nsist on the
performance of services which were originally mere evidences of
hospitality and kindness. Little by little they assumed greater power
and control over the Indians, until in the course of years they had
subjected a large portion of them to servitude little differing from
actual slavery.

The impolitic zeal of the monks gradually invoked the spirit of hatred
and resulted in a rebellion that drove the Spaniards, in 1680, from the
country. The large number of priests who were left in the midst of the
natives met with horrible fates:

Not one escaped martyrdom. At Zuni, three Franciscans
had been stationed, and when the news of the Spanish retreat
reached the town, the people dragged them from their cells,
stripped and stoned them, and afterwards compelled the
servant of one to finish the work by shooting them. Having
thus whetted their appetite for cruelty and vengeance,
the Indians started to carry the news of their independence
to Moqui, and signalized their arrival by the barbarous
murder of the two missionaries who were living there.
Their bodies were left unburied, as a prey for the wild
beasts. At Jemez they indulged in every refinement of
cruelty. The old priest, Jesus Morador, was seized in
his bed at night, stripped naked and mounted on a hog,
and thus paraded through the streets, while the crowd
shouted and yelled around. Not satisfied with this,
they then forced him to carry them as a beast would,
crawling on his hands and feet, until, from repeated beating
and the cruel tortures of sharp spurs, he fell dead in
their midst. A similar chapter of horrors was enacted
at Acoma, where three priests were stripped, tied together
with hair rope, and so driven through the streets, and
finally stoned to death. Not a Christian remained free
within the limits of New Mexico, and those who had been
dominant a few months before were now wretched and
half-starved fugitives, huddled together in the rude huts
of San Lorenzo.

As soon as the Spaniards had retreated from the country,
the Pueblo Indians gave themselves up for a time to
rejoicing, and to the destruction of everything which could
remind them of the E