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
