About Lucas Naranjo
Lucas Naranjo died July 24, 1696, shot at El Embudo, Nuevo México, Nueva España
Son of Domingo Naranjo who may have instigated the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico. In 1696 Lucas was behind a new insurrection against the Spanish. He was killed with the assistance of his brother Jose, a loyalist, who presented his head to don Diego de Vargas.
Unlike the Revolt of 1680, this rebellion was poorly planned, and the rebels divided into several distinct factions. One powerful faction was under the command of Lucas Naranjo. On July 24, 1696, Antonio was with Vargas at the Battle of El Embudo (an unmarked area on the Taos Highway between Taos and Espanola). War chief, Lucas Naranjo, had attempted to entrap Vargas and some of his best men and annihilate them once and for all. Naranjo and his warriors waited in a safe place, entrenched in the cliffs and peaks of the mountains, ready to fight at the slope of the mountain. From below, the Spaniards fired repeatedly at them, and according to Vargas “…tuvieron la suerte de un tiro de los nuestros de un vezino llamado Antonio Cisneros…” It was the Spaniards good fortune that the bullet from a shot by Antonio Cisneros hit Naranjo in the neck. When Naranjo fell to the ground, he was decapitated by Antonio and his head was carried off. Said de Vargas, "It gave me great pleasure to see the said rebel apostate dog in that condition. A pistol shot that was fired into his right temple had blown out his brains leaving the said head hollow." The remaining rebels fled and the allies from Pecos were given Naranjo's severed head as a trophy of war. Naranjo’s death and the defeat of his warriors paved the way for the eventual suppression of the Pueblo Revolt of 1696 and assure the Spaniards of permanent colonization in New Mexico.
After the fall of Naranjo, the rebellion began to collapse. The most active rebels in the central Rio Grande valley were destroyed. Those who had fled their pueblos to the mountains were leaderless and in desperate circumstance. The Spanish had appropriated stores of food after each victory, and the people remaining in the mountains faced the choice of either returning to their pueblos and accepting Spanish governance or starving.