By Keli Holt
In 1540, Spanish soldiers entered Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Gold (Cíbola to the Spanish). Led by conquistador and explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, they had embarked from Spanish-controlled Mexico seeking riches and glory. Coronado would explore New Mexico along the Rio Grande, set eyes upon the Grand Canyon, and travel as far as modern day Kansas in search of gold. Along the way, Coronado read out in Spanish the “requerimiento,” demanding all who heard it to accept Christianity and Spanish rule in return for peace and protection.
For the next few Prime Time issues, we are going to step back from a chronological exploration of New Mexican history to survey some of the political institutions used first by Spain, then Mexico, and ultimately America to administer New Mexico. This month we will focus on how Spain expanded and enriched its Empire, converting Native Americans to Catholicism in the 16th century. In 2024, we take it as a given that elections occur on a cyclical timeframe and that however contentious they may be, the losers eventually accept defeat and the winners do not punish the recently vanquished. There were obviously no elections held at this point in history, neither in Spain nor in its outposts in the New World. The Spanish world was strictly hierarchical: Lower classes had few rights of their own and existed solely to serve the State. The State rather than the law was supreme.
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a Papal Bull, or decree, giving the New World to the Spanish Empire for the purpose of converting its inhabitants to Catholicism. Spain interpreted this decree as granting to Spain complete political authority over the New World (with the notable exceptions of North America, which Europeans had as yet to discover, and Portuguese Brazil). There was no separation of church and state, and Spain would use religion to spread its influence. After all, friars are much cheaper than soldiers, and the papal blessing of 1493 gave Spain a moral rationale for conquest.
By 1540, with Coronado’s expedition into New Mexico, Spain controlled most of Central and South America, greatly enriching Spain with Mexican silver and Peruvian gold. When rumors of Cíbola reached Spanish ears in Mexico, Coronado set out to seize any riches on the unclaimed (for Europeans) North American continent. Marching alongside Coronado were both friars and soldiers.
While Coronado’s initial meeting with the Zunis in 1540 turned violent, by 1542 the Spanish had made inroads with the settled farming Native Americans who lived along the Rio Grande. The Spanish called them all “Pueblos” after their word for village, ignoring the fact that most of the tribes spoke different languages and followed a variety of religions. There was no central government uniting the various Pueblo tribes and thus no institutions like an army or bureaucracy to administer government. Spaniards happily stepped into what appeared to them as a power vacuum of authority.
At first, some of the Pueblo tribes welcomed the Spanish, albeit hesitatingly. The new technologies, crops and animals the Spanish brought enticed a basic level of cooperation. During the 16th century, Spanish law dictated that only friars were allowed to live in the Pueblo, although this seems to have been sparsely enforced. These friars encouraged voluntary acceptance of the requerimiento (submission to Spanish dominion and Christianity) and enlisted the Puebloans to build churches and plant crops.
To the Spanish, once the requerimiento was accepted, any return to Native ways of life was sacrilege and could be punished severely. By 1542, the friars’ disregard for Native traditions led the Puebloans to band together and revolt. When the authority of the friars failed, Coronado turned to the soldiers. The 1542 Puebloan revolt was so brutally suppressed that word of the atrocities reached the Spanish governor in Mexico who charged Coronado’s lieutenants with crimes against the Puebloan peoples.
Sixteenth-century Spanish policy also differed between tribes that practiced sedentary farming and nomadic tribes, like the Navajo, that did not. When dealing with the Pueblos, the Spaniards first relied upon the softer power of the friar but would fall back on the sword as needed. With nomadic peoples, there was no village in which to embed friars. The nomadic lifestyle was so unrecognizable to the Spanish that rather than try and induce cooperation through religious conversion, the Spanish built outposts manned by soldiers to keep an eye on them. During the 16th century, Spanish policy toward nomadic tribes was basically one of containment. The Spaniards were interested in claiming North America and its riches and needed Puebloan labor to support them while they searched for gold. Spanish policy thus focused on preventing the nomadic tribes from raiding the Puebloan settlements they relied upon for survival.
To be continued…
