In this dissertation I seek to understand the Pueblo Patron Saint's Feast Days as sites of resistance, accommodation, and appropriation in their negotiation of colonial and national rule. I trace the development of the Feast Days and the colonial and missionary contexts involved in this process, as well as the ways in which Catholicism and the Feast Days became part of Pueblo tradition.

Using historical primary and secondary sources, the work of anthropologists and archeologists, and my own qualitative fieldwork, I argue that the Feast Days developed as a way to negotiate the imposition of Catholicism with the necessary continuance of Pueblo ceremonial practices making them an important way in which the Eastern Pueblos integrated a foreign ceremonial system into their own already extensive and demanding ceremonial calendar, largely on their own terms. Taking ceremonial activities that had traditionally been public and open to surrounding Pueblos, these social ceremonies could involve not only the Franciscans but the Spanish colonists, creating a safe ritual space that allowed for the continuation of necessary ceremonial activities. During this process, aspects of Catholicism became important to the Pueblos, becoming a part of their "traditions.".

With the official conquest by United States in 1848, a new set of rules, government, and religious institutions needed to be negotiated. I argue that the Patron Saint's Feast Days not only provided an argument for the Catholicism of the Pueblos as a way to resist the intrusion of Protestant missionaries, but also offered public ceremonial activities that could be used to assuage the curiosity of outsiders.