Drought is sweeping New Mexico in the…

Drought is sweeping New Mexico in the 1670s, causing famine among the Pueblo and provoking increased attacks from neighboring nomadic tribes—attacks against which Spanish soldiers are unable to defend.

At the same time, European-introduced diseases are ravaging the natives, greatly decreasing their numbers.

The people, unsatisfied with the protective powers of the Spanish crown and disenchanted with the Roman Catholic religion it has introduced, have turned to their old religions, provoking a wave of repression on the part of Franciscan missionaries.

Fray Alonso de Posada, serving in New Mexico from 1656 to 1665, "forbade Kachina dances by the Pueblo Indians and ordered the missionaries to seize every mask, prayer stick, and effigy they could lay their hands on and burn them....”