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As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
Why did the Spanish decide to invade New Mexico and what were some of the immediate consequences of the decision?
What are some examples of how Pueblo people experienced colonialism?
What are some of the ways that Pueblo people resisted Spanish colonization before 1680?
What big event sparked the Pueblo Revolt?
How did the Pueblos coordinate the revolt? Was it successful?
: Hi, I'm Jared Koepp (Wukchumni), a small tribe from Central California and the 2022 Washington State teacher of the year.
: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 started here, among the dozens of Pueblo communities living under Spanish
: colonial rule in what is today New Mexico. By 1680, the Pueblos and other Indigenous communities
: in this region had endured over 80 years of brutal Spanish conquest. Spanish massacres,
: forced conversions by Catholic missionaries, and dire economic conditions pushed the Pueblo
: communities of New Mexico to the tipping point. Pueblo leaders joined forces and cast
: off Spanish rule—for a time. This revolution is part of a long age of revolutions that
: swept across the Atlantic World and beyond. But it, like other uprisings of Indigenous
: and enslaved people, rarely gets included in the narratives about the Age of Revolutions.
: I'm here today at the Poeh Cultural Center in Pojoaque Pueblo to speak with Dr Porter
: Swentzell, an education leader and historian from Santa Clara Pueblo.
: KOEPP: What was Pueblo life like before Spanish arrival? SWENTZELL: In 1540,
: when the first Spanish conquistadors invaded our homelands, there probably was somewhere
: in the vicinity of a hundred different villages, each independent and autonomous from each other,
: speaking a multitude of languages, somewhere around perhaps a hundred thousand people living
: in these villages. KOEEP: Why did the Spanish invade? SWENTZELL: One of the sort of key events,
: of course, is when the Spanish invaded Mexico in the early 1500s. One of the main peoples
: that they were focused on colonizing initially were Mexica people, or more often known as Aztec
: people. In their oral traditions they talked about a homeland far to the north and a sacred
: lake to the north. And so the Spanish got into their imagination that there was this place to
: the north and based on the riches that they found in the Valley of Mexico, they thought there must
: be something even more amazing to the north. This triggers a major expedition, a major invasion led
: by an individual by the name of Coronado. They rampaged through Pueblo country, they're deeply
: disappointed by the lack of cities of gold. In Mexico, all the Indigenous people that notice all
: these soldiers had just disappeared and headed off north, decided that maybe they'll give a try and
: take their homelands back and revolt against the Spanish. So there's this massive series
: of revolts in Mexico that come very, very close to completely ejecting the Spanish from Mexico.
: So when the Spanish invade Pueblo country, they immediately go into houses demanding food,
: demanding clothes, demanding. . . people. And you can imagine the sheer horror—they come
: into your home, they take your food, they take your kids, you can't speak to them,
: right? They speak some other language, right? And then when you refuse them,
: they physically assault you, they murder you, right? And so that's what it basically looks like
: on the ground level. So there's a very famous example of Juan de Oñate sending his nephew
: to go see what is out on the western areas right towards Hopi. They stop at Acoma (what's today Acoma
: Pueblo) and they meet with resistance. And so there's this violent exchange,
: and Acoma people end up, you know—this is another example from the very beginning—they
: kill those scavengers, right? And they chase off. And so the uncle learns about this,
: and he brings his forces over to Acoma Pueblo, and basically, destroys the entire village,
: launched a massive assault on the village, burns it down, kills hundreds of people, takes whoever's
: left alive as prisoners, sentences able-bodied men to have a foot cut off and sentenced to 25 years
: in servitude. This becomes something of a special project of the Spanish Empire that's not so much
: about making money (they end up losing enormous amounts of money on New Mexico in terms of
: the cost) and so Franciscan priests came into New Mexico, and they began to go to each of the Pueblo
: communities to build massive mission complexes. In the first 20 years of the Spanish War, and so the
: very first part of the 1600s, the Spanish built 60—and I say the Spanish built, but we built them
: under, you know, their orders at spearpoint, basically—60 massive mission complexes.
: KOEPP: How did the Pueblo people resist Spanish colonization prior to 1680?
: SWENTZELL: Continuously, and in every way. We spend a lot of time focused on 1680,
: on this one particular revolt, but when you start to dig into the documents a little bit,
: you start to see there was a revolt like almost every year or every other year. We've always
: maintained our agency, always been looking out for future generations, always looking out for how
: we might continue to carry on who we are. In the middle of all of it, there's continuous revolts.
: Various public communities planning revolts, more regional revolts, the killing of a priest,
: the burning of the church. . . By the 1670s though, you start in the later part of the 1600s,
: you get a couple governors that align with the church and they launch major campaigns
: to suppress Pueblo traditions: dances and culture and things of that nature.
: KOEPP: By the time the 1680 revolt happens,
: is it. . . more of an accumulation of grievances than a single event that
: sparked it? SWENTZELL: When we're talking about the reasons behind, it was 33 Franciscan priests
: in New Mexico at that time. Um, two-thirds of them died, basically immediately in the revolt. So they
: were. . . basically target number one, um, so that tells a little bit of that story, right?
: Um, the churches were among the buildings that were destroyed almost immediately. And then the
: bells—these giant bells that were dragged 100,000 miles across all sorts of terrain and hung up on
: a church in New Mexico—were then smashed into tiny little pieces. And that's no easy task—to
: take a giant bell and smash it into little chunks. So those three things to me, you know,
: tell the story: this is really about cultural preservation, about maintaining our way of life,
: making sure that the beliefs that were passed on to us from the beginning of time wouldn't be lost
: in that moment. So in the 1670s, there's major famine that occurs and then connected with that,
: epidemics breakout. There's a major failed revolt in the eastern part of New Mexico,
: right? And so right—leading right up into the 1680 revolt, this is kind of like the church and the
: governor have linked together, they're working hard to suppress Pueblo culture and traditions,
: there's a massive famine, crop failure, epidemics, all happening in the decade before 1680. And
: basically, people are saying, "enough is enough", right? And this leads up to that moment also where
: the Spanish governor arrests many religious leaders in the Pueblos. They take them to
: Santa Fe to be executed. Quite a few of them are from the Tewa speaking villages north of Santa Fe,
: and about 2,000 Tewa fighters show up on the heights above Santa Fe and say, "If you
: execute our religious leaders, we're gonna burn the place down."
: And so they're like "Okay, we'll just flog them in public", right? Flog within the inch of their
: life. One of those individuals was a Tewa man by the name of Po'pay. And so he was flogged,
: his sentence was commuted from execution to flogging, so and he left and he ran away to Taos
: Pueblo to kind of hide out even though they're a Tiwa-speaking village. And at that time he started
: to begin working in coordination and usually he's highlighted as, like, the leader, right?
: But he's just one of many, many leaders, right? And so it's always important to note there was
: many—every village had people working and there's many that we won't know who their names are.
: KOEPP: How does cooperation between the Pueblos start to take off? SWENTZELL: The sort of final
: message came in the form of runners that were sent out with instructions to revolt
: on a particular day, alright? And so, the runners carried yucca cords that all had knots
: tied into them. And as the runners brought those cords to each village and let the leaders know:
: "Untie a knot each day and on the last day—the last knot is untied—that's the day the revolt
: will happen." Some of the villages are hesitant to revolt and for a good reason,
: some had in just a few years prior had revolted all by themselves and no one supported them,
: and so some of those villages didn't join. And so, some people revolt, some of the villages revolt on
: the designated day, some get the news and so they revolt the next day, so it's a rolling series—
: and then even some wait an extra day beyond that to see if, was everybody gonna do this,
: right? And so, it's not, you know, sometimes it's told like everybody rolls all at once,
: right? But, you know, a span of three or four days is incredibly impressive in 1680, right?
: That this is a rolling revolt that paralyzes the Spanish colony. It's after August 10th,
: especially in the northern areas, groups of Tewa and Tiwa fighters surround Santa Fe,
: some Keresan-speaking fighters as well, and cut off the water supply—basically besieged
: Santa Fe. This is a pretty unique story in that sense that the Spanish were ejected out.
: But I also like to point out that, at the same time and in the surrounding decades, there was
: innumerable Indigenous revolts in Mexico, and in some of those revolts, the Spanish were ejected
: for 80-90 years, right? And so, I always like to emphasize the story—those are the stories we
: don't hear in the United States at all, right? The Pueblo Revolt isn't a common story, right?
: And it's unique within what is now the outline of the United States, but in terms of the Indigenous
: experience in the Americas, there's other revolts like it, right? It's not the only one. One of the
: things that I think is really important is that even in the midst of colonization, that Indigenous
: peoples not only here in New Mexico but all around the world, we have continuously been fighting on
: behalf of our nations and to continue on our ways of life, right? And this is just one example—one
: small example—of so many others around the world, right? And that also, those events that happened
: then are very much a part of the story of today and are part of the story of how we continue to
: battle on behalf of our communities, to carry on who we are and our languages,
: our traditions. So the fight that happened in 1680 is still the fight that's going on today.
: Today, you've heard how the Pueblo peoples united under a common cause, and for 12 years,
: seized back their land, chased out the colonizers, and tore down Christian churches. You might
: think that the eventual return of Spanish rule meant that the revolt didn't matter.
: But as you'll learn in this unit, there were many revolutions in the world after 1680,
: and many didn't end in a permanent victory for the revolutionaries.
: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 might not have evicted the Spanish forever, but it did produce important
: and lasting changes, especially for the Pueblo peoples living under Spanish colonization after
: 1692. The revolt put fear into the hearts of later Spanish colonizers. After their return, Spanish
: rule was less violent, forced conversion became less common, Pueblo religion was more tolerated,
: and the forced labor of the encomienda system was ended. These changes contributed to the endurance
: of Pueblo cultural traditions into the present. In this unit, and in later units, you'll encounter
: more examples of revolutions and more examples of colonization. You might start to think that
: the ideals of sovereignty and resistance to the rule of foreign kings was invented by American
: revolutionaries, or, the European Enlightenment. But don't be fooled—the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is
: just one example among many of the ways that colonized people across the world found their
: own methods to resist foreign rule. Indigenous Americans were not merely victims of the so-called