Thoughts on Reading The Pueblo Revolt

Modern New Mexico Pueblos

I have been reading The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. Focusing on the revolt of the Pueblo Native Americans against the Spanish in 1680, the book tells the early history of Spanish-Native American contacts in New Mexico.

I find it useful to remind myself that there were Spanish colonists in Texas and New Mexico before the English colonists arrived in Massachusetts and Virginia. It is even more necessary to remind myself that before the Spanish arrived in New Mexico there were people living in communities of adobe or stone buildings in there, in agricultural societies that had mastered irrigation, and that had already developed complex and rich cultural traditions.

The Fragility of Historical Knowledge

The book makes clear the difficulty of figuring out what actually happened during the Revolt and its aftermath. There are a few modern histories of the events, but Roberts is clear that their work is criticized by other historians as well as descendants of the protagonists of the story.

There are contemporary accounts in the archives of Spanish documents from the period, but we are reminded that there were often self serving documents written by people seeking to obtain the approval of superior officials or at least to avoid their sanctions.

Those original Spanish accounts include reports of the testimony of Native American captives obtained by people well acquainted with the interrogation techniques of the Inquisition. Even if these accounts are faithfully transcribed, we know that the methods of the Inquisition were more likely to obtain "confessions" than intelligence.

There may be hidden archives in the modern Pueblos and oral histories, but they are not available to outsiders. Of course, it may be that the events of 300 years ago are too painful to remember, or to remember correctly. It seems more likely that the problem is that the Pueblo peoples invest knowledge with power and limit its distribution to a small select minority within their own communities.

Spanish speaking communities still exist in New Mexico that maintain oral histories hundreds of years long, but Roberts seems to distrust their accounts of the events. Not only is there the difficulty implied by the accuracy of history transmitted by oral processes for centuries, there are potential sources of distortion in the historical patterns of pride and shame over the years.

Don't get me wrong. We can be fairly sure that something important happened and when and where it happened. However it is harder to figure out who were the key players (especially on the Native American side) and the whys are only available by inference.

It is interesting how the beliefs of people about the events differ among the Pueblo Modern society, the Hispanic modern society, and the more maistream "Anglo" society. The knowlede subsystems of our larger society that serve these ethnic groups convey differennt information about the events, and the beliefs depend on the knowledge system that formed them.