I imagine you have to do a lot of digging to get the true story of Juan de Oñate. This of course, is ignored and Google is not helpful; making it easy to get out the Cultural Marxist twist.
Thanks for your good information. The problem is, now that this thread has suffered the death of time, few will get your post.
Yes, but it was interesting. There's no doubt about it - by our standards, it was hideous. By the standards of the time? Pretty normal.
Actually I did some more digging and found that Oñate was descended matrilineally from Conversos - Jews forced to convert to Christianity. Making him Jewish by some standards. He was also Basque. I imagine he was subjected to quite a bit of discrimination and became a Conquistador to improve his station out of the box. And his wife was the great-granddaughter of Montezuma and the granddaughter of Cortés, so he married up. His son became Governor and left office when Oñate lost his case and returned to Spain, Thus I speculate there was some political element to it. Certainly cutting off feet in reprisal and massacre of Pueblo Indians was popular long after Oñate as it was cited in the Pueblo Revolt.