Terri A. Castaneda

𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟔𝟖𝟎 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 It was the most successful Indigenous uprising and one that would ensure survival of Pueblo people. It took place in August 1680. It would also re-script Pueblo-Spanish relations in what is known today as New Mexico. In spite of it being obscured over the years, recent scholarship about the Indigenous uprising has revealed that slavery was one of the primary causes of the revolt, exacerbated by religious animosities, famine & illness, all well documented in the archival record. As Historian Andrés Reséndez argues, "In the course of the 17th c., the silver economy expanded, and it was New Mexico's misfortune to function as a reservoir of coerced labor and a source of cheap products for the silver mines. It did not take the bad behavior of too many Spanish governors, friars, & colonists--compelling Indians to carry salt, robbing their pelts, locking them up in textile sweatshops, & organizing raiding parties to procure Apache slaves-- to bring about widespread animosity, resentment, & ultimately rebellion." Reséndez makes this case based on 3 types of evidence, summarized below: I. 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬. In 1681 nine Pueblo men were captured and brought before the governor to ascertain the cause of the revolt. Their depositions were recorded beginning in 1681 and 1682. Eighty-year old Pedro Naranjo of San Felipe declared that in the wake of the revolt, the Indians had finally remained "free from the work demanded by the friars and the other Spaniards which they could no longer bear, and that this was the real reason and legitimate cause that they had to rise up." A 20 year old ladino (Hispanicized) Indian named Joseph also noted, "the causes generally given were the ill treatment and abuses that the Indians received... from Alonso Garcia... Luis de Quintana, & Diego Lopez because they had hit them and taken away what they had and made them work without paying them anything." II. 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠. Reséndez makes the point that the revolt was "long in the making" and that the 30 year period of unrest corresponds with commercial ties between NM and the silver mines of northern Mexico. New Mexican officials responded to these opportunities by seizing Indian products, pressing Natives into work in textile sweatshops & raiding rancherias to procure slaves. While a few sources mention famines and epidemics, particularly in the 1660s, no testimony provided claims famine or pestilence as a cause of the revolt. III. 𝐄𝐭𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜/𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞. While the events are almost always only associated with Puebloan people, the "Great Northern Rebellion" as some scholars have referred to it, was well beyond the geography of NM and included Apaches, Mansos, Conchos, Sumas, Pimas, Janos, Salineros, Tobosos & many other groups. Two primary corridors were included, involving regions of Indigenous inhabitants that had all been subjected to "gravitational pull of the silver economy" and into the "slaving corridors leading to Parral." In the end, these rebellions redefined labor relations in northern Mexico. Indigenous people in New Mexico, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonara & Coahuila according to Reséndez, "challenged slavery and forced important changes in the ways the traffic in humans was conducted in the following century. " The NBU Team is working diligently to reveal just how impactful Indigenous slavery was, document by document, story by story.