From
Indian
Running: Native American History and Tradition by Peter
Nabokov
OF THAT EPIC mission, this much we know.
In the late spring of 1680, messengers assembled at Red Willow (Taos
Pueblo) in what is today northern New Mexico. Speaking to them was a
middle-aged man born in the nearby village of Grinding Stone (San
Juan Pueblo). Spaniards would record him only as Popé, and
revile him as "a magician," the devil incarnate. His native name,
Po'pay, possibly meant "ripe squash," which could identify him as a
religious leader of his village's summer moiety. with him were
probably other Pueblo Indian leaders, Luis Tupatu of Picuris, Antonio
Malacate of Tesuque, and his host, El Saca of Taos. they were
conspiring to overthrow Spanish rule in the southwest.
Deerskins with pictographs were handed to the runners. Po'pay told
them that the uprising would come upon the new August moon, with the
ripening of corn. The runners were rehearsed in the plan behind the
pictographs. They were to forewarn all the seventy-odd Pueblos the
Spanish had been persecuting for nearly a century, even to the Hopi
villages over 300 miles away.
Word flew on foot, and August drew near. They were brought together
for a second mission. Given a bundle of knotted yucca-fiber cords as
countdown devices, the runners were to repeat the itinerary of
Pueblos. Every village was to untie a knot each day until the cords
were clear. That day they should grab hidden weapons and "burn the
temples, break up the bells."
We know that the information leaked out, requiring a last minute
runner communiqué to push the date ahead. Two runners from
Tesuque were intercepted and hanged. The revised target data: August
10. There is no description of these couriers at work but Willa
Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop offers this picture of
the Pueblo messengers: "North of Laguna two Zuni runners sped by
them, going somewhere east on 'Indian business.' the saluted Eusabio
by gestures with the open palm, but did not stop. They coursed over
the sand with the fleetness of young antelope, their bodies
disappearing and reappearing among the sand dunes like the shadows
that eagles cast in their strong, unhurried flight."
Since the Spanish had permanently settled among them in the 1590s and
built their chain of missions, the Indians of these city-states had
seen their lifeways disrupted and their religion defiled. Twenty
years before the conspiracy was hatched at Taos, a Franciscan priest
boasted of burning 1600 kachina masks. Five years before speaking to
the runners, Po'pay was among forty-seven religious men who were
publicly flogged in the Santa Fe plaza.
... No native monuments were built to honor Po'pay or his peoples'
consequent victory. Surprisingly, there is scanty mention of the
major war in Indian oral tradition. Perhaps the charred shells of the
Catholic churches were enough, the twenty-one dead priests, the ashes
of church documents, and the 380 Spaniards and Mexican Indians also
killed. Superimposed on the ruins of the Santa Fe's plaza, a
newly-built kiva, the Indian chamber reserved for sacred activities,
did symbolize the restoration of the Pueblo Indian sovereignty. Over
the next dozen years no Spaniards were to be found in this land.
Although don Diego de Vargas led the reconquest of the territory in
1692, Spanish control of the Indians was crippled forever. The church
and the kiva have coexisted to this day. The revolt remains a
victory.