLO: REVOLT AND PUEBLOAN WORLDVIEW IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEW MEXICO Martin Norment, The College at Brockport Abstract Previous historical scholarship on the origins of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt argues that the rebellion resulted from either poor environmental conditions, harsh Spanish treatment of the Pueblo Indians, or a combination of the two. Using Puebloan myths, Spanish documents from colonial New Mexico, and anthropological studies of various Puebloan groups and religions, this paper contends that the Pueblo identified the disease, worsening environmental conditions, and harsh Spanish treatment as an indicator that they had failed to meet their ceremonial obligations to their ancestors. Therefore, Spanish occupation and prohibition of customary Pueblo religion acted as a barrier to their restoration of harmony. Thus given a tangible cause for their suffering, the Pueblo people rebelled to rid themselves of the Spanish in order to practice rituals and secure their prosperity. [Keywords: Pueblo Indians, New Mexico, Spain, Native American religion] In 1680 the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico rose in rebellion, quickly regaining their sovereignty by removing their Spanish overlords. Historians intrigued by the unique, but limited, success of the Pueblo Revolt have struggled to explain the origins of the Indian insurrection. Scholars such as Henry Warner Bowden, Ramón A. Gutiérrez, and Jack D. Forbes have cited religious differences and Spanish suppression of native Puebloan rituals as the chief determinants of the uprising. Specifically, the authors see the Franciscan missionaries’ violent and despotic enforcement of decrees prohibiting “idolatry” and traditional native religious practices as the motivations for Puebloan assault against their colonial oppressors.1 Contrasting the claim that the revolt was the result of the Indians’ desire for religious self-determination, historian Van Hastings Garner attributed the revolt to economic and environmental conditions. Garner argues that increasingly poor crop yields due to drought, fierce outbreaks of disease, and repeated Navajo and Apache forays against Puebloan settlements demonstrate that the Spanish were not as powerful as they had initially seemed and could not guarantee prosperity or protection. 2 Similarly, Andrew L. Knaut contends that the proliferation of drought, pestilence, and violence significantly increased the burden of Spanish demands for tribute. This, he reasons, prompted the Pueblos to challenge Spanish authority and rise in rebellion.3 Although the aforementioned arguments acknowledge many of the conditions in seventeenth-century New Mexico that antagonized the Pueblos, they do not adequately account for the cultural context in which the revolt occurred. The Pueblo Indians possessed a worldview that connected prosperity with the timely performance of traditional rituals and misfortune with the failure to appease their ancient gods and grandmothers through the fulfillment of their Norment, Martin. “The Great White Dawn of the Pueblo: Revolt and Puebloan Worldview in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico,” #History: A Journal of Student Research, n. 1 (December 2016). Brockport, NY: Department of History, The College at Brockport, S.U.N.Y.: 20-34. #History: A Journal of Student Research, Number 1 ceremonial duty. 4 The Pueblos’ worldview helps to compensate for the lack of Puebloan documents describing the rebellion and the surrounding events, subsequently improving the historical understanding of the revolt. The Pueblo Indians experienced the Spaniards’ religious repression and the proliferation of poor environmental conditions within the context of their cultural understanding of the world. They identified their suffering as the result of a failure to adhere to their ceremonial and ritual norms, which their myths and oral histories confirmed would guarantee prosperity. Thus, the Pueblos revolted in order to remove Spanish authority, which prevented them from paying homage to their ancestors and assured a perpetual decline in security for the indigenous people of New Mexico. With the advent of Spanish colonization of New Mexico, two distinct changes to the Puebloan experience occurred, subsequently challenging the natural order of their world and motivating the Indians to rebel. First, in 1598 Franciscan missionaries began to destroy all signs of Puebloan religion in their campaign to convert Indians to Christianity. Later, during the seventeenth-century, the Spanish colonial government and missionaries instituted an era in New Mexico where violent repression of native religion was the norm. Then, with the arrival of Governor Juan Francisco Treviño in 1675, the Spanish commenced a crusade against native religion and “witchcraft” that resulted in the execution or imprisonment of those accused. In one instance, “forty-seven medicine men who admitted practicing witchcraft were arrested, flogged, and sold into slavery.”5 Second, from the onset of Spanish-Puebloan contact, European diseases had decimated native populations in New Mexico. By 1680, the Puebloan population was reduced to one third of estimates from 1600. 6 Beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century drought, famine, and Apache raids further worsened environmental conditions in New Mexico. In the 1660s, the Pueblos suffered a succession of crop failures that led to widespread famine in the 1670s, which prompted starved Athapascan tribes to raid Puebloan settlements in search of sustenance.7 The changes in seventeenth-century New Mexico prompted Puebloan medicine men and religious leaders to argue for the revitalization of native religion and the overthrow of the Spanish in order to restore cosmic order. Popé, a Puebloan religious leader from San Juan and an instrumental organizer of the revolt, told the Pueblos that, if they killed the “priests and Spaniards” and returned to their ancient traditions, “they would gather large crops of grain, maize with large and thick ears, and everything else” they needed.8 The absence of historical documents regarding (...truncated)