Document+E+Pope+Excerpts


 * Document E: Popé Excerpts **

Governor Juan Francisco Trevino of New Mexico moved to suppress idolatry among the Pueblo Indians. As a result of these efforts, forty-seven Pueblo medicine men were arrested, beaten, and sold into slavery. The Tewa Indians, though, moved against Trevino and demanded the release of the medicine men. Governor Trevino complied. Popé was one of the medicine men released and he moved to Taos to organize the rebellion of 1680. He promised the following to the Pueblo Indians: “…who shall kill a Spaniard will get an Indian woman for a wife, and he who kills 4 will get 4 women, and he who kills 10 or more will have a like number of women.”[|[1]]

He also promised them a relief from their economic woes. Once the Spanish were dead, they would “break the lands and enlarge their cultivated fields…free from the labor the performed for the religious and the Spaniards.”[|[2]]

On August 9, 1680, two day before the rebellion was scheduled to start, Popé sent messengers to warn other Pueblos that “all of them should rebel, and that any pueblo that would not agree to it they would destroy, killing all the people.”[|[3]]

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[|[1]] Gutiérrez, R.A. (1991). //When Jesus came, the cornmothers went away: Marriage, sexuality,// // And power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. // Stanford: Stanford University Press. Retrieved from ACLS Humanities E-Book. p.132

[|[2]] Gutiérrez p. 132.

[|[3]] Gutiérrez p. 132.