Pueblo Revolt (1680): Popé Drives the Spanish from New Mexico

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a coordinated uprising by the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico against Spanish colonial rule. Beginning on 10 August 1680 and led by the Tewa religious leader Popé, it killed around 400 colonists, besieged the capital, Santa Fe, and drove the Spanish out of the upper Rio Grande valley for twelve years. It stands among the most successful Indigenous revolts against European colonisation in North America.

Background: Spanish New Mexico

The Pueblo peoples, descendants of the builders of sites such as Chaco Canyon, lived in compact farming towns along the Rio Grande and its tributaries and westward to Acoma, Zuni and the Hopi mesas. They spoke several unrelated languages, including Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, Keres and Zuni, and each town governed itself. Spaniards first encountered them during the Coronado expedition of 1540–1542.

Permanent Spanish settlement began in 1598, when Juan de Oñate led colonists north from New Spain. In 1599 his forces destroyed Acoma Pueblo after a clash, killing several hundred people and punishing survivors with servitude and mutilation. Santa Fe was founded as the capital around 1610. By 1680 there were roughly 2,500–3,000 Spanish and mixed-heritage colonists in New Mexico, among an estimated 17,000 Pueblo people, whose numbers had fallen sharply through epidemics.

Causes of the revolt

Several pressures built up over eighty years. Under the encomienda system, favoured colonists collected tribute in maize and cotton cloth from Pueblo households, while another system, the repartimiento, forced Pueblo men and women to work for Spaniards. Franciscan friars built missions in many pueblos and demanded labour for churches.

Religion was a central grievance. The friars tried to stamp out Pueblo ceremonies, raided kivas (underground ceremonial chambers), and burned sacred masks and prayer sticks. Pueblo people often accepted Christian rites outwardly while continuing their own, which friars denounced as idolatry. At the same time, conflicts between friars and governors left Pueblo communities caught between two sets of Spanish demands.

In the 1660s and 1670s drought and famine struck. Apache and Navajo raids intensified, and many people died of hunger and disease. In 1675 Governor Juan Francisco Treviño arrested 47 Pueblo religious leaders on charges of sorcery. Three were hanged, one took his own life, and the others were whipped and imprisoned until armed Pueblo men came to Santa Fe and demanded their release. One of those freed was Popé, from Ohkay Owingeh, then called San Juan Pueblo.

Planning the rising

Popé moved to Taos Pueblo, far to the north, and with leaders from other towns organised a rising across dozens of communities separated by hundreds of kilometres and several languages. Runners carried knotted cords of yucca fibre to each pueblo; one knot was to be untied each day, and when none remained, the revolt would begin. Accounts by Spanish officials and later Pueblo testimony suggest the date set was 11 August 1680, though some accounts give 13 August.

Some Pueblo leaders who were friendly to the Spanish warned the authorities. On 9 August the Spanish captured two young runners from Tesuque, Nicolás Catua and Pedro Omtua, and learned of the plot. The leaders reacted by starting the revolt a day early.

What happened

On 10 August 1680 Pueblo warriors struck across the province. They killed colonists on outlying ranches and missionaries in their missions, destroyed churches and seized horses and livestock. In all, about 400 Spaniards died, including 21 of the roughly 33 Franciscan friars in New Mexico. Many settlers in the southern Rio Abajo district fled to Isleta Pueblo and then south, believing that everyone in the north had been killed.

Around 1,000 colonists took refuge in Santa Fe with Governor Antonio de Otermín, crowded into the governor’s palace and the government buildings around the plaza. From mid-August, Pueblo forces numbering in the thousands, later joined by fighters from Taos, Picuris and other towns, besieged the town and cut off its water supply. On 20 August Otermín led a desperate sortie that killed many attackers and captured prisoners, but he decided the capital could not be held.

On 21 August the survivors abandoned Santa Fe and marched south along the Rio Grande, watched but not attacked by Pueblo warriors. They joined the refugees from the south and reached the area of El Paso del Norte, the site of present-day Ciudad Juárez, in the autumn. Around 2,000 colonists survived the retreat. Pueblo people occupied the governor’s palace in Santa Fe, the building that still stands on the plaza, for the next twelve years.

The Pueblo world without Spain, 1680–1692

After the victory Popé and his allies called for a return to traditional ways. People were urged to wash away baptism in rivers, abandon Christian marriages and names, and destroy crosses and church goods; kivas were rebuilt. Spanish cattle, horses, sheep and crops such as wheat were kept, however, and many changes of the previous century could not be undone.

Unity did not last. Drought returned, Apache raids continued and old rivalries between pueblos resurfaced. Popé is said to have been deposed for a time in favour of Luis Tupatú of Picuris, and he probably died around 1688. Meanwhile the Spanish tried to return: Otermín’s expedition of 1681–1682 burned several pueblos but failed, and in 1689 Governor Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate sacked Zia Pueblo, killing several hundred people.

The reconquest

In 1692 the new governor, Diego de Vargas, marched north with a small force. Reaching Santa Fe in September, he persuaded its Pueblo occupants to submit and conducted a ceremonial repossession of the town on 14 September without a battle, an event later celebrated as a “bloodless reconquest”. The reality was harsher. When Vargas returned with about 800 settlers in late 1693, the Pueblo people in Santa Fe refused to give up the town; after fighting in December, Vargas had around 70 defenders executed and several hundred women and children distributed as servants.

A second rising in 1696 killed five friars and some colonists but was put down. Some Pueblo families fled west to the Hopi or to the Navajo. Afterwards Spanish rule in New Mexico became less oppressive: the encomienda was not restored, forced labour was reduced, and friars were generally more tolerant of Pueblo ceremonies, which survive to this day.

Key people

• Popé (died c. 1688), Tewa religious leader from Ohkay Owingeh and the revolt’s chief organiser.
• Luis Tupatú of Picuris and Alonso Catiti of Santo Domingo, among the many Pueblo leaders who shared command.
• Antonio de Otermín, Spanish governor who defended and then abandoned Santa Fe.
• Diego de Vargas (1643–1704), governor who led the reconquest from 1692.

Legacy

Historians debate how much the revolt affected the wider continent. Horses captured or released in 1680 are thought to have helped speed their spread to Apache, Ute, Comanche and Plains peoples. The revolt also showed Spain that it needed Pueblo allies against raiders, a partnership that shaped New Mexico in the 18th century, while the missions of Spanish California were founded only much later.

Pueblo communities today remember the revolt as a successful defence of their land, language and religion. In 2005 a marble statue of Popé by the Jemez Pueblo sculptor Cliff Fragua was placed in National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol as one of New Mexico’s two statues.

Timeline

• 1598: Juan de Oñate establishes the Spanish colony of New Mexico.
• c. 1610: Santa Fe is founded as the capital.
• 1675: Governor Treviño arrests 47 Pueblo religious leaders, including Popé.
• 1680, 9 August: The Spanish capture two runners and learn of the planned rising.
• 1680, 10 August: The revolt begins across the pueblos.
• 1680, 21 August: Otermín abandons Santa Fe and retreats south.
• 1681–1682: Otermín’s attempt at reconquest fails.
• 1692, 14 September: Diego de Vargas ceremonially reclaims Santa Fe.
• 1696: A second Pueblo revolt is suppressed.

Why it matters

The Pueblo Revolt was a rare case in which Indigenous peoples expelled a European colonial power from a whole province, through careful planning across many independent towns. Its outcome forced Spain to moderate its rule and helped preserve Pueblo religion and culture into the present.