American Spirits #38 - The Southwest

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:04]second attempt at American Spirits, episode 38, wherein we begin our treatment of the southwest of these beautiful United States, the civilizational predecessors that we found here and the uh interactions between the peoples there and our own peoples. It is a fascinating story that we will unwind at some length. And to help me do so, first off, as always, Mr. George Bagby. How are you doing this evening, sir?

[00:00:30]>> I'm doing well. I'm happy to be with you. I've got a sure internet connection this time. So, >> for those >> those who were here last week who will remember we had some connection issues, but those appear to have been banished.

[00:00:45]So, hopefully we will proceed smoothly this time. And also joining us is a subject matter expert in the Southwest, none other than Mr. Thomas Wayne Riley of the American Southwest podcast. How are you doing, Mr. Riley.

[00:00:59]>> Very good. I'm glad to be here. Thank you all.

[00:01:01]>> And we are delighted to have you here.

[00:01:04]All right. Uh well, why don't we uh begin at the beginning? Mr. Magne, you uh had some things to say about the civilizations uh pre-Colombia and postcolia Columbus.

[00:01:17]>> Indeed. So, I I thought it'd be helpful uh starting off with the Southwest as we are today uh to contrast civilization among pre-Colombian Americans. So, at the time of European contact, we have large empires in Central and South America. The most famous being the Aztecs, the Mayans, and and the Incans down in South America. Um, it's really important to draw a contrast uh between what those civilizations were capable of and what they represented and the North American natives. Basically, everyone north of Mexico. So, the Aztecs are what the anthropologists would term a bronze age civilization, which is a reference to their technology.

[00:02:14]everyone north of them with with the exception of say the PBLO Indians in the southwest an important exception because that's in our area they are not working with stone um like building things out of stone [laughter] they uh only have stone tools uh many of them um depending on their geography uh aren't even working with stone tools. Um they have no written languages. The Aztecs in contrast do though it is a very difficult language to work with. Um they have a kind of a primitive pictographic script in the Aztec Empire. But they can communicate information that way. um their numerology is far more complicated yet more efficient in communicating information. And so the Aztecs famously have a an astronomical record. Um they have complex calendars.

[00:03:25]Uh they do mathematical calculations. Uh the Aztecs build cities out of stone. uh the famous stone temples down in uh Central America being an example. The Aztecs also have things like fermentation technology. They're making mild alcoholic beverages uh like uh the modern uh Mexican drink p. Uh that's that's something the Aztecs had. Um guacamole is even an Aztec dish. It's a of pre-Colombian origins.

[00:04:01]um and they have uh complex irrigation for their agriculture and such. Most Native Americans in North America, everything north of Mexico has no such technology. Um the exception being the PBLO Indians in the Rio Grand Valley and some other places that have irrigation systems and they have a permanent kind of agricultural technology.

[00:04:30]>> An example of Aztec sophistication I want to say that their counting system was base 20 was it not?

[00:04:39]>> Um I can't I can't uh give any information about that. Do you have anything on that, Riley?

[00:04:45]>> I do not actually. I don't know too much about the Aztecs. I did my archaeological dig in Bise because I was obsessed with the Maya >> before switching to uh southwestern archaeology when I graduated.

[00:04:58]Uh that's that was I don't know anything about the 20 system. That'd be interesting to learn though. But I do know there there are a couple they're finding some vessels with possible alcohol in them on the Mississippian frontier with the Mississippian culture, but it would have been very uh just um fermented, not like obviously distilled, but just fermented corn stuff. Southwest no doubt did, but only the elites. And chocolate too was even has even been found in Louisiana maybe and Florida and as high up as I think Cahokia may have had chocolate from central as well.

[00:05:43]>> Well that that's an important point. Um there are older civilizations in pre-Colombian America that were extinct at the time of European encounter. And you mentioned the Mississippian culture. These are uh the mound building civilizations who uh in in uh the archaeological record they have permanent agriculture. They can live in one place for many generations.

[00:06:15]Most most of the Native Americans did not have the ability to do that with the exception again of the PBLO Indians. The PBLO Indians are a major uh exception for us and we're going to be talking more about them, much more sophisticated uh Native American civilization at the time of European colonization.

[00:06:38]And uh they're still evident in places like New Mexico in particular. um places like um Taos, New Mexico, which has this uh great big apartment building uh made of adobe um that's been inhabited for I want to say over a thousand years. Uh do we have on that?

[00:07:03]>> They may have been there. Um so the Anastasia everyone knows about they left in the late 1200s, 1280. They went down south to a place called Pakime just across the border into Mexico.

[00:07:17]Uh they were the leaders of the people before the PBloans, the modern PBloans and I believe the Mesaverians and the Anoszi were their central capital was Choco Canyon in New Mexico and the Mesa Verians up in southern Colorado. They were kind of at odds and eventually they had a a civil war. Not like massive, you know, killing, but they had a civil war. The Mesa Veritans won, the Anosazi left and the Mesa Varians took the technology, I should say, the Anosazi went back down south where they came from the at least the elite and the Mesaarians took the technology and moved to the Rio Grand where they already had Ken folk and trading connections.

[00:08:01]And I think Tal is one of those that was there before the Mesa Verarians and the Chocoins left. And so they may be I would guess around a thousand but definitely around 1280 to I mean all of the Rio Grand PBLO in New Mexico took off because the entire four corner area was abandoned by the people that were living there essentially and the Atabaskcans moved in. could have they could have left also because the Aopaskins moved in. But yeah, >> and there are lots of uh there's lots of speculation among the anthropologists.

[00:08:40]The anthropologists work with um archaeology obviously that's their hard evidence, but then they have to theorize to explain the archaeology.

[00:08:51]And we we have a lot of plausible theories that the mound builders of the southeast and the Ohio Valley and uh the Gulf Coast and places like that were in connection with Central American higher civilization. One of the most >> 100%.

[00:09:13]>> Yes, >> without a doubt. I think it's actually could have been the Toltech. It doesn't matter who it was, but there was a civilization in Central America after the Maya, before the Aztecs that went from Tulum, Chichinita to the Mexican Valley to the American Southwest and the Mississippians and the Gulf.

[00:09:34]>> Now, we we uh have this theory and and we've got a lot of good evidence for it.

[00:09:41]things like uh chocolate presence in the mound building civilizations, the fermentation technology which was completely lost by the successive nations that took the the region after the mound builders, but also really compelling things like uh metal um metal artifacts which they themselves may not have made. I don't I don't know if we can conclude that because of the presence of these metal artifacts that they had to get them by trade. It's possible they made them themselves. Um, but these are like small pieces of jewelry that we find in the mound building civilizations. We also find things like bird feathers from Central America.

[00:10:34]And that's one of our >> better >> Go ahead. the the macaw bird.

[00:10:41]>> You could not uh hatch them. They tried hundreds or maybe thousands of time here in the southwest. You had to so a person had to have a little basket on their backs because there's pictures of it.

[00:10:53]Not pictures, there's drawings of it.

[00:10:55]Had a little basket on their back with a little chicks in it. They had to feed them by mouth and carry them from uh where they're from. Veraracruz or or Tabas, I don't remember where. On the on the eastern coast of Mexico. They had to carry them all the way up to the southwest. And >> they did this over land.

[00:11:14]>> Over land. Yep.

[00:11:15]>> Oh wow.

[00:11:16]>> Yeah.

[00:11:17]>> I was about to ask what kind of veles they were using to conduct this trade, but that's amazing.

[00:11:21]>> Is by foot. I I mean the people of the Americas were the best walkers and runners on the planet. We all developed agriculture out in the in in Europe and the Asians as well. But the people I don't know how that affected their diet, but the people and beast of burden. The Americans, well, not Americans, but the people who were here before us did not have beast of burden. They did everything by foot. I mean, some of the best runners in the world are still the Tara Humara. And uh everyone walked. I used to think the the continent and the continents in the western hemisphere were kind of isolated. I no longer believe that. I believe there were probably people that walked across the Garry or Darian Gap from Illinois because they just they they walked and they traded and there's southwestern turquoise all over the Western Hemisphere. I mean, these people got around and they did have boats, too, but they got around.

[00:12:22]Now, this is a a good opportunity to ask a theoretical question. Um, it's a question that I'm particularly interested in and I I entertain this idea from time to time. Uh we have the decline of the moundbuilding civilization and we we also have the decline of the cliff dwelling civilizations like the Anastasi and the decline of the Hohokum peoples in what is now Arizona, the builders of Casa Grande, which is a very interesting ruin um in Arizona. It's Koolage, Arizona, I think is where you find it.

[00:13:04]>> Yeah. My my friend's parents live across the street from it. They can see it from their house.

[00:13:08]>> Wow.

[00:13:09]>> Yeah. I've been there many times. And there were hundreds of Kasa Grandes around the Phoenix basin.

[00:13:16]So we we have these people who are building monumental architecture like Kasa Grande, Mesa Verde, uh Choco Canyon, places like that and they disappear. Um, we have the mound building civilizations, the builders of Cahokia, the builders of the Serpent Mound in Ohio, uh, the builders of a great many interesting like settlements around mounds which were permanent places of dwelling. And they are displaced by people who are hunter gatherers. They're living at a lower level. They no longer have the trade routes spanning thousands of miles. um they have no information about the mound building civilizations or the uh you know the large uh city structures that you see in the southwest. They're confused by them. Um does this res represent a massive civilizational decline over a region? I believe it was a because I believe the the hocom, the puebloans and the Mississippians all the ho come not at first but eventually they all shared an elite class that was from Central America.

[00:14:35]After hundreds of years, possibly 600 years, this ruling class um lost favor with the people they ruled. And it kind of happened at the same time as a not quite hemispherewide drought, but a pretty severe drought.

[00:14:56]And it was a successive decades of a couple years of drought and then a couple of years of like we're just getting by and then more drought. And that hadn't happened since the altrmal some 6,000 years ago that dried up all the lakes in the far west. And so these people began to rule as they lost control within more and more iron fist, which is why an unfortunate amount of skeletons in the four corners area that are on Aszi have been cannibalized. I think up to eight or 12% I forget the number >> have been cannibalized not for sustenance but for punishment as a as a way to say you have not paid your taxes corn or you have committed witchcraft by not following the state religion whatever it was they went to these pblo the choan central authority the anazi sent thugs or warriors out to these pblo they killed them ate them shat them out in their kas, their ceremonial centers, their living rooms almost, and then burned everything down. And so we have found those fossilized copper lights.

[00:16:06]And that similar thing happened in Cahokia. It was a massive fire in the 1280s, which is the same time the Anastasia had some trouble. Uh in Cahokia, all of the elite buildings we now know were burned at once. So the elite were kicked out. You guys are done. we are we're tired of your rule. And I think that happened once it happened in Cahoki, it spread down the Mississippi, down the various rivers to even as far south as northern Florida. there was a um above the equator there was a hemispherewide rejection of the elite that had been there since around 800 after the Maya after whatever Teayotoon Khan was because we don't know who built that but after Teotail fell and in the Maya this is before the Aztecs Toltks were in there but people argue it isn't the Toltech but it doesn't matter who it was there was a group of people in Central America who sent elite north to go colonize and mix with the local populace and make a new ruling structure. And after 600 years or so, 500 for whatever it was, the people that were native to the area decided they'd had enough. And they expelled them, killed them, burned most a lot of burning. A lot of burning.

[00:17:30]>> So what takes their place then? Is is this when we see the dominance of the hunter gatherer mode? It's after the burning of Cahokia, the [clears throat] abandonment of Mesa Verde, things of that nature.

[00:17:47]So the in the southwest, a lot of the elite that were opposed to the Anastasia, like the Mesa Verarians, they had the knowledge. So they continue to grow uh crops up until today. still they have you know you thankfully Albuquerque cannot grow uh in size beyond its borders because it's surrounded by um pblo and reservation I guess they're not reservations they're pbllo and those people still have massive farms and so they they kept the knowledge and they kept some beliefs I mean they still did human sacrifice here in the southwest they just didn't eat them anymore although that the hopey did but the hopy are actually On a sausage that stayed, but the PBloans are different than the Hopi. In Cahokia, they still built mounds up until the Europeans came and they still grew I mean even the oh shoot the the Moheakans, you know, the even in the Northeast, they grew southwestern corn in the Northeast.

[00:18:52]So I mean they still had so ultimately they rejected everything about a centralized government. There's a great book I forgot the name of shoot the history of everything or something I forget it but it talks about this a little bit and a lot of these people so thor because the French recorded this.

[00:19:10]That's how we know it. The the early French fur trappers and stuff that came down from what we call Canada down. They recorded these elites that learn had learned French. They recorded their oral histories and they're like, "Oh, no. We had a a great civil war years ago and we reject all centralized authority. So, we're not going back to that. We're just we have adopted our culture to not have rulers like that. We still have chiefs and whatnot and but we are not doing the centralized state anymore." Even if that means we give up agriculture on a massive scale because that's all the state was doing was just agriculture and war fighting on a massive scale because that was the only two things those civilizations gave the people is everyone gives taxes and in bad years we redistribute some corn. Although that didn't happen as much towards the end which is why again they all rebailed.

[00:20:08]There are definitely parallels here between ancient Sumeriia and ancient Egypt and they're all building step pyramids which is very interesting.

[00:20:23]But we we move on to the the entry of the new elites. So famously, Cortez conquers the Aztecs from 1519 to 1521.

[00:20:38]He does this with only a few hundred men. One of the reasons is because he finds disaffected native elites who are willing to fight at his side. So those are the uh the long-term foes of the Aztecs. They're being prayed on by the Aztecs. They're being rounded up and enslaved and sacrificed by them in large numbers and they're done with the Aztecs and that's one of the reasons they fight alongside Cortez and they find a role in the new regime. Um, this is uniquely different than the area that we are focusing on the southwest because there is a large population there and there are major civilizational stakes there.

[00:21:21]Um, and that's one of the reasons why Mexico has a different ethnic composition than does America. The native population element in North America today is extremely small. It is maybe 1% if that much. Um, it's higher, uh, according to the demographers, it's likely higher than it's ever been in, uh, known history today. Um, but we also have a lot of incentives to claim that heritage today. So, it's been inflated.

[00:21:56]But this is an interesting contrast as well. Um, again making an exception to the hoopies and other PBLO dwellers in in mostly New Mexico. Um, in most of North America, the mode of life is hunter gatherer. They are not living in one place for more than one growing season. They are planting um in many areas in North America, but it's not a sustainable practice. So, they have to keep moving along and farm new land. Um they are gathering uh gathering edible food, hunting for food. Um often suffering from famine. Um and they have the tribal system of government. So they've rejected a central organization of government which you still see in Central America at the time of European conquest. But they uh have adapt adapted to a tribal mode of government where the chief authority is a tribal lord who is the head of a community or band of somewhere between one and 200 individuals. Um more recently we've associated that number with Dunbar's number in fact >> uh which is kind of an interesting connection in modern social research to anthropology.

[00:23:28]It does correspond with the number of people that the chief could personally interact with and this makes uh estimating the numbers in North America very difficult. At the time of European conquest uh the anthropologists are widely various of just how how many people there might have been in North America but given that most of them are hunter gatherers.

[00:23:56]Many of them, the majority of these tribes require a very large amount of wild land to forage and hunt off of.

[00:24:06]Um, and according to some uh anthropologists, this may have amounted to something like a 100 square miles per individual.

[00:24:16]>> Uh, which leads to >> Thomas Jefferson will be jealous.

[00:24:21]>> Yeah. Um th this is a really extraordinary amount of empty land. Um so a conservative estimate for the population of North America at the time of European discovery is in the tens of thousands for the whole of the area north of Mexico. And that would include the PBLO which actually have much more advanced agriculture and irrigation. The PBLO Indians because of their environment, because there is very little arable land in New Mexico, they had to have a technology that enabled them to replant the same area year after year. There simply weren't any other areas to plant in.

[00:25:08]And they also needed irrigation technology and such even to survive in that measure of space. And so they had a more advanced agricultural technology and a more sophisticated social structure. But with no most of North America that was not the case.

[00:25:25]>> Yeah. The new New Mexican PBLON had the three sisters which allowed each plant to thrive off each other and that would be corn, squash, and beans.

[00:25:39]>> Indeed. And that was a that was a common sort of tactic even among the southeastern Indians but >> which they got from the southwest.

[00:25:52]>> Yes, they got it from the southwest. It was a survival evidently.

[00:25:58]So uh we see the the uh early uh movement and exploration people like Hernando Dodto and Cabza Devaka who explores in uh Texas and northern Mexico. Um we see >> tell that story real quick.

[00:26:18]>> Yeah, I'd love to hear you do that.

[00:26:21]So, Cababesa Devaka, he was part of a a group of gentlemen who they left. Oh, they went to Florida and then they went to Cuba and then they were they got shipwrecked maybe on their way to Cuba.

[00:26:32]I forget now. And they landed on near Galveastston and they were hosed. I mean, they were starving. Their boat was wrecked. They tried to build new boats to sail back, but I mean, they all just got pushed back by the surf. So they were found by the Karnawa Indians who Austin and his 300 had problems with uh they were cannibalistic actually and the Kankawa Indians found Kabasa Devaka and his slave or not maybe it wasn't his slave but the black Moore uh Steven Yeah. and a whole bunch of other Spaniards and they nursed them back to health. But then they saw the Spaniards, oh do something, kill a an animal. I don't know. They saw the Spaniards do something and they just wiped him out and they enslaved Cabesa Devaka and Esteban, not Steven. Well, it is Steven, but Esteban the Moore uh and a couple other gentlemen. They enslaved.

[00:27:36]But Cabza Devaka and uh Estebon and these other guys kind of got traded from tribe to tribe. first as slaves and then as like commod like in um whatever you call like an interesting like an intriguing person and then eventually they became healers and holy men who had this weird language and they could heal the sick by praying to Christ or praying to to heavenly father through Christ to heal the sick and it was working although unfortunately he left a trail of disease death behind him he didn't know he was going to do but he was He was uh marched from the Gulf Coast all the way almost to New Mexico, probably a little bit into and he heard tale of these seven cities of Siola, these golden cities over there. It was just the PBLO who were just caked in bright mud. But he heard of like these cities that were incredible. After oh, I hate being a history podcaster. I'm forgetting, but it was like five or seven years or something ridiculous. He gets back down all the way to Mexico City and he tells this story and immediately this story picks up and so Coronado hears the story and he's like I'm ready to I'm ready to go find those seven cities of Sibla and he takes Estabbon the more slave with him actually but yeah >> so that that becomes ground for the original Spanish exploration of the southwest with Coronado And Coronado is is looking for the fable old cities of gold. He goes out as far as Kansas uh searching. Um is uh frequently very belligerent and brutal along the way because he's a treasure seeker. Um, but he maps out the southwest and we uh we follow that with the 1610 founding of Santa Fe in New Mexico, which is a very important Spanish trading center. Um, the PBLO Indians in the in what is now New Mexico have industries. They have uh mines. There's silver and turquoise there. Uh they are also weaving uh weaving blankets and other textiles.

[00:30:11]Um so there is a bountiful kind of trade there. Um and Santa Fe is uh established to to make that uh connection with the outside world. Later on, um, Santa Fe becomes a very important node in a trade from Mexico up towards Independence, Missouri, which is the origin of the Santa Fe Trail from New Mexico all the way up to the banks of the Missouri River.

[00:30:44]>> And that would have been on Yate, who conquered New Mexico in 1598 and then established Santa Fe afterwards. It was a it was a heck of a fight. The PBlo ones put up a fight. They always went they always hit up in the top of their um maces and threw down stones and it was handtohand combat. It was rough but obviously the Spanish uh prevailed with a lot of help from sympathetic puebloans and uh yeah so the Santa Fe was an important trading route via pos. They were in contact with the Plains Indians who brought them bison pelts and they would give them pottery or ceramics and it was a very lucrative very lucrative trade. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah.

[00:31:31]>> No indeed and it's uh it's an important element there. At least I I always identify it as important. The Spanish justify their conquest in part because the PBloans they have they have resources they have developed agricultural areas and such. It's a habitable area and the Spanish are a mobilized warlike people. They have a soldier class and this is very correspondent to the medieval system where the soldier class they are there um on on pay they are there to fight and they are there to protect the surfs who are under the protection of their lege whoever he might be. So when New Mexico is added to the Spanish Empire, there are these suzarines there, the governors of the region. They have their soldiers. Um the Spanish typically set up precidios, which is the fortification where the soldiers are garrisoned and they are there to protect the surfs that are under their protection. In this case, the PBLO Indians. Now, the PBLO are being prayed on by other warlike nations in the area. So, we have >> the Apache.

[00:33:06]>> The Apache and also further to the east, the Comanches.

[00:33:11]>> Not quite yet. We're jumping ahead a couple hundred years there. But the Comanches actually kick out the Apaches.

[00:33:16]But yeah. Yeah. And I'm I'm I'm sorry, Bab. Can I can I say something real quick about all that?

[00:33:22]>> Yeah, go right ahead.

[00:33:24]So the crown and the viceroy did not want to keep New Mexico as they didn't want to garrison soldiers in the precidios.

[00:33:35]They didn't want to build churches. They didn't want to deal with any of that.

[00:33:39]The there were two things that kept the Spanish in uh New Mexico first and then eventually uh southern Arizona. And it was the the promise of some mystical gold and silver that didn't really ever pan out until we took over the Southwest. But and then there was the souls of the American Indians that the priests underate converted. It was constantly this is too expensive. It's too far away from me. It's actually was faster to get on a boat on the Pacific and sail to California and then walk to New Mexico than it was to walk from DeFair or Mexico City up to a Santa Fe and it was a very dangerous trek. By now you have Apaches. And so the two things that kept the Southwest in the grasp of Spain was the promise of future riches which never panned out. And we have to keep these children of gods, these infidels, these uh Indians. We have to keep them Christian. So we have to keep New Mexico because we have to continue to because if we abandon them, we're just as at fault as they were before we converted them. And that was a major factor from 1600 on to the I mean the PBLO revolt in 1680 which I'm sure you'll get to but even the reconquest of New Mexico was to get the Indians back into the fold of Christ.

[00:35:13]>> They have a responsibility then. So th this develops into a major revolt in 1680, the Pueblo revolt, which takes place in modern day New Mexico. And the uh the PBLO, >> it was led by an Indian named I'm sorry, an Indian named Poe, who may have been descended from Estban, the Moore, the Black Moore.

[00:35:43]>> Wow.

[00:35:44]>> He may have been from Zouri and the Black Moore. Uh he could be a mythical figure for all we know, but Pope led the 1680 Spanish revolt. There have been a couple or not Spanish, the PBloan revolt. There have been a couple revolts, but they'd all been put down because uh some tribal or a PBloan leader said told the Spanish, "Hey, this is going on. You should put it down because we want to stay Catholic or we don't want trouble essentially."

[00:36:14]And so Pope led a successful rebellion in 1680 and he kicked out every well he killed a lot of Spanish especially Spanish fathers and um as in Catholic fathers and he kicked out the Spanish completely from New Mexico and that isn't that I'm I'm sure you're going to say it so I'm stealing your thunder. The 1680 PBLO revolt is what allowed the rest of North American Indians to get the horse. And I'll give it I'll give it back to you.

[00:36:48]>> No, go go go ahead and develop that because I'm I'm very interested in what you have to say.

[00:36:53]>> So Pope was some mythical possible figure who was uh harking back to the Anastasia Civil War. He said, "We PBloans or Mesa Veridians kicked out the old cannibal choans. They're gone. And I am the resurre I'm not sure if he said this, but he hinted at it. I'm the resurrected leader of that revolt." And now it's 1680 instead of 1280. And he aligned the PBLO, which a lot of them did not speak intelligible languages. A lot of them did, but they did not speak intelligible languages. So, they probably communicated through interpreters or hand signals or whatnot. He used, I think, knotted cords and he he sent runners to every PBLO and he said, "Every day, uh, take out one of the knots and when the knots are done, that is the day where you're all going to unite and overthrow the Spanish from New Mexico, from the Rio Grand Valley." And they did successfully. It was horrible.

[00:38:02]Um, a lot of brutal violence on the on the part of the Puebloans and other tribes around mostly Pbloans. A lot of a lot of hate against the Catholic fathers. I am not Catholic, but a lot of hate against the Catholic fathers unwarranted. And uh the Spanish old fled down the Rio Grand Valley back to I guess what we call El Paso now, but was Franklin and before that I I forget the uh the Spanish name of El Paso at that time, but it was across the Rio Grand Valley. So see Hores now, but obviously Hores was much later.

[00:38:43]Yeah. So, they uh totally kicked out the Spanish successfully. In my episode, I called it the first successful American Revolution cuz it was it was it was rough. Um, the Spanish, they kind of sat around in El Paso for a a while and then kind of they sent up a couple weak excursions to go take it back. It didn't really happen. But then, a man, I'm sure you're going to talk about in a little bit successfully retook New Mexico. But that PBLO revolt ended up cuz they when the Spanish left, the Spanish kept horses like we unless you're in a a spy for a small Middle Eastern country, we kept the Spanish kept horses like we keep um nuclear secrets. Like they did not allow horses to ever be given or except for scouts like ridden by Puebloans or American Indians. They kept them under lock and key. If one was missing they went out and found it. I mean at that time the horse was equivalent to you know Soviet American parody when we both got the bombs. We could not let the Indians get the horse. I say we Spanish.

[00:40:12]>> And so the 1680 revolt, all the Spanish fled with what they had on their on their backs. And so they left thousands of horses in corral. And by the time I mean just 50 years later, the horse was spreading rapidly, especially north in the mountains and east to the plains.

[00:40:33]That development was huge because this totally changes the culture of a number of Native American tribes. Previously, there were marshall tribes that specialized in raiding their traditional foes or just whoever whoever happened to be near them and pillaging them. But when the horse becomes available to them, tribes like the Apache and later the Comanches and other nations um elsewhere like the Sue Indians or the Lakota.

[00:41:16]Um they organize their lives around the horses and they become like the barbarian huns of America. uh very fearsome people uh living on horseback, riding hundreds of miles to do a daring raid or massacre and pillage before disappearing into the wilderness. And that's part of the origin of the lore of the several of these very fearsome nations in the southwest. people like the Apache and the Comanches >> and the and the Apache were able to adopt the horse.

[00:41:59]Maybe not as fast as the Comanche, but so fast that the PBloans, who had fields of corn and cotton and whatever they and beans and squash and whatnot, they lived in centralized locations and the Apaches could get on these horses, ride the horses, ride up to the PBLO, get off the horses, go in, massacre. I mean, POS PBLO, one of the largest PBLO and I think the largest Catholic church north of the Rio Grand, largest church period for a long time, was burned in the 1680 revolution. But they were they rebuilt the POS PBloans with the help of the Spanish and they lived there for a little while until it was abandoned because of the Apache raids on horseback. The town I live in in New Mexico, Tiharis, uh there is a Pueblo here. Uh it it was abandoned in 1200. It was abandoned a long time ago. But the Mexicans or I guess Spaniards. Yeah. Yeah. The Spaniards that eventually became Mexicans. They have land they had a land grant here into Harris in the 1810.

[00:43:03]So this was before the Mexican Revolution. So they would have been Spaniards. The Apache came in and stole every child, killed every man, and probably just left the women here.

[00:43:16]Although some women they carried away with them. But the town I live in was raided by Apaches in the early 1800s.

[00:43:23]And everyone was carried off on horseback. And the people that lived here, uh, they had horses, but they you cannot fight against such a a horseback marshaled people like the Apaches, as you were saying.

[00:43:40]Yeah, it's a a very fearsome thing and there are lots of chilling tales that come out of those uh those nations and their exploits.

[00:43:49]So now we we come to the story of fatherio Kino.

[00:43:57]Um a remarkable Jesuit priest who um had a he he had a academic career in Europe. I think he was Italian initially. Um but he he went to a university. Um had a serious illness and a mystical experience in his illness and swore that he would dedicate himself to the church and the uh order of Ignatius Loyola um the founder of the Jesuits. and his his own u his own life kind of parallels that of Ignatius Loyola. The uh the prominence in his early career, his promise, um his resources and such you he could have been a very successful man in the secular world. Um but like Lyola, he dedicates himself to the work of the church and to missions. And so Kino leaves central Europe, uh, leaves the university and all the rest and goes to northern Mexico. Um, there he has a a long career exploring the southwest and establishing missions. So between 1687 and 1711 he goes through Baja California. He establishes Baja California is not an island but actually a long peninsula. Um he goes to Sonora in northern Mexico. Um he goes into Arizona into southern Arizona. Um he establishes 24 missions in this period.

[00:45:50]Um many of them are just isolated chapels where an itinerant priest might uh serve the mass to uh Native American converts in the area but it doesn't amount to a permanently settled place.

[00:46:06]Um but he does bring with him things like bread making technology, things like wine plantings. um because obviously these are uh important elements of Christian civilization.

[00:46:22]Christians cannot celebrate their religion without bread and wine. And so this was an aspect of mission culture that is very important in retrospect.

[00:46:34]Fermentation technology followed the work of these Christian missionaries. U but Kino is a really extraordinary man.

[00:46:44]He is a geographer. He has a scientific training. So he is a map maker. Um he is a trailblazer. He establishes uh trails into these very remote areas.

[00:46:58]Um and he ministers to the Pumas, the Apaches, the Yumas, and he was just um beautified by Pope Francis. So, he's on his way to being a Catholic saint, which seems to me he has good grounds for being declared so.

[00:47:20]>> Um, but he is a major figure in the uh early settlement of the Southwest outside of New Mexico.

[00:47:32]Um we we also see just after the the life of Kino um in 1716 the establishment of the famous Spanish mission at San Antonio in what is now Texas. This is the uh famous edifice of the Alamo um which we would know uh readily for other associations that we'll get to later in our series.

[00:48:03]Now the tenure of the Jesuits who are very prominent in this period, it ends in 1767 when the Jesuits, the Jesuit order is banished by King Charles III of Spain.

[00:48:21]And I was hoping that you Jerry could shed some more light about this. How was it that the Jesuits get disestablished and uh all of their property gets turned over to the Franciscans at least in this sphere?

[00:48:39]>> Can you enlighten us about that?

[00:48:41]>> I am uh unfortunately unable to. This is a uh particular blind spot of mine. I don't uh I don't know too much about the uh the banning of the Jesuit order in this period.

[00:48:54]The Jesuits are kind of delisted, right?

[00:48:58]Aren't they excommunicated?

[00:49:01]>> No, they're not excommunicated, but uh this was uh essentially a a secular fight between the Spanish crown and the papacy at this point. And so they weren't uh communicated by the church.

[00:49:12]It was much more I think an act of the Spanish government. But uh as I said, my knowledge of this is limited.

[00:49:22]Well, it it seems to me, and I I'm probably conflating this with another period. Um I it seems to me it must have been much earlier.

[00:49:31]No, no, I'm thinking of something totally different. The the Jesuits, aren't they refounded at some point?

[00:49:40]>> I looked them up when I was doing my um series and there are Jesuits right now in somewhere in the world. Probably I think they're in America. I maybe everywhere.

[00:49:52]>> Pope Francis was a Jesuit.

[00:49:54]>> Oh yeah. Pope Francis was a Jesuit. Um the Jesuit order is still very much in evidence. Any school uh you come across with the name Loyola is a Jesuit school of which there are many.

[00:50:07]>> Oh, we have a friend that went there.

[00:50:08]That's right.

[00:50:11]>> Shares my name, I think.

[00:50:14]>> Well, we'll we'll have to we'll have to touch on that in some other context.

[00:50:18]It's an interesting one and I don't know the lore but u >> I will look it up for time.

[00:50:24]>> The there are a lot of missions in the southwest that were originally founded by the Jesuit order in 16 or 1767.

[00:50:32]They're turned over to the Franciscans which turns out to be very important. So now I I wanted to touch on the work of the missions like what the missions were and such. They were quite prominent in California. Of course, they they span from Texas all the way to California.

[00:50:51]And we we've uh touched on some of the development in these different regions.

[00:50:56]Um Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California all have different experiences of this period and that's part of their origin as regions. They're different geographical areas. There is some cohesion in the geographical area.

[00:51:14]Um there is frontier between these regions. Um there there are natural boundaries but also cultural boundaries between them. And that's part of the beauty of studying the the area. Um that there are distinctive characteristics between these really very huge states.

[00:51:34]Um but they have a different spirit and a different story from place to place.

[00:51:39]Um but in California where these missions are most famous, the place names are still uh reflections of the the early mission stage. So you look across the map of California and you see places like San Diego, the the name of the original mission, San Francisco, the name of the original mission, uh Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Santa Anna, and so on. Um all of these uh represent the original missions in the area.

[00:52:14]So California presents a very interesting uh contrast because the environment there is so beneficial. Um, it led to a particularly strange Native American experience, uh, where these are particularly indolent hunter gatherers in California.

[00:52:41]Um, they are they're not sticking to any one place. They do very little cultivation.

[00:52:48]uh they are just gathering uh from from the uh verdant climate in California. Um they're not even doing very much hunting. Um with the exception of the the native tribes on the sea coast which do engage in fishing. Um many of the native tribes in California are not actually doing very much hunting. Um they are settled in particular spots. Um they are described as extremely unhealthy because they do not move around. So they live amidst a great deal of refu including a lot of human waste. This is extremely detrimental to them. They have lots of epidemics and such. H >> um but they're they're living at a particularly low level. U based on based on what I've read about uh Native American tribes in the region, uh this is very unusual. The some of the first Spanish missionaries in the area, they witness uh beached whales being a especially important event for these tribes. They would go down to the coast where there would be a beached whale and they would gorge themselves on the rotting whale uh which was particularly disgusting to the European uh explorers and the missionaries. So the missionaries they they go in there um they uh they have some violent encounters with these native groups. these native groups do have something in common uh with the the natives in the southeast and and uh New Mexico and places like that. There's more or less constant low-level warfare in between these people and there is social status to be gained for an ambitious young man to kill an enemy in battle. This gains him prominence in his community. And so there there is uh there is incentive there to uh have belligerent encounters.

[00:55:13]Um but the the uh missionaries that go into the area, they build these mission compounds. Initially they take in the sick, the exiled, which are basically the felons of the nearby uh peoples. Uh they've been tossed out of their communities and left to fend for themselves, which is naturally a kind of death sentence. Um they they have a really extraordinary mission approach.

[00:55:48]They display the cross. They display the crucifix. They display icons and statues to the Native Americans. They invite them into their chapels and missions and they feed them, clothe them and house them. Um these are Franciscans at this stage.

[00:56:13]Um the California missions are Franciscan. The Franciscans are particularly devoted to the hungry, the naked, the ignorant and so on. They are very famous for taking their vows of poverty along with with other vows chastity and such. These are monastics.

[00:56:35]Um they dress in burlap. They are famous for their very rough uniform.

[00:56:43]And that is a sign of their their scorn of worldly adornments, wealth, and the rest. So they go out into the wilderness, they start farming there, they start cultivating vineyards there.

[00:56:58]Again, they're taking uh cutings from vines back in Europe. They're transplanting them in the the uh very promising climate of California. Um bringing viticulture there. Um they make wine, they make bread. Um they build these these barracks alongside the missions and they're displaying the holy signs of the Christian religion to the native peoples. they are singing the mass and this is a very attractive establishment.

[00:57:38]Um in a couple of generations most of the native peoples in California are living in proximity to these missions. They are working the fields.

[00:57:52]Uh they are disciplined by the Franciscan friars.

[00:57:57]um they are being uh they're being taught agriculture and they are settling in these mission communities.

[00:58:06]Now this is extremely important um when we when we talk about the abolition of these communities after Mexican independence which uh we'll cover in our next uh our next survey of the material.

[00:58:22]Um but they are civilizing these people.

[00:58:26]they're they've Christianized them in a couple of generations.

[00:58:31]Um, now modern day critics will say just how m how much of this is genuine? Um, how how can you say what these people actually believed? They were there for the food, they were there for the other benefits. Um, >> yeah, but they say that about in Arizona and New Mexico, too. They say that about everywhere.

[00:58:54]It's a fundamental disrespect of the reality of the religious life.

[00:58:59]>> Well, people who write that are not religious themselves. So, >> absolutely. And they don't have any respect for people who are and they read that >> Barbara Tuckman's quip in uh through a distant mirror where she remarks that religion was of course fundamental to the Middle Ages experience. But uh that is for some other chronicler to investigate in her.

[00:59:25][laughter] >> Yeah, >> she's uh revealing something about herself there. It seems >> indeed.

[00:59:34]Um but this is a really extraordinary u success and it has received um overdue recognition in modern times by the Catholic Church in in my humble opinion.

[00:59:50]I I'm not Roman Catholic but I'm a big fan of these people. I like what they accomplished.

[00:59:56]Um the most famous of all of them is a a very recent saint of the Catholic Church, St. Unipuro Sarra, who goes to California in 1770.

[01:00:12]Um he's uh experiences incredible hardships and also uh violent attacks by the native groups after he arrives. So he witnesses attacks, he witnesses murders and such. And yet he is absolutely steadfast in his devotion to these people and their spiritual good.

[01:00:36]And he establishes nine missions in California and dies in like like uh Father Kino in incredible poverty and privation. Um and he was recently canonized. I don't remember um I don't remember the year he was canonized. He was canonized within the last 10 or 15 years I believe.

[01:01:00]>> Um he's called the apostle of California and um he of course was a Franciscan. Um he dressed in a very rough way, had a very simple diet. Um and yet he built temples and educated barbarians everywhere that he went. um bringing them up to a higher level of civilization and knowledge of their creator. Um so he's a really remarkable fellow. Um I had I had a most uh consequential interaction about St. Unipuro Sarra. I was uh in the process of being cancelled and I was uh talking to someone I I thought would be an ally of mine uh a Catholic, a observant fellow and I brought up Uniperos and I said, "Well, you can you can have uh a certain sympathy with feudalism and such because of Sarah." And he disavowed any sympathy whatsoever. and he said, "No, I actually have a problem with this guy because he was a feudal oppressor."

[01:02:13]>> He was he was telling the Native Americans that they had to work in the field and uh physically disciplining them on occasion and such. I'm like, well, you know, that was the criminal code.

[01:02:27]>> He didn't lock them he wasn't locking them in a whitewashed broom and telling them to think about what they've done.

[01:02:33]you know, he wasn't he wasn't a uh a uh maladaptive school momm. He was he was a man [laughter] who uh he he believed that there were physical consequences for uh transgressions and that that is not in the least unusual in his time. That's what everyone believed then.

[01:02:56]>> Yeah.

[01:02:57]>> Bag people become Quakers.

[01:03:02]Did you come across the Dominguez Escalante expedition?

[01:03:06]>> No, do tell us.

[01:03:08]>> So on Well, they were supposed to leave.

[01:03:12]So it was uh two Franciscan monks uh fathers Domingo or Dominguez and Escalante and modernday Escalant in Utah is named after Escalante and the um Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is named after him. Although they never stepped foot in either of those places, but they came close.

[01:03:34]>> They uh were supposed to leave on July the 4th, 1776 from Santa Fe to map to go to San Francisco across the Sierra Neadas.

[01:03:47]Uh they didn't end up doing that because they left too late because I think Escalan Escalante was too sick. So they left on July 29th, 1776 instead of July 4th, 1776. And they no doubt had no idea what was going on thousands of miles to their east. But they left from Santa Fe and they did a trek longer than Lewis and Clark.

[01:04:14]>> They went north into Colorado, west into Utah, went to the Salt Lake Valley, went to the Salt Lake, actually didn't go to Salt Lake, the Salt Lake, the Great Salt Lake. They went to the lake right below at Provo Lake and they met all along the way.

[01:04:34]They met utes and they were afraid of Apaches and they were afraid of the Aabaskans the whole time. But they got to the edge of western Utah and decided if we continue we will die which they absolutely would have. It would have been a Donner party all over again. But then they went south to the Hopi Mesa which just uh 70 years before there were four Hopi Mesa.

[01:05:04]One of them the most eastern mesa was converted to Catholicism and the other three it's literally like a hand if you put a hand and you put your hand down with four fingers. They had four Hopi Mesa. The pinky finger was a Hopy Mesa.

[01:05:18]The furthest east one got converted to Catholicism. After the re 1680 revolt, the other three PBLO got together and decided this Catholic PBLO was guilty of witchcraft.

[01:05:35]They killed every single person and ate a good 30 m 30 amount of them. But so they were they knew that story. So the they went down to the Hopi Mesa to hopefully there were no Catholic churches there at the time because after the revolt and after everyone got eaten who was a Catholic they decided we'll stop by see if they'll give us some food. We're not going to stay and convert them. We're just going to leave.

[01:06:00]And they did and they they survived and they made their way back to Santa Fe. It was a it was longer even though you look at a map it don't look longer than the Louiswis and Clark expedition. It was longer than the Louiswis and Clark expedition and it started the same year we became a nation.

[01:06:21]The the mention of the massacre of the Hopi Catholics there is another reminder of why there were Spanish garrisons, why there was a tax system and an administration and such because you can't allow this kind of thing to happen. This is >> odd not at all >> with civilization.

[01:06:45]Um people come into your religion um they are you have a duty to them in this situation and that that's why you have wars among the Spanish and these various hostile nations because this kind of thing does happen regularly down there.

[01:07:12]>> Exactly. one of the reasons why this >> it's a common criticism of the Spanish administration that these people are um just money grubbing tax farmers and such there there's extremely little to be made from all of that there there wasn't wealth and prestige to be had in this region there there was always rumors that it was right around the corner but it was never something that was realized there was never a gold mine that made everyone there rich in the administration.

[01:07:47]>> Nope.

[01:07:48]>> Um it was >> called the New Mexican governor called as New Mexican governor. It was a position that you could just you didn't want it or you knew you could use it to your advantage, but it wasn't some the Mexican Northwest was not some place people wanted to go, >> but it was a place that people went nevertheless out of a sense of duty and um other kinds of opportunities like spiritual opportunities which is really the only way that we can account for the the long list of uh remarkable leaders and heroes that we see in this area these missionaries like father Kino and St. Uniper Sarah. Um, the only explanation that we can give for their careers is spiritual heroism, >> blazing trails through the wilderness, >> engaged in a little bit of metaphysical speculation.

[01:08:55]Seems to me that the 800year experience of the reconista shaped the Spanish soul to undertake exactly this work.

[01:09:06]certainly uh great spiritual struggle and sacrifice in this distant and parched land.

[01:09:18]So just to leave us off here and in in conclusion um what we've seen is the establishment of Spanish uh Spanish susarenti and these mission [snorts] structures across the southwest. Uh we have um a significant number of Native Americans in New Mexico and in California.

[01:09:44]uh we have a complex network of missions where there is very lowlevel sort of industry going on. Um we're talking about tens of thousands of people total.

[01:09:58]Um small number of monks um also comparable number of soldiers always pretty small in the area. um a few administrators and mostly Native Americans and most of them um in California are on the mission uh establishments there. Um they are learning handiccrafts. They are learning permanent agricultural practices. Uh they're learning how to care for the domesticated livestock, cattle, horses, swine, things like that.

[01:10:35]and they were only one or two generations removed from a hunter gatherer lifestyle by the early 1800s.

[01:10:46]>> So, that's where we're leaving off uh with with our survey of the Spanish Southwest.

[01:10:54]And in our next episode, we're going to talk about Mexican independence and the secularization of the church lands, which dramatically changes the situation in this region. Indeed.

[01:11:12]>> To give a hint, the uh the church, which I forgot its name, was turned into eventually a barracks in a place where you an armament and uh it was called the Alamo.

[01:11:26]>> Huh.

[01:11:26]>> Yeah. Yes. Um it was called San San Antonio Mission of San Antonio.

[01:11:36]>> Excellent. Well, I'm very excited for that. And I would also like to point out that we here at American Spirits enjoy the most attentive and prescapacious chat in the podcasting game. Four. In the spirit of the poor Franciscan friars, our audience is astute enough to give us no super chat tonight. Well done, chat.

[01:12:01]>> We accept their faith.

[01:12:03]>> Indeed. This is a this is a work of the spirit.

[01:12:07]the American spirit you would say.

[01:12:12][laughter] >> Well done, >> Mr. Ab have you any uh final thoughts for shillings to uh impart upon us?

[01:12:18]>> Uh I think everyone look forward to the next episode. This whole series is going to be great. Listen to my show, The American Southwest. It's easy. And uh join your local OGC if you ain't already.

[01:12:30]>> Excellent. Mr. Bagley, what's new from Tall Man Books?

[01:12:34]Um, I've got several big titles that are right on the horizon, but I I'm not ready to announce them yet. Um, I will pitch one particular title that corresponds with our material tonight.

[01:12:46]I've >> Can I interrupt you?

[01:12:48]>> Mexicans.

[01:12:48]>> Oh, sure.

[01:12:50]>> Mexicans and uh Oh, shoot. Texans in the Mexican War.

[01:12:56]>> Um, >> you have that book. I bought it from you.

[01:12:58]>> I do. Yes. Texas and the Mexican War by Nathaniel Stevenson. Um, the Chronicles of America series. Um, what I was going to suggest was The Spanish Borderlands, a chronicle of old Florida and the Southwest by Herbert Bolton.

[01:13:14]>> Uh, you can find that at my website, tallmenbooks.com.

[01:13:21]>> I wish I'd read that years ago when I was doing my Spanish Southwest series.

[01:13:26][laughter] >> It's a good succinct account. and uh Father Aino and St. Uniperos are uh are both in that volume if you're interested.

[01:13:38]>> All right. Well, thank you both gentlemen. Thank you chat. And we look forward to next week when we proceed to Mexican independence on this show, American Spirit.