Status Updates From New Mexico: An Interpretive...

“Finally, in 1924, the matter was judiciously settled with passage of the Pueblo Lands Act which set terms for the eviction of—and in some cases, compensation for—squatters on patented Indian grants. The ancient land rights extended to the Pueblos by Spain were at last recognized as perfect and unimpaired.”

“In Congress, the Bursum Bill was recalled from the House by unanimous consent, with the explanation that its intent had been misrepresented to the lawmakers.”

The Pueblo spokesmen traveled across country accompanied by John Collier and carrying the venerable Spanish and Lincoln canes as symbols of their authority.

“Messages went out, just as they had 242 years before, at the time of the great Pueblo Revolt, summoning the Indians to unite. Delegations from each village came together at Santo Domingo, north of Albuquerque; they formed an All-Pueblo Council and pledged to use every resource available to defeat the Bursum Bill.”

It was the youthful and intense poet John Collier who learned of the onerous Bursum Bill before congress and sounded the alarm. With Taos Indian Tony Luhan, as his interpreter, Collier met far into the night with the Pueblo elders, explaining the full implications of Senator Bursum’s legislation.”

The Indians were delivered an additional blow by another provision of the bill proposing that future challenges to Pueblo water rights & land should fall under the jurisdiction of the unfriendly state courts…[the Pueblos] nearly missed hearing about the bill…In fact it seemed there was a deliberate conspiracy of silence on the part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to keep the measure quiet until it had become law

“In May of 1921, Fall asked Senator Bursum to draft a bill to resolve the land crisis. The final measure that emerged after much tinkering and revision was designed to confirm all non-Indian claims of title held for more than ten years prior to statehood in 1912.”

“The land base would have continued to erode had not the correct in 1913 reversed its earlier stand and ruled that the United States was in fact responsible for the welfare of the Pueblo people, just as it was for other Indian tribes in the country”

“The Spanish regime had diligently protected [the Pueblo Indian’s] property boundaries, upheld the doctrine that their lands were inalienable, and provided free legal services. Now the Pueblos found themselves thrown on their own meager resources and deprived of the supporting arm of the government.”

“Much of the reason resided in the continuing dominance of the Hispano population. Throughout territorial days, and indeed until the 1940s descendants of the colonial Spaniards constituted a majority of New Mexico’s people. In the other borderland provinces acquired from Mexico in 1848–Texas, Arizona, and California—the original inhabitants by contrast had quickly been swamped by incoming Anglo-Americans”

“New Mexico, despite immigration from the eastern United States, steady economic growth, and a gradual increase in educational institutions—all of which drew the territory closer to the mainstream of national life—still remained a land apart.”

“The New Mexico Territory [during the early American period] was an outlaw haven, and, in the phrasing of Emerson Hough, a popular writer of the day, “was without doubt, as dangerous a country as ever lay out of doors.”

“The debacle at Glorieta and the retreat to Texas scuttled for all time Confederate hopes for an empire in western America.”

“His (Governor Otermín) blindness in perceiving the short and long range causes of the revolt was a symptom of the same malady that had afflicted all seventeenth century New Mexican governors. They had gone about their self-serving ways, oblivious to the anguish of the Indians and unmindful of the fact that every people possess a limit beyond which oppression will no longer be endured.”

“The governor knew that the fate of his people dangled by a fragile thread. Neither of the choices open to him was an enviable one: stay forted up in the smoking ruin of the capital and hope aid arrived before starvation set in; or try to break and run with a caravan encumbered by women, children, and the wounded. Necessity forced upon him the latter course.”

This is a such a well written and very accessible overview of the first colonial period. It’s absolutely riveting. Really reminds me once again what a miracle life is. Any one of my ancestors, native, or Spanish could’ve died from famine, disease or been massacred during the Pueblo revolt, and I would not exist today.

“The tragedy was one of the worst to fall upon Spain’s dominions in America. Not until that moment had she ever lost an entire province to the Indians.”

“The Pueblo Indians, themselves victims of two generations of religious persecution, brought their remote corner of the Spanish empire to its day of reckoning. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 not only destroyed New Mexico, but it rocked the entire northern frontier of the viceroyalty and sent shock waves rippling through Mexico City and, ultimately, the mother country.”

“Against smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and cholera, they had no natural resistance and they died in droves…In 1640, at the height of Rosas’s ignominious reign, smallpox killed three thousand Indians, or something more than 10 percent of the entire Pueblo population.”

“The dreadful Church-State rivalry through the years eroded the Spaniard’s ability to exert any real control over New Mexican affairs and left them practically no time to confront the calamity fast overtaking the Pueblos.”

“Proclaiming worthy laws in Madrid was one thing; enforcing them under the stern realities of life on a far frontier was another. And the crown knew it.”

“In the interval since Coronado and de Soto had marched to conquer, the entire concept of conquest had been called into question and was found wanting in morality. As a consequence, His Spanish Majesty had issued a set of Royal Ordinances in 1573, outlawing the use of violence in dealing with the Indians.”

“Spain ruled over New Mexico twice as long as the United States has ruled, to date.”