The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest

by David Roberts

The dramatic and tragic story of the only successful Native American uprising against the Spanish, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

With the conquest of New Mexico in 1598, Spanish governors, soldiers, and missionaries began their brutal subjugation of the Pueblo Indians in what is today the Southwestern United States. This oppression continued for decades, until, in the summer of 1680, led by a visionary shaman named Pope, the Puebloans revolted. In total secrecy they coordinated an attack, killing 401 settlers and soldiers and routing the rulers in Santa Fe. Every Spaniard was driven from the Pueblo homeland, the only time in North American history that conquering Europeans were thoroughly expelled from Indian territory.

Yet today, more than three centuries later, crucial questions about the Pueblo Revolt remain unanswered. How did Pope succeed in his brilliant plot? And what happened in the Pueblo world between 1680 and 1692, when a new Spanish force reconquered the Pueblo peoples with relative ease?

David Roberts set out to try to answer these questions and to bring this remarkable historical episode to life. He visited Pueblo villages, talked with Native American and Anglo historians, combed through archives, discovered backcountry ruins, sought out the vivid rock art panels carved and painted by Puebloans contemporary with the events, and pondered the existence of centuries-old Spanish documents never seen by Anglos.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, American History, Indigenous, Westerns, War

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.

David Roberts is the award-winning author of twenty-nine books about mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His most recent publication, Alone on the Wall, was written with world-class rock climber Alex Honnold, whose historic feats were featured in the film Free Solo.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Paternalistic, Patronizing, and Scant on Detail.

If a tribe doesn't welcome the author with open arms he labels them as xenophobic. Any archaeologist, anthropologist, or historian of Pueblo descent, the author questions their ability to tell the history with honesty and candor. Yet, the author relies almost exclusively on Spanish, historical records, takes Anglo archaeologists and historians at their word often without question, and patronizingly writes as though he knows what's best for how the Pueblo people's histories, sacred sites, and self-determination ought to be handled.

Half the book is how the author can't get access to Pueblo stories, sites, or documents or is simply about how none exist. If you enjoy reading about failed research, then enjoy, but if you came for a balanced narrative or detailed history of the Pueblo Revolt, you won't find it here.

At some point you would think the author would have realized there just wasn't enough here to fill a book. Incredibly disappointing read.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about the revolt, but Roberts comments several times about how the peoples he was visiting (and essentially in some places harassing - he came off pretty poorly throughout this text) were really uncomfortable with the information he was asking them to give. Learning is valuable, but I'm not entitled to information these groups don't want out there.

Also, the ancestral Puebloan women are entirely absent from this history, unless they are being raped or murdered. Can we chalk that up to the documented reticence of the modern Puebloans to discuss their history? Maybe, but I don't think that's the case here because had Roberts asked about them and been denied the information, he would have included that as he did all the other lines of questions the governors and guides were reluctant to answer. I honestly don't think Roberts thought at all about the women present, other than as objects for suffering (my thinking is also supported by my knowledge that many of the groups he discussed - Hopi, Zuni, Jemez - are matrilineal).

[Thom DeLair]

This book had been title "David Roberts Get Frustrated while trying to learn more about the Pueblo Revolt." 45% of the book is his diary entries, which try to make sense of his limited and questionable sources as well as his griping on Pueblo people's resistance during the interviews.

There's a sense that Roberts set out to write the history of the Pueblo REVOLT in an American history psychology, a dramatic tale of hardy soldiers taking a stand for liberty at their Alamo. Instead, most of the Pueblos he interviews talks about how the revolt was connected to a long and tragic period of Spanish occupation. Maybe putting this revolt at the center of Pueblo history doesn't really speak to the values of those cultural inheritors. Roberts pursues his mission with the confidence and self righteousness of a Spanish conquistador.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Nice read, if sometimes a little dry. I read history books just for fun and this one was a bit more academic than I am used to, though with a fun edge of travel journal. I actually found the first half of the book, the stuff leading into the revolt, to be more interesting than the revolt itself. I think I'll check if this author has any other books that sound good.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only time in all of North American history that the Spanish were defeated by the Indians and forced to retreat was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which lasted for twelve years before the Spanish returned in force.

David Roberts has written an excellent book about this event: The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest. To this day, we don't know very much about the twenty Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona -- and the Indians would prefer it that way. There were no John Wayne movies about the Pueblos; and the U. S. Cavalry did not fight any wars against them the way they did against the Apaches and Comanches.

In addition to being a thoughtful study, The Pueblo Revolt has an excellent annotated bibliography that will have me taking some notes before returning my copy to the library.

[Danielle LaJoie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book sets out to understand the Pueblo Revolt but instead the author spends 200+ pages complaining that the Pueblo people won’t give up their closely held oral traditions to a random academic that did a hike and went to a Pueblo visitors center a few times.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is dependent on the 'author's self-professed bias' going in. No surprises -- he tells you that right up front: he is writing a book that's sympathetic to the Pueblo Indians' point of view and not to the colonizing Spaniards' actions. (The latter are *colonialist* and pretty despicable, but when you think about it for a second, you know well enough from any readings in *colonialism* (anybody's colonialism) how that part of the written record is going to sound.) So -- after the first half of the book -- which includes short reviews of early Spanish explorations, including Coronado's -- the book is going to hinge upon the author successfully 'uncorking' some version, any version, of the Pueblo Indians' oral traditions about the 1680-1694 Revolt period (because that's where their side of the story, their records, are hidden -- in oral history. IF available...). He essentially never succeeds in laying that viewpoint bare, although the tension in the writing is sustained by his modern (very late 20th century) hunt all across New Mexico (and NE Arizona) for any good version of those oral histories. Instead, he gets small 'clues' from this and that, including the written records of a handful of earlier US university-system-educated Pueblo Indians, who did lay down partial explications of Pueblo culture -- and who were heavily criticized by their Pueblo contemporaries in some cases for having even done that much) -- and from the archaeological record. The modern archaeological and travel/discovery review-portion is repeatedly intercut with what is known about the period up to the 1680 Revolt, and immediately after the 'reconquest' -- without too much reliance on (or should one say a reliance on a 'very particular and critical reading'?) of the Spanish records of the time -- and that is the structure of this book. ... This is a worthwhile read, but very specific to the time period, and to the Pueblo cultures themselves, and to New Mexico. 'Narrow history' in other words; but of value to those readers who are interested in it.

[Adrian]

I hadn't read any archaeology in so long I had forgotten how much I enjoy it. The author does well unravelling the slim resources available describing the 1680 Indian revolt against Spanish hegemony in New Mexico. But the book covers more than the revolt, it's a history of Indian-Spanish relations from Coronado until the mid 18th century. It also probes into many of the controversies dogging southwest archaeology. I appreciated Roberts' writing on his own excursions into the field and found the Puebloan attitude towards historians and archaeologists- which is mostly to block them at every step- most tiresome. Intriguing stuff.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a particularly interesting book as many of the events took place within a 100-mile radius of my home. In fact, the Spanish and the Native Americans moved up and down the Rio Grande, a couple of hundred yards from my house. They likely walked the ground where I live during these events. A constant theme in the book is the reticence of the current Puebloans to tell their version of this history.

The author visits many of the abandoned Pueblo sites. Three are close to me:

Three of these ruins—Abo, Gran Quivira, and Quarai—are incorporated into a single unit, as the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. Lying some fifty miles as the crow flies southeast of Albuquerque, more than eighty south of Santa Fe, they are in the middle of nowhere in terms of modern settlement patterns. In consequence, they are relatively little visited. Yet each has a lonely beauty of its own, and each brims with the history of the difficult decades that preceded the Pueblo Revolt.

The “Salinas” of these pueblos’ common name refers to the extensive salt beds nearby. Salt was so valuable a trading commodity in the pre-Columbian Southwest that those beds, as much as anything, were the villages’ original raison d’étre. Yet, as the southeasterly-most pueblos in all of New Mexico, they became acutely vulnerable to Apaches and Comanches roaming the plains to the east, who raided more and more boldly as the seventeenth century wore on.

The author gives a running commentary of his site visits. I found them interesting.

On a cold March day with a fierce wind lashing out of the east, I strolled, the only visitor, through the mission at Abo—a graceful oblong structure made of well-shaped brownish orange stones. Then I meandered out past the humble room blocks hidden in the ground, and finally, off the tourist track, down a dry wash for half a mile until I found several low cliffs covered with beguiling petroglyphs, probably carved in the fifteenth century. Abo was first occupied around A.D, 1300. The mission was built, we think, in the 1620s. Between 1672 and 1675, having fallen on desperate times, the pueblo was abandoned for good.

...the single most intriguing puzzle about the place stared back at me as I lingered by a numbered post. At Abo, the Franciscans did not obliterate the kiva of their heathen charges. Instead, it seems, they built (or allowed the building of) a kiva right in the middle of the mission’s west court patio. Was this a sign of an atypical tolerance on the friars’ part? Had they permitted Indian dances and secular meetings right here, in the shadow of the walls of the house of God? The 1930s excavators found that the kiva had never had a roof, and it was full not only of ashes but of kitchen rubbish. This gave rise to the speculation that the Spaniards had allowed the building of the kiva only to treat it as a garbage bin—one more way of heaping humiliation on the benighted pagans whom the friars had come to save.

What caused the abandonment of many Pueblos? Environmental causes or thee result of the Spanish rule---or many a bit of both?

On a much warmer day in April, I drove thirty miles from the sleepy town of Mountainair, down an empty road that made four beelines straight south punctuated with three jogs straight east, to arrive at Gran Quivira. The site struck me as the most improbable of any pueblo I had yet visited in New Mexico or Arizona. So flat was the basin stretching away on all sides, I might, I thought, have escaped the mountains and mesas of the Pueblo homeland to creep to the very edge of the Great Plains. Yet a single bulging outcrop of bedrock had allowed the construction of a village here. Gran Quivira, every bit as appealing to the eye as Abo, is made of gray limestone, rather than the warm-toned sandstone otherwise so prevalent all over the Southwest. Though it is a harder stone to work, the builders here had shaped their blocks to fit with cunning precision one against another.

Gran Quivira is also far older than Abo, its roots reaching back to pithouses gouged in the earth around A.D. 800. At peak population, this isolated pueblo was home to between 1,500 and 2,000 natives. A first church was built at Gran Quivira in 1636; a second, never completed, in 1659. Here, uncharacteristically, the friars put up their mission not smack on top of the central roomblocks, but off to the side, on lower ground. The statement of Catholic supremacy is correspondingly muted.
An excellent job of excavation and stabilization was carried out here in the 1970s. Not content simply to rehabilitate the mission, the archaeologists excavated many Puebloan roomblocks as well. As a result, Gran Quivira gives the best picture in all the Southwest of what a missionized pueblo must have looked like. And in the course of their work, the diggers made a fascinating discovery: several ordinary rooms fitted out with all the paraphernalia of a kiva. In the 1660s, apparently, after dutifully attending Catholic Mass in the mission, the Indians would slip into these hidden chambers to commune in earnest with the gods that had never failed them.

Gran Quivira succumbed, around 1670, to the same misfortunes drought, famine, and disease, as well as Apache raids—that depopulated Abo. After a continuous occupation of almost 900 years, the isolated pueblo on the salt plains was abandoned to the coyotes and the winds.

A third abandoned Pueblo not far away:

Later the same day, I drove north to the third Salinas pueblo, Quarai. Sheltered beside a spring-fed stream on the east slope of the Manzano Mountains, Quarai seemed to me more cozy than lonely. The mission, built of a deep red sandstone, looks virtually European in its ruined grandeur. Like the mission at Abé, Quarai’s church encloses a puzzle—a rectangular kiva in the middle of the convent. We know the kiva was built at the same time as the church, in 1630, but everything else about it remains a mystery.

…Quarai suffered the same fate as its neighbors to the south. Abandonment came in 1677, only three years before the Pueblo Revolt. A despairing dispatch from the last priest at Quarai, shortly before the dispersal of its last inhabitants, reads like a message in a bottle:

The drought and famine continue. Many are sick, some are dying. ... The terror and outrages continue. Some are leaving every day... . We must leave, all two hundred families, and go north to Tajique where there is a mission and a settlement. If that, too, is unprotected, we will go on to Isleta to be with other Tiwa-speakers.

Spanish Governor Luis de Rosas was a real peach of a guy:

Only months after his term as governor had ended, Rosas was killed in Santa Fe by a soldier who, returning from an extended leave in New Spain, found his wife hiding underneath the ex-governor’s bed.

In the middle of Rosas’s reign, a terrible smallpox epidemic swept through the pueblos. At least 3,000 Indians died. This epidemic, which coincided with a lasting drought, proved to the Puebloans that the friars’ magic was worthless. According to Ramén Gutiérrez, it also “indicated that the native gods were angry.” With the 1640 epidemic, a movement to revive the kachina religion—often enacted in dances and rites defiantly carried out under the noses of the priests—swept the Pueblo world.

This provoked a predictable counterreaction. The priests, whom Oniate had scripted to play the role of saviors and protectors of the Indians, could also prove themselves apt disciples of Torquemada. At their most extreme, some of the punishments carried out by friars against Puebloans bespeak a cruelty, guided by religious bigotry, whose horror still reverberates more than three centuries later. At Hopi, Fray Salvador de Guerra brutally flogged a Puebloan for “worshiping idols” until “he was bathed in blood,” then poured hot turpentine on his wounds. (The man died from the treatment.) At Taos, according to Gutiérrez, Fray Nicolas Hidalgo “punished his insolent children by castration and acts of sodomy.” The friar also fathered a number of illegitimate children by Indian women. A priest at Awatovi, alarmed that his affair with an Indian woman had aroused the jealous wrath of a leading Puebloan, ordered two soldiers to kill the man. Then, to cover up his own role in the plot, the friar contrived to have the soldiers arrested, brought to a swift trial, and hanged.

In the mid-1640s, as part of the backlash against the revival of the kachinas, Governor Fernando de Argiiello Carvajal had forty Indians whipped and imprisoned for “sedition.” No pueblo suffered more than Jemez. On the flimsiest of evidence, Argiiello accused Jemez leaders of aiding the Apache and Navajo enemy, and summarily hanged twenty-nine of them.

It took a long time for the native population to revolt but there were early signs of mutual cruelty:

By the 1640s, then, after four decades under the quixotic and often mutually contradictory despotisms of Spanish church and state, the Puebloans had seen their way of life profoundly disrupted. Complicating the situation was the fact that not a few of the conversions were genuine. Thus within each pueblo, a tense struggle was acted out between Christianized Indians (mostly young) who were loyal to the friars and the more conservative and usually older Puebloans (particularly the shamans) who clung to the kachina faith. According to Gutiérrez, there were instances in which the “traditionalists” seized half-breed children fathered by concupiscent friars and beat them to death.

The Hispanic cruelty against the Native Americans eventually found a reaction in the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico 80 years after conquering the territory.

It was interesting to see how the widely spaced Pueblos timed the simultaneous gathering to attack. Runners delivered ropes with knots calibrated for the distance from Santa Fe. The tribes were to untie one knot every day and when the knots were gone, time to march for the attack. Clever.
The Spanish governor Otermin does not take warning of the revolt seriously until too late. Everyone gathers at Santa Fe as the Puebloans converge on the settlement:

On the morning of August 15, the first day of the siege, Otermin’s men saw an army of 500 Puebloans approaching from the south, burning the cornfields and villas on the other side of the Santa Fe River. According to the pair of “Christian Indian” spies the governor had sent out to gather information, these were the Pecos and Tano warriors, the latter term designating the pueblos on the northern edge of the Galisteo Basin: San Marcos, San Lazaro, San Cristébal, and Galisteo itself. Otermin sent a small contingent of soldiers out to “reconnoiter” this invading force.

They found a Tano man named Juan riding at the head of the army. His very appearance bespoke the devastation these Puebloans had already wreaked south of Santa Fe, for he was not only on horseback, but armed to the teeth with harquebus, sword, and dagger, and he wore not only a Spanish leather jacket but a sash of red taffeta that some of the soldiers recognized as belonging to the convent of the Galisteo mission. (Under Spanish rule up to August 1680, even as allies against the “heathen” nomads—Apaches, Navajos, perhaps Comanches—who occasionally raided their villages, Puebloans had never been allowed to ride horses, nor to carry Spanish firearms or swords.)
With “fair words,” Juan was persuaded to enter the stronghold to parley with Otermin. The two men knew each other well, it seems. Yet a sense of the absurd hangs over this initial conference, even as reported by the governor himself, for his account reveals just how out of touch the Spaniards were with the true wrath of the natives they had subjugated for the previous eighty-two years. How was it, Otermin demanded without preamble, that Juan had gone crazy? He was, after all, an Indian who was intelligent enough to have learned Spanish, had lived his whole life in Santa Fe, and had become a promising young leader in whom Otermin placed a great deal of confidence.
Juan deflected the governor’s entreaties. The “rebels,” he replied, had elected him captain. At that very moment, they were bringing to the stronghold a pair of crosses, one white, the other red. It was up to the governor to choose his cross. In Otermin’s own words, “If we wished to choose the white it must be upon our agreeing to leave the country, and if we chose the red, we must perish, because the rebels were numerous and we were very few.”

A generous 4 Stars

[Kara Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay 2.5 maybe 3 idk. I learned a lot but the way he speaks about the secrecy of the Pueblos is not a good look. Came off as entitled AF.

[Heidi Capriotti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Retelling a history with very little written documentation, multiple individual puebloan languages, and the generational and well-deserved mistrust of white colonists is a terrific undertaking. I enjoyed learning about New Mexicos Pueblos and their fight to overthrow occupation in the late 1600s as well as what became of their diaspora and how it influences culture in NM today.

[Matthew Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically informative and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Roberts has blended ethnography, archaeology and rock art study with an account of his travels in New Mexico to produce a very readable history of the Pueblo Revolt. There are gaps in the Spanish records and the Pueblos' account of what happened is little known, so there are still a number of mysteries to be solved about this important event in the history of Native American resistance to European colonization, particularly in the 12 years between the expulsion of the Spaniards in 1680 and their re-conquest in 1692. Roberts at times sounds frustrated by the Pueblo reluctance to discuss the revolt and probably didn't need to repeat his point quite so often. Overall, though, this is a very engaging book and I found it completely absorbing.

[Shari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned. If I wanted to know about David Roberts, I would have looked for an autobiography. Feels too patriarchal to me.

[Takli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read and relatable to one who visits the area.

[Nathan Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberts attempts the impossible and tries to figure out what happened before, during, and directly after the Pueblo Revolt (known as the reconquista), a watershed moment in New Mexican and American Indian history. Why is this task impossible? There are only two sources of information for this event, and they are both inherently flawed.

The Spanish sources are unreliable mostly because of bias that was consciously and unconsciously rampant. The local leaders had to report the events to their superiors, and they obviously had to frame the occurrences in as positive a light as possible for their own sake, especially since the Spanish Crown had strict, though impossible to enforce, edicts against mistreatment of natives. Additionally, Inquisition fervor placed a high premium on piety, and blame is handily doled out to "the Devil" while atrocities levied out by power-hungry friars are left untold. Accounts of interactions with Puebloans, a group with diverse cultures and languages, many of whom could not possibly have understood Spanish, frequently detail fluent conversations invoking the Devil and the Virgin and Jesus. These reported conversations also usually accompany horrific violence, which makes the obvious purposeful blurring so chilly. Consider too that the Spanish secular leaders who ended up in this corner of the New World were often of low repute (though not all were) and that friars emulated martyrdom, and it is clear that the Spanish sources are of limited accuracy.

However, the alternative is even worse. There are no written accounts from the Puebloan peoples, who do not have a written language. The Puebloan perspective either comes second-hand from testimonies extracted by Spanish, some probably obtained via torture, or from oral tradition passed down through hundreds of years. Further complicating the mix is a litany of uncited, unsourced testimony from bad or biased historians. In modern times, hearing oral traditions from Puebloans is next to impossible, because regaling time-honored stories of the people's history to Anglo-Americans (or at all, in some cases) is considered taboo. That Roberts tries to piece together what actually happened from such flawed sources on both sides while remaining respectful to traditions is a monumental task. However, Roberts has a secret weapon up his sleeve: archaeological sites. Roberts visits several sites, often virtually untouched by humans since they were last occupied by some remaining Puebloan resistance fighting off the Spanish during the reconquista, to powerful effect. I was personally moved by the story regarding Black Mesa, near the San Ildefonso Pueblo. This mesa is instantly recognizable to anyone who has worked at Los Alamos, as I have, and I had no idea that this was once one of many "Alamo"-like sites for Puebloan people. Also key are the petroglyphs that populate Puebloan ruins, many of which hauntingly detail conquistadors, friars, and crucifixes juxtaposed with suffering kachinas.

Ultimately, though, Roberts admits that the story told in the book is biased. The Spaniard account is patently false in much of the minutiae, but the Puebloan account is so flawed that hardly any of it can be taken as fact from a scientific standpoint. With such a complex interaction of cultures and languages, who knows how much boiled down to misunderstanding. In my opinion, the job of a historian (which Roberts is not) is to separate the myth from the fact, but in the case of the Pueblo Revolt and the reconquista, the myth is all we have. The effects they have had on modern-day culture in New Mexico are innumerable. In an age in which Columbus Day is being replaced with Indigenous Peoples' Day, the Spanish and Puebloans seem to be in a quasi-stable symbiosis. Pope, the mysterious architect of the Pueblo Revolt, represents New Mexico in the National Statuary Hall, while the annual Fiesta in Santa Fe celebrates the reconquista. Native American artisans sell their wares in the shadow of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, and Puebloans whose ancestors killed friars and burned missions now practice a melding of Catholicism and their respective Puebloan faith, insisting that "there is no contradiction".


Overall, I enjoyed this book very much, and I wish it were longer. For this, and for the fact that I think it is awkwardly structured, particularly in the nonlinear retelling of the Pueblo Revolt, I have only given it four stars.

[Paul Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think there is much known about anything in American history going back farther than this. Jamestown is the only east coast settlement I've read anything about from the 17th century, but this was here in the southwest and involved Spanish settlers and the Puebloans. There is still some architecture standing from the events this author writes about, and he is touring those ruins, explaining what we know and how we know it about the revolution he recounts for us.

Interestingly, he touches upon a quirk in American history and, I suspect, all human history that has come up in my mind before. I love history, I love America and I love my native roots as well. How can I love America, knowing what we did to my native ancestors (stealing their land, the genocide that resulted from the disease brought by Europeans, enslaving those who wouldn't surrender, etc, etc...)? Because I'm BOTH, native American and American! MANY of us are and similar things happened over and over around the globe in human history, only not as recently as the American story. Two forces clash and create a new force, containing parts of both originals...I must say I'm very happy to see the revival on some of the Indian reservations these days and the turn away from some of the commercial exploitation I saw a few generations ago (re-enactments of sacred and cherished beliefs for entertainment purposes) although there was some educational benefit to some of it.

The Puebloans have held onto much of their culture and protect it to preserve and nurture it, and this author has to strain against some of that protection in order to gain insight. He does come through with a serious, respectful account of what we know and what we wish we knew...well worth the read.

"In almost every dealing I had with Puebloans, even with my five university-trained informants, at some point I had run smack into what Brandt calls "the polished evasion of questions" -- one more strategy developed over the ages to ensure secrecy. Likewise, the reluctance on the part of the pueblos to put any part of their history or belief system into the written record -- even if that record be penned by one of their own, an Alfonso Ortiz or a Joe Sando -- sprang from the fear that the power of knowledge evaporates when it is too widely shared."

"'A likeness of San Diego soon appeared on the cliff. After that, those who jumped landed on their feet, and did not die. The likeness of San Diego is still visible today on the red rock cliffs.' Early that morning, I had paused on my drive up the canyon east of the penol to spy the apparition with binoculars, making out a natural discoloration on the smooth wall that indeed looked like a hooded, cloaked figure. (That a Catholic, Spanish saint should miraculously appear to save Puebloan lives was simply one more evidence of the syncretism, bizarre to my Western way of thinking, that by now seamlessly bridges two apparently irreconcilable faiths.)

[David Jacobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

America is a young country, but still old enough that some of the early events of European settlement are shrouded in fog. As David Roberts observes in this fascinating work of history and personal narrative, everything we know concretely about the settlement of New Mexico (at the time the far northernmost extremity of the Spanish empire in America) is from the Spanish point of view. The same is true of the English settlement of the eastern seaboard, where the Native Americans were so completely annihilated as to leave no record. In New Mexico, however, the Pueblo cultures survive, and with them an oral history to contrast with the Spanish record.

In this book, Roberts is concerned with the key 12-year period in New Mexico history when the Pueblo people revolted and drove the Spanish out. With the Spanish gone, the written historical record ends and Roberts takes us on an interesting meta-historical journey to ask what aspects of the oral tradition from that period can be believed from a critical viewpoint and, more profoundly, what aspects of that tradition are even accessible outside of the xenophobic Pueblo culture—a xenophobia that arises, to a large extent, from the dealings with the Spanish under study.

The book alternates between sections of textbook history (i.e., that which can be established from the Spanish record or from archeological evidence) and sections describing the author's personal visits to the sites in question, both ruins and living Pueblos. This variety makes the book very readable and also takes us behind the curtain of history to ask critical questions about how we know what we know about what happened in the past.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pueblo Revolt looks at the rebellion of what we would define as New Mexico native peoples against the Spanish in 1680. The Spanish would not reclaim the land for 12 years and when they did, they found a group of people that were split between wanting them back to defend against larger tribes surrounding and those who valued their freedom. One thing you learn from David Roberts here is that we don’t know a lot and we rely on archeology, limited Spanish documentation and tight-lipped native peoples that do not want to talk about the revolt. Half the book is Roberts unsuccessful attempts to get information from the native people. Overall this is a footnote at best in continental American history but if you have a lot of interest in the Southwest there is a lot of fun things to gleam from this episode but be prepared to leave the book not knowing much more about it then when you started. For those interested in the historiography and the challenges of ethnohistory there is a lot here to pick up and reflect upon and I appreciate Roberts taking the time to explore those challenges along with the subject the book is about.

[Troy Goodfellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satisfactory accounting of Spanish occupation of, eviction from, and reoccupation of New Mexico interspersed with accounts of the author’s experiences in the region and digressions on the historiography and collective memory of the great Pueblo rebellion.

The mix of topics brings to Fenn’s “Encounter at the Heart of the World” which doubles as travelogue and history of the Mandan. Roberts doesn’t have the same deftness to pull this off, and the shifts in tone and topic mean we move from a heartbreaking slaughter to an account of a modern tribal meeting that spurns the author.

It’s greatest failing follow on one of its strengths. Roberts pays great attention to the art and architecture of the region and describes it with care. But with few illustrations! If kachina art and cave graffiti are going to come up every five pages, it wouldn’t hurt to throw in a sketch or ten.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent one from Roberts. There's not a lot to write about the revolt itself. The Puebloans destroyed many pre-1680 Spanish records. Some they kept, and some of those reportedly they still have today.

And, no, they're not revealing them to Anglo writers.

Roberts understands that, and the exploitation of Puebloans by post-1848 Anglos, even more than Spaniards and Mexicans before that, is a fair chunk of the story. So, too, is the speculation on just what all drove the revolt, speculation on the rise of the katsina religion and more.

The one small ding I'd give Roberts is his seeming inability to comprehend the "syncretism" in today's native Puebloan belief. There's plenty of that in Christian history, despite more conservative Christians' strident denials.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pueblo Revolt is a popular history of an event few people know about. In 1680, the Indians in central and northern New Mexico rebelled against the Spanish and drove them from their country for 12 years. It is the only long-term expulsion of European invaders in Native history. This book offers a solid history of the Spanish conquest leading up to the revolt, speculates what happened when the Pueblo Indians took back their country, and what then happened after the Spanish returned. It is well written and researched, but I found the author a bit irritating with his personal observations on endless hikes to sites, and some of his interactions with native people were downright embarrassing.

[litost · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this history of little known events: the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 which drove the Spanish out of what is now the American southwest and kept them out for twelve years. Roberts relates the history, as best he can with the only written records being from the Spanish, but also writes about Pueblo culture, and visits the sites of former and current villages, though this is less travelogue and more history. It’s not a long book, but I felt the re-conquest part dragged; still an interesting story about important events that are slipping from our consciousness. The audiobook was well read by David De Vries.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pueblo Revolt explores the events leading up to the Native American revolt against Spanish rule in 1680. Author David Roberts not only details the Spanish accounts of the revolt, many of which are discredited, but also discusses the brutal history of the Spanish reign preceding the revolt. The author travels to the remnants of the pueblos that existed before the revolt and provides his reflections about the pueblos and the tribes that inhabited the region. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in New Mexico Native American history.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good portion of the book is devoted to the difficulty in figuring out what really happened in the southwest a few centuries ago. Roberts leads us through his efforts to piece together a story from the obviously biased Spanish documents, different conclusions of western scholars, and the oral histories of the Pueblo groups. The oral history is closely guard by the Pueblo peoples as are many of the sites relevant to the history of the area. All this makes for an interesting look at the author's effort to reconcile the views. And that trhead maybe the more telling portion of this work.

[Francis X DuFour · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing study of the little known revolt by first nation people against their Spanish oppressors in 1680 New Mexico. The natives remained free for 12 years, after which the Spanish “reconquest” regained dominance of New Mexico. Filled with fascinating details of the origins and interrelationships between the pueblos, and their (non)participation in the revolt, the author recounts his many visits to historic sites of the revolt. A truly fascinating book and a must read for any one interested in the early history of New Mexico.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, kept me engaged. I don’t think he accomplished what he set out to do, give an explanation of what happened in the 12 years after the revolt. A lot of the book is about his attempts to get more info from the Puebloans, and their refusal to share. He doesn’t necessarily sound like he’s complaining about that, but he is also not respecting their wishes, and doesn’t support their choice to remain silent- which we all should. I learned a lot, but his narrative came off as very privileged.

[Bennjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well spoken well researched narrative of some of the most humble and secretive people of North America. David Robert writes with humility and care to do justice to the peoples of the American Southwest. Read this before taking a journey to Santa Fe. It gave me a new perspective of the Spanish conquest and recon quest and showed the Pueblo’s did not go calmly and quietly into the night but made a stand as best they could.

[James McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not specifically a history book, the genre is a first person exploration for history. Much is unknown about the tragic, terrible early history of New Mexico, but the author does his best to find what information he can, surmising in a few spots and unapologetically editorial in other spots. Though much of the 1680 uprising is forever hidden, the author does his best to paint a picture for his readers of the era of the Pueblos in the rio grande valley.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It would not be surprising, after all, if the Navajo had transformed their way of life by observing and copying Puebloan productions. Among all the native peoples in the Southwest, the Navajo have been both damned and praised as the great adapters and imitators. Only a few generations after the Navajo saw their first Spanish sheep and goats, they became the herders par excellence of the Southwest." (219)