A Place Of Senses For People Who Value A Sense Of Place – Pecos, New Mexico

 Great minds discuss ideas;

Average minds discuss events;

Small minds discuss people. 

Eleanore Roosevelt

The original (white) against what is left today (adobe brown)

Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula de los Pecos Mission Church

From a sign at Pecos National Historical Park

Pecos is immersed in a unique culture that you won’t find anywhere else in the country. Centered at the crossroads of the Southwest, New Mexico has developed a unique mix of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American traditions over the centuries, resulting in spectacular architecture, flavorful food, and a diverse collection of people who are proud to call this area home.

Sometimes the best journey starts when you slow down.  Sometimes you hear more in a quiet place.  Have a high point in your life down in the valleys.  Reach down deep inside yourself up on the ridge tops.  Pecos is for people who want to explore the simpler, purer path.  It isn’t a park, and it doesn’t have a theme.  It’s a village tucked into a river valley, with a horizon that scans mountains and meadows and mesas and plains. 

Pecos is for people who want to hear the beat of a bird’s wings and the wind in the high mountain forest.  A place to remember what it’s like to be civilized in a wilderness.  Pecos is a western saga, situated near an all-weather pass where the west was lost and won time and time again.  First came Pueblo and Plains Indians, then Spanish settlers, then traders on the Santa Fe Trail and then Confederate and Union soldiers. 

I couldn’t have said it better myself, the above is from: www.pecosnewmexico.com.  The week I was here, camping was difficult to find.  All spaces were taken by people who had come to fish in the, very low level, Pecos River.  It may have been an abrupt end to the fishing season due to an incredibly dry year and people were flocking here for a last chance.  Thankfully, one can also do disperse camping in the forest – where I stayed to enjoy an especially parched but peaceful nature. 

Low foundation walls from 1625, church from 1717

Delineating where the larger, earlier, Mission Church structure used to stand

At an altitude of 6,945 feet, it is nice to get away from the summer heat of Albuquerque.  

Mission Church seen from the back as you approach it

Dark green background is Glorieta Mesa (flat top mountain)

Second longest mesa after Grand Mesa, Colorado, the largest in the world

Though the Spanish built missions throughout the southwest, the oldest ones are in New Mexico.  Historians refer to the 1600’s as ‘The Golden Age of the Missions.’  The Spanish sent Franciscan Friars to convert locals.  The Franciscans claimed they wanted to save the souls of ‘heathens’, but actually they were motivated by greed and power.  Consider the amount of time and energy they invested wrangling with the Spanish civil authorities for the upper hand.  Their motto said it all: Gold, God, Glory – yes, in that order! 

Pecos is not as well-known as Chaco, Bandelier or Mesa Verde but was the largest when 1,200 of Coronado’s army invaded in 1541…  Five plazas, twenty-one kivas, and 2,000 souls.  That latest figure is disputed by today’s archeologists.  In the days, Friars inflated the number of people under their care to impress the church back in Spain.  Based on the size of the structures they uncovered, archeologists put that number closer to 700-1,200 individuals. 

Top of kiva, seen on way to the Mission Church – What a view!
Interestingly, there are still disagreements as to what makes a pithouse vs. a kiva.
There are also private as well as public kivas

The story of Pecos is one of change and of a people flexible enough to meet this change, preserve traditions, and survive for centuries in this mountain valley.  On this ridge are the buried houses of the main characters of this story, the Pecos People.  The name Pecos is derived from the Native Towa word P’ækilâ, which means ‘the Place above the water’. 

In a nutshell:

12,000 – 7,500 years ago: The Big Game Hunters.  Paleo-Indian people were primarily hunters – following the herds of mammoths, giant bison, and camel. 

7,500 – 2,000 years ago: The Archaic Stage.  The archaic people were foragers – gathering wild plants and hunting small game.  These nomadic people traveled through the Pecos Valley on hunting and gathering expeditions.

800 CE: Pithouse Dwellers.  As people cultivated corn to supplement their diet, a new lifestyle emerged.  Permanent homes were built because families spent more time in one place – tending their fields.  A pithouse village occupied a site close to today’s mission ruins.

1100 – 1300 CE: Early Pueblos.  With a growing population and an increasing dependence on crop, village architecture changed.  The Pecos Valley inhabitants now lived in above ground masonry room blocks organized into pueblos.

1500’s: Pecos and the Plains.  Nomadic Apache bands and other groups from the Great Plains had begun to make contact with the Pueblo world.

1541: Spanish Contact.  Francisco Vasquez de Coronado advanced the Spanish frontier.  His expedition sought treasures rumored to be in seven legendary cities. 

Early in this century: Birthplace of Southwestern Archeology.  Pecos became the focus of one of the first scientific excavations of a prehistoric North American site.

Located on the busy trade route between the farming people of the Rio Grande Valley to the west and the Plains Indian hunters to the east, Cicuyé, later called Pecos Pueblo, was built on a high ridge near abundant water supplies.  It grew into one of the largest and most powerful pueblos, rising four to five stories high.  In its heyday, Plains Apache, Comanche, and Navajo traded and pitched their tipis in these fields and forests.  

As the ranger who gave the tour said: ‘Imagine Pecos through the centuries, the bustling sounds of the trade fairs between the people of Pecos Pueblo and the Plains Indians, the clang of swords and Spanish armor, the smell of incense burning in the Spanish missions, the rumble of thousands of wagons traveling the Santa Fe Trail, the gnawing hunger in your stomach after drought killed your crops, and the burst of artillery shells at Glorieta Pass.  Pecos, where the past is present.’

Native Americans traded ceremonial items such as macaw feathers from Mexico, abalone shells from the Pacific, and fresh water shells from the Great Lakes.  Plains Indians came from the east bringing tools, bison hides, and captives (slaves) for trade.  Closer to home, other Pueblo people came to Pecos offering ceramics, obsidian, and turquoise. 

Pecos history began around 800 CE when early inhabitants of the Rio Grande Valley moved into the upper Pecos Valley.  They had established fourteen hamlets by 1100 CE, extending forty miles down the river.  Something happened in the 14^th century, as the inhabitants of the small villages along the Pecos river consolidated at Pecos Pueblo, dramatically increasing the population of the community.  By 1450, the village became a frontier trading hub and fortress.  While balance and harmony were important ideals, warfare was common.  With 500 warriors, Pecos was considered the dominant power, as newcomers to the area soon realized. 

Coronado found storerooms piled high with corn when he arrived in 1541; his expedition party estimated it to be a three-year supply, the Pecos people were well prepared.  A Coronado chronicler described Cicuyé as ‘a strong village, four stories high. The houses do not have doors below, but instead ladders are used which can be lifted up like drawbridges.’

The community was strategically located between the agricultural villages in the Rio Grande river valley to the west and the hunting tribes on the plains to the east.  The inhabitants of Pecos were savvy traders, well-versed in the cultures, languages, and customs of their trading partners. 

Franciscan Friars were forcing communities to build missions.  Their success created conflict with Spanish officials because both were vying for labor and tribute.  Locals became increasingly hostile due to the religious suppressions, economic exploitation, and abuse; their spiritual practices were banned, while their wealth, resources and food were plundered.

After Santa Fe became the capital of New Spain in 1610, Pecos assumed increasing importance to Spanish authorities. Strategically located on a route from the northern Rio Grande Valley around the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains, Pecos was seen by the Spaniards as a friendly community that could act as a buffer against Apache and Comanche raiders.  The community was a shield between the Spanish capital and raiders for the Great Plains and they were a middleman to trade with those tribes.  Less risk, more profit. 

What you see today is the last of four adobe mission churches built at Pecos over the course of almost 100 years, the last one built in 1717.

To think there is still some wood left from that period!

Due to the proximity to the mission and architectural details and artifacts found in the rooms, some archaeologists believe those who resided in the South Pueblo were more allied with the Spaniards than those who resided in the North Pueblo. 

Franciscan Friar Andrés Juárez arrived at Pecos in 1621 and directed construction of the 'Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula de los Pecos’ Mission Church, the largest Spanish colonial structure north of the Mexican border. It stretched 150 feet from altar to entrance and the walls were 22 feet thick in places.  Archeologists estimate that builders used 300,000 forty-pound adobe bricks to complete the structure.  It contained exterior buttresses, white-washed walls, and six bell towers.  The Natives destroyed the church during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. 

To the Pueblo people, the Christian concept of a single church representing one god contrasted with their many kivas centered on the rhythms and harmonies of nature.  Kivas were the hub of community, not only for religious activities, but also for education and decision-making.  Unlike our secular world, there was no separation of church and state in Ancestral Pueblo culture.  Religious belief was a thread woven throughout their daily lives.  The kiva was the community’s heart and center.

The Pecos people farmed for generations before the Spanish arrived.  Through the mission, Franciscan Friars taught the Puebloans about raising animals and ranching.  The Friars introduced domesticated livestock including sheep, goats, chickens, cows, and pigs that became vital to the regional economy.  This work supported both the local mission and the Spanish crown.  Today many of the artistic and practical skills that were once taught at the mission, such as woodcarving, weaving, and tin works, remain an integral part of the northern New Mexico economy.  Great practical adaptation.

Kiva in mission’s courtyard, by Greg Disch
They had a tent to cover some digs when I visited so I couldn’t take a picture
Some thinks kivas may have been built here by Franciscans to entice the natives

It is uncommon to find a Pueblo religious structure, such as a kiva, in a Franciscan convent.  This kiva was built before the Pueblo revolt of 1680, between 1620 and 1640.  There are only two other examples of kivas within mission conventos (residence of parish priest in Spanish America), making this a rare and fascinating Pecos mystery.  Perhaps the padres believed it would be easier to teach the Pecos people Christianity in a structure where they were used to learning religion.  It may have been an attempt to link the two religions and promote a brotherhood between differing faiths.  Kivas emphasize the traditional Puebloan connection between the world below, and the world above. 

After decades of Spanish control, forced labor, tribute (obligation to give their food to the church and army, diminishing their precious stock each time.), injustice, and repression, the Native populations co-joined in a regional revolt, the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, forcing the Spanish to abandon the entire region north of modern-day El Paso. Pecos inhabitants killed their priest, and destroyed the massive church.

The relationship between the Spanish and the Pueblos changed after the revolt.  The Spanish prohibited the forced labor system.  Priests did not interfere with religious ceremonies as long as Catholic traditions were also observed.  Spanish authorities abolished tribute and negotiated military alliances to fight common enemies, including the Apache, Navajo, Utes and Comanche. Middle ground happens when neither group/side gets what they want. 

The Spaniards returned with military force after 12 years (1692). Tribute was abolished as ‘peace’ was imposed by the sword. The smaller, rebuilt church was completed in 1717. The decline of Pecos Pueblo began in the 17^th century as trade with surrounding tribes lessened. The population was further reduced by European-introduced diseases, and by warfare with Comanches.  Native populations declined, primarily due to diseases.  When the Santa Fe Trail arrived in 1821, fewer than 20 survivors remained, then, in 1838, they moved to join other Towa-speakers at Jemez Pueblo. 

Example of standard prices in 1754: 

•             Two knives for one bison hide
•             One poor bridle for two bison skins
•             Two good horses for one Indian slave girl plus additional ‘trifles’

Archaeologist-historian Adolph Bandelier once wrote: ‘Up to 1859 regular caravans of Pueblo Indians visited Sonora annually in October.’ They carried, he says, their woven blankets and buffalo hides to trade for fancy shawls and oranges.  Bandelier states that in 1859 the Sonora government imposed an import tax on this petty commerce. As a result, the Pueblos abandoned their trading caravans and never returned.

Flowering cholla in front of the Mission Church

Walls made of adobe bricks quickly erode and disappear without protection.  The National Park Service protects the original adobe walls of the church and convent by encasing the walls in new adobe brick veneers.  This ensures the remaining original adobe brick walls from the 1600’s and 1700’s are preserved, and the form and outline of the mission remain intact.  Assessments show that many walls in the church and convent still have original adobe brick nearly 200 years after the Pecos people departed.  The first attempt at amending the mortar between the adobe bricks created more degradation.  Over time, however, the restorations have become more friendly to keeping the older adobe intact. 

Pecos National Historic Park holds and preserves more than 12,000 years of history and cultural remains including pueblos and kivas, two Spanish Colonial Missions, part of the Santa Fe Trail, the Civil War battlefield at Glorieta Pass (7,500’), and the Forked Lightning Ranch that was built in the 20th century.

In addition, Pecos was the chosen summer home of E.E. ‘Buddy’ Fogelson, a Texas oil magnate, and his wife, actress Greer Garson. Fogelson bought the Forked Lightning Ranch in 1941, expanded it to 13,000 acres and raised Santa Gertrudis Cattle. He married Garson in 1949, and together they helped to protect the land and actively supported preservation efforts.

Greer sold the ranch to the Conservation Fund in 1991, who then donated it to the National Park Service. She and Fogelson received the Department of the Interior’s highest civilian honor – the Conservation Service Award.

Doorways
Adobe bricks covered with preservative ‘veneer’

Archaeologist Albert Vincent Kidder brought the fledgling science of archaeology to Pecos in 1915. Kidder tested the theory of stratigraphy on the Pecos trash middens. After 12 field seasons, he had established a relative chronology for the American Southwest based on ceramic variation, in styles, materials, and techniques. At the 1927 Pecos conference, he and other scientists established the classification system still in use today, from Basket-maker to Puebloan periods. The Pecos Conference tradition continues annually.  From 1915 to 1927, Pecos was the subject of one of the first organized excavations of a southwestern ruin.

Pottery chronology, Pecos Museum

‘It was obvious that we were digging in the greatest rubbish heap and cemetery that had ever been found in the Pueblo region…the same sort of slope stretched away to the south on the east side alone for nearly a quarter of a mile… The beds of rubbish were repositories for ashes, house sweepings, table leavings, broken pottery, and discarded implements; they served, as well, for the burial of the dead…caused, apparently, by no disrespect for the departed, but rather by the fact that the heaps offered as a rule the only soft earth for gravedigging in a land of bare rocks and hard-packed clay.’ 

A. V. Kidder

Kidder’s excavation at Pecos revealed an advanced, powerful, elaborate, impressive trading village.  The size and age of the community made it an archeological Petrie dish.  Large numbers of humans living in the same place for a long time generates a lot of trash (up to 20 feet high) and you can tell a lot about people by sifting through it.  The village’s waste, from food scraps to pottery shards to human remains, provided insight into diet, daily activity, artistic achievement, burial practices, etc.  It comprised of 660 rooms in two large terraced communal dwellings (one north, one south), 17 round subterranean kivas and 4 square above-ground kivas. 

At Pecos, Kidder concentrated on the study of pottery – ‘the most abundant and most reliable criterion of culture change.’ He demonstrated that pottery styles not only identified groups of people, but could also be used as an indicator of time periods, trade, and geographical location.  He also demonstrated that the layers of a site (stratigraphy) represent different periods of time.

Stratigraphy demonstrated, Pecos museum

Kidder was one of the first North American archaeologists to study the development of human culture over a large region through the systematic examination of stratigraphy and chronology in archaeological sites.  From his work at Pecos and other sites, he developed the first regional cultural chronology for the American Southwest, the Pecos Classification, which is till used today.

Person next to wall to give you better sense of size
Wind, water, and vandalism reduced the latest church to a partial shell.

When Kidder conducted his excavations at Pecos Pueblo and Forked Lightning Ranch from 1915 to 1929, he uncovered the human remains of 2,000 individuals dating from 1100’s to the 1800’s.  Following the archaeological practices of the time, he collected the remains and shipped them to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA for study.  In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), requiring institutions receiving federal funding to return human remains and certain cultural items to affiliated tribes. 

When the last permanent residents left Pecos Pueblo in 1838, they settled some 80 miles away at Jemez Pueblo where they had cultural and linguistic ties.  Descendants of those Pecos residents continue to preserve their culture at Jemez.  Jemez Pueblo, the Peabody Museum, and the National Park Service agreed that the remains should be returned to their original home at Pecos Pueblo.

On May 23, 1999, a truck containing the remains of 2,000 individuals arrived at the park where it was met by hundreds of residents from Jemez Pueblo, some of whom had traveled by foot from Jemez to Pecos for the event.  In a traditional ceremony, the Jemez people reburied their ancestors in an unmarked area of the park and welcomed the return of their ancestors with dances and a feast.

Geological circumstance and geographical location made Pecos a cultural crossroads for centuries. Human activities in the area have centered around the Glorieta-Pecos corridor, a 30-mile-long passage eroded between the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range and Glorieta Pass by mountain streams.  The middle section of this corridor is Glorieta Pass. Since prehistoric times, travel and commerce between peoples of the upper Rio Grande Valley and the Great Plains have funneled through this strategic portal.

Glorieta Pass became a cultural crossroads through which hunters and gatherers, traders, conquerors and explorers, immigrants, soldiers, ranchers, and tourists passed.  

Kiva mystique – connection between two worlds

Because of the threat of Comanche raids and encroachment of livestock on fields, the Pecos Puebloans found farming to be increasingly difficult.  New Hispanic settlements in the valley had taken over what remained of the fertile agricultural fields that supported the pueblo.  This, coupled with a drought, caused famine.  Hundreds died from epidemics like influenza and other diseases introduced by the Europeans. 

By 1788, only about 180 inhabitants remained in the pueblo. Time and storms contributed to the gradual deterioration of the high-walled village and church. Finally, in 1838, after almost three centuries of combating neighboring tribes and various forms of pestilence, the last 17 disheartened inhabitants abandoned their once-populous ancestral village and made an 80-mile trek northwest to Jemez, the only other pueblo that spoke their Towa language. The people of Jemez had given them an invitation to come, and provided houses as well as fields.  (Church in Jemez is built very similarly to the one in Pecos)

One cannot speak of Pecos and several other pueblos without mentioning the Battle of Glorieta Pass as well as the Indian Detours.   

Battle of Glorieta Pass:

Santa Fe Trail

Between the towering Sangre de Cristo mountains and the flat-topped Glorieta Mesa lies Glorieta Pass, through which a continuously unfolding story of human culture has traveled to and from the Pecos Valley for thousands of years. Pueblo and Plains Indians, Spanish conquerors and missionaries, Mexican and Anglo armies, Santa Fe Trail settlers and adventurers, tourists on the railroad, Route 66 and Interstate 25...

From ancient footpaths to today’s I-25, the geographic corridor of Glorieta Pass has been the channel through which countless people have passed.  Some came for survival, hunting and gathering food along the way.  Some came for conquest, seeking riches and new lands.  Some came for trade, and some sought adventure or just a getaway.  This mountain pass has provided safe passage through the Sangre de Cristo mountains for thousands of years.

March 26-28, 1862 – The Glorieta Civil War Battle: Referred to as ‘The Gettysburg of the West’, it was here that Union troops thwarted an ambitious Confederate military campaign, designed to expand the Confederacy westward.  Confederates had hoped to take control of the gold fields of Colorado, mineral-rich Nevada, press on to capture key ports in California, as well as the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California. 

If the California ports of San Diego and Los Angeles could be taken, the South would have access to international trade, which was severely restricted by the Union blockade of the Atlantic ports. 

Defeat at the Battle of Glorieta Pass ended the Confederate’s incursion into the Southwest.  The Texas vanguard captured Santa Fe on March 10, 1862.  On March 28, after two days of battle at the Glorieta Pass, Union troops, including Colorado and New Mexico volunteers, burned a poorly guarded Confederate supplies camp, spiked cannons, and slaughtered or freed hundreds of horse and mules.  Within two weeks of their defeat here, Confederate troops were forced to withdraw to Texas.  This battlefield was designated a National Historic Landmark on 11/5/1961.

Glorieta Pass on Santa Fe Trail (far left)

Much as the Confederates were never again to invade the north after losing the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), the Southern Rebels never again attempted a significant action in the far West after the Battle of Glorieta Pass (1862). 

The battle was fought over only 3 days.  In the course of the battle, Confederate food, ammunition, and other vital supplies were destroyed, wagons burned, and corralled mules and horses stampeded off a narrow canyon, a crucial tactical event that led to their demise.  That afternoon and evening, additional hardship came in the form of a late-winter snowstorm that dropped nearly a foot of snow in the pass. 

With approximately 1,200 soldiers on each side, the casualties were high, Union forces suffered 51 killed, 78 wounded, and 15 captured.  Among the Confederates, 48 were killed, 80 wounded, and 92 captured.  The Battle of Glorieta Pass came more than a year before Gettysburg.  It was nowhere near the magnitude of Gettysburg but still had a big impact. 

Truce was eventually declared to allow both sides to tend to their wounded and bury their dead. 

Indian Detours:

When the railroad opened in 1880, the trail became obsolete, and the nearby ranch and trading post closed. 

It is easy to imagine the community as it was long ago; feet of ancient people trodding the soil, fires smoldering in kivas, traders haggling, and the voices of children filling the air.  Pecos was a vibrant, thriving community, with mountains and mesas defining the horizon.  Now it is quiet, with knowledge, stories and secrets that we may never know.

By 1900 the railroad was promoting tourism.  ‘Indian Detours’ – starting in 1926, in a joint venture with entrepreneur Fred Harvey – offered the cross-country traveler ‘an adventurous and romantic interlude’.  

Selling the romance of the old West didn’t help save this area.
Driving ‘detourists’ through the ‘wilderness panoramas’ of
Northern New Mexico

Harvey’s trained staff provided good, wholesome dishes, and polite, professional service to passengers, earning him the name ‘Civilizer of the West.’

Inside brochure: ‘On the broad highway modernity flashes past horseback Indians and tiny burros packing firewood to Santa Fe just as they did three centuries ago…  Everywhere on the open upland above are evidences of the Forgotten People.’

The way they describe the landscape at the time: ‘Words are futile things with which to picture the fascination of this vast enchanted empire, unspoiled and full of startling contrasts, that we call the Southwest.  It is a land of limitless panoramas and distances dwarfed by the clear, dry air; of flooding sunshine and intense color; of snow-capped peaks and twisting, abysmal gorges; of sage and cedar and mountain forests; of lazy rivers and plunging torrents; of broad mesas and rich, peaceful valleys.  It is a land where the sunsets flame and the afterglow softens the harsh outlines of the wilderness into a picture of unspeakable beauty, where the silence listens and the night stars glow like headlights. 

To John Muir our Southwest stood for the greatest treasure-store of natural wonders on the known globe.  It holds as rare a place in the hearts of the historian, the archeologist and the simple traveler.  For it is at once the Last Frontier and the home of an ageless antiquity.  In it the American reads his history in a few raw decades, the Spaniards in mellow, colorful centuries, the Indian in myths and traditions whose origin is lost in a past that was old before the beginning of the Christian Era.

Yet the lives of the three flow on together, unblending.  The rush of the twentieth century disturbs little the slumberous content of the old Spanish-American towns.  The Indian lives much as he did when Columbus sailed.  And around them all, ringing the canyon walls and dotting the lofty mesas, lie countless mighty ruins, the unsolved riddles of the People of the Past.’

Joan Sloan, like many other resident artists 
Found these ‘detours’ gawking intrusions into sacred Native American rituals
Lampooned here in one of his 1927 etching called The Indian Detour

In all this history, what I misconstrued for a long time is that the name New Mexico (1561) existed more than 260 years before Mexico, the country, (1824) was named.  I had always assumed that Mexico came first.  Thus New Mexico’s name didn’t derive from present day Mexico.  There is yet so much to discover in this great state and wonderful world.  The more of these places I visit, the more I am able to make connections between the various archeologists, researchers, stories, events over time.  Fascinating and rewarding.  

El Macho Church in Pecos Valley – couldn’t resist because of the name 
But in this case, it means donkey/burro, not macho as in ‘manly man’