rebellion was to take place on
the 11th of August, 1682; others, on the 13th. Anyway, the first blow
was struck on the 10th. Not a pueblo town failed to rally to the call,
as the Highlanders of old responded to the signal of the bloody cross.
New Mexico at this time numbered some 3,000 Spanish colonists, the
majority living on ranches up and down the Rio Grande and surrounding
Santa Fe. The captain-general, who had had nothing to do with the
foolish decrees that produced the revolt, happened to be Don Antonio de
Otermin, with Alonzo Garcia as his lieutenant. In spite of no women
being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked out. Pope's son-in-law,
the governor of San Juan, was setting out to betray the whole plot to
the Spaniards, when he was killed by Pope's own hand.

Such widespread preparations could not proceed without the Mission
converts getting some inkling; and on August 9, Governor Otermin heard
that two Indians of Tesuque out from Santa Fe had been ordered to join a
rebellion. He had the Indians brought before him in the audience chamber
on the 10th. They told him all they knew; and they warned him that any
warrior refusing to take part would be slain. Here, as always in times
of great confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a
multiplicity of detail. Warning had also come down from the alcalde at
Taos. Otermin scarcely seems to have grasped the import of the news; for
all he did was to send his own secret scouts out, warning the settlers
and friars to seek refuge in Isleta, or Santa Fe; but it was too late.
The Indians got word they had been betrayed and broke loose in a mad
lust of revenge and blood that very Saturday when the governor was
sending out his spies.

It would take a book to tell the story of all the heroism and martyrdom
of the different Missions. Parkman has told the story of the martyrdom
of the Jesuits in French Canada; and many other books have been written
on the subject. No Parkman has yet risen to tell the story of the
martyrdom of the Franciscans in New Mexico. In one fell day, before the
captain-general knew anything about it, 400 colonists and twenty-one
missionaries had been slain--butchered, shot, thrown over the rocks,
suffocated in their burning chapels. Pope was in the midst of it all,
riding like an incarnate fury on horseback wearing a bull's horn in the
middle of his forehead. Apaches and Navajos, of course, joined in the
loot. At Taos, out of seventy whites, two