“…being weary, they had rebelled”: Pueblo subsistence and labor under Spanish colonialism

Native American responses to Spanish colonialism are explored through an analysis of multiple lines of evidence concerning subsistence practices, diet, and health in the Salinas Pueblo area of central New Mexico. Zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data from three Pueblo villages that experienced different degrees of Spanish missionization are the focus of this study. In addition, human osteological data from one village provide important information on activity patterns and health. These data are used to document the kinds of changes that occurred in Pueblo labor patterns, food consumption, and health from the pre-colonial to colonial periods. Synthetic analyses document the development of some degree of inter-village specialization in large game hunting, hide processing, and corn farming, presumably in response to Spanish tribute levies in corn and antelope hides, and demands on Pueblo labor in other arenas. There also appears to be a degree of divergence in women’s and men’s lives in the colonial period. These southwestern data are then compared with similar information from the southeastern US to identify patterns of similarity and difference in Native American experiences of and strategies for dealing with Spanish colonization.