Santa Fe Santa Fe New Mexico United States

San Juan de los Caballeros, north of Santa Fe near modern Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, had been the capital of the province of Santa Fé de Nuevo México under Juan de Oñate and his son.

New Mexico's third Spanish governor, Don Pedro de Peralta, in 1608 founds a new city at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which he calls La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.

He makes it in 1610 the capital of the province, which it has almost constantly remained, making it the oldest capital city in what is the modern United States. (Jamestown, Virginia, is of similar vintage (1607) but is no longer a capital.)

Santa Fe is at least the third oldest surviving American city founded by European colonists, behind the oldest St. Augustine, Florida (1565). (Although Santa Fe is not one of the oldest continuously occupied cities, as from 1680 to 1692 it will be abandoned due to raids by natives.)

A few settlements had been founded prior to St. Augustine but all failed, including the original Pensacola colony in West Florida, founded by Tristán de Luna y Arellano in 1559, with the area abandoned in 1561 due to hurricanes, famine and warring tribes. (Fort Caroline, founded by the French in 1564 in what is today Jacksonville, Florida only lasted a year before being obliterated by the Spanish in 1565.)

The city is today the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico.

It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of Santa Fe County.

The Spanish kingdom of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, with its capital at Santa Fe, is centered on the upper valley of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), in an area that includes most of the present-day U.S. state of New Mexico.

Four medicine men are sentenced to death by hanging; three of these sentences are carried out, while the fourth prisoner commits suicide.

The remaining men are publicly whipped and sentenced to prison.

When this news reaches the Pueblo leaders, they move in force to Santa Fe, where the prisoners are held.

Because a large number of Spanish soldiers are away fighting the Apache, Governor Treviño releases the prisoners.

Among those released is a San Juan (called "Ohkay Owingeh" by the Pueblo) Indian named "Popé" (pronounced Po'Pay).

Many of the Pueblo people harbor a latent hostility toward the Spanish, primarily due to their denigration and prohibition of the traditional religion.

The traditional economies of the pueblos have been likewise disrupted, the people being forced to labor on the encomiendas of the colonists.

Some Pueblo people may have been forced to labor in the mines of Chihuahua.

However, the Spanish have also introduced new farming implements and provided some measure of security against Navajo and Apache raiding parties.

As a result, they have lived in relative peace with the Spanish since the founding of the Northern New Mexico colony in 1598.

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....”

The attack is commenced by the Taos, Picuris, and Tewas in their respective pueblos.

They kill twenty-one of the province's forty Franciscans, and three hundred and eighty Spaniards, including men, women, and children.

Spanish settlers flee to Santa Fe, the only Spanish city, and ...

Popé's insurgents meanwhile besiege Santa Fe, surrounding the city and cutting off its water supply.

New Mexico Governor Antonio de Otermín, barricaded in the Governor’s Palace, calls for a general retreat.

The remaining three thousand Spanish settlers stream out of the capital city on August 21 and head for El Paso del Norte.

The native peoples of New Mexico acquire hundreds of Spanish mounts during the Pueblo Rebellion, thus allowing the further spread of horses to the Plains tribes.

The retreat of the Spaniards leaves New Mexico in the power of the Pueblos.

There are many tales of what happened to Popé after the revolt had transpired.

One tale has him ordering the Puebloan people, under penalty of death, to burn or destroy crosses and other religious imagery, as well as any other vestige of the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including Spanish livestock and fruit trees.

He supposedly also forbade the planting of wheat and barley and commanded those natives who had been married according to the rites of the Catholic Church to dismiss their wives and to take others after the old native tradition.

Another tale says that he left after the revolt to Taos to live out the rest of his days incognito to avoid persecution from the returning Spaniards and the anger of the Puebloans who hadn't support him during the revolt.

Another tale states that he simply disappeared.

Following their success, the diverse Pueblo Tribes, separated by hundreds of miles and eight different languages, quarrel as to who will occupy Santa Fe and rule over the country.

These power struggles, combined with raids from nomadic tribes, Spanish raids, and a seven year drought, will weaken the Pueblo resolve and set the stage for a Spanish reconquest.

Trading between Spanish settlers and natives is rare and occurs in parts of New Mexico and California.

The Spanish mainly intend to spread the Christian faith to natives and to use them as slaves for work.

The most significant effect of trading with the Spanish is the introduction of the horse to the Ute in New Mexico.

Gradually, horses breed and their use is adopted across the Great Plains, dramatically altering the lifestyles and customs of many Native American tribes.

Many natives switch from a hunter-gatherer economy to a nomadic lifestyle after they begin using horses for transportation.

They have a greater range for hunting bison and trading with other tribes.

The governor of New Mexico retakes Santa Fe from the Pueblos, who had successfully evicted the Spaniards a dozen years earlier.

New Spain will retain the province throughout the age.