"He instructed the Indians... that the God of the Spaniards was no good, being made of rotten wood, and that the God of the Indians was very strong... He commanded that they break up and burn the images of the holy Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints, the crosses, and everything pertaining to Christianity, and that they burn the temples." — Declaration of Pedro Naranjo to Spanish authorities, recounting the teachings of Po'pay during the Pueblo Revolt (1681)
Compared with King Philip's War in New England (1675-76), the Pueblo Revolt was distinctive in that it:
- A
Resulted in immediate full Indigenous conversion to Christianity
- B
Was suppressed within weeks by colonial militia
- C
Was led primarily by enslaved Africans rather than Indigenous peoples
- Dcheck_circle
Successfully expelled European colonizers from the region for over a decade
Explanation
Whereas King Philip's War devastated but did not displace English New England, the Pueblo Revolt drove the Spanish out of New Mexico from 1680 until the reconquest in the 1690s — a rare sustained Indigenous victory.