Popé was no ordinary Indian malcontent. He must have been a character of unusual force, with keen understanding of his fellows, and with a real gift for leadership. Let us even admit in him a sincere patriotism for his ancestral heritage. Thus he imposed his supernatural claims no less easily than his practical plans for the elimination of the conquering people. At the time of the outbreak the Christianized Indians were estimated at about sixteen thousand. To these Popé proposed to add a large number of tribes occupying districts lying more than a hundred leagues to the westward. This would include Zuñi and Hopi. By means of secret council meetings Popé stirred up a general sentiment of revolt over this great area and even succeeded in winning to his support the Apaches,[80] up to now age-long enemies of all pueblos. The Indians had learned through experience the necessity and the strength of unity, through which, indeed, their success was accomplished. Only the chosen leaders were allowed to know any details of the carefully systematized plot until all was ripe for its operation. Popé’s chief assistants were Jaca of Taos, Catití of Santa Domingo and Don Luís Tupatú of the Picuris tribe, men speaking the same language and wholly in each other’s confidence. Popé took such precautions not to be betrayed that when he suspected his son-in-law, the Governor of the pueblo of San Juan, of friendliness to the Spaniards, he killed him there in his own house. At last all seemed to be ready. The Piros nation, being the only one that refused to join the movement, was left in ignorance of its arrangements. All the other tribes were informed of the day for the uprising by the clever device of knotted cords carried from pueblo to pueblo by relays of the swiftest runners. There has been some confusion about the full significance of these knots but Hackett is convinced that each knot merely signified a day. At each pueblo one knot would be untied[81] and the number of intervening days indicated by those still in place.[82] When the last knot should be straightened out, the Indians, wherever situated, were to rise as one man, and descend upon their unsuspecting prey, with the absolute order that no one—woman or child, priest or soldier—should be spared. All the pueblos were to be surrounded by their warriors, the mountain paths guarded and defended by Apaches, and if a few Spaniards should escape, the Mansos, living near El Paso, were to finish the slaughter as the Spaniards fled toward Mexico. The moment chosen was particularly auspicious because the greater part of the Spanish soldiery had been sent to El Paso to meet there the supply train coming from Mexico under the leadership of Father Ayeta, with the result that the colony was comparatively undefended.