Cultural continuity and change

Colonization and resistance

Spain hoped to gain gold, slaves, and converts to Roman Catholicism from its New World colonies; soldiers and missionaries who undertook the work of conquest were promised a portion of those riches. Not surprisingly, rumours of golden cities soon abounded, though of course none were actually discovered. In 1536 the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca recounted stories of golden cities rumoured to be somewhere in the North American interior. His report spurred the government to sponsor an exploratory trip by the friar Marcos de Niza (1539), who reported seeing from afar cities of vast riches. These were probably the Zuni pueblos and the friar’s mistake is understandable given that the Zuni towns were larger than many of the Spanish outposts in Mexico.

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado subsequently led an expedition (1540–42) that included some 300 soldiers, several missionaries, approximately 1,000 indigenous labourers, and some 1,000 pack animals. Overwintering on the Rio Grande, Coronado demanded provisions from nearby pueblos; his men also molested several Pueblo women. Indigenous resistance was met with force: the Spanish executed some 200 Pueblo individuals, many through burning at the stake; Spain was in the throes of the Inquisition during this period, the methods of which had been quickly transferred to the Americas. The surviving Pueblos in the area were horrified and they fled.

Permanent colonial occupation of the Southwest was initiated in 1598 under the leadership of Juan de Oñate, who had been commissioned to found a series of Spanish towns in the region. When Oñate’s troops met with resistance at Acoma pueblo in 1599, they killed perhaps 800 of the town’s 6,000 residents. The 80 surviving men of Acoma were punished by the amputation of a foot, the women and adolescents were sentenced to 20 years of slavery, and children under age 12 were given to the missions.

The next eight decades saw the spread of Catholicism and the establishment of the encomienda, a system of tribute paid through indigenous labour and foodstuffs. Although these changes were burdensome, the penalties the Pueblos felt for engaging in traditional religious activities such as kachina dances were far worse. These rituals were seen by the Catholic priests as abominations, and, in order to stamp out traditional religion, the missionaries destroyed regalia and punished religious leaders severely; reports of tortures such as flaying and dismemberment are common during this period.

By about 1670 it had become increasingly clear to the Pueblos that the world was sliding into chaos. In addition to deaths from torture and execution, many Pueblos died during recurrent epidemics of smallpox and other Old World diseases to which they had little resistance. Further, the Apachean tribes had begun to raid freely; raids combined with a series of devastating droughts and the encomienda to cause mass starvation in the pueblos. Given their worldview, the Pueblo peoples thought it imperative to reestablish their religious observances. In 1680 they effected an organized revolt against the Spanish, killing nearly all the Catholic priests and driving the conquerors out of the region (see Pueblo Rebellion).

Accommodation and cultural preservation

Between 1680 and 1692 the Pueblos were free from foreign rule. When soldiers and missionaries returned they employed a divide and conquer process, overcoming each pueblo individually; by 1696 Spanish rule again prevailed in the Southwest. Having had a period in which to reorganize and reevaluate their position vis-à-vis the colonizers, the Pueblos appeared to accede to missionization. They did not, however, abandon their traditional religious and cultural practices; instead, they took such practices underground and thus preserved many aspects of their pre-Columbian cultural traditions.

With differing levels of exposure to colonial conquest, it is to be expected that the traditions of the eastern and western Pueblos were differentially preserved. Unless totally destroyed, the western Pueblos did not surrender structurally to foreign control. Social organization among these groups was characterized by robust and cross-cutting levels of clan and secret society memberships; these were rather easily disguised and the people were thus able to resist (or only superficially absorb) externally imposed social change.

In contrast, the eastern Pueblos had more centralized forms of social organization based on moieties; the moieties, in turn, were the foundation of both civil and spiritual life. When combined with the greater levels of subjugation to which these groups were exposed, the moiety systems proved vulnerable to attack at both the sociopolitical and the ceremonial levels. Most of the eastern Pueblos incorporated at least some aspects of the Spanish system into their own structures, creating a syncretic blend of the two. The Tohono O’odham produced their own Christian sect, a blend of native and mission practices known as Sonoran Catholicism.

During the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the Apachean tribes fought the foreign control of the Spanish and attempted to gain and hold territory surrounding the Pueblo communities. They also took note of the material conditions of these groups—indigenous and Spanish— and selectively incorporated such things as horses, sheep, cattle, woven goods, and dry land agricultural techniques. While fiercely preserving their unique tribal identities, the Apacheans also engaged in a long period of cultural acquisition and remodeling.

In the 19th century, a period of relative peace for the Pueblo groups, the Apachean peoples encountered considerable difficulty. During this period the Southwest was ceded by Spain to Mexico (1821) and later became part of the United States (1848). Although the American Civil War slowed U.S. colonization of the region, Apachean actions against settlers were reported in newspapers and caused great public outcry. In 1863, Kit Carson was ordered to pacify the Navajo and led U.S. Army forces in the systematic destruction of the tribe’s fields and livestock. Carson’s forces captured some 8,000 Navajo who subsequently endured the “Long Walk” from their homeland near Canyon de Chelly in northeastern Arizona to Fort Sumner, N.M., some 300 miles away; they were interred at the nearby Bosque Redondo camp from 1864 to 1868. After their release, the Navajo returned to their communities and began the rebuilding process.

The Apache were more difficult to conquer, particularly as several incidents of treachery, rape, and murder by members of the U.S. military instigated extreme wariness on the part of these tribes. Military pressure did cause some of the more sedentary Apache bands to move to reservations following the Civil War, but many did not trust promises of peace and chose to flee to the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau or southward, to Mexico. Although most were captured and removed to reservations by 1875, others, led by luminaries including Geronimo, continued to engage in spirited resistance until their final capture in 1886. Those who had continued armed resistance were transported to Florida, and later to Alabama, only returning to the Southwest in 1894. Geronimo, however, was seen as a figurehead of resistance and so was not allowed to return; he died in custody in 1909.