In the history of the Pueblo Indians, the 17th century is marked by the onset of Spanish Conquistadors who sought power and the natural resources of the land and Franciscan friars who sought to Christianize the Pueblo villages. These new conquistadors arrived in New Mexico with their foreign customs, animals, dress, religion, and culture, and Franciscan friars who set up evangelical missions followed shortly thereafter.
In reading Gutierrez’s work and attempting to remove my presentism and thus approach history from a completely new perspective, I find it interesting that the friars who entered the Pueblo society which was so starkly different than their European society faced a similar obstacle. In order to reach the Pueblo people and deliver their spiritual message, the friars developed a systematic method of evangelizing: end the practice of idolatry by removing fetishes, overcome the sins of the flesh, educate the people with Christian doctrine through preaching and missions, and overhaul their social structure to replace it with a more acceptable European version. The friars faced great difficulty in evangelizing the people because of a lack of common ground from whence to start. These European Christians were interacting with the Pueblo Indians whose entire mindset and frame of reference was vastly different from theirs (e.g. monks preaching celibacy as a means to spirituality to a people who viewed open sexuality as the ultimate means to spirituality), and because of this their evangelizing often resulted in a simple substitution of new Christian practices for old Pueblo practices, with no real spiritual transformation (e.g. the substitution of the friars’ crosses for the Pueblo prayer sticks).
Just as I strive to remove my present cultural mindset and preconceived notions in order to better understand a historical work, the friars had to remove completely their “cultural presentism” in order to fully understand the Pueblo people and reach them spiritually.
Taylor Duncan
In reading Gutierrez’s work and attempting to remove my presentism and thus approach history from a completely new perspective, I find it interesting that the friars who entered the Pueblo society which was so starkly different than their European society faced a similar obstacle. In order to reach the Pueblo people and deliver their spiritual message, the friars developed a systematic method of evangelizing: end the practice of idolatry by removing fetishes, overcome the sins of the flesh, educate the people with Christian doctrine through preaching and missions, and overhaul their social structure to replace it with a more acceptable European version. The friars faced great difficulty in evangelizing the people because of a lack of common ground from whence to start. These European Christians were interacting with the Pueblo Indians whose entire mindset and frame of reference was vastly different from theirs (e.g. monks preaching celibacy as a means to spirituality to a people who viewed open sexuality as the ultimate means to spirituality), and because of this their evangelizing often resulted in a simple substitution of new Christian practices for old Pueblo practices, with no real spiritual transformation (e.g. the substitution of the friars’ crosses for the Pueblo prayer sticks).
Just as I strive to remove my present cultural mindset and preconceived notions in order to better understand a historical work, the friars had to remove completely their “cultural presentism” in order to fully understand the Pueblo people and reach them spiritually.
Taylor Duncan