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Investigating the Pueblo Revolt In 17th-century New Mexico the Native Americans launched a successful revolt against the Spanish. Archaeologists are unearthing the details of this unusual event and its consequences. By Julian Smith
This illustration showing Native Americans hanging a Spanish priest is based on a painting by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie that appeared on the cover of the book What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
n the late-summer heat of August 1680, the Pueblo Indians on the northern edge of Spain’s New World empire banded together and drove the Spanish colonists out of the province of New Mexico. As monsoon thunderheads gathered over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Pueblo warriors killed roughly 400 colonists, burned churches and homesteads, and laid siege to the Spanish capital of Santa Fe. After nine days, Governor Antonio de Otermín led the survivors to El Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juárez, Mexico). The Pueblo Revolt lasted for 12 years, making it one of the most successful uprisings in the history of the Americas. Its repercussions are still felt today among the inhabitants of the Southwest. Recent investigations into the archaeology of this turbulent period are revealing how
CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB
I
american archaeology
it changed the lives of those who lived through it and those who came after. “From 1680 to 1692, archaeology and Pueblo oral history are our only sources of information,” says Robert Preucel of the University of Pennsylvania, editor of Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt. Spanish written records are mostly limited to the periods before and after the uprising, and they didn’t record the day-to-day lives of Indians, much less many of the abuses they endured under both the Spanish crown and the Catholic Church. Pueblo oral histories have often been ignored. Preucel’s research has involved combining archaeology and oral history in collaboration with Cochiti Pueblo. “Archaeology can tell us what daily life was like for the Pueblo people and the struggles they faced,” says Preucel. “Did they give up Spanish foods or herding Spanish livestock? How did they build the new villages they took refuge in after the rebellion? How did they restructure their lives?” The causes of the revolt included decades of economic 33
