Great topic for your research project. I think that exploring Acoma culture an its significance to early NM History is a great direction to go.

This question focuses more on Onãte and the Spanish than on the Acoma, however. It's fine to choose either direction (Spanish colonizers or the Acoma people or both), but you should revise your question a bit to reflect exactly which aspects of early NM culture you want to learn more about. Also, it may be extremely difficult, given the types of sources that we have access to, to find an answer about Oñate's internal motives. Instead, you might focus on the bigger picture--what reasons Oñate and the Spanish would have to want to send such a brutal message to the Acoma, and by extension, other Pueblos?

Can you respond here to let me know how you might want to revise the question to more directly address your interests and the dynamics of 17th Century NM? Please let me know if you could use any help or if you have any questions for me.