It was at this period, while Walpi was still on this lower site, that the Spaniards came into the country. They met with little or no opposition, and their entrance was marked by no great disturbances. No special tradition preserves any of the circumstances of this event; these first coming Spaniards being only spoken of as the “Kast´ilumuh who wore iron garments, and came from the south,” and this brief mention may be accounted for by the fleeting nature of these early visits.
The zeal of the Spanish priests carried them everywhere throughout
their newly acquired territory, and some time in the seventeenth century a band of missionary monks found their way to Tusayan. They were accompanied by a few troops to impress the people with a due regard for Spanish authority, but to display the milder side of their mission, they also brought herds of sheep and cattle for distribution. At first these were herded at various springs within a wide radius around the villages, and the names still attaching to these places memorize the introduction of sheep and cattle to this region. The Navajo are first definitely mentioned in tradition as occupants of this vicinity in connection with these flocks and herds, in the distribution of which they gave much undesirable assistance by driving off the larger portion to their own haunts.
The missionaries selected Awatubi, Walpi, and Shumopavi as the sites for their mission buildings, and at once, it is said, began to introduce a system of enforced labor. The memory of the mission period is held in great detestation, and the onerous toil the priests imposed is still adverted to as the principal grievance. Heavy pine timbers, many of which are now pointed out in the kiva roofs, of from 15 to 20 feet in length and a foot or more in diameter, were cut at the San Francisco Mountain, and gangs of men were compelled to carry and drag them to the building sites, where they were used as house beams. This necessitated prodigious toil, for the distance by trail is a hundred miles, most of the way over a rough and difficult country. The Spaniards are said to have employed a few ox teams in this labor, but the heaviest share was performed by the impressed Hopituh, who were driven in gangs by the Spanish soldiers, and any who refused to work were confined in a prison house and starved into submission.
The “men with the long robes,” as the missionaries were called, are said to have lived among these people for a long time, but no trace of their individuality survives in tradition.
Possibly the Spanish missionaries may have striven to effect some social improvement among these people, and by the adoption of some harsh measures incurred the jealous anger of the chiefs. But the system of labor they enforced was regarded, perhaps justly, as the introduction of serfdom, such as then prevailed in the larger communities in the Rio Grande valleys. Perhaps tradition belies them; but there are many stories of their evil, sensual lives—assertions that they violated women, and held many of the young girls at their mission houses, not as pupils, but as concubines.
In any case, these hapless monks were engaged in a perilous mission in seeking to supplant the primitive faith of the Tusayan, for among the native priests they encountered prejudices even as violent as their own. With too great zeal they prohibited the sacred dances, the votive offerings to the nature-deities, and similar public observances, and strove to suppress the secret rites and abolish the religious orders and societies. But these were too closely incorporated with the system of gentes and
other family kinships to admit of their extinction. Traditionally, it is said that, following the discontinuance of the prescribed ceremonies, the favor of the gods was withdrawn, the clouds brought no rain, and the fields yielded no corn. Such a coincidence in this arid region is by no means improbable, and according to the legends, a succession of dry seasons resulting in famine has been of not infrequent occurrence. The superstitious fears of the people were thus aroused, and they cherished a mortal hatred of the monks.
In such mood were they in the summer of 1680, when the village Indians rose in revolt, drove out the Spaniards, and compelled them to retreat to Mexico. There are some dim traditions of that event still existing among the Tusayan, and they tell of one of their own race coming from the river region by the way of Zuñi to obtain their cooperation in the proposed revolt. To this they consented.
Only a few Spaniards being present at that time, the Tusayan found courage to vent their enmity in massacre, and every one of the hated invaders perished on the appointed day. The traditions of the massacre center on the doom of the monks, for they were regarded as the embodiment of all that was evil in Spanish rule, and their pursuit, as they tried to escape among the sand dunes, and the mode of their slaughter, is told with grim precision; they were all overtaken and hacked to pieces with stone tomahawks.