>>The celebration of 500 years of European
contact, which is basically the commemoration of Columbus, it is an opportunity for Indian
people to tell their story, something that has to be, I think, very important for Pueblo
people, because there are always two sides to the story. And there's not just one way of looking
at history, but many ways. >>Funding for this program has been provided
by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the financial support of viewers like
you. Additional funding has been provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium. >>I make my living telling stories, stories
about human life, human tragedy, human drama. Living in a place like Los Angeles is so different
from the place where I grew up, that place that I call
home, where my people are. My family. My clan. And it's probably the reason why I return
home as much as I can. (Music) >>I was born and raised in this house coming
up over here, so, close to the tracks. And, I remember as a kid standing outside
my mother's house and watching the trains go by, sleek red and silver train. (Music) >>It's the village where I grew up. Played with mostly children here, and brings
back a lot of memories. (Music) >>I remember going to school and being taught
that Columbus discovered America, a land populated by brutal savages who had to be conquered,
converted and civilized. In the official version of
history, it always seemed better to be white than to be Indian, but at night when I came
home to my family, my grandparents, especially my great-grandfather would tell us stories
and legends, myths about our past, about our history, that began long before Christopher
Columbus set sail, before Spain was a nation and even before Christ was born. This, then, is our story. My story. A living story. A story of how Pueblo people have survived
>>Always tell a story from the beginning. That's what Pueblo elders used to tell us. Telling a story is re-knowing the experience. This is the way all things have always been. >>As a little girl, I stayed with my grandparents
in, they would, you know, she would tell me, you know, long ago tales and she told me that
one day two Spider Sisters came out of a hole in the ground, and they saw all the beauty
that surrounds Acoma, the meas, beautiful mesas, the Pinon trees, cedar trees, all around
was beautiful, so they went back in and told the chief of the tribe, and they told him,
"It's so pretty up there. Why don't we move, you know, up there? Everything is so beautiful." So, the chief, the kokopelli, the humpbacked
flute player to lead the people out from the underworld, into the world we live in. (Music) >>When people found a place they wanted to
settle, they of course could not do it just by themselves. They always had to talk to other animals. They had to talk to the rainbow. They had to talk to the water spider and say,
"How does this feel to you? Does this feel like, like we've arrived at
some place where the energies are swirling, and this is a place that we can give ourselves
to?" (Music) >>After their emergence from that world beneath,
our ancestors set off to find the center of this world, the middle place of a spiritual
landscape. It's here that they created one of the most
highly evolved civilizations ever known. Cities like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Aztec,
and Canyon de Chelly stand in testimony to a complex, highly sophisticated culture. Pueblo culture was in formation about the
time of Christ and of course it all picked up steam in the centuries between 900 and
about 1350 AD, when the largest towns were occupied and the most architecturally complex
cities were built, and the Pueblo culture extended at a Zenith from Las Vegas, New Mexico
to Las Vegas, Nevada on an east-to-west range, and from Durango, Colorado to
Durango, Mexico north to south. It was a very vast range. There's a story in Acoma history that talks
about a place like Chaco Canyon, a place where Acoma people migrated from. I remember my grandparents going to Chaco
Canyon and taking prayer bundles with them and late at night as they were praying, my
grandmother later told me she thought she heard someone, somebody singing, It not only
frightened her, but maybe even at the same time, delighted her to know that there was
still this connection between what had been and what is now. >>What we're told as children is that people
when they walk on the land leave their sweat, and they leave their breath wherever they
go. So that wherever we walk, the place, that
particular spot on the earth never forgets us, and when we go back to those places, we
know that the people who had lived there are in some ways still there, and that we can
actually partake of their breath, and of their, of their spirit. And that's another incredible source of power. (Music) >>Pueblo life is always close to the earth. The traditional homes of stone and adobe,
the red, yellow and white Mesa cliffs, and sandstone canyons into which they blend, this
closeness is in the agrarian way of life, the link is there between our land and people,
our homes, our art, and our religion. It is in the colors of our skin and hair,
and our clothing and food, just as it is in the natural earth and sky all around. >>What makes Pueblo culture so unique is its
special relationship to the land. The mountains, the deserts and the rivers
are not resources to be exploited, but our sacred landscape. We don't own the land. We belong to it. >>The land is part of a ceremonial universe,
in literally the shrine systems that exist in the center of the community, and around
the community. And that mountaintops as far as you could
see, and that defines who you are and where you are now. But I think very much it defines the origin,
as well as the destination, the destiny of a person. >>You can look back to the old members' pottery
and you see depictions of people, and you can look at petroglyphs and rock art, and
you see that occurrences in people's lives were being recorded, and there is that presence
there that really indicates that people are aware of where they came from and who they
are and they were leaving images for other people to see. >>Each family has their, you know, own own
designs, you know, that, you know, they're, their mothers, their grandmas, you know, that
this is the way they paint it. So it's, you know, it's just passed down,
you know, it's just, we just keep on doing it. When my mother was real sick I told her that
my daughter had called from Phoenix and I told her, I said, "She, she did a pottery
with a parrot design. That it's one of our oldest designs." And, I hugged my mother, and I told her, "Oh
mother, you're gonna live forever through your designs." I said well you know people will
always see always, see the beauty that you have left with us. All all, this you have left, I said don't
be so sad. I said because we will carry on this. (Music) >>Some of our ancestors moved closer to the
Rio Grande so that their villages of stone and adobe were strung along the river and
it's tributaries, like beads upon a string of water. In the West, other groups concentrated around
desert water sources in Acoma and Zuni and Hopi. >>The movement through the land by the people
is very significant and as, and as part of all Pueblo mix. It's part of that emulation of movement that
was seen in the, in the natural environment. One that was always talked about and in songs,
and prayers is the movement of the clouds, how the rain comes from the father source
and fertilizes the mother earth, and then out of that everything grows. (Music) >>Pueblo life before the Europeans arrived
consisted of farming and supplementing their farming by hunting Buffalo, antelope, deer,
and because this is a semi-arid country, low rainfall they spent much of their time fasting
or praying for good weather, and other times they spent dancing to ask for more animals
during the winter months. They have Buffalo dances, deer dances, so
that they hope that more will be available when hunting season comes around. (music) (Laughter) (Music) >>On the eve of the first contact with European
culture, the Pueblo people comprised a peaceful, highly successful civilization, made up of
over a hundred Pueblos of fifty thousand people, speaking eight sovereign languages. It was a multitude of differing customs, but
one common culture. >>We saw it in our dreams, in our dark nighttime
knowings, that a white man would come from the south. We did not understand what the nighttime knew,
that his men would take our corn, our cornmeal, our bodies, use them, throw them against the
ground with disdain, with disdain for both us and the ground, for our place, for our
lives. It was a bad wind against which we tightened
our blankets, closed our eyes and waited for the wind to pass. The wind passed, but we were left with the
men in metal, with diseases which rotted our bodies, with dying children. Our nighttime voices warned of more to come. >>One afternoon in May of 1539 in the Zuni
Pueblo of Hawiku the Pueblo world was changed forever, because of a Spanish myth, a dream
of Seven Cities of Gold. Less than 50 years after the voyage of Columbus,
this dream of golden cities waiting to be plundered drove men thousands of miles across
seas of sand and stark mountains. Ironically the first white man to contact
Pueblo people was Estevanico, a black slave from Morocco. Estevanico was the guide for Fray Marcos de
Niza's expedition to find the Seven Cities of Gold. >>He was the first black man who was representing
the Spaniards, who told the Zunis when he arrived that he was representing white
men they were following that were more powerful than he was, and that he they had to obey
things that he was asking for. I'm sure he was asking for food, for shelter,
for gifts and probably, probably women also. And in the meantime had been hearing rumors
of slavery up into the into the northern part of Sonora where there was many, many slave
raids, where whole villages were killed off by, the by the slave raiders taking all the
men, women and children and killing all the older men
and women, and leaving and taking them into into slavery. And so they were afraid that he was one of
the, one of the slave spies. (Music) >>Estevanico and the rumors of slave raids
have long since entered Zuni legend. Over the centuries the actual events have
receded until only faint echoes remain, in the stories of giants
and magic rattles. But then Pueblo history is history through
storytelling, history through legend. >>Estavnico learned a few tricks of the trade
of being a Medicine Man. So, he sent this gourd that he had, that was
supposed to be his medicine gourd, which had two feathers, one white and one red, and a
couple of copper bells, and at that point the Zuni chief, the war chief flung the gourd
to the ground and said this is not from our people. This,this person must be a spy. >>The Zuni treated Estevanico like any other
spy. They confined him in a house outside the Pueblo
walls, but one morning in May 1539 as Estevanico tried to flee and was killed. When Fray Marcos de Nizaa heard about Estevanico's
death, he turned around and sped back to Mexico without seeing the country he called Cibola. His lack of first-hand knowledge did not prevent
him, though, from inventing the tale of the seven golden Cities of Cibola. >>Cibola has the appearance of a very beautiful
town. The city's bigger than the city of Mexico
and it is the least of the seven cities. There is much gold and the natives trade in
vessels and jewels. >>Fray Marcos's lies and exaggerations soon
ignited Spanish greed for gold. One year later in 1540 an expedition led by
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado came to Zuni to find the treasure of the Seven Cities of
Cibola. Coronado brought with him 300 Spanish soldiers,
a thousand Mexican-Indians, guns, cannons, crossbows
and war hounds. (Music) >>Banners were waving, armour was shining. Coronado is riding right the most important
religious period of time, people arriving at the summer solstice for the pilgrimage. When the pilgrims are out on their journey
going to and coming from the sacred lake, nobody must cross their path, because that
cuts off the rain wishes of the people who are performing the ceremony. As they approach the high priests, forming
the frontline spread out on a corner which, is a symbol for do not enter now. Do not enter now, because we don't want to
interrupt our ceremony. >>And of course they did just that. They violated the Zuni ritual taboo, and that
was a terrible thing to do. And violence was inevitable after that. >>Against the peaceful Zuni, European military
techniques and weapons resulted in a quick victory. The Spanish, however, were barely disappointed. There was no gold. No precious jewels. (Music) >>When the Spaniards first saw the village
which was Cibola, such were the curses that they hurled at Fray Marcos, that I pray God
may protect him from them. It is a crowded little village, looking as
if it had been all crumpled together. >>After hearing about the arrival of the Spanish,
the people of Pecos Pueblo sent two of their most important men, including a man who the
world would come to know only as Bigotes, the man with the moustache. Bigotes led the Spanish on a tour of the Pueblos,
perhaps hoping to show Coronado that the Pueblos lacked
the gold and the treasures that they sought. >>Bigotes was a war chief, or at least a war
captain and in the company of one of his leaders they made plans to go out to Zuni
to look into the situation themselves. And Bigotes was able to bring them up to his
country to show them the place first but at the same time the idea of the Spaniards was
that maybe there was something that they were looking for further east from Zuni. >>The Pueblos were not the Cities of Gold
the Spanish sought but the collapse of the myth of the Seven Cities of Cibola only made
the Spanish ripe for an even bigger lie, the legend of Quivira. Quivira was a land where rich Lords drifted
along a river in gold draped barges, and ate from golden plates. In their efforts to prove the existence of
Quivira, Coronado threw Bigotes in chains and set the war hounds on him. The Pueblo peoples near Coronado's camp were
also learning the true nature of the invaders. Constant Spanish demands for food, blankets
and clothing, coupled with the rape of a Pueblo woman ignited a rebellion among the Tewa
>>After the Pueblo had been set ablaze, the Pueblo peoples urrendered of their own accord. As Cardenas had been ordered by Coronado not
to take them alive, but to make an example of them so the other natives would fear the
Spaniards, he ordered 200 stakes prepared at once to burn them alive. Then, when the enemy saw that the Spaniards
were binding them and beginning to roast them, about a hundred men who were in the tent began
to struggle and defend themselves. Our men, who were on foot, attacked the tent
on all sides so that there was great confusion around it, and then the horsemen chased those
who escaped. As the community was leveled, not a man of
them remained alive, unless it was some who remained hidden in the village and escaped
that night to spread throughout the countryside the news that the strangers did not respect
the peace they had made. >>The Pueblos of the Tewa were abandoned,
like so many Pueblos would be in the future, their peoples pacified by death and destruction. Coronado pushed on to Kansas only to find
that Quivira was yet another lie and without gold Spanish interest quickly waned, and the
expedition retreated, leaving the Pueblos in relative peace for yet another 50 years. >>Coronado may be a knight or an explorer
and a pioneer to Spanish people and to Euro-american peoples in general, but from a Pueblo perspective
he was a disaster. You know, his expedition might better be termed
a destructive rampage through Pueblo country. >>Really, it was Coronado, by behavior, who
was a savage. >>So what does the conquered call her conqueror? What name does the victim give her victimizer? What is the proper name of the man who brings
a bewildering storm of people, wagons, guns, strange ways and a cold philosophy of fear
into your beautiful peaceful place? What right sound and true image conveys the
pysche of the man who reeks unspeakable sacrilege and does not know he does? The name of the conqueror is not discoverer. The name of the victimizer is not pacifist. The name of the conqueror is fear and death. The name of the victimizer is hunger and loss. >>One morning in 1598, 400 soldiers, colonists,
priests, Mexican Indians, servants and black slaves gathered on the banks of the Rio Grande
hundreds of miles to the south of Pueblo country. >>On April 30th, 1598, Day of Ascension of
our Lord at this Rio Del Norte, governor Don Juan de Onate took possession of all the
kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico in the name of King Felipe. (Music) >>The Spaniards who came into the Southwest
were imbued as we're all Europeans of the Age of Discovery, with a peculiar notion that
they owned the whole heaven and the whole earth, and that any lands that were not already
occupied by Europeans were theirs by right of discovery to do with as they wished. >>When the Spanish arrived in New Mexico they
established their first capitol in San Juan Pueblo. It was clear that this group of invaders was
different from Coronado's expedition. They brought their families, mission supplies,
wheat seed, fruit trees and thousands of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens. The Spanish were here to stay. >>When the Spanish were coming from the south,
I suppose that was where they were coming from, each Pueblo where they stopped at, they
were driven off and then when they came to San Juan, they were on the other side of the
river, and the people had heard about them being driven off from the other places, so
they were going to do the same. And, they had a meeting. But then, the governor that they had there
then was one who had compassion, and he talked to his people and he said why do we want to
treat them in this manner? They have families. They have children to raise. They have to feed their families, and we can't
be mean. We'll let them stay on and let them raise
their family, let them raise a crop. >>The reason we're called Pueblo Indians is
because when the Spaniards came through our country, they found our Indian people living
in towns and in villages, so Pueblo is a Spanish word, word which means town or village. They classified us. Their only classification they knew, of course,
was Pueblo Indians or town or village Indians. (Music) >>One of the first things the Spanish taught
the San Juan people was the dance of the Moors and Christians, a dance that celebrated the
invincibility of Spanish arms and European religion. Although the dance has changed over 400 years
the Matachina is still being danced in San Juan on Christmas Day. >>The Matachina dance is known to us as Matazina
and represents Christianity, and the main dancer represents the king and the little
girl that dances with the man represents the Blessed Virgin Mary. And there are 10 dancers and these dancers
represent the 10 beeds on a rosary. This is how we celebrate the birth of Jesus
Christ and his coming into the Pueblo, and basically reminds us that we not only have
our traditional way of life but the legacy, or the tradition of being Catholic is passed
on to the people. (Music) >>We have to look also at who were the people
who came to settle. Although they were families this was not a,
this place was not settled by Spaniards who were tied to being farmers, tied to the crafts
or anything like that. They were basically people who wanted to colonize
and use an available labor source here. >>We send people out every month in various
directions to bring maiza from the Pueblos. The feelings of the natives against applying
it cannot be exaggerated for they weep and cry out as if they and all of their descendants
were being killed. The Spaniards seize their blankets by force,
leaving their poor Indian women stark naked, holding their babies to their breasts. (Music) >>At Acoma, the demands of a small Spanish
force led by Onate's nephew Juan de Zaldivar provoked a fierce battle. Pueblo warriors poured out of the houses and
killed Zaldivar and thirteen other Spanish soldiers. When he heard the news Onate moved quickly
to crush this rebellion by ordering Zaldivar's own brother Vicente to lead the attack on
Acoma. >>Many of the Spanish soldiers who were there
were either thrown off the Mesa or were in some way hurt by the Acoma Indians. His brother came in with the idea of revenge,
with the idea of getting back at these people who had killed his brother and
had hurt so many, and killed so many Spaniards. >>Led by Vicente de Zaldivar, 70 Spanish soldiers
arrived at the steep cliffs of Acoma and methodically prepared for a European war without quarter. Against cannons, muskets, crossbows, steel
swords and war horses, the Acoma people held out for three days. >>Vicente the Zaldivar ordered the kivas and
living quarters to be set on fire. Many were burned alive in those places. Men and women, some with children in their
arms. Others were suffocated by the smoke. >>Those who refused to surrender were dragged
before Zaldivar and hacked to pieces, their limbs, heads, and bodies thrown over the cliff. The Spanish lost a single man, while 800 Acomas
died. A line of 500 men, women and children were
led down from the Pueblo and brought to Santo Domingo to stand trial
before Onate for rebelling against the king of Spain. >>The males who were over 25 years of age,
I sentenced to have one foot cut off, and to 20 years of personal servitude. The males between the ages of 12 and 25, I
sentenced likewise to 20 years of personal servitude. >>Shocked by the severity of the sentences,
the Spanish settlers brought charges against Onate and Zaldivar, who were found guilty,
fined and banished from New Mexico. Still, these European invaders continued their
efforts to impose the feudal world of 17th century Spain on the Pueblo people. We were considered the property of an unseen
king and his armored servants. We were forced to prey to a cross and European
Saints, and follow the rules of an invisible Pope and his all too visible missionaries. (chanting) >>The church and the state in the early colonial
period had very similar goals. I would say the political perspective was,
of course, one, to subjugate politically, and to control, within a feudal system, and
the church's view was to christianize and to convert and to save souls, and these two
coincided as the encomienda system was formalized and implemented, where they could use Indian
labor, they were the missions, which were to missioniza, to Christianize. >>The encomienda and the repartimiento systems
were the basic economic systems that were imposed on native people of New Mexico, and
all of a sudden there comes this, these invaders who begin to tell you, well things are going
to change here now. You
can't, you can't leave your Pueblo. You can't travel as far as you want anymore,
because we don't want you leaving your area. >>They begin to cut up the land and for the
Pueblo people they were told how much of the land was now theirs, so you get the idea of
owning other people for yourself. What an incredible, strange, foreign notion,
you knowm when we talk about that other world. >>The Spanish imposed a governmental system
on the Pueblos whereby governor's ran the civil part of tribal life. In 1623, The Spanish gave each Pueblo governor
a cane as a symbol of authority. >>One of the most symbolic gestures that has
elevated this whole notion of our status of sovereign entities over the last 400 years
has been the issuance of canes by various sovereigns of the world. A traditional passing of authority annually
among Pueblo officials is the passing of the canes, which symbolize the sovereign status
of our governments. >>I remember elders in my family talking about
how when the mission in Acoma was being constructed, being built, Pueblo people there had been
basically placed into slavery, and made to work until they dropped dead, and yet ironically
now three, four hundred years later, we celebrate, you know, with the feast days. We dance inside the mission. We revere Christianity. >>Well, when the Spaniards first came up into
northern New Mexico, one of the first things that they did was to build churches, and they
utilized Indian labor to build those churches and later on to maintain those churches and
the labor was not voluntary. A price of land was to decide for the priests,
in which they would plant corn, cultivate corn, squash and things of that sort to maintain
the missionary household. >>The church as a whole, because of its theological
position, would begin to, would look at the Indian religion as probably superstition and
witchcraft. So, from time to time, people were punished
for that, and I think the church was was concerned with creating a unified worldview. And, it's not only converting people and saving
souls but also getting a perspective from the Indians that would support the medieval
Catholic worldview of the Spaniards. The missionary program involved the attempted
destruction of all semblance of the indigenous religions, the filling in of Kivas, the destruction
and burning of Kachina masks, the outlawing of the dances, the reporting of people who
were involved in the practice of the traditional indigenous religion. >>There were three missions that were built
on Hopi terrain during that period of time. The priests were so isolated that they pretty
much made their own rules, and they made claims on women reaching puberty, they were said
to be the first to have these young women reaching the age of puberty before they were,
before the girls were free to participate in the rest of the social marital institutions
of Hopi, and that this apparently, according to the stories, was the the last straw. >>In their efforts to destroy our religion,
the missionaries tried to separate sons from the knowledge of their fathers and daughters
from the world of their mothers. Christianity would have destroyed our culture,
our relationship to the earth mother herself. We did not consent to the eradication of our
world. >>Gran Kavita at Tambido Pueblo(?), abandoned
in 1672, was one of the victims of the great contraction of the Pueblo world. It was a time when the world was out of balance. It was a time of death. The rain ceased to fall. The corn withered. Thousands of Pueblo people died in a great
famine. >>For three years no crop has been harvested. Last year, 1668, a great many Indians perished
of hunger, lying dead along the roads, in the ravines and in their hovels. >>That year thousands died of starvation in
Grand Kavita(?), Karai(?) and other Pueblos. The elders and the children were the
first to die, leaving a society bereft of its past and its future. >>Giving food to the missionaries and giving
food to the Spanish colonizers had a tremendous impact on the Pueblo economies. For example, at Taos where the climate varies
from season to season and some seasons were, you were able to reap a lot of corn, in other
years not being able to do that, some years being lean in
terms of hunting for venison, in some days, some years not so, it did have a tremendous
impact on the economy. Many people were not eating as well as they
used to. >>The Apaches had mastered the horse, upsetting
the balance between the Pueblo peoples and their nomadic neighbors. Their raids on the Pueblos came with increasing
frequency, and then there was disease, a disease that struck both Indian and European. The Spanish attributed the deaths to witchcraft
by Pueblo sorcerers. In 1675 the Spanish governor finally heeded
the calls of the missionaries and arrested 47 alleged sorcerer's and brought them to
trial. >>Naturally the case was against them and
four men were condemned to die and the others were to be whipped publicly. One of the men that was whipped was a man
from San Juan Pablo, whose name was Pope, and the Spaniards called him Pope. He began to think about what should be done
to reatliate. Pope decided to go to Taos Pueblo, far away
from the center of Spanish activity, and Taos needs to be given credit for giving protection
to him and all the others that were planning the revolt. >>The decision to fight, to go to war, probably
took a lot of soul-searching a, lot of input from various factions, various groups, various
clans, various leaders within the pueblos and that to unite all the Pueblos, to unite
each of these sovereign nations in a united effort to drive the Spaniards out of their
lands, there must have been an awful lot of suffering that occurred, that eventually drove
them to that point. >>It was a very ingenious plan. First of all to communicate this plan, to
have the rebellion, it consisted of messengers running to all the various Pueblos in New
Mexico and into Arizona and informing them that this is going to happen, that they would
create their own little rebellion within the village and kill the intruders. >>The three spirits told Pope to make a cord
of fiber and tie some knots in it which would signify the number of days that they
must wait for the rebellion. The cord was taken from Pueblo to Pueblo by
the swiftest youth under the penalty of death if they reveal the secret. (Music) >>Two young men were appointed to carry the
knotted rope and each day as the sun came up, a knot would be untied. And on the last day that the knot was untied
would be the day the action would begin. It didn't happen the way it was really planned. The two boys were discovered. They were brought to Santa Fe for trial. When the Tesuque people learned about it they
became extremely alarmed, consequently they killed a Spaniard that was at Tesuque. This was the beginning of the first successful
revolt of a Native American organization against the Europeans. >>On August 10th, 1680 the Pueblo warriors,
by design, attacked the churches. August 10th happens to be St. Lorenzen's day
and so the people knew that both Indian and non-Indians
would be congregated in church, and it was in retaliation for what the church and civil
authorities were doing to the Pueblo people. >>Most of the villages, the churches were
destroyed, and those people who were accepting of the Catholic faith were ousted from
their villages if not killed. >>All of the Pueblos under the Spanish rule
rose up against the yoke of Spain and in some cases as a Hopi killed the priests, the Franciscan
priests. >>Within three days over 400 Spaniards, men,
women, and children lay dead. 21 of New Mexico's 33 priests were killed. Church's, crosses, saints and the symbols
of Christianity were burned and destroyed. The Spanish governor and most of the colonists
were trapped in Santa Fe, besieged by thousands of Pueblo warriors. >>Indians from the Pueblos of Pecos and Cristobal,
San Marcos and Cienega are one day from the city of Santa Fe. On the way to attack it and destroy the governor
and all the Spaniards, they're saying that now God and Santa Maria were dead and that
their own God, that they obey, never die. >>They had a few days of standoff here. The Spanish guns against Pueblo bows and arrows,
clubs and stones. Naturally, the Pueblos were at a disadvantage,
but soon decided that the only way they could dislodge the Spaniards, were to cut off the
water and a few days later the Spaniards had no water
for themself nor their animals. >>Every day of the nine days which the siege
of Santa Fe lasted more and more people assembled until the beasts and the cattle began to die,
because we had been entirely cut off from water. Being agreed that it was better to die fighting,
his lordship advanced and invoking the name of the Virgin he routed and overan them massacring
more than three hundred Indians. Forty-seven Indians were taken prisoner in
their houses. They were executed, but finding ourselves
out of provisions with very few horses, threatened by the enemy in not being assured water it
is necessary to leave. We have decided to withdraw. >>The Pueblo people's had a chance during
the siege of Santa Fe to wipe out all the Spaniards, and they stood to one side when
their siege worked, and the Spaniards silently filed out heading southward on their remaining
horses, and carrying what possessions they could carry. The Pueblo warriors made no effort to attack
them. They just let them leave. >>We are at quits with the Spaniards and the
persons we have killed. Those of us who they have killed do not matter
but the Spaniards are going and now we shall live as we like. >>The period after the revolt it's recorded
that the Pueblo people went down to the river, cleanse themselves, they did away with many
of the things that the Spaniards brought, for example,
they burned the orchards and tried to again be pure Pueblo people again. >>It was a very joyous time for them. It was a time of relearning what had been
lost in the past and there was also a sense of threat as well that existed because they
knew that there would be other people to come in. They knew that they weren't completely safe
from the Spaniards. >>During the 12 years that the Pueblo world
was free from European domination the Spanish sent a number of armed expeditions to reclaim
their kingdom. In the Pueblo of Alameda, the Spaniards found
a man who, unable to flee, hung himself rather than be captured by the Spanish. >>There would not be much of a Pueblo culture
left over if the Pueblo people of 1680 had not taken the action they did. They acted to save their culture, to save
their integrity of communities, and to save their self-respect, which the Spanish were
rapidly withering away with their onslaught on their religion, on their labor, on their
politics, on their very independence. And so, it's in that sense, the sense that
Pueblo culture survives late into the 20th century, that we must
honor and commemorate the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. >>There was no mention in the text books that
I read of the Pueblo revolt. There was never any mention of the kind of
treatment of Pueblo people at the hands of Spaniards in the textbooks that I read. There was never anything said about our survival,
our efforts to survive, and I think it's only now that our story be told. >>Freedom gives life. Freedom is life. The Indian Pueblo Revolt of 1680 gave life. We exist today as Indian communities because
of the revolt. Now our Pueblo people knew it was the time
to be patient and determined to be enduring. Now, we the people were to keep struggling
for the existence of all things in creation. >>The Pueblo revolt brought 12 years of freedom
for our people, but in 1692 Don Diego de Vargas visited the Pueblos with promises of peace,
and our leaders agreed to let the Spanish return. Each year in Santa Fe the so-called peaceful
reconquest of New Mexico was celebrated, complete with Indians dressed in Hollywood costumes,
and looking happy to see their conquerors. Unfortunately, the real reconquest began when
de Vargas returned with settlers, priests, and cannons. >>The coming of de Vargas back into New Mexico
has been depicted as one of being a bloodless conquest, but we know different, that de Vargas
was just as brutal as Coronado and Onate. However we, you know, we've managed to survive
and I think there's a lesson there for all peoples, in terms of enduring atrocities imposed
on people. >>The first thing that de Vargas did after
a long night of siege of the Villa Real de Santa Fe was to order some 80 Pueblo Indian
warriors to be shot, summarily shot and the remaining 400, mostly women and children,
were order to be partitioned out to Spanish families, to serve as servants. >>Two years later another revolt broke out,
only to be put down by Governor de Vargas and his Pueblo allies. While individual Pueblos would continue to
resist whenever their way of life was threatened, the Spanish had regained control, but they
had also learned tolerance and respect for the Pueblo peoples. While the relationship to the Spanish improved,
the world was still violently out of balance. Once-living Pueblos were now abandoned to
the wind. A Pueblo world that once held 50 thousand
people and a hundred pueblos was reduced to 14 thousand people, and 22 pueblos. >>The whole land is at war with the very numerous
nation of the heathen Apache Indians, who kill all the Christian Indians they encounter. No road is safe. The Apaches hurl themselves at danger like
a people who know not God, know that there is a hell. >>By the 18th century violent raids had become
all too common by other nomadic tribes, the Navajos, Utes and the fierce Comanche, who
were not only mounted on the descendants of Spanish horses, but armed with French guns. >>With the introduction of the horse it just
made it more difficult for the Pueblo Indians to secure their Pueblos from, from outside
intervention. >>It enabled the mounted Raiders to appear
and disappear very quickly and make them highly efficient as Raiders as well as warriors. The Spaniards and Pueblo peoples needed to
pull every resource at their command to protect themselves effectively. >>The need, just based on survival, for Pueblo
people, to not only defend themselves, but defend themselves very well, there grew among
the northern Pueblos a class of warriors, because of the many, many different kinds
of engagements which they were called upon, either individually or acting as part of the
Spanish militia. The Tiwas especially, and also the Tewas in
Northern New Mexico, became very well known for their fighting ability. >>The alliance between the pueblos and the
Spanish after 1692 was, in a way, an alliance of convenience, I would say. In terms of protection against the Plains
Indians, or the Indians who were roaming the, you know, the plains and this this forces
the villagers in both villages, Indian as well as a Spanish, to be, to come closer together. >>The Alliance of Pueblo Indians and Hispanic
farmers and ranchers would last into the 20th century, but its roots went far beyond the
need for defense. >>I think that alliance between the Pueblo
people and Spanish really was part of working with the land. When the Spanish came to the southwest, and
found that there was no gold here, or wealth, great riches to be had, they still had to
survive, find a way to survive, and they really had to then cooperate, or find out how the
Pueblo people were doing it. The earth remains the symbol of the place
where people connect. >>What was happening right after the revolt
was a search for common ground. That common ground was found first, primarily
through trying to establish an understanding of each other's ways, and also finally, or
secondly, through a process of coming to terms with living in this place, which is New Mexico. There was indeed a new kind of Spaniard, primarily
an individual who was looking, indeed, to make New Mexico their home. >>After the Spanish returned, they recognized
Pueblos lands through a series of land grants. This legal recognition of our lands, the center
of places of our world, would be crucial to our existence in the centuries to come. >>Under the Spanish flag we were well protected,
under the Laws of the Indies, which were Spanish policies, we were given land grants which
we still have today, cannot be touched by any government. >>But reaching an accommodation with the church
was far more difficult. The clergy and civil authorities still sought
to replace our traditional beliefs with Christianity. >>Again there was a re-assertion of Catholicism,
the pressure to convert. A number of different Pueblos attempted to
convert outwardly, and yet at the same time practice their own traditional native practices,
as they had always done. And that, of course, varied from Pueblo to
Pueblo, each Pueblo evolved and developed their own kinds of strategies in relationship
to the specific kinds of things that they were faced. >>We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, we believe in one Lord, Jesus
Christ. >>Even to this day my grandmother will recite
the Catholic prayers in Spanish. She'll say them in Spanish, like before she
goes to sleep. But yet, my grandmother will go to the Kiva
and she’ll dance and she, when she really, when she really wants to pray, she prays in
Indian. She prays in Tewa. >>One of the things that we can be thankful
for is a foresight of what our forefathers did to take our religion underground, so that
what we know of today, what has been preserved, our language, our ritual, our ceremony, our
songs, that they took all of that underground and developed a level of secrecy that still
is very much a part of our way of life, so that much of what takes place as the most
meaningful in our lives, ceremonially, is often closed to the public, is often performed
at nights. >>While the Pueblo peoples and most Hispanic
settlers depended on subsistence agriculture, there was money to be made in New Mexico through
trade, trade with the same Comanches, Apaches and Navajos whose attacks threatened the colony's
survival. Every autumn, a great trade fair was held
outside of Taos Pueblo. Human beings were one of the most important
commodities of these trade fairs. In 1776, the going rate for an Indian girl
between 12 and 20 years old was two horses and a blanket. Young men were substantially cheaper. >>The Comanches would take captive Pueblo
men and women and they used people as a sort of medium of trade with the Spanish for goods
that they wished to obtain. In many times, they would trade with Plains
tribes for the captives that the Plains tribes held. Those captives were then inducted into the
Spanish households and this really is where the He nacido, and Mestizo population began
to blossom in New Mexico during that century. >>Historically He nacidos were referred to
the tribalized Indians, Indians that were captured and ransomed by the Spaniards and
brought into New Mexico and placed in Mission communities, select mission communities throughout
the state. He nacidos are Indians that settled
into permanent communities, but they bridge two worlds, the Hispanic world and the Indian
world. >>Most Pueblos had achieved a stable relationship
with the Spanish government, the Catholic Church and their Hispanic neighbors. This stability ended in 1821 with Mexico's
independence. While the Mexican period was short, it was
marked with the loss of Pueblo lands. >>The Mexican period for all intents and purposes
was a very dire, a period of time for Pueblo people because of the change in the way that
Pueblo people are viewed and also with regard to the way in which Pueblo lands were handled. They were no longer looked upon as being special,
and as they had been with regard to the case of the Spanish colonial laws in that period
of time. They were viewed as being just the same as
any other Mexican citizen, in some ways the selling of land or the loss of land began
to really occur extensively. >>Dissatisfaction with the Mexican government
was not restricted to the Pueblo's, and in 1837 an alliance of Pueblo leaders, He nacidos
and Hispanics flamed into armed rebellion in Santa Cruz and Chimayo. The revolt was crushed. It’s He nacido leader, Jose Gonzalez, who
for one brief moment had been New Mexico's only Indian governor, was executed. But the conflict between rich and poor would
continue, and would become even more severe after the Americans invaded New Mexico in
1846. >>Well, I'm very lucky to have a grandmother
who listened to many of the stories of her grandparents and her great-grandparents. One time when I was a little girl I went into
her bedroom and I saw a saint and it's, it's always the saint that I thought was the ugliest
because it was well, you know, when you're a child, it was kind of burned-out looking,
and it, you can't really see the face and can't see the eyes but you, it's a figure
of a saint and, and I asked my Grandma, I said, how come this saint looks so ugly? How come you keep it, and you have all these
other saints? And, she told me that that was the Saint that
was thrown out of the church during the rebellion of 1847. >>The rebellion of 1847 that took place here
at Taos Pueblo was a result of our Taos Pueblo people here having very strong feelings regarding
the imposition of a different way of life, again, here in this part of the country. Our Taos Pueblo leadership here took a very
serious stand about the takeover by the United States government of this area. >>The last armed struggle of the Pueblo peoples
began in January 1847, under the leadership of Tomas Romero from Taos Pueblo. At dawn a group of Pueblo men, Hispanics and
He nacidos surrounded the house of the American governor. Instead of fleeing with his family, the governor
stayed, only to be killed and scalped by the angry crowd. Five more Americans in Taos died that day
and as the news spread, so did the rebellion, to Arroyo Hondo, Mora, and other parts of
New Mexico. Armed with artillery and modern guns the US
Army set off from Santa Fe to answer this challenge to American Authority. In battles at La Canada & Embudo, a poorly
armed group of Pueblo men and Hispanic farmers was easily defeated, and forced to flee back
to Taos and the fortified Pueblo which had protected them so many times from Comanche
raids. The Americans were not intimidated by the
thick adobe walls, they surrounded the Pueblo and deployed their artillery and began to
reduce the village to rubble. >>Many of the women and the children here
took refuge within the interior of the end of the large pueblo structures. The tunnels were dug from one room to another
in order to get to the, the deeper part of the village, as the soldiers stormed the walls
of the village. >>On the second day the defenders gave up
and sent the women and children to the church, but any hopes of sanctuary were quickly dispelled
by cannon fire. >>And so when the soldiers came in, there
was a lot of fighting that occurred. Fighting broke out and somebody set the church
on fire. They started throwing the saints out because
they didn't want the saints to burn, and one of my aunts, or one of my other uncle's caught
that saint and that's how we have that saint. >>Over a hundred fifty people died and the
Taos revolt ended. The American conquest of New Mexico was complete. >>The religious leaders were taken to Santa
Fe under the pretense of, of negotiations and talks with the representatives of the
United States government. Our people never saw these religious leaders
again. These men were all hung by the neck until
death in Santa Fe. (Music) >>The American conquest of New Mexico did
have one benefit, a respite from violent raids by nomadic tribes which allowed the Pueblo
population to increase once again after reaching its lowest level in history in 1850. 7,000 survivors in a world that once contained
50,000 people. Unfortunately the practice of Indian slavery
was accepted and continued by the Americans, even after the Civil War and the freeing of
the slaves. (Music) >>American Progress finally made an impact
on New Mexico. Mining towns popped up overnight, forests
were cut down to build houses, and Jemez Pueblo lost its mountains. The Transcontinental railroads linked the
nation and cut Pueblos in half. >>As I go up that, you know, boarding house
to ride horses, I used to herd horses in college, and ride along the railroad. I used to go ride my horse to see passengers,
passengers couldn't come. I used to gallop over there with my horse
ready to go right up alongside them, right alongside the railroad then, when people start
waving at me, and I have long hair, and everything I wore was handmade, and I have always carried
bow and arrow on my back to ride along the side of the railroad. And they say, “look at that little Indian,”
I guess they say(chuckles). >>The influx of people following upon the
railroad, and even before, also serve to reduce the land base the Pueblo peoples have been
accustomed to using. A lot of Pueblos of which had traditionally
been left alone to graze their horses and cattle, their stock, on certain areas, lost
those areas to the aggressive expansionist activities and policies of new ranchers. >>Along the Rio Grande the new Anglo American
immigrants pushed Hispanic farmers off their lands. U.S. courts did accept the old Spanish land
grants to the Pueblos and to their Hispanic neighbors. All that was required was a simple survey
and a review of the grant, a simple procedure that was used to defraud Pueblo people and
Hispanics out of hundreds of thousands of acres. >>The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo theoretically
ended the Mexican-American War and as provisions of the treaty, the rights of the Pueblo people
were to be protected and respected just as they had been under the government of Mexico. The Pueblos were legal citizens but there
were some disadvantages because we were not recognized as American Indians under the 1834
trade and intercourse act. This was an act which was proposed for other
Indian tribes to protect them against land speculators and traders. >>The court encouraged the Non-Indians to,
to settle into the, within the exterior boundaries of the Indian Pueblos. In our case up here, there were something
like three thousand non-Indians who squattered on Indian land and they, they really refused
to give up and to go out, off the reservation even if they were asked. >>The government not only stood by as our
lands were taken, but actively joined in the theft. In 1906, President Roosevelt created the Carson
National Forest. It's heart was the Taos Pueblo sacred Blue
Lake. >>Our people belong to mother earth just,
like the trees, the living things, the water, the mountains, everything is a part of Mother
Earth. Blue Lake is a part of the land that our people
have used and occupied for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is a link to our origin, a link to our
past. (Music) >>At the first snow, one winter in 1893, a
white man came and took all of us on a train to a new kind of village called Carlisle Indian
School, and I stayed there seven years. They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized. I remember that word, it means “be like
the white man”. It was a warm summer evening when I got off
the train at Taos station. The first Indian I met, I ask him to run out
to the Pueblo and tell my family I was home. The Indian couldn't speak English and I had
forgotten my Pueblo language. All this time, I was a white man. I wore white man's clothes, and kept my hair
cut. I was not very happy. >>The federal government decided that maybe
they did have some responsibility for educating Indians to become Americans, so they built
these boarding schools removed, you know, for the most part, from reservations and brought
children there, severed from their parents and to get him away from their own cultural
influences and make them into little Americans. >>In those experiments, especially in the
1880s, when the Dawes Act said we will de-tribalize Indians, and I think Theodore Roosevelt put
it well he said the Dawes Act was like a mighty machine, it pulverized family and culture. The manifest destiny of the nation has moved
up to and sometimes over or through Indian people. >>Like the Spanish before them, the American
conquerors decided that Pueblos could only progress if our religion was eradicated. A new wave of missionaries was unleashed,
only this time, they were Protestants. And rather than missions, they built schools
to teach our children how to speak English and reject the ways of their mothers and fathers
as pagan, beastial, and half-animal. >>Well, the Americans began to settle in with
their own mission of civilizing Indians and making them good little Christians. So by 1860’s, they decided to bring the
missionaries who were apparently in competition with each other, different kinds of denominations,
in competition with each other to see, to get their own territory of Indians to civilize
and Christianize. >>Oh my father sang, you know, he was singing
all the time, and so he said one day, one day there was these young, young women missionaries
coming with a little box he said and it was a Victrola. And so, my mother went to the door and that
she said “I'm sorry but we're Catholics” and so that my father said let them come in. Let them come in. They have a music box. I like to hear music. He says, let ‘em come in. We're not gonna be contaminated. If we didn't know any better, we might, you
know we, we might you know, turn. And so, then she let him in and so that they
started playing that little music and of course I said, he said, “I liked it.” I sat listening and listening to uh, to the
music and they were talking to us about, about, you know, God and, and of course they, they
don't understand that we know God more than they do (chuckles). >>At the beginning of the twentieth century
our lands, our religion, and even our children were all under attack. The modern world with all its wonders and
problems began to invade once isolated Pueblos. The myth of the vanishing American Indian
was created. It was only a matter of time, they said, before
native cultures were swept away by the march of progress. >>The modern world had arrived at our doorsteps,
in trains, cars and tourist buses. As anthropologists, photographers, and visitors
flocked to see our quaint customs before they disappeared. But our people refused to vanish, because
they knew the beauty of the Pueblo way of life. >>Generosity, unselfishness is one of the
greatest values that our Indian people taught, and especially in my family, because my mother
and father always say never refuse a stranger never refuse a person when they come to the
house. Those are the things that we had before Columbus
came, before education was put upon us and those are the things that I call surviving
Columbus. >>Some of the best moments of my childhood
were when I knew that feast day was coming, and all this activity would be going on and
I would of course have to be a part of helping to make the bread and, and sweeping the yard
and sweeping the plaza. I helped to plaster, bring the mud. But when the day finally came, I would get
this wonderful sensation of walking through the crowds, hearing the sound, hearing the
beat of the drum. >>Whether we wanted it or not, the U.S. government
decided that our culture, our heritage, would have to be destroyed before we could progress. More boarding schools were built so that all
children would be forced to learn the white man's ways and forget those of their parents. >>We went to school at Albuquerque Indian
School or Santa Fe Indian School, some went to Haskell and other places. Many of us were taken away from home during
the time when our culture was at its strongest peak. Many of the elders were still living and I
feel that by being away from home, we lost out on many of the teachings that our elders
would pass on to the people during the winter time. >>Yes there were some negative things happening
in the Indian schools because a lot of them were not allowed to talk the Indian language,
and punished very severely for speaking them if they were caught speaking the language. >>I went to the day school here in San Juan
and then from fifth grade we get sent to the boarding school in Santa Fe. Then I entered Santa Fe boarding school. I didn't like that at all. Night time is when it was lonely, when you
go to bed, you have nice clean sheets waiting for you, a nice bed. But there's no grandfather there's no grandma
there to sit on their lap and listen to the stories. (Music) >>Columbus goes back to Europe and claims
that he found a new world. What right did Columbus have to make such
a claim? Or what proofs did he have that it was a new
world that he found? This world was not lost. Our principle needs today are that you eject
all Non-Indian trespassers of our lands instead of reimbursing the Indian for what land a
Non-Indian holds, why not reimburse a Non-Indian trespasser and make him get off. He knows that he is holding land illegally,
only you know that he won't vote for you if you don't take us into submission. >>The U.S. government had taken more than
60 years to realize that we were Native Americans, and entitled to the protection of our lands
and water rights. It would however, ignite a legal storm. >>Another threat that was faced by the Pueblo
people came in the 1920s in the form of the Birtham Bill. What it proposed to do, basically, was to
legalize the rights of squatters on Pueblo land. It would leave squatters both Hispanic and
Anglo right where they were by legalizing their rights to the lands they were living
on. If it had been uncontested and gone on through
the Congress and been signed into law, it would have probably meant the end of Pueblo
culture. >>The failure of Protestant missionaries to
eliminate native religions, led to yet another assault on pueblos life, the religious crimes
code. In direct violation of the Constitution, the
U.S. government made our religion illegal. >>Until the old customs and Indian practices
are broken up among these people, we cannot hope for a great amount of progress. The secret dance is perhaps one of the greatest
evils, what goes on I will not attempt to say, but I firmly believe that it is a little
less than a ribald system of debauchery. >>Our most fundamental right is threatened
and it's actually being nullified. Our religion is sacred and is more important
to us than anything else in our life. The religious beliefs and ceremonies and forms
of prayer of each of our pueblos are as old as the world and they are holy. We Pueblo Indians have not consented to abandon
our religion. >>The government was tempering with something
very deep and sincere in the minds of the Pueblo people, because the religion ceremonies
and dances are at the heart of who we are, you know, and if you start messing with that
people are going to take care of themselves and protect themselves. So very often what happens is you know that
the intent is, is one thing, but the result is just the opposite because it just forces
people to, to clam up even more to guard themselves even further than ever before. >>The leadership of the All-Indian Pueblo
Council and widespread public support defeated these threats, and by the 1930s the policy
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under John Collier had changed. For the first time, the BIA admitted that
it was good and honorable to be an Acoma, a Zuni, a Hopi. But at the same time, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs tried to impose its political system and federal rules and regulations on our way
of life. >>Out here at Laguna, there was a time that
they recall when their sheep had to be driven into pits and slaughtered because of the drought
that occurred but in their own minds they were able to manage that drought by rotation
of the Sheep to various pasture lands, but somebody else came in imposed certain quotas
and limitations on grazing capacity that, that were external, but yet they had to live
with them so that was a great period a great time of devastation. >>My grandfather used to always talk about
the survival living of Indian people then he would always say that, it's, there's no
question that we as Indian people are going to survive. But the more important question that we should
be asking ourselves is how? And that, our answer to that how, is the extent
to which we continue to maintain the rights and powers of a sovereign entity. (Music) >>Like other Native Americans, the Pueblo
peoples defended the United States in its Wars. At home, women and children pitched in to
support the boys in the front and the war effort. >>On Bataan, I was with the 31st infantry
regiment. We were ambushed. Machine guns started firing all around us
and we hit the ground. By the time I looked up there were Japanese
guards all around us with their rifles pointed at us and then they walked us. We walked the group I was with, for three
days. We walked and walked and walked and walked. >>I came back, we couldn't vote and then I
asked myself “Why did we go? Why did they accept so many Indians, drafted
you might say, to be in the Armed Forces when there's still wars, when we are still wars
of the government?” >>We had hoped that World War II would end
all possibilities of other wars, but it didn't come out that way and I thought that if any
of our boys had to go to other wars, they should have the right to vote for the people
who sent him out there. >>We had to sue the state of New Mexico before
we got the right to vote in 1948, but the changes set in motion by World War II would
have an even more profound impact on the Pueblo world. The Pueblo people paid an additional price
to defend the country. Lands from San Ildefonso Pueblo were taken
to create Los Alamos National Laboratory, the top-secret research center which developed
the atomic bomb. Uranium was discovered at Laguna Pueblo and
bulldozers, earthmovers and dynamite created a vast pit mine. >>When the Armed Forces veterans came back
return home, in the absence of farming, people began to work outside of the Pueblos. Los Alamos was established as a wartime project
the Manhattan Project so at least for the northern Pueblos, a large number of Pueblo
people began to work at Los Alamos, both men and women. >>Many had sold their livestock during the
uranium boom because they I guess couldn’t handle livestock and a full-time job. So now, often I hear “I wish I hadn't sold
my livestock I envy you because you still have livestock”. But that was another thing that the old-timers
used to tell us. “Don't ever sell your livestock because
it's food on your table and clothes on your back when the going gets tough”. >>In the 1950’s, the U.S. government attempted
to terminate its treaty responsibilities for all tribal people, and turn administration
over to the states. At the same time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
began a program to relocate Indians to urban centers across the country. >>I have an uncle who was part of that relocation
program, who has lived in Oakland for over 40 years. They're feeling at the time was that they
were going to do the best they could for their children, but one of the devastating outcomes
of that is the offspring has rejected their parents and are very bitter towards their
parents because they never gave them an opportunity to learn about Cochiti, never having an opportunity
to learn the language. >>I think that until the 1970s not only Indian
policy by the federal government, but in a way the reality of making a living or finding
a way to stay in the Pueblo was very difficult. Policy said go away in 1950 it was we take
you away with the relocation and termination policy. >>The U.S. government's efforts to destroy
native cultures finally ended in the 1970s, with the recognition that we were capable
of determining our own destinies. The return of Taos’s Blue Lake marked the
first time the U.S. government actually gave land back to a native people rather than just
providing compensation. This victory capped a 60 year long struggle
by a community determined to maintain its sacred relationship to the land. >>It wasn't until the 1970s that Blue Lake
was finally given back to the Taos Indians. It was a time of celebration. I remember seeing my grandmother crying and
my grandfather crying in the house it was at night when we heard the story and heard
the news and they were crying and they said we never have to worry about people desecrating
our area, and I remember my older brother and I, David we were flashing the lights off
and on on the porch light because we were so happy. >>Blue Lake, a symbol of perseverance because
indeed this was a very strong symbol of a people enduring great hardships, great difficulties,
and persevering in what they wanted done in the way of justice for our people. Justice for Indian people. (Music) >>While the sacred Blue Lake was returned,
other sacred areas were taken. The Acoma people have come to worship in the
starkly beautiful lava flow of the malpais since our Pueblo was built over a thousand
years ago. Yet in 1987, these sacred places were made
part of a national park and exposed to the influx of tourists. >>Land is critical to the survival of the
Pueblo people in this day and age because, as elders have put it, unless we can bequeath
to the children a place on which they may plant their feet as well as their crops of
whatever they want to plant, then the community will dissolve, then they'll scatter like leaves
in the autumn. For centuries our ancestors have successfully
defended our culture, religion and lands against the attacks of the Spanish, Mexican, and American
governments. But today we face perhaps our greatest challenge:
how to maintain our existence as Pueblo people in a rapidly changing world replete with alcohol,
drugs, Aids, urban encroachment, and television. At the same time, the traditional roles of
Pueblo women are changing, as they too enter the workforce. >>When I was growing up as a child I remember
that the role of a woman being in a home, being the nurturer, taking care of the family. But as time changes I see women getting more
involved in the working field, getting education and because of socioeconomics, we have more
single parents that need to get out and work now, we have more women working in the Pueblos
here. >>The role of the women has changed drastically
with time, with even the education that women have gotten, and the career that they want,
and then to try to be a part of Indian life it's a very difficult role to have. >>It's extremely critical that Indian women
hold on to and maintain our lives that involves the traditional aspect of being Indian, because
if we don't then we're going to lose it completely, because the woman is the most important part
of the home when it comes to the teaching of children, and if we're going to have our
children continue this way of life, then it's up to us as mothers and teachers to instill
all of that in our children. >>At the same time, traditional family roles
are changing. Our culture is also being threatened by an
even more severe problem, the loss of our native languages. >>Language has been lost by the people and
when that happens we have to worry and wonder about how long our traditional dances, our
songs and our prayers will continue to survive. >>But qualities that help the Pueblo peoples
to survive with their culture up till today is first religion, their native religion. And in order to have their native religion,
they have to have a language. So these are the two outstanding qualities
that help the Pueblos to survive, religion and language. You need one to operate the other. >>It's very hard to be from a community where
language is so important, where custom tradition are so important and not be a part of it,
not to have grown up in it, to not know the language that is really difficult. I talked to my mother about this, and I would
ask her about language I would I would ask her what are they saying when they say those
when they pray and she would try to explain it to me and then she would say I don't know
the words. She said that's, I know what they mean, but
I can't explain it in English, and she said I don't even think I could explain it in my
own language because those are words that are so special, that they feel awkward in
my mouth. (Talking in Native language)
>>That’s good, that’s real good. Okay now that you know that prayer you have
to go every morning and throw corn meal okay? >>I think they can learn, I think they can
learn how to pray the right way in Indian and I want them to if they can. >>It actually feels good, because I feel that
I'm learning it and just Comes to you. >>We're Sandia Pueblo Indians and if we don't
grow up speaking it, it's like, it's our responsibility to learn. >>I think for a long time there's been this
expressed fear by tribal elders that somehow we were losing something. That as they were pushing their children to
get educated, they were at the same time sacrificing their own tradition, their language, their
culture. >>What am I asking you? What am I asking you to do? Anybody? >> I know it would be very sad for me if they
do lose the culture but I still want for them to carry it on and that's one of the reasons
why I try to reinforce this in the classroom if they can't get it at home they surely can
get it here at school. >>If we just maintain to carry our language,
carry our cultural practices, that we still can survive the next 500 years. That we still can go beyond that, to carry
our identity, but it's entirely really up to us. Nobody has a part to come and destroy our
culture and do away our language. And if we only carry this idea, not backing
off, not giving up life, not shunning anything. We still can survive in time to come because
we are unique people all the way through history and we still have to look forward to carry
this. >>And so we find ourselves on the eve of the
con-centennial faced with some of the greatest challenges that Indian people have ever faced
over the last 450 years, and that is how we survive into the 21st century. (Music) >>It makes me very proud to have the heritage
that I do have, because I feel that, that my people were opposed to Spanish colonization
later on, the U.S. intrusion makes me very proud that my people think that their culture
and their traditions are so important. I don't consider myself a citizen of the United
States, I don't consider myself a citizen of New Mexico, I am a Taos Indian and that's
what I am. That's my nationality, if we were to call
it a nationality and I'm very proud of my history of resistance, very proud about the
history of resistance. >>My hope for Pueblo people is that we're
gonna be here in a thousand years, still very clear and very strong on who we are and why
we are. It’s mainly that, that the celebration of
humanity would still be very much part of our prayers. >>There is hope. It is in what past generations of our people
have always said: as long as we keep believing in and living by the ways of our people, we
will continue. As long as the story of our struggles which
is like the story of all people who deeply love and respect themselves and their culture,
community, and land is told we the people will continue. >>Even after 450 years, the encounter of the
Pueblo peoples with white man's culture continues. What will be our children's future is unknown. Still, we have a genius of enduring, of surviving
the descendants of Columbus. (Music) >>Funding for this program has been provided
by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the financial support of viewers like
you. Additional funding has been provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Native American public broadcasting consortium. This is PBS.
