Monday, March 24, 2014

Pueblo Uprising




I read Uprising with relish. I’ve tried to read other books about the Pueblo Revolt, but couldn’t get into them as they were too ponderous or dry. Jake Page’s prose is as good as non-fiction narrative can get, and it flows like a well-paced, humming river. So many historical books get bogged down with the numerous players, settings, or events, but not Uprising. In the narrative the people, Pueblos, settlements, and complicated events are so well portrayed that I could quite easily keep track of them. The map also helped. The spot illustrations are an added bonus.

Because I live in the region, I see it as a plus that Jake Page also lives here as the land itself informs the book’s narrative. Even in an automobile, it t takes the fortitude of an old mountain man to traverse this vast desert region in order to ferret out the facts hidden between the Spanish lost or destroyed records, the understandable Pueblo secrecy in order to preserve their culture, and the cultural narrative point of view on all sides of  the history and peoples in New Mexico.

Jake Page points out on page 161, “The Pueblo Rebellions of 1680-1696 can be considered the first American revolution – fought in part if not entirely for the right of the Pueblo people to practice their s and cultural ways without interference.”

It is amazing that to this day, in spite of conquest, some diaspora, intermarriage, and suppression of culture, religion, and language that the Pueblos remain the most intact of all the North American indigenous groups.


Uprising
Jake Page
Rio Nuevo Publishers, Tucson, 2013
ISBN: 9781933855929