III.  A Colony Lost

~

Three generations,

from Oñate to here,

Sixteen-Eighty,

and the changes appear:

 

Caste system conflict

among three estates –

Religious, Government,

and the Colonists –

coupled with Distance,

which turns to Neglect

and Form follows Function

to change and correct.

 

The land was harsh –

this has its own impact.

Isolation, survival at stake;

acculturation of the Third Estate.

 

Three of five castes

the latter did make:

the Colonists, the Pueblo,

and Athapaskan.

 

Conflict and concert,

acculturation

led to a different

generation.

 

The Spaniard Rule

by Domination

weakened and lessened

through isolation.

 

Oñate would find

no recognition

from that of his own kind

to the new generation.

 

And the Pueblo people

still held to their ways,

though stifled and hidden,

and lessening these days.

 

They still had resentment

with the Vassalage phase

the Spanish Class System treatment

of Old Europe’s ways.

 

Persistence, refusal

of the New Faith

by many a Pueblo

incurred the Church hate.

 

The Church had become

the vestige reprisal,

the government gone

it held on arrival.

 

And it would uphold

its own form of law,

and punish the Pueblo

if they went afar.

 

A Colony Lost

by its Isolation,

survival at cost

through the depredations.

Athapaskan,

on occasion,

and their own invasions.

The harsh climate,

a nation of devastation.

Miscegenation

and acculturation

in three generations

led change to the culture,

and the Pueblo, by now,

were ready for rupture.

~

 

 

 

©2013, Marvin Loyd Welborn

11July2013