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Acoma Pueblo During the Spanish Colonial Period, 1500-1821

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Acoma Pueblo During the Spanish Colonial Period, 1500-1821 PHOENIX ON THE MESA: ACOMA PUEBLO DURING THE SPANISH COLONIAL PERIOD, 1500-1821 By JOHN KELLY ROBISON Bachelor of Arts Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio 1988 .Master of Arts University of Montana Missoula, Montana 1992 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May, 1997 PHOENIX ON THE MESA: A.COMA PUEBLO DURING THE SPANISH COLONIAL PERIOD, 1500-1821 Thesis Approved: ~- }J. 7ttMM/ Thesis Advisor Dean of the Graduate coilege ii PREFACE When Christopher Columbus arrived off the shore of a small Bahamian island in 1492, he initiated contact between the peoples of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The people of the Western Hemisphere, he termed "Indians." Contact profoundly affected all parties in the exchange. When Spanish explorers and colonists made their way to the valley of the Rio Grande and established an outpost of the sprawling Spanish Empire, their contact with native inhabitants of that region affected those peoples, including the inhabitants of Acoma Pueblo. This is the story of how Spanish interaction influenced the society of Acoma Pueblo. In the historiography of the contact of Spaniard and Pueblo two groups of historians emerged with diametrically opposed views. An earlier school of thought tended to glorify the exploits of the Europeans who came to conquer, colonize and "civilize" a "New World" that was theirs by right of discovery. These historians cast the European iii conquistadors, missionaries, trappers, traders, and colonists as the heroes in an epic struggle to civilize a savage land. Native Americans became either the noble yet savage adversaries or the ignorant heathens whom the Europeans were right to subdue. Such a history of the conquest presents the narrative from only one viewpoint, that of the European. 1 A newer school of thought has examined the interactions of European and Native American from an opposite viewpoint. In these narratives, Native Americans are portrayed as treated evilly by the Europeans who sought to eradicate their religions, customs, cultures, economies, and sometimes even the people themselves. In these stories, Native Americans attempted to defend their land, livelihood and lives from the true villains, the European conquerors. While the newer school has attempted to redress the wrongs of the older school, it nevertheless has recreated a biased 1 See, for example, Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), reprint edition; Herbert Eugene Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands; A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921); and Frederick Jackson Turner, .Ihe. Frontier in American History, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920). iv view of the story of European-Native American contact. 2 Each school of thought is a product of its time. Yet, neither school has truly come to terms with the problems inherent in its presentation. When attempting to paint a heroic portrait of the European conquistadors, the old school left out the oftentimes tragic story of the Native Americans. When presenting the often tragic story of the Native Americans, the new school leaves out the sometimes heroic story of the Europeans. A presentation based on the supposition that the historical narrative exclusively contains neither heroism nor tragedy more accurately presents history. The Spanish Borderlands is a region of historical research that contains a great deal of primary materials. Luckily, the Spanish were conscientious bureaucrats and kept copious records. These records are currently located at various archives in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, 2 See, for example, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Legacy of con®est;·the Unbroken Past of the American west, (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1987); Donald Worster, Under western Skies; Nature and History in the American ~' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles Rankin, editors, Trails Toward a New Western History, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991). V most notably at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in the form of microfilm. Additionally, many of the most important documents in the history of Spanish New Mexico have been translated. Adolph Bandelier, Lansing Bloom, Charles W. Hackett, and most especially Herbert Eugene Bolton, went to great lengths to gather the documents and produce first-rate translations. Most recently, Miguel Encinas, Alfred Rodriguez, and Joseph Sanchez introduced a new translation of Villagra•s Historia de la Nueva Mexico, 1610, which includes the original document. Unfortunately, the record is incomplete for some of the period. Many documents have been lost. The Pueblo Indians themselves destroyed some of the earliest written records during the revolt of 1680. 3 The Spanish documents are one of two main sources of information used to piece together the history of contact between the Spanish and the Pueblo Indians. But they wrote down what was of interest to them. The Spanish saw what they wanted to see, with little regard for the cultures they 3 J. Manuel Espinosa, The Pueblo Revolt of 1696 and the Franciscan Missions in New Mexico; Letters of the Missionaries and Related Documents. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), p. 36. vi were observing. Thus, the historical record is incomplete in another way. The other major source of information is the ethnographic work done by people such as Bandelier, Leslie White, Ruth Benedict, and others during the first half of the twentieth century. The information gathered by these researchers regarding the Spanish Colonial Period must, like the Spanish documents, be understood within their own context. This dissertation uses both the Spanish and modern ethnographic documents to reach an understanding of the significance of cultural contact between the Spanish in New Mexico and the Pueblo of Acoma. It is also an attempt to tell a story. It is the story of a people who, despite the attempts of the Spanish to change them in fundamental ways, remained much as they were prior to the first Spanish explorations into New Mexico. To establish a baseline from which to gauge change at Acoma, Part I examines Acoma prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Chapter One presents a general ethnography of Pueblo culture, based on historical documents. Chapter Two examines the origins of the Acoma, according to both the people of the pueblo themselves and to anthropologists and vii archeologists. Chapter Three delves into the lives of the Acoma people on a daily basis prior to Spanish contact. Diverging slightly from the study of Acoma, Chapter Four examines the development of Spanish Indian policy. Despite some excellent monographs, including Leslie Simpson's .Ille Encomienda in New Spain and Lewis Hanke's The Spanish struggle for Justice in the conguest of the Americas, no one has succinctly explained the development of Spanish Indian policy as a whole. Such an explanation is necessary because Spanish Indian policy in New Mexico cannot be fully understood without the general background since early New Mexican policy derived directly from policy in Central Mexico. Part II heralds the arrival of the Spanish in New Mexico. Chapter Five chronicles the contacts between the early Spanish explorers and the Pueblo Indians continuing through colonization of New Mexico by Don Juan de Ofiate. Chapter Six examines the first conflict between the new Spanish colony and the Pueblo Indians--the attack by the Acoma on one of the leaders of the Spanish, Juan de Zaldivar, and the subsequent retaliation by the Spanish on the people of Acoma. Chapter Seven relates the rebuilding viii of the pueblo. It also examines Spanish colonial Indian policy during the seventeenth century--how this policy affected the Acoma, and how this policy failed and led to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Part III begins in 1692 with don Diego de Vargas' expedition of reconquest and the return of the Spanish to New Mexico. Chapter Eight addresses the reconquest and the problems the Spanish faced attempting to reforge their ties with the Pueblos and the lack of a coherent policy to do so. Chapter Nine examines Spanish Indian policy in the eighteenth century, noting how this policy reflected the lessons the Spanish learned by their forced removal from New Mexico and also reflected newer external threats to New Mexico. Chapter Ten, like Chapter Three, examines the culture and economy of Acoma, but at the end of Spanish hegemony in New Mexico. This is a story--a story of the contact and collision of two cultures, one technologically superior to the other. The people of the technologically superior culture felt themselves culturally, religiously, and socially superior to the other and attempted to mold that culture to their own ideas. The interaction of the Spanish and the Acoma during ix the first two hundred and fifty years of their contact reflects a broader history of the Spanish presence in New Mexico. What the Spanish attempted at Acoma, they attempted at other pueblos and had tried throughout their possessions in the Western Hemisphere. But the Acoma retained much of their traditional culture, traditions, and economy despite the efforts of the Spanish. While the pueblo adopted some elements of Spanish material culture, they fit these items within their traditional culture and discarded what they could not use. The Acoma reacted to Spanish contact on their own terms. This is the story of that contact. X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is an extension of my thesis on agricultural change at Acoma Pueblo. I realized when I was finishing the thesis that there was much more I could say about change at the pueblo. This work is an attempt to say what I could not say in the thesis. However, as I complete this dissertation I find myself in the same situation as I was in finishing the thesis: there is still much more to say, as in bringing Acoma's history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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