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Acoma Massacre
In January 1599 Spanish colonizer Juan de Oñate besieged Acoma Pueblo, the sky city of New Mexico, in reprisal for an attack on a Spanish supply trai…
Timeline
- 1598Acoma Pueblo · New MexicoIn December 1598, Spanish soldiers including Juan de Zúñiga sent by Oñate to collect grain at Acoma were ambushed by Pueblo people at the cliff village; more than ten were killed and only one escaped to report. Oñate declared Acoma in rebellion and ordered Vicente de Zaldívar to lead seventy soldiers and several Pueblo allies on a punitive expedition.
- 1599Acoma Mesa · New MexicoSpanish forces bombarded the cliff-top stone dwellings with light artillery, cut off water, and burned stored grain. Pueblo warriors resisted stubbornly for three days, many leaping to their deaths. In late January the Spanish entered the village; some six hundred to eight hundred Acomans died in the fighting and siege, including many women and children.
- 1599Acoma Pueblo · New MexicoOñate imposed harsh sentences on the survivors: each man over twenty-five had one foot cut off, two chiefs each lost a hand; the remaining survivors and their descendants were sentenced to twenty years of forced labor, assigned to colonists and the church. The sentence caused controversy even in Spain, but in the short term it consolidated the colonial authorities' reign of terror over the Pueblo people.
Sources
- The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico — Andrew L. Knaut (1995)
- Acoma Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Massacre