An adobe gateway of old-world charm in Santa Fe
The estufa is large enough to seat three or four hundred men. It is night time. A few oil tapers are burning in stone saucers, the pueblo lamp. The warriors come stealing down the ladder. No woman is admitted. The men are dressed in linen trousers with colored blankets fastened Grecian fashion at the waist. They seat themselves silently on the adobe or cement benches around the circular wall. The altar place, whence comes the Sacred Fire from the gods of the under world, is situated just under the ladder. The priests descend, four or five of them, holding their blankets in a square that acts as a drop curtain concealing the altar. When all have descended, a trap door of brush above is closed. The taper lamps go out. The priests drop their blankets; and behold on the altar the sacred fire; and the outraged wise man in impassioned speech denouncing white man rule, insult to the Indian gods, destruction of the Spanish ruler!
Of the punished medicine men, one of the most incensed was an elderly Indian called Popé, said to be originally from San Juan, but at that time living in Taos. I don't know what ground there is for it, but tradition has it that when Popé effected the curtain drop round the sacred fire of the estufa in Taos, he produced, or induced the warriors looking on breathlessly to believe that he produced, three infernal spirits from the under world, who came from the great war-god Montezuma to command the pueblo race to unite with the Navajo and Apache in driving the white man from the Southwest. If there be any truth in the tradition, it is not hard to account for the trick. Tradition or trick, it worked like magic. The warriors believed. Couriers went scurrying by night from town to town, with the knotted cord—some say it was of deer thong, others of palm leaf. The knots represented the number of days to the time of uprising. The man, for instance, who ran from Taos to Pecos, would pull out a knot for each day he ran. A new courier would carry the cord on to the next town. There was some confusion about the untying of those knots. Some say the rebellion was to take place on the 11th of August, 1682; others, on the 13th. Anyway, the first blow was struck on the 10th. Not a pueblo town failed to rally to the call, as the Highlanders of old responded to the signal of the bloody cross. New Mexico at this time numbered some 3,000 Spanish colonists, the majority living on ranches up and down the Rio Grande and surrounding Santa Fe. The captain-general, who had had nothing to do with the foolish decrees that produced the revolt, happened to be Don Antonio de Otermin, with Alonzo Garcia as his lieutenant. In spite of no women being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked out. Popé's son-in-law, the governor of San Juan, was setting out to betray the whole plot to the Spaniards, when he was killed by Popé's own hand.
Such widespread preparations could not proceed without the Mission converts getting some inkling; and on August 9, Governor Otermin heard that two Indians of Tesuque out from Santa Fe had been ordered to join a rebellion. He had the Indians brought before him in the audience chamber on the 10th. They told him all they knew; and they warned him that any warrior refusing to take part would be slain. Here, as always in times of great confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a multiplicity of detail. Warning had also come down from the alcalde at Taos. Otermin scarcely seems to have grasped the import of the news; for all he did was to send his own secret scouts out, warning the settlers and friars to seek refuge in Isleta, or Santa Fe; but it was too late. The Indians got word they had been betrayed and broke loose in a mad lust of revenge and blood that very Saturday when the governor was sending out his spies.
It would take a book to tell the story of all the heroism and martyrdom of the different Missions. Parkman has told the story of the martyrdom of the Jesuits in French Canada; and many other books have been written on the subject. No Parkman has yet risen to tell the story of the martyrdom of the Franciscans in New Mexico. In one fell day, before the captain-general knew anything about it, 400 colonists and twenty-one missionaries had been slain—butchered, shot, thrown over the rocks, suffocated in their burning chapels. Popé was in the midst of it all, riding like an incarnate fury on horseback wearing a bull's horn in the middle of his forehead. Apaches and Navajos, of course, joined in the loot. At Taos, out of seventy whites, two only escaped; and they left their wives and children dead on the field and reached Isleta only after ten days' wandering in the mountains at night, having hidden by day. At little Tesuque, north of Santa Fe, only the alcalde escaped by spurring his horse to wilder pace than the Indians could follow. The alcalde had seen the friar flee to a ravine. Then an Indian came out wearing the priest's shield; and it was blood-spattered. At Santa Clara, soldiers, herders and colonists were slain on the field as they worked. The women and children were carried off to captivity from which they never returned. At Galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off. Rosaries were burned in bonfires. Churches were plundered and profaned. At Santo Domingo, the bodies of the three priests were piled in a heap in front of the church, as an insult to the white man faith that would have destroyed the Indian estufas. Down at Isleta, Garcia, the lieutenant, happened to be in command, and during Saturday night and Sunday morning, he rounded inside the walls of Isleta seven missionaries and 1,500 settlers, of whom only 200 had firearms.
What of Captain-General Otermin, cooped up in the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe, awaiting the return of his scouts? The reports of his scouts, one may guess. Reports came dribbling in till Tuesday, and by that time there were no Spanish left alive outside Santa Fe and Isleta. Then Otermin bestirred himself mightily. Citizens were called to take refuge in the Palace. The armory was opened and arquebuses handed out to all who could bear arms. The Holy Sacrament was administered. Then the sacred vessels were brought to the Governor's Palace and hidden. There were now 1,000 persons cooped up in the Governor's Palace, less than 100 capable of bearing arms. Trenches were dug, windows barricaded, walls fortified. Armed soldiers mounted the roofs of houses guarding the Plaza and in the streets approaching it were stationed cannon.
Having wiped out the settlements, the pueblos and their allies swooped down on Santa Fe, led by Juan of Galisteo riding with a convent flag round his waist as sash. To parley with an enemy is folly. Otermin sent for Juan to come to the Palace; and in the audience chamber upbraided him. Juan, one may well believe, laughed. He produced two crosses—a red one and a white one. If the Spaniards would accept the white one and withdraw, the Indians would desist from attack; if not—then—red stood for blood. Otermin talked about "pardon for treason," when he should have struck the impudent fellow to earth, as De Vargas, or old Frontenac, would have done in like case.
When Juan went back across the Plaza, the Indians howled with joy, danced dervish time all night, rang the bells of San Miguel, set fire to the church and houses, and cut the water supply off from the yard of the Palace. The valor of the Spaniards could not have been very great from August 14th to 20th, for only five of the 100 bearing arms were killed. At a council of war on the night of August 19th, it was decided to attempt to rush the foe, trampling them with horses, and to beat a way open for retreat. Otermin says 300 Indians were killed in this rally; but it is a question. The Governor himself came back with an arrow wound in his forehead and a flesh wound near his heart. Within twenty-four hours, he decided—whichever way you like to put it—"to go to the relief of Isleta," where he thought his lieutenant was; or "to retreat" south of the Rio Grande. The Indians watched the retreat in grim silence. The Spanish considered their escape "a miracle." It was a pitiful wresting of comfort from desperation.
But at Isleta, the Governor found that his lieutenant had already retreated taking 1,500 refugees in safety with him. It was the end of September when Otermin himself crossed the Rio Grande, at a point not far from modern El Paso. At Isleta, the people will tell you to this day legends of the friar's martyrdom. Every Mexican believes that the holy padre buried in a log hollowed out for coffin beneath the chapel rises every ten years and walks through the streets of Isleta to see how his people are doing. Once every ten years or so, the Rio Grande floods badly; and the year of the flood, the ghost of the friar rises to warn his people. Be that as it may, a few years ago, a deputation of investigators took up the body to examine the truth of the legend. It lies in a state of perfect preservation in its log coffin.