The "Predicament of Culture" and Spanish Missionary Accounts of the Tepehuan and Pueblo Revolts

The recent critique of ethnography has highlighted various contingent factors (e.g., cultural-historical, institutional, literary, rhetorical) that affect fieldwork and ethnographic writing. Used constructively to interpret the historical record, the critique suggests that similar contingent factors governed Spanish perceptions and representations of Native Americans, as exemplified by missionary accounts of the Tepehuan (1616) and Pueblo revolts (1680) in northern New Spain. The missionaries represented the revolts as the work of the devil rather than as millenarian movements triggered by the devastating effects of Old World disease and Spanish colonialism. Missionary perceptions and representations reflect Counter-Reformation theology/philosophy/epistemology, a largely medieval literary tradition, and institutional and political contingencies arising from membership in religious orders sent to the New World to direct culture change.