Recognizing Pueblo autonomy in N.M.
In July of 1598, there was a meeting at what today is Kewa Pueblo (formerly Santo Domingo Pueblo). The participants were Juan de Oñate, the adelantado, or leader of the conquest and colonization of New Mexico, and the leaders of the Native people of the area.
One can only imagine the uncomfortable efforts to communicate the concept of absolute monarchy and absolute Catholicism to the Pueblo people. They must have shaken their heads in confusion and bewildered affirmation at what was being presented to them.
Surely there was some understanding, some minimal agreement that the Spanish were here to stay, but the Pueblos would maintain their power and authority. How else could it have unfolded? If the Pueblo leaders had understood all Oñate was offering them was complete domination by the Spanish, surely their warriors would have wiped out the colony in that instant. And they could have.
But they didn’t. Instead, they entered into a compromise of shared power and authority; autonomy and sovereignty. At least on the surface.
There is some indication that either Oñate, or one of his successors as governor, may have presented the leader of each pueblo with a cane of authority. After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the return of Spanish rule in 1692, it is more clear that Diego de Vargas, using the institution of
compadrazgo — diplomacy and force — gave canes of authority to the pueblos.
In an ironic twist of history, during the colonial period that stretched from 1598 to 1821, the pueblos exercised a certain degree of democracy in that communities chose their leader. By contrast, the Nuevo Mexicano people had no such direct involvement in their government. In fact, the governor of New Mexico was appointed by the viceroy in Mexico City, and was always a
forastero, or an outsider, from Spain, who would come and lord his power and authority over not just the pueblos, but the New Mexicans.
One can imagine when a Spanish governor or Franciscan priest used or abused their authority to the detriment of the Pueblos, a Pueblo governor might wield his cane of authority in the face of the offending official and proclaim, “You do not have power over us to do that!”
The pueblos of New Mexico have always exercised a certain degree of autonomy and sovereignty, depending on which flag flew over the region. Mexico recognized Pueblo autonomy in 1821, 200 years ago.
A little over four decades later, in 1863, New Mexico was a territory of the U.S., after Mexico was stripped of roughly half its land in 1848. The Compromise of 1850 made California a free state, but New Mexico had a different destiny. As a free territory, there were historical stresses and pressures between slave-owning Texans and the
Nuevo Mexicanos.
Whether it was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 or the Lincoln canes, historical events have informed the present.
The pueblos held their ground, as they had for centuries while the debris of history fell around them. The Civil War in the U.S. in the 1860s nearly destroyed the nation, yet through it all, President Abraham Lincoln took a stand to guarantee the pueblo people of New Mexico their sovereignty, autonomy and to respect their land claims.
As the Spanish and Mexicans had done before in the 1600s and in 1821, Lincoln presented pueblo leaders with canes of power — wooden and metal symbols of authority the pueblos knew deep down was theirs all along, bestowed on them not by governors or presidents but by their Creator.
Through the centuries, the canes have led them. Whether Lincoln himself or a representative awarded the canes, those symbols of independence have come down through the centuries with each succeeding generation of the Pueblo people.
Whether it was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 or the Lincoln canes, historical events have informed the present, showing Pueblo autonomy and the right to determine their own destinies are some of the great American truths in our national and state histories.
Rob Martinez, New Mexico’s state historian, writes a column about the state’s rich past the first Saturday of every month in The New Mexican.