Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

“ I therefore returned to Baughl's, and thence to Santa Fé, with the firm determination to revisit Pecos at a future day, and then do what I was compelled reluctantly to leave undone this time. Should, in the mean time, some archæologist explore the same locality, correct my errors, and unravel the mysteries hovering about the place, I heartily wish him as much pleasure and quiet enjoyment as I have had during my ten days' work, in which the dream of a life has at last begun its realization. ”

“ The positive assertion that the winter pueblo of the Pecos tribe was about 2,000 feet higher than the great ruins on the mesilla—that these ruins themselves were but their summer houses—was very startling. It appeared incredible that the Indians should have left their comfortable quarters in the coldest season to look for shelter in the highest and coldest places of the whole region. ”

“ Our choice is therefore limited between Zuñi and the Moqui towns themselves; for there can be no doubt as to the identity of the rock of Acuco or Tutahaco, east of Cibola, with the pueblo of Acoma, whose remarkable situation, on the top of a high, isolated rock, has made it the most conspicuous object in New Mexico for nearly three centuries. ”

“ On the right side of the Arroyo de Pecos, there is a wide amphitheatre bottom, which was filled with red clay, like that of which the adobe at the church is made, and which appears to have been partly dug out. The place is to the right of the road also, which there crosses the creek. The only objection to the surmise is in the fact that along this entire bottom I found not the slightest trace of obsidian. Pottery, however, is scattered everywhere. ”

“ Not only did thep. 90 Pecos Indians live together, and build their houses together, but they raised their crops in one common field (though divided into individual or rather family plots, according to Ruiz) , irrigated from one common water source which gathered its contents of moisture from the inhabited surface of the pueblo grounds. "The lands," said Mariano Ruiz, "belong to the tribe, but each man can sell his own crops." ("Las tierras son del pueblo, pero cada uno puede vender sus cosechas.") It forcibly recalls the system of "distribution and tenure of lands" among the ancient Mexicans. ”

“ Tiguex, therefore, must be located on or near the site of Bernalillo. The "Rio Tiguex" of Castañeda is the Rio Grande del Norte, and the Indians of Tiguex belonged to the stock of the "Tanos" language, now spoken still by a few Indians at Galisteo, and by the inhabitants of the pueblos of Sandia and Isleta. [57] Even the direction in which the Spaniards moved from Acoma—that is, to the north-east—perfectly agrees with that in which Bernalillo lies, whereas the mouth of the Rio Puerco, below which General Simpson locates Tiguex, lies south-east of the pueblo of Acoma. ”

“ As the bee builds one cell alongside of the other and above the other,—the norm of one and the "habitat" impelling the norm of those above and alongside,—so the Indians of Pecos aggregated their cells according to their wants and the increase of their numbers ”

“ The tourist who, in order to reach Santa Fé from the north, takes the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad at La Junta, Colorado,—fascinated as he becomes by the beauty as well as by the novelty of the landscape, while running parallel with the great Sierra Madre, after he has traversed the Ratonis at daybreak,—enters a still more weird country in the afternoon. ”

“ But Antonio de Espejo, who, with fourteen soldiers, explored New Mexico in 1582 and 1583, visited Pecos. There can be no doubt but that the pueblos of the "Hubates"—two journeyings of six leagues to the east of the "Quires"—are the Pecos and the "Tamos," the Tanos. [153] Espejo is very liberal in his estimates: he gives to the "Hubates" five towns with 25,000 inhabitants, and to the "Tamos" even 40,000 souls. He says they had cotton cloth; he also says there was much good pine and cedar in their country, and that their houses were four and five stories high. ”

“ The bleak summits of the high northern chain seem to rise in height as he advances; even the distant Trout mountains (Sierra de la Trucha) loom up solemnly towards the head-waters of the Pecos. About Glorieta the vale disappears, and through the shaggy crests of the Cañon del Apache, which overlooks the track in awful proximity, he sallies out upon the central plain of northern New Mexico, six thousand eight hundred feet above the sea-level. To the south-west the picturesque Sandia mountains ”

“ While this discussion has proved, we believe, the truthfulness and reliability of the chroniclers of Coronado's expedition, and their great importance for the history of American aborigines, it establishes at the same time the superior advantages of New Mexico as a field for archæological and ethnological study. It is the only region on the whole continent where the highest type of culture attained by its aborigines—the village community in stone or adobe buildings—has been preserved on the respective territories of the tribes. ”

“ The Moqui of Arizona, clearly identified with Coronado's "Tusayan" are not noticed on the map, of course.
If now we compare these localities in 1540 with the present sites of the pueblos of New Mexico, it is self-evident that the Zuñi, Acoma, Tiguas, Queres, Jemez, Tehua, and Taos still occupy (Acoma excepted) , if not the identical houses, at least the same tribal grounds. The Piros have removed to the frontier of Mexico, the Pecos are extinct as a tribe; of the Tanos and Picuries, a few remain on their ancient soil. Their fate is not a matter of conjecture, but of historical record. ”

“ In order to burn or bake their pottery, the present pueblo Indians of New Mexico build large but low hearths on the ground of small wood, sticks, and other inflammable rubbish and refuse, on which they place the newly formed articles, and then set the floor on fire, until the whole is thoroughly burnt. ”

“ In the middle of the north wall a hole is knocked out, but the two coats of plaster (dark and white) are almost everywhere preserved. Great interest attaches to this apartment, from the fact that, according to Sr. Mariano Ruiz, the sacred embers ("braza") were kept here until 1840, in which year the five last remaining families of Pecos Indians removed to their cognates at Jemez, and the "sacred fire" disappeared with them. Sr. Ruiz is good authority on that point, since, as a member of the tribe [125] ("hijo del pueblo") , he was asked to perform his duty by attending to the embers one year. ”

“ E. K. Walters, are all above the layer of white ashes, charcoal, corncobs, and corrugated pottery found as a continuous seam along an extent of over 100 m.—327 ft.—from N. to S. Consequently, the walls and graves must have been built over these remains of a people which appears to have made indented and corrugated pottery alone, and consequently also the latter must be older in time than the former. It does not appear that the sedentary Indians of New Mexico ever made, within traditional and documentary times, any other than the painted pottery in greater or less degree of perfection. ”

“ Nearly in the centre of this triangle, two miles west of the river, and one and a half miles from Baughl's, there rises a narrow, semicircular cliff or mesilla, over the bed of a stream known as the Arroyo de Pecos. [89] The southern end of this tabular cliff (its highest point as well as its most sunny slope) is covered with very extensive ruins, representing, as I shall hereafter explain, three distinct kinds of occupation of the place by man. These ruins are known under the name of the Old Pueblo of Pecos. ”

“ When, therefore, in the afternoon of the 17th of October, 1692, Diego de Vargas Zapata, having recaptured Santa Fé from the Tanos who then held its ruins, [170] moved upon Pecos, he was received by the whole tribe with demonstrations of joy, [171] and the "capitan de la guerra" of the pueblo afterwards assisted him in subduing a second outbreak in 1694. [172]
The result for the pueblos of the great revolt in New Mexico was a gradual diminution in the numbers of their inhabitants. It was the beginning of decline. ”

“ It can be nothing else than Pecos, whose aboriginal Indian name, in the Jemez language, is "Âgin," whereas Pecos is the "Paego" of the Qq'uêres idiom. There is no other Indian pueblo answering to its description and geographical location as given by the chroniclers of Coronado. The fact that "when the army quitted Cicuyé top. 21 go to Quivira, we entered the mountains, which it was necessary to cross to reach the plains, and on the fourth day we arrived at a great river, very deep, which passes also near Cicuyé," [58] does not at all militate against it. ”

“ Further north of Quirix, Yuque-Yunque was found on the Rio Grande. An officer was also despatched to the south beyond Tutahaco, and he indeed discovered "four villages" at a great distance from the latter, and beyond these a place where the Rio Grande "disappeared in the ground, like the Guadiana in Estremadura." [68]
Through our identifications of "Tiguex" with Bernalillo, of "Cicuyé" with Pecos, and "Tutahaco" with near Isleta, it becomes now extremely easy to locate all these pueblos in the most satisfactory manner. "Quirix" is the Queres district Santo-Domingo, Cochití, etc. ”

“ The Rio Pecos is crossed just beyond Bernal, and thence on he speeds towards the west and north: to the left, the towering Mesa de Pecos, darkp. 39 pines clambering up its steep sides; to the right, the broad valley, scooped out, so to say, between the mesa and the Tecolote ridge. It is dotted with green patches and black clusters of cedar and pine shooting out of the red and rocky soil. Scarcely a house is visible, for the casitas of adobe and wood nestle mostly in sheltered nooks. Beyond Baughl's, the ruins first strike his view ”

“ The slope towards the east and south-east is rocky on the top, covered with sandy soil growing grama and very few cedar bushes, studded with ant-hills, and devoid of all remains of human structures so far as I could see. Pottery and obsidian are ever present, but become perceptibly less andp. 88 almost disappear further east. The rills which drain the eastern slope carry much of this broken stuff into a small arroyo that winds to the left of the mesilla. About one quarter of a mile east of the building A, on a bare sunny and grassy level, are, quite alone, the foundations of a singular ruin. ”

“ In a direct line the distance p. 41 to the ruins is but a mile and a half; but after nearing the banks of the stream (which there are grassy levels) , one is kept at a distance from it by deep parallel gulches. So we have to follow the arroyo downwards, keeping about a quarter of a mile to the west of it, till, south of the old church itself, the road at last crosses the wide and gravelly bed, in which a fillet of clear water is running. Then we ascend a gradual slope of sandy and micaceous soil, thinly covered by tufts of grama; a wide, circular depression strikes our eye ”