Slavery existed across the precontact North American continent even before the first Europeans set foot within the confines of modern Utah. It was an integral part of indigenous societies; captives were regularly taken as spoils of war and thereafter either kept to demonstrate the captor’s power, traded to establish peaceful relations with other tribes, or incorporated into the captor’s tribe to replace lost family members. European colonization and expansion introduced a demand for large numbers of indentured servants or enslaved laborers which the indigenous slave trade adapted to meet. Indigenous slavers equipped with European guns and horses preyed upon neighboring tribes, fueling the depopulation of indigenous peoples through slave raiding, warfare, and disease transmission. Spain officially declared slavery illegal in 1811 but did virtually nothing to eradicate it, and Spanish colonizers sometimes even perpetuated it. Religious fervor from the Reformation further added difficulty: Spanish and other Europeans believed indigenous peoples needed to be “saved” by the “civilizing” influence of Christianity and Western Europe. Claiming charity, colonizers bought and sold their fellow human beings on a grand scale to build new empires. Although technically illegal under Spanish and Mexican rule, the indigenous slave trade flourished in the Great Basin region that became Utah Territory. Ute enslavers raided far and wide as well as close to home for captives whom they bartered to New Mexican traders plying the Old Spanish Trail. The trade in enslaved persons constituted a significant portion of the region’s economy. When members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes called Mormon pioneers) arrived in the Great Basin in 1847, they entered a part of the country steeped in the indigenous slave trade. While a few Latter-day Saints themselves claimed ownership of enslaved Black Americans whom they brought to the territory, other Latter-day Saints, sometimes from the American northeast or from Europe, opposed slavery and favored abolition. Euro-American Latter-day Saints initially avoided dealing with slavers, who tortured or killed their captives to excite pity from the settlers.  After some Latter-day Saints tried rescuing a few children from captivity by trading for them, Church leaders encouraged the strategy, and Latter-day Saints’ involvement in the indigenous slave trade became complicit. Motivated by a paternalistic desire to save indigenous captives from their captors, the need for enslaved labor, and religious zeal, Church leadership urged members to buy as many indigenous slaves as they could. Mormon efforts to save indigenous slaves from destitution and make them “pure and delightsome” frequently met no success. The mortality rate for child slaves was exceedingly high, and very few of those taken into Mormon households even survived to maturity. It was rare for Latter-day Saint men to marry indigenous women, and only a few indigenous men are known to have married white women. Under early Utah territorial law, Latter-day Saints could legally acquire indigenous indentures and keep them for up to twenty years as long as they allowed their charges to attend school for three months each year. Slavery in Utah Territory was outlawed on June 19, 1862, when Congress abolished slavery in all federal territories.

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The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe was built in 1610 with the rest of the early town. It served as the governing seat of New Mexico from 1610 to 1886.

The arrest of forty-seven Puebloan spiritual leaders by Governor Juan Francisco Treviño in 1775 exacerbated the deepening rifts between the Pueblo people and the Spanish colonial administration in New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt, started by one of the forty-seven leaders released at arrowpoint by Governor Treviño, started in 1680 and quickly spread through the countryside. Churches and haciendas were burnt to the ground, and Pueblo armies quickly reached Santa Fe.

The Pueblo warriors besieged the Palace of the Governors. Governor Antonio de Otermin led a desperate sally out of the Palace which Pueblo forces, under Juan, a Tano man sporting a Spanish leather jacket, arquebus, sword, and dagger, rebuffed. As the Rio Grande Pueblo numbers swelled with reinforcements from the northern pueblos, the situation began to look more and more grim for the Spaniards barricaded in the Palace of the Governors. After five days of siege, running dangerously low on water and food supplies, Otermin ordered another charge, which took the Pueblo warriors by surprise. The previously cornered Spaniards were able to rout enough of the Pueblo force to escape the city the next day.

Two Spanish groups, one from Santa Fe and another that hid in the Isleta Pueblo (who did not participate in the revolt) headed by the lieutenant governor of New Mexico, met at Socorro, New Mexico, on September 6, 1680. Otermin had Alonso Garcia, his lieutenant governor, arrested for not assisting Santa Fe in its time of need, but released him upon hearing the official’s story, which included being informed that everyone up north was already dead. The defeated Spanish then headed to El Paso and were expelled from New Mexico for the next twelve years, ending the first Spanish occupation of New Mexico.

Diego de Vargas retook the Palace of the Governorsduring his reconquest of New Mexico, and served as his government’s seat. Neither the Mexican nor early American period saw a new capitol building until 1886. The Palace served the public as the New Mexico History Museum between 1909 and 2009. The state then built a larger building next to it to house the museum collections, and the Palace of the Governors itself is now only part of the museum. The building saw many iterations of remodeling and change during its later periods. A particularly dramatic episode followed the popularity of the Pueblo Revival style, which resulting in the complete transformation of the historic Santa Fe area.

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Taos Pueblo’s remote location has instilled a fierce independence in its native people. The people of Taos tell that they arrived to the site following an eagle which dropped two feathers on opposite sides of two streams. This was an indication that the people should settle here.

Since Taos was on the very periphery of Spanish rule, it was more able to defend its customs than other pueblos. Twenty years before the Pueblo Revolt, the Taos people demolished the San Geronimo de Taos mission and executed the resident priest. The Spanish rebuilt the mission soon after, but then Taos Puebloans demolished it again during the Pueblo Revolt.

After being imprisoned by the Spanish along with forty-six other Pueblo religious leaders, Popé realized that the Spanish needed to be removed from New Mexico permanently in order for the Puebloan people to have peace and religious freedom. He was set free by armed Puebloan warriors who were furious at the execution of three of Popé’s fellow spiritual leader prisoners. Once free, he moved from his native Ohkay Owingeh pueblo to the more distant Taos Pueblo, where he could operate from a safer position. He spent the next five years organizing the pueblos to rebel against the Spanish. Popé promised his supporters that when the Spanish were sent back to Mexico, the Pueblo deities would reward the Pueblos with peace and prosperity. When he had acquired sufficient support, he handed out knotted cords to the leaders within his network. These came with instructions that the holders of the cords needed to untie a knot every day, and that when the cord was free of knots, it was time to attack. He chose not to send cords to the southern Pueblos; he doubted their loyalty due to their stronger willingness to adopt Spanish customs.

The Pueblo Revolt ignited on August 11, 1680. Puebloans burned down missions as the first targets of the revolt, with twenty-one of the thirty-three Franciscans in New Mexico being killed on the first day. The Spaniards that were able to escape from the hinterlands fled to Santa Fe, where Governor Otermin had barricaded himself within the Palace of the Governors and some fortified parts of the plaza. The siege of Santa Fe started three days later.

Taos retained its independence from Spanish reconquest a little longer than other pueblos due to its distance from Santa Fe. Once back within the Spanish sphere, it became a prosperous center of trade between the the Hispanosphere and the nomadic peoples of the plains and mountains. Taos was the center of the Taos Revolt against the American occupation of New Mexico, which led to the destruction of their mission church and the slaughter of hundreds of people.

In the present day, Taos Pueblo has been extremely successful in preserving its culture. It has the largest traditional multi-story pueblo left and, through fierce court battles against the United States, has regained access to its Sacred Blue Lake.

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The Santa Fe Plaza is a traditional Spanish colonial style city square built in 1610 by the founders of Santa Fe under the orders of Don Pedro de Peralta, the second governor of New Mexico. Like other Spanish colonial plazas, the Santa Fe plaza served as the central hub of its city. It was flanked by the town church, the Palace of the Governors, and the houses of local notables.

The late 17th century was a period of drought, nomadic raids, and increased political repression for the Rio Grande Puebloan people. The Spanish Franciscan missionaries increasingly asserted their power over the New Mexican colony, culminating in a showdown with the provincial governor, Diego de Peñalosa. Governor Peñalosa arrived in New Mexico in 1661, and governed until ousted by Franciscan political pressure in 1664. While in office, he banned forced Native American labor and worked to preserve Puebloan cultures. This led to excommunication by a local Catholic clergyman, which Peñalosa had arrested, triggering the series of events that led to his ouster and a Mexican Inquisition jail cell.

The following governor was also not to the local clergymen’s liking, so he was politically forced to retire as well, leading to installation of Governor Juan Francisco Treviño in 1675. He was dedicated to the supremacy of the Catholic faith and the eradication of Puebloan culture. In the same year that he came to power, he ordered Spanish troops to burn kivas and arrest forty-seven Puebloan religious authorities. He then commanded that they all be tried for witchcraft. After three men were executed and a third that was sentenced to death committed suicide, a large, armed group of Pueblo men surrounded the Santa Fe Plaza and demanded that the shamans be released from prison. With most of the Spanish troops of Santa Fe out fighting nomads, Governor Treviño was forced to release the men. One of the men released was determined to end the Spanish period in New Mexico and safeguard the religious traditions of Puebloan people. Popé, a religious leader from the pueblo Ohkay Owingeh, retreated to the safer and more distant Taos Pueblo after he was released, where he would hatch a plan to remove the Spaniards.

The Santa Fe Plaza continued being the center of city life after the reconquest of New Mexico by Don Diego de Vargas. To this day, it serves as the city center for many communal events like the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe. After the Civil War, the New Mexican government erected a monument in the middle of the plaza and dedicated to Union troops and Indian fighters. In 1974, an unidentified man chiseled out the word “savage,” which was used to describe indigenous people by the monument’s creators.

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Jemez Pueblo, or Walatowa, consists of several villages united by a shared background and their unique usage of the Towa language. These villages sit at the mouth of the Cañon de San Diego.

The formidable fortified villages of Jemez Pueblo were bastions of anti-Spanish sentiment for much of the first period of Spanish occupation of New Mexico. In 1623, fed up with Franciscan demands for labor and forced conversion, the Jemez people burned down the nearby mission of San Jose and retreated into the mountains. The Jemez then returned to their site once they had avoided Spanish retaliation. The mission was rebuilt, but then abandoned in 1639 as sentiments remained hot and the Jemez people continued their recalcitrance in the face of missionary proselytization.

One of the three Pueblo religious men executed by Governor Juan Francisco Treviño in 1675 was from Jemez. This was likely a calculated decision by Governor Treviño, as the Jemez people had been among the most successful of the pueblos in reining back the influence of Franciscan missionaries. However, Treviño’s plan backfired as many Jemez warriors were present when a force consisting of several pueblos surrounded Santa Fe and demanded the release of the imprisoned religious men. Jemez Pueblo was also one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and it continued its resistance well into the reconquest of New Spain by Diego de Vargas. Although frequently called a “bloodless reconquest,” the account of Jemez Pueblo during Vargas’ takeover shows that it was anything but. San Diego Mesa, where many Jemez had moved during the Pueblo Revolt for safety, was besieged by Vargas and his Keresan speaking allies from Zia and Santa Ana Pueblos on July 24, 1694. The besieging foce killed eighty four Jemez people and captured another 361 by the end of the day. The remaining Jemez population scattered throughout Apache, Navajo, and Hopi lands.

Several years later, many Jemez returned and reconstituted the pueblo in a much diminished form. Many pueblos suffered during the early nineteenth century rise of nomadic raiding powers like the Comanche and Apachean people. In 1838, seeking safety from nomadic incursions, the people of the Pueblo of Pecos joined the Jemez in Walatowa and were absorbed into the Jemez population. There is still a position in the Jemez government for a “Governor of Pecos.”

Tourism on Jemez Pueblo lands today is run through the Walatowa Visitor Center. The Towa language, also called the Jemez language, is spoken only by the Jemez people. With around eighty percent of the tribal population speaking it means that the language is not currently endangered. Jemez Pueblo has been very successful in preserving its culture, and cultural conservation programs run by the Pueblo government have even revived its pottery styles that were lost during the chaotic Vargas reconquest years.

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The Acoma people have inhabited Acoma Pueblo, now called Sky City or Old Acoma, for at least a millenia. Oral history tells that the pueblo was originally located on the similarly sized mesa directly to the east, but that a tragedy led the Acoma people to move their pueblo to the mesa where it currently stands.

In 1595, Viceroy of New Spain Luis de Velasco gave Juan de Oñate royal permission to colonize the area that is now New Mexico. Five hundred colonists and 7,000 livestock animals accompanied him north. He declared to indigenous leaders of nearby Pueblos that they were all now subject to the King of Spain and the Catholic religion, and that he would be king’s representative. Acoma Pueblo, which was widely known to be the most defensible pueblo in New Mexico, had no delegates there. Oñate sent a small group under his nephew Juan de Zaldivar to receive Acoma’s submission. Accounts of what happened next differ but the Spanish conquistadors under Juan de Zaldivar quarrelled with the Acoma people and their leader Zutacapan, and most accounts also include the Spaniards attempting to forcefully take Acoma food and blankets. The Acoma refused, a fight ensued, and Acoma warriors killed most of the group, including Oñate’s nephew. Only a few Spaniards that jumped from the mesa survived.

Oñate arrived in January 21 with his army, and fighting raged all of the next day. Eventually, a concealed party of Spaniards armed with cannons and muskets attacked from another side of the mesa and overwhelmed Acoma’s defenses. The Spanish set the pueblo on fire and at the end of the day, 600-800 Acoman people were slain. As additional punishment, on February 12, Oñate decreed that every man over the age of twenty-five would have his right foot cut off and women and children were forced into slavery. While Oñate’s acts of barbarism won him New Mexico, they would later also be partially responsible for him losing it and being stripped of his titles by the Spanish Crown.

The first Spanish regime in New Mexico focused heavily on evangelizing the many Puebloan peoples, and Acoma was no exception. The friars forced them to drag ponderosa timbers from forty miles away at Mount Taylor in order to build the San Esteban del Rey Mission.

After the Pueblo Revolt, Acoma people continued to use the mission grounds for feast days and burials, but the friars never again held the power they once did. Only twenty to fifty people currently inhabit Sky City, the old Acoma hilltop Pueblo, but over five thousand Acoma people are spread out throughout the surrounding reservation lands. The roughly 250 dwellings of Sky City sit atop a massive sandstone mesa. The old pueblo’s population still fluctuates dramatically on weekends and holidays as Acoma people visit their relatives and return to their cultural heartland, while tourists meander on organized tours coming from the Sky City Cultural Center directly beneath the northern edge of the mesa.

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