by Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint The decades of the 1660s and 1670s were ones of looming catastrophe for the Spanish province of New Mexico. There had been repeated disputes between Franciscan clergy and royal governors over use of Indian labor and conflicting attitudes toward native religious practice. Caught in the middle were the Pueblo people of the province, their beliefs alternately persecuted and condoned and their labor and its products routinely appropriated by government officials and over-zealous missionaries. At the same time, the Hispanic community was riven by rancorous disputes and occasional violence, as partisan factions vied for … Continue reading Antonio de Otermín and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680