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 Oņates
main purpose in colonizing
New Mexico was to discover gold and silver,
but the missionaries who traveled with him were determined to
Christianize the
Native
Americans. In the decades that followed the
Pueblo Indians suffered under an oppressive Spanish rule in which they
were forced to labor, required to pay demanding taxes in goods, and
their religious activities were suppressed. The first to rebel were
the Acoma tribe. In December, 1898, a
party of Spanish soldiers seeking food arrived at
Acoma. Initially, they were welcomed and
treated in a friendly manner until the soldiers turned aggressive and
began to demand grain from the Acoma
storehouses, which was needed for the tribe to survive the winter.
Provoking a furious reaction, the Acoma
attacked the soldiers, killing 13 of them, including their commander,
Juan de Zaldivar, who was a nephew of Juan de Oņate.
In response, Oņate resolved to make an
example of Acoma, and dispatched 70 of his
best men, under the command of Vicente de Zaldivar, to attack the
Acoma Pueblo. On January 21, 1599, the
Spanish troops came into view of the
pueblo and the tribe fanned out from their village to guard the
edge of the mesa. As the Spaniards drew closer, the defenders
unleashed a barrage of rocks and arrows down on them. Despite the
defensive barrage coming from atop the mesa, the soldiers fought their
way to the top over the next three days. During the battle, the
Spaniards brought a small cannon up the back of the mesa and began
firing into the village. The battle then became a massacre and when it
was over, as many as 800 Acoma people were
dead and their
pueblo in ruins. Oņate was later tried, convicted of cruelty to
Indians and colonists, and was banished from
New Mexico. However, he appealed the ruling and was later cleared
of all charges. He lived out the rest of his life in Spain. A later
governor, Pedro de Peralta, established the settlement of
Santa Fe in
1609 as the seat of government. Peralta built the Palace of the
Governors in 1610.
The Acoma
rebellion was not forgotten and tensions increased between the Spanish
and the Pueblo Indians as the Spanish continued to demand food,
clothing and labor. Additionally, the Spanish attempted to prohibit
their traditional religion and disrupted their economy. The
disappointed Franciscans also found the pueblo people increasingly
unwilling to consent to baptism, despite the number of missions that
they founded.
For the next several decades, most of the
Puebloans lived in relative peace with the Spanish, primarily due to
the protection the Spanish provided against
Navajo
and
Apache
raiding
parties. However, some repeatedly rebelled against the better-armed
and better-organized Spaniards, but, these uprisings were quickly
suppressed.
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