The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 - the bloodiest, most destructive, most dramatic event in the history of the fabled Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal Road to the Interior) - grew out of a clash between an ancient European culture and an ancient Native American culture. It climaxed in Santa Fe at the central plaza, the northern end of the trail. It produced a stream of suffering Spanish refugees who straggled down the trail through New Mexico to the Rio Grande ford at El Paso del Norte (El Paso/Juarez). It set the stage for a march by Spanish conquerors back up the trail, in 1692, to take back the lands of the Pueblos, this time for good.

Spain's notions of conquest, imperialism and Catholicism - which lay like stratified bedrock beneath almost nine centuries of her history - defined her exploration and colonization of the lands of the Puebloan peoples. Her settlers, many considering themselves aristocrats, began coming by caravan up the trail that would become known as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in the late 16th century, marking her earliest colonization efforts in the Southwest.

They rode horses descended from Spanish stock; carried cannon, harquebuses and swords from Europe; used rudely crafted two-wheeled ox-drawn wooden carts for conveyance; and drove great herds of livestock. As "European aristocrats," they felt culturally and morally superior to the Puebloans they encountered as they moved up the trail through the Rio Abajo stretch of the Rio Grande basin and into the foothills of the Southern Rocky Mountains, and they presumed the right of entitlement to Puebloan stores, larders and labor.

They intended to re-cast the Puebloan peoples into Spanish subjects. They expected the Puebloans to give allegiance to Spanish custom and law. Most of all, in their unshakable faith, they meant to convert the "heathen" Puebloans to Catholicism and to abolish the ancient religious beliefs.

Most Puebloans would come to view the Spanish, and especially their Franciscan friars in blue habits bound at the waist with ropes, as unwelcome intruders.

Conquest, Imperialism and Catholicism

Spain had mastered the art of conquest during the Reconquista, or Reconquest, the epic seven and one-half century crusade to drive the Moorish sultans and their armies from the Iberian Peninsula back to North Africa. Led by Ferdinand and Isabella - known as the "Catholic Monarchs" - Spain celebrated her final triumph in January of 1492, when her forces marched into the streets of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold.

Spain had perfected the craft of imperialism in the wake of the Reconquista, through systems called encomienda and repartimiento, royally approved grants which allowed an aristocratic new owner of re-conquered Iberian territory to tax the local peoples provided he would also Christianize, civilize and protect them. The aristocrat frequently collected his "taxes" in the form of spoils, tribute and enforced labor.

With the approach of victory over the Moors, Ferdinand and Isabella had sharpened the zeal of the Church into a fearful weapon - the Inquisition - to nationalize a fragmented land, convert or expel Moors and Jews, and assail the heretics. During the days of the Inquisition, Spain burned people at the stake for advocating the heresy of Protestantism, purportedly practicing the dark magic of witchcraft, carving their mutton in the kosher tradition, or for taking their weekly rest on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, rather on Sunday, the Christian day of worship.

The Spanish settlers came up El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro imbued with an attitude cast by conquest, encomienda and repartimiento, and the Inquisition. That shaped their view of the Puebloan peoples. It had worked so far in the Spanish conquest and settlement of the New World.

Empire

In the immediate aftermath of the Reconquista, Spain, intoxicated by an exaggerated sense of power and a fervor for Catholicism, laid claim to the most extensive empire in history. It included many of the Caribbean Islands; much of the South American continent; all of Central America and Mexico; the lands along the northern Gulf of Mexico; the deserts and Pacific Coast of southwestern North America; the islands of the Philippines; large parts of Africa; all of the Iberian Peninsula; and large parts of the Netherlands,

Germany and Italy. (Spain's ambitions would transcend her national power and resources, leading to an unprecedented crash of empire, astonishing waste of treasure, and impoverishment of her people, but she left her enduring cultural and religious imprint across a vast region.)

Spain sent her conquistadores - the conquerors! - trained in the crucible of battle during the Reconquista, to the Western Hemisphere to plunder the Native American gold and silver treasures and to expand and consolidate Spanish domination. ("I came to get gold, not to till the soil like a peasant," Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of the Aztecs, had declared.) Spain sent her citizens to settle the land and subjugate the people. She dispatched her Franciscan and, later, her Jesuit friars to harvest the souls of the "heathens."

Spanish conquistadores, in their glittering armor, came to the lands of the Puebloans in an illusory search for treasure. Colonists - "aristocrats" -came with royal grants of land as well as the specific rights of encomienda and repartimiento to establish and consolidate empire. The missionaries came, financed by the Spanish royalty, with the charge to Christianize and civilize the Puebloans, making them loyal, if lower class, subjects under Spanish governance. The friars anticipated Puebloan gratitude in return for holy salvation and a European value system.

The Puebloans viewed the invasion - the occupation of their lands and the demands for their housing, goods, food, labor and religious conversion - with smoldering resentment.

Conquistador -- El Paso's monumental sculpture, The Equestrian, the world's largest bronze equestrian statue.

Juan de Oñate statue, Albuquerque

Colonists

"I take possession, once, twice, and thrice, and all the times I can and must, of the actual jurisdiction, civil as well as criminal, of the lands of the … Rio del Norte [the Rio Grande], without exception whatsoever, with all its meadows and pasture ground and passes," Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, a wealthy Basque born in Mexico's silver mining town of Zacatecas, declared ceremoniously on April 30, 1598.

He stood on the right bank of the river on his way up El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro to found the first European colony in the Southwest, near Española, north of Santa Fe. "…this possession is to include all other lands, pueblos, cities, villas, of whatsoever nature now founded in the kingdom and province…and all the neighboring and adjoining lands thereto, with all its mountains, valleys, passes, and all its native Indians who are now included therein," said Oñate, according to Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá who chronicled the expedition in his History of New Mexico, Alcala, 1610.

"I take all jurisdiction, civil as well as criminal, high as well as low, from the edge of the mountains to the stones and sand in the rivers, and the leaves of the trees."

Oñate acted in the name of the "most holy Trinity, and of the eternal Unity, Deity, and Majesty, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three persons in the one and only true God…" and in the name of "the most Christian king, Don Philip, our lord, the defender and protector of the holy church, and its true son…"

"The work must be done," Oñate believed, "because it is the will of God that all people [in this case, the Puebloan peoples of the upper Rio Grande] be saved. It is His divine will that His word be carried to all men, and that it be obeyed everywhere by everyone…

"There are other temporal reasons for which I should accomplish this conquest … That these peoples may be bettered in commerce and trade… gain better ideas of government … augment the number of their occupations and learn the arts, become tillers of the soil and keep cattle, and learn to live like rational beings …"

The Puebloan peoples knew utterly nothing, of course, of Oñate's ceremony hundreds of miles to their south, on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Undoubtedly, they felt comfortable with their own religion, which had served them for centuries. They had commerce and trade networks, perfectly functional local governments, various occupations, craftsmen and artisans, farmers and domesticated turkeys. They probably even thought they lived like "rational beings."

Moreover, as Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá would remark, the Puebloan communities along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro were "all well built with straight, well-squared walls. Their towns have no defined streets. Their houses are three, five, six and even seven stories high, with many windows and terraces. The men have as many wives as they can support. The men spin and weave and the women cook, build the houses, and keep them in repair. They dress in garments of cotton cloth, and the women wear beautiful shawls of many colors. They are quiet, peaceful people of good appearance and excellent physique, alert and intelligent …"

One suspects that the Puebloans may have been rather surprised to discover that they (including their souls) and their land (including the "leaves of the trees") now belonged to someone called "Philip," who was a person called a "king" from someplace called "Spain."

Oñate, however, embodied the beliefs and attitudes of the Spanish military, colonists and Franciscan friars, who would extend their collective and abrasive reach into every corner of Puebloan life in the coming decades.

Part II continued in July Gazette...

Ferdinand's tomb, in the Cathedral of Granada. Isabella's tomb lies immediately next to Ferdinand's tomb.

Monuments in western El Paso, near the ford where Oñate led his colonizing expedition across the Rio Grande

Franciscans, under the watchful eye of conquistadores, Christianize Indians near the banks of the Rio Grande
As portrayed in a mural on a public building in Juarez