I Never Knew the Catholics Were Once Chased Out by Native Americans

[LAGC]

Just watching the PBS FrontLine/American Experience series on Netflix: "God in America: How Religious Liberty Shaped America" and have learned quite a few interesting historical tid-bits in just the first episode.

I was always under the impression that the Spanish Conquistadors pretty much just ran roughshod over all the native tribes, from the Aztecs to the Mayans to the Incans, converting them all to Christianity by the sword without too much resistance. (Well, they pretty much did in Central and South America, hence the Catholic dominance there now.)

But I never realized that the Spanish had ventured so far north in the late 16th century, settling in what would become New Mexico, and tried to pull the same shit with the Pueblos. Well, the Pueblos apparently played along, they "converted" and went to church and adopted the baby Jesus story, which made the Catholics happy until they realized that outside of church the Pueblos were still practicing their old heathen ways.

The Catholic leaders demanded that the colony soldiers enforce their "one true faith." Native ceremonies were banned, religious icons burned, sacred places of worship destroyed. The breaking point came in 1675, when 47 Pueblo religious leaders were imprisoned in Santa Fe for "sorcery." The Catholics tortured, flogged, and hanged some of them, yet one of the survivors managed to get word out to all his fellow tribes about what was happening.

2000 Pueblo Indians descended on the Spanish, hundreds died in the fighting. But it was the Catholic priests who were specifically targeted, more than half their number were slaughtered. It was August 10, 1680 -- ten days later, the Spanish fled New Mexico. The Catholic Empire had faltered...

They never taught any of this stuff in my junior high U.S. history classes -- for some reason religious history was always left out. Sure, there was a brief mention of the Puritans in passing, but never any of the major religious struggles of the time. What a shame. Organized religion has such a "colorful" history in the formation of the Americas, you'd think they'd teach kids all about it in school.

Maybe we should allow some exception to the "Separation of Church and State" principle to allow religious history to be taught more freely in public school history classes? I think every child should be shown what religion is really all about, not just the biased crap they are exposed to in Sunday School. Might allow for them to form their own opinions and make their own minds up on the matter... but we couldn't have that, could we?

[ejpoeta]

1. my memory of history in school was some whitewashed account in which

europeans came over and befriended the indians. then the indians were rude and didn't seem to like when the europeans wanted to move westward and take their land. so the europeans had to kill the bad indians. and put them on reservations. of course, we were helping the indians.... how nice. it seemed history was a lot of that kind of we are good stuff. wasn't til college that i saw any true history.

[Sherman A1]

2. Agreed

Religion is so very intertwined with history that it would be hard to separate it from civil history. I am not sure how you do it without causing a ruckus, but I believe it should be included when it was a motivating factor.

[Possumpoint]

3. I Attended Catholic School Through The Tenth Grade

Think your account was white washed? By the 11th grade attention was more focused on current events and then with the assassination of Kennedy and Vietnam breaking out.

[pnwmom]

4. Religion as part of history can be taught in public school.

That's not the same as teaching theology.

We already teach it, to some extent. Think Puritan New England. The question is why we teach it in such a limited way.

[LiberalFighter]

5. Agreed.

It isn't the problem of teaching religion in history. It is the problem of teaching religion.

I had Humanities for 3 years in high school which was the equivalence of Social Studies. We learned about religion in history. The Puritans, the Inquisition, the Church, etc. And our teachers were not religious idiots.

[geckosfeet]

6. You mean native americans didn't worship at the feet of missionaries

who considered them inferior heathen beings because of their religious beliefs?

That's outrageous!

Ingrates.

And then, then those mean nasty native americans, they chase out an invading army of religious fanatics!

The unbelievable temerity!

[Igel]

8. It gets better.

In Texas there was a bit of genocide going on. A number of ethnicities had been wiped out. The tribes under threat of genocide befriended the Spanish when they showed up and went along with them in order to avoid extermination. They even went so far as to engage in false-flag operations to trick the Spanish, both raiding Spanish camps as well as faking a raid on their own camps.

The Spanish eventually wised up and realized they were being played. Still, to defend Spanish territory they set up the mission system and did manage to achieve a stalemate with the Apaches.

(Having the locals draw the new arrivals into their political and military shenanigans is also to be seen in various other places where Europeans ran across Native Americans.)

[rug]

7. Google Isaac Jogues.