“Weeds of the Devil Have Been Sown into the Land”: Faraon Performative Violence and the Capture of the Northern Spanish Empire, 1670–96

Between 1670 and 1696 Faraon Apaches claimed imperialistic control over the northern Chihuahuan Desert of North America through performative violence, sometimes real, other times imagined. Furthermore, when they choose to enact the spectacle of bloodshed to manipulate their European and indigenous adversaries, Faraones did so in sophisticated, calculated, and measured ways that evinced profound political and economic gains in a short span of time. Performative violence served as the strategic means by which these Apaches isolated, managed, and bled Spanish colonists and their Puebloan allies, both literally and figuratively. Although frequently underrepresented in the histories of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and its broader context, Faraones and their unique brand of bellicose showmanship would determine much of this region’s development during a crucial moment in its imperial history.

Famously, the northern Chihuahuan Desert contains the colony of Nuevo Mexico, from its northern extreme–Santa Fe–to its southern tip–El Paso del Norte along the Rio Grande. Whereas historians have traditionally approached the crucial period from 1680 to 1692, when colonists were effectively exiled from Santa Fe and besieged at El Paso, as the Spanish interregnum, my research suggests that it would better described as the inception of an Athapaskan political climax that would last well into the eighteenth century. A fresh look at Spanish colonial documentation left by the titular governors of New Mexico at El Paso reveals that the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was only a single moment within a much broader trend:  Faraon performative violence was almost singlehandedly responsible for deconstructing large chunks of the Spanish imperial landscape, and then reforming the debris into a geopolitical world dominated by Apache political and economic structures stretched between the Pecos River Valley, the Jornada del Muerto, and the ranges and basins of the northern Chihuahuan Desert.