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.At the heart of the revoltwas the ongoing exploitation of the Pueblo Indians, whowere forced to work for the friars and pay multiple tributes toSpanish officials.The Indians were also inspired to revoltbecause they had been ordered to bring an end to their Nativedances and nature worship, which the friars considered paganand sacrilegious.Pueblo villages were also being raided by localNavajo and Apache bands, and the Spanish government didlittle to protect them from these raids.The Pueblo leader and medicine man, Pope, set August 13,1680, as the date for the uprising.He sent messenger-runnersto all the neighboring pueblos to encourage their inhabitantsto rise up and slaughter the local Spanish leaders.Each runnercarried a piece of knotted cord, the number of knots indicat-21ing the days remaining before the attack. When two of hisrunners were caught and revealed their message to Spanishofficials, Pope changed the date for the uprising to August 10.In a unified gesture of solidarity and defiance, the PuebloIndians followed Pope s lead and the revolt began.The Indiansmoved systematically from village to village, killing Spanishmen, women, and children.They were especially brutal withthe friars.The day of the uprising soon revealed how thorough Popehad been in recruiting his fellow Native Americans in thedestruction of the Spanish presence in New Mexico:All through the day reports flooded in [to Santa Fe].Pecos,Taos, Santa Cruz, San Marcos, San Cristobal, Santo Domingo,Santa Clara, Picuris all the pueblos in the area had risen, allthe churches were being burned, all the priests killed.As far 52 THE RIO GRANDEaway as Acoma and the Zuñi and Hopi villages to the westthere was death and destruction.By the night of the 10th, allSpaniards in the Santa Fe area had swarmed into the town.Survivors from the devastated areas to the north and west rangauntlets of raiding parties to seek safety in Santa Fe.22Santa Fe was protected by a garrison of only 150 soldierswho fought Indians throughout the day in the fields outsidethe town.By nightfall, more than 1,000 Indians had reachedthe capital, and the soldiers took refuge inside the town walls.By the following morning, 2,500 Native American combatantshad completely surrounded the town.By August 16, they hadtaken control of every part of the capital except the plazagrounds, setting fire to the buildings until the whole townbecame a torch. 23 They cut off the city s water supply byblocking the ditch that delivered water.On August 17, Indianbesiegers tormented and mocked the beleaguered Spaniards inSanta Fe by chanting the Catholic liturgy in Latin.The soldiers in Santa Fe held out against the repeated Indianassaults until August 21, when the Spanish capital of NewMexico was abandoned.As they moved out of town, theyfollowed the old yellow silk banner that Spanish soldiers hadcarried into New Mexico the century before. 24 Fleeing south,some Spanish refugees took up residence in the village ofEl Paso del Norte, a mission town founded just 20 years earlier.Some eventually moved across the Rio Grande and founded acommunity on the site of present-day El Paso, Texas.(El Pasodel Norte is today the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez).For the time being, the Spanish operated from their new capital at El Paso, which was located within the borders ofthe province of New Mexico.Prior to the Indian attacks, the Spanish population of theUpper Rio Grande was approximately 2,800.In all, the Pueblouprising resulted in the deaths of 400 Spaniards, approximately Colonizing the Rio Grande 53one out of every seven colonists.Another 400 were missingand presumed dead.Twenty-three friars were killed; only 11survived.The Pueblos took out their frustration and revengeon the Spanish settlement buildings as well, destroying homes,government buildings, and especially churches.As buildingsburned, so did the official records, church documents, andbooks they held.By the following year, Spanish military forces had defeatedseveral groups of Pueblo Indians and had managed to bringthem under Spanish control.Some pueblo complexes werefound abandoned, their residents gone, having fled into thelocal mountains.New Mexico and the lands of the UpperRio Grande were retaken after years of long, difficult militarycampaigns.Even then, the vast majority of the Pueblo Indianswho had converted to Christianity, an estimated 16,000,remained hostile to the Catholic faith and were opposed tothe ongoing presence of the Spaniards in their lands.ThoseIndians who had been baptized were washed with soapweedto remove the stigma of Christianity.All Christian Indianmarriages were no longer binding.There is an ironic footnote to the history of the PuebloRevolt.Pope, the leader of the revolt, was soon corrupted byhis own success.Even as he ordered the destruction of Spanishchurches, ranch haciendas, and government houses, the Indianleader took possession of the governor s palace in Santa Fe ashis own, declaring himself governor of all the pueblos.All toosoon, other Native Americans were paying tribute to anIndian governor, one who proved to be as harsh a ruler as theSpaniards had ever been. Mexicans andAmericans Mexicans and Americans 55hroughout the century that followed the 1680 PuebloTRevolt, the Spanish in the Upper Rio Grande valley struggledto recover their hold on the region
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