The Other Slavery (61 page)

2. For a rundown of these conspiracies, see, for example, testimony of Pedro Naranjo, December 24, 1681, in De Marco, “Voices from the Archives,” part 1, 417; testimony of
the lieutenant general of the cavalry, place on the Río del Norte, December 20, 1681, in Charles W. Hackett, ed.,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682,
2 vols. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 2:266; and testimony of Sargento Mayor Luis de Quintana, hacienda of Luis de Carbajal, December 22, 1681, in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
2:278.

3. The quote is from testimony of Juan, Tewa from Tesuque, camp on the Rio Grande within sight of the pueblos of Alameda, Puray, and Sandia, December 18, 1681, in De Marco, “Voices from the Archives,” part 1, 392. For the connections between Po’pay, Poseyemu, and the Devil, see especially testimony of Pedro Naranjo, December 24, 1681, 418. Another version has Po’pay in direct contact with Caudi, Tilimi, and Tleume, three spirits who had traveled from the primordial lake of Copala to Taos. For more on Poseyemu and his influence on the Pueblo Revolt, see Richard J. Parmentier, “The Mythological Triangle: Poseyemu, Montezuma, and Jesus in the Pueblos,” in Alfonzo Ortiz, ed.,
Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest,
vol. 9 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 609–622. See also Stefanie Beninato, “Popé, Pose-yemu, and Naranjo: A New Look at Leadership in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680,”
New Mexico Historical Review
65:4 (October 1990), 417–435; and Robert W. Preucel,
Archaeological Semiotics
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 218–221.

4. For the killing of Po’pay’s son-in-law, see testimony of Juan, Tewa from Tesuque, December 18, 1681, 392. For Governor Treviño’s campaign, see testimony of Diego López Sambrano, hacienda of Luis de Carbajal, December 22, 1681, in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
2:330–331. Several scholars refer to this campaign, including Andrew L. Knaut,
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 164; and Ramón Gutiérrez,
When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 131–132.

5. There is some confusion about the precise date of the uprising. Originally the revolt was to take place on August 13. But according to modern astronomical calculations, the full moon occurred on August 10, which is when the rebellion in fact broke out, after frantic date changes just prior to that date. For the “juntas” of the “old men,” see testimonies of Nicolás Catúa and Pedro Omtuá, Santa Fe, August 9, 1680, in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
1:4; and Edward P. Dozier,
The Pueblo Indians of North America
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 56.

6. The quote is from testimony of Pedro Naranjo, December 24, 1681, 418. For a broad introduction to Indian runners, see Peter Nabakov,
Indian Running: Native American History and Tradition
(Santa Fe, NM: Ancient City Press, 1981). The book begins with the runners of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, placing them in a much larger regional—and sometimes continental—context. In 1980 the three hundredth anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt included a tricentennial run following some of the routes of the original Pueblo couriers. In addition to Nabakov’s book, see Herman Agoyo, “The Tricentennial Commemoration,” in Joe S. Sando and Herman Agoyo, eds.,
Po’pay: Leader of the First American Revolution
(Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light, 2005), 93–106.

7. Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” Biblioteca Nacional de
México, L. 3, N. 1, transcription in Eleanor B. Adams Papers, box 13, folder 23, Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

8. Testimony of Pedro Naranjo, December 24, 1681, 419. Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” August 23 and 26, 1680. For a fascinating look into the materiality of the Pueblo interregnum in the Jemez district, see Matthew J. Liebmann, “‘Burn the Churches, Break Up the Bells’: The Archaeology of the Pueblo Revolt Revitalization Movement in New Mexico, A.D. 1680–1696” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006); and Matthew J. Liebmann,
Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), passim.

9. J. Manuel Espinosa, ed. and trans.,
The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696 and the Franciscan Missions in New Mexico: Letters of the Missionaries and Related Documents
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 35. A partial list of the deceased friars can be found in “Memorial of the Religious Whom the Indians of New Mexico Have Killed,” Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
1:108–111.

10. Andrew O. Wiget, “Truth and the Hopi: An Historiographic Study of Documented Oral Tradition Concerning the Coming of the Spanish,”
Ethnohistory
29:3 (1982), 181–199.

11. Testimony of Juan, Tewa from Tesuque, December 18, 1681, 393.

12. Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” August 14, 1680.

13. David Roberts,
The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards out of the Southwest
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 20–22.

14. Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” August 14–15, 1680. The quotes are from Governor Otermín to Friar Francisco de Ayeta, September 8, 1680, in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
1:99. The same version of the conversation can be found in Friar Francisco de Ayeta’s account in Barbara De Marco, “Voices from the Archives: Francisco de Ayeta’s 1693 Retrospective on the 1680 Pueblo Revolt,” part 2,
Romance Philology
53 (Spring 2000), 459.

15. As mentioned earlier, Bishop Bartolomé García de Escañuela of Durango launched a formal investigation into this burgeoning business a few months before the outbreak of the Pueblo Revolt. “Informaciones sobre los del Nuevo México y la saca que hacen de ganados en detrimento de los diezmos y venta de indios. Año de 1679,” AHAD, reel 3, frame 429. See especially the deposition of Antonio García, San Juan Bautista de Sonora, January 12, 1679, AHAD, reel 3, frame 430.

16. This account comes largely from Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” section titled “Gobierno de Otermín.” Silvestre Vélez de Escalante was, to put it in terms that are instantly familiar to us, the Indiana Jones of his time. He was a friar and a scholar, having become a “brother philosopher” of the Franciscan order when he was only nineteen. But Vélez de Escalante was also a man of action. Today he is remembered for pioneering an overland route between landlocked New Mexico and the recently established missions of California. Passing through Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California—some of the most desolate and challenging areas of North America—Vélez de Escalante and his party successfully completed their mission in
1776. But unlike the usual Hollywood version of the scholar-adventurer, Fray Vélez de Escalante paid a heavy price for his exploits. He returned to New Mexico a much-diminished man, afflicted by a chronic illness that would take his life in 1780. Even so, during his prolonged demise he reviewed old documents in the government archives of Santa Fe and composed a history of early New Mexico modestly titled “Extracto de noticias” (Digest of events). Vélez de Escalante was a meticulous historian. Frequently he quotes from documents that are still available to us, but just as often his narrative draws on letters and reports that have since vanished. Because he was writing less than one hundred years after the Pueblo Revolt, it is also likely that he gathered some of his information from oral traditions that were still in circulation.

17. For Xavier’s objections to the kachina dances, see Hackett,
Historical Documents,
3:177. There were two Francisco Xaviers in New Mexico, but the other one would have been barely a boy in 1661. For the campaign of 1675, see testimony of Pedro Naranjo, December 24, 1681, 417; testimony of the lieutenant general of cavalry, December 20, 1681, 2:266; and testimony of Sargento Mayor Luis de Quintana, December 22, 1681, 2:278. See also Knaut,
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680,
167–168.

18. For Xavier’s early involvement in the Indian slave trade, see the copy of the receipt signed by Juan Manso in favor of Governor Villanueva, November 29, 1665, in Hackett,
Historical Documents,
3:282; and Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” section titled “Gobierno de Otermín.” See also Kessell,
Kiva, Cross, and Crown,
231–232; and Brooks,
Captives and Cousins,
52. Many Indians shared a very negative view of Xavier as indicated later in this chapter.

19. Governor Otermín to Friar Francisco de Ayeta, September 8, 1680, 1:99.

20. The muster was held at a place called La Salineta, just north of present-day Ciudad Juárez, before the survivors left New Mexico and entered Chihuahua.
Auto
for passing muster, La Salineta, September 29 and October 2, 1680, in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians,
1:134–153, 157–159. Unfortunately, the muster list does not distinguish between those who had been holed up in Santa Fe and the Spanish survivors who came from other places.

21. The exact number of individuals who passed muster is 1,579. It does not include another 317 Christianized Pueblo Indians from Isleta, Sevilleta, Alamillo, Socorro, and Senecú who joined the exodus for one reason or another.

22. The
maestre de campo,
Pedro de Leiva, stated that “of thirty servants whom he had, the enemy left him only three,” and Sergeant Major Fernando Durán Sánchez declared that the enemy had “carried off or killed . . . twenty-eight servants.” Unfortunately, the muster list does not always make a clear distinction between family members and servants. For example, Esteban López listed himself “and a family of 23 persons including mother, brothers, and servants,” and Ensign Blas Griego passed muster with “seventeen persons including wife, children, mother, and servants.” To solve this problem, I did a low estimate of the numbers of servants and Spaniards (512 servants in the hands of 1,067 Spaniards) and a high estimate (611 servants owned by 968 Spaniards). The value of the servants far exceeded that of the 444 horses, 25 mules, 8 mares, and 5 jacks the Spaniards also reported. As for the servants/slaves themselves, they consisted largely of Apaches, some Pueblos, and a sprinkling of
Navajos and other Plains Indians. The muster list offers fleeting glimpses of them. Sergeant Major Diego Lucero de Godoy, for instance, noted that his Indian servant was armed and willing to fight alongside the Spaniards. Evidently not all the Indians were unwilling prisoners of their masters. It also seems clear that the vast majority of them were women and children. Gregorio Valdés identified his servant as “an Indian woman,” Pedro de Cuéllar passed muster with “a boy who serves him,” Francisco González said that he had “one Indian woman with three children,” Captain Esteban de Grazia specified that he had “two Indian servant women and two servant boys,” and so on.

23. The quote is from Vélez de Escalante, “Extracto de noticias,” section titled “Gobierno de Otermín.” My description follows Vélez de Escalante’s unless otherwise noted.

24. Roberts,
The Pueblo Revolt,
passim.

25. The quotes are from the report by the Jesuit provincial of Mexico, Francisco Báez, n.p., April 1602, transcribed and translated in Naylor and Polzer,
The Presidio,
vol. 1,
1570–1700,
160; and Priest Diego de Medrano, “Informe sobre sucesos en Durango,” Durango, August 31, 1654, Arizona State Museum, Tucson, MF J-03-A-13 Pastells Col. V. 008, pp. 383–458. The connection between witchcraft in Europe and idolatry in the New World went back to the first bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, who received his appointment in part because of his prior experience in battling witchcraft in Spain. Similarly, Friar Andrés de Olmos composed a famous treatise on witchcraft titled
Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios
(1553) by adapting a European manual on witchcraft to the circumstances of the New World. Patricia Lopes Don,
Bonfires of Culture: Franciscans, Indigenous Leaders, and Inquisition in Early Mexico, 1524–1540
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010); Friar Andrés de Olmos,
Tratado de hechicerías y sortilegios
(Mexico City: UNAM, 1990). For northern Mexico, see Daniel T. Reff, “The ‘Predicament of Culture’ and Spanish Missionary Accounts of the Tepehuan and Pueblo Revolts,”
Ethnohistory
42:1 (Winter 1995), 62–90; and Daniel T. Reff,
Plague, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). In northern Mexico, missionaries always identified rebellion leaders as
hechiceros
(sorcerers), men endowed with supernatural powers and in league with the Devil. Chantal Cramaussel, “La Rebelión Tepehuana de 1616: Análisis de un discurso,” in Chantal Cramaussel and Sara Ortelli, eds.,
La Sierra Tepehuana: Asentamientos y movimientos de población
(Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2006), 186. Spanish and English colonists shared a similar demonological discourse. See Jorge Cañizares Esguerra,
Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1500–1700
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). Spanish sources ordinarily named the Devil as the ultimate and true instigator of these insurrections. It is likely that some Christian Europeans sincerely believed these rebellions were the work of the Devil. See, for example, Cramaussel, “La Rebelión Tepehuana de 1616,” 186. But we also have to recognize that such explanations conveniently glossed over more earthly and controversial alternatives, such as ill treatment and exploitation of the Natives.

26. L. Bradford Prince, quoted in David J. Weber,
What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999), 10.