institutional Church, as evident by the fact that
when some Spanish officials attempted to limit the power of the Franciscans they were charged with heresy and tried before the Inquisition.
It is thus not surprising the pueblo peoples
came to resent and then defy the Spanish
invasion and occupation. When Spanish governor Juan Francisco Treviño accused and then ordered the arrest of forty-seven pueblo medicine men for practicing “sorcery” in 1675 – ultimately ending with three men being hung, one committing suicide, and the remainder being publicly whipped and sentenced to prison – the Puebloan peoples could take it no longer. In mass, they converged on Santa Fe, where the individuals were held. With Spanish forces away fighting the Apache, Treviño ultimately agreed to the Puebloan peoples' demand that the prisoners be released. But it was not the end of things: one of the prisoners, a holy man and war captain of Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan) Pueblo named Po’Pay, who was one of the prisoners whipped, vowed to drive the Spanish from New Mexico.
For five years Po’Pay planned for the pueblo people to expel the Spanish. He subsequently kept his vow when he conceived of a means to organize the rebellion. Po’Pay devised a scheme for runners to be sent to each pueblo carrying knotted cords that represented the number of days before the uprising, at which point each pueblo was expected to revolt and kill the Spanish in their area. Each day, pueblo leaders would untie the knot from the cord until the day of the rebellion – initially scheduled for 11 August 1680. By some yet unclear means, the Spanish discovered the plot on August 9th and subsequently tortured two men.
Understanding the consequences of the Spanish discovering the plan, Po’Pay ordered the revolt to begin immediately. And on August
10th, the Puebloan people started sealing off
roads and raiding settlements. By August 13th
all Spanish settlements had been destroyed
and Santa Fe had been captured, causing the
Spanish governor and his constituents to leave the city on August 21st. The Spanish would not return for 12 years. During this time, people of Cochiti who took part withdrew to a fortified community at Horn Mesa where they joined a multi-pueblo community with the people of San Marcos and San Felipe. They lived in that communal environment until 1663, when the Spanish under Governor Don Diego de Vargas and his troops again returned to Santa Fe, recapturing the city, executing 70 pueblo warriors, and sentencing about 400 women and children to ten years of servitude with many being distributed as slaves to the Spanish families. Cochiti members not executed or captured retreated once again to Horn Mesa until the Spanish and their allies forced the people to return to their village located along the Rio Grande.
Across time, Puebloan peoples continued to be treated with disrespect by religious groups and government entities other than the Spanish. There were, of course, continued efforts by the religious orders to convert the pueblo people. But when the United States acquired the territory of Arizona and New Mexico in 1854 through the Gadsden Purchase (or treaty), Americans replaced the Spanish and Mexicans
as the dominant political force. And it was not
The arc of history passes through Virgil Ortiz. He is the vessel – and the pivot point – that stretches back into the history of his ancestors and his people, the people of Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico.
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