The retreat of the Spaniards left New Mexico in the power of the Puebloans.[16] Popé was a mysterious figure in the history of the southwest as there are many tales among the Puebloans of what happened to him after the revolt. Later testimony to the Spanish by the Pueblo people was probably colored by anti-Popé sentiments and a desire to tell the Spanish what they wanted to hear.
Apparently, Popé and his two lieutenants, Alonso Catiti from Santo Domingo and Luis Tupatu from Picuris, traveled from town to town ordering a return "to the state of their antiquity." All crosses, churches, and Christian images were to be destroyed. The people were ordered to cleanse themselves in ritual baths, to use their Puebloan names, and to destroy all vestiges of the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including Spanish livestock and fruit trees.Popé, it was said, forbade the planting of wheat and barley and commanded those natives who had been married according to the rites of the Catholic Church to dismiss their wives and to take others after the old native tradition.
The Puebloans had no tradition of political unity. Popé was a man of trust and strict policy. Therefore, each pueblo was self-governing, and some, or all, apparently resisted Popé's demands for a return to a pre-Spanish existence. The paradise Popé had promised when the Spanish were expelled did not materialize. A drought continued, destroying Puebloan crops, and the raids by Apache and Navajo increased. Initially, however, the Puebloans were united in their objective of preventing a return of the Spanish.
