Wednesday, April 08, 2009

A comment on the Pueblo Revolt

My book club last night discussed The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. (I have already posted on the book.) The book tells the story of the colonization of New Mexico by Spanish speaking people from New Mexico. During the period of a century covered by the book native Americans joined the Spanish in campaigns against other native Americans. One of my friends asked why. The question made me think.

It presupposes that tribes in what is now New Mexico identified the Europeans as significantly different than the other native American tribes. The people of the United States have a couple of centuries of experience with discrimination and prejudice of European Americans against African Americans, native Americans and Asian Americans, so the European versus native is very significant to us. I can imagine that 500 years ago it may not have been so significant to the native Americans living in the South West. When tribes were taking sides for a campaign or battle, the "racial" difference may not have seemed any more important than the differences in language and culture among the tribes to the tribal peoples themselves.

One of my friends noted that it is sometimes hard to tell the differences that really matter from those that do not. After centuries it is painfully apparent that the European advance into what has become the United States, but how could the people of the tribes of the South West possibly have predicted that future in the 17th century?

Of course, it is possible that it looked better to be on the side of the group with firearms, horses, war dogs, and steal armor than on the side of the folk fighting with rocks and bows and arrows. And indeed, the survival of the people who allied themselves with the Spanish might have been better than that of the people who opposed them.

Some may have been converted to Christianity and have seen the Spanish introduction of livestock and new crops as signs of a more advanced culture that they desired to share. And indeed, for the survivors of the epidemics and famines that followed the Spanish-Mexican colonization, there were important advantages in some of the technologies brought from Europe. We don't know what would have happened had those tribes not sided with the foreign invaders, and that future might have been worse for them and/or for all.

Ultimately, political decisions are made by groups of people working with limited rationality and incomplete information. As the cowboy said when asked why he had stripped naked and jumped into the cactus patch, "it may have seemed like a good idea at the time".

The comparable question is why the Spanish colonists went into New Mexico. Perhaps the leaders of the expedition had some hope of obtaining fame and wealth, but their followers were facing hardships and likely early death in a very harsh land that was already occupied by another people. Of course, it was likely that their futures would not have been very bright had they not immigrated to New Mexico. Some, like the priests among them, may have immigrated due to missionary zeal, but most one assumes were otherwise motivated. Perhaps to the too, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

One last thing
A Metaphor

One of the difficulties that David Roberts had in writing the book was that he believed that the modern Puebloans had sources of information on the events of the 17th century that they would not share with him.

He notes at one point in the book that the Pueblo leaders tend to feel that there are other times from their history that are more important to remember than the horrors of the Spanish colonization, that there are better lessons to be drawn from history than those from such desperate times. This reminds me that attitudes towards history as culture specific. And indeed, the aspects of history we find most interesting and valuable change with time, even within a given culture. That is why in every generation, historians can profitably reexamine the history that earlier historians have interpreted.

Still it seems that the Puebloans tend to be very secretive about aspects of their culture and history. It has been suggested that they feel that were critical information to be obtained by the wrong people it would be very dangerous. We find it hard to understand why that should be.

The metaphor that occurred to me is the U.S. government classification of information. The policies were created to keep military secrets from falling into the hands of enemies. Of course, any policy that allows government bureaucrats and politicians to shield their activities from public view is an invitation to corruption and misuse, but it seems clear that even with good intentions people classify information that poses no security threat.

If we "rational and modern" people can create a complex and expensive system to classify information and limit its distribution to those with "the need to know", we should be able to relate to Puebloans if they too have developed cultural taxonomies of information including categories of "dangerous information" and have institutionalized means to limit the distribution of such information to those culturally authorized to know it.

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