Antonio de Otermín

Antonio de Otermín was the Spanish Governor of the northern New Spain province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, today the U. S. states of New Mexico and Arizona, from 1678 to 1682. He was governor at the time of the Pueblo Revolt, during which the religious leader Popé led the Pueblo people in a military ouster of the Spanish colonists. Otermín had to cope with the revolt with help of the settlers and their descendants in New Mexico, fighting against the Pueblo in some military campaigns and establishing a refuge for the surviving settlers and loyal native Pueblo in the vicinity of the modern Ciudad Juárez, current Mexico.

It is not known when or where he was born. It is assumed that he was born roughly between 1620 and 1630 in the Otermín family home, which in this time was recorded as Otromin House. It is located on the foothills of the Massif de Aralar, natural border between Gipuzkoa and Navarre, Spain. On the Gipuzkoa side is the house Otromin Haundi (‘Big Otromin’), which, by its size and name, was the ancestral home of the Otromin. However, two sources indicate that Otermín is the standard version and that it's from Guipúzcoan Basque oteme, in Spanish ‘árgoma’ ( ‘furze, broom’), the genera Ulex and Genista, spiny yellow flowered evergreen leguminous shrubs.

Otermín was appointed governor of New Mexico in 1678. On August 9, 1680, Pueblo leaders

On September 16 came a group Queres warriors from Cochití and Santo Domingo led by mestizo Alonso de Catiti, whose brother was with the defenders of the governor's house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He informed to the Spanish that the attackers of Santa Fe were 2,500 people and the city could not withstand their attacks. Otermín then blocked the Casa Real (Royal House), cutting the water supply, so the women and children, after exhausting their supplies in a few days, began to die of thirst. Because to that Otermín could not stand it any more, on August 21, he arranged the execution of 47 prisoners that he had captured in the combats and arranged a general exit to break the fence of the city. They succeeded it and in February, Otermín and his army went to El Paso (in the present Texas), New Mexico was already in hard of Puebloans. In November 1681 Otermín attempted to return to New Mexico, burning both Isleta Pueblo (which had not taken part in the revolt) and Sandía Pueblo. He returned to modern Isleta del Sur, near El Paso, with some prisoners, but little else. In Isleta Pueblo, the settlers were attacked by the Puebloans, but they were defeated. So Otermín held a ceremony in which he re established the Spanish power in the region and spared the natives for their actions. Otermín also gave large amounts of corn of local inhabitants, as was claimed by them, although gave scarce amounts in the Isleta. After the victory of Otermín, he sent to Juan Domínguez de Mendoza and a company of Hispanic men and Pueblo allies to north, to the Tiwa and Keres lands of Albuquerque and Bernalillo. There Mendoza spoke with Pueblo leaders who told him that his people had the intention of attacking and killing the settlers to return to the region. Therefore, Mendoza ordered the settlers were directed to Isleta, where was the governor. Otermín traveled with his army to northern New Mexico, but there he found that the region of the Puebloans was empty. Perhaps for fear of planning a new attack, he decided to reconvene several councils of war. In August 1682, Otermín fell ill so he requested to be replaced in the government of New Mexico, being replaced by Domingo Jironza Pétriz de Cruzate. one of the survivors of the Pueblo Indian Revolt. There are no data about his death.