Sonya's Blog - Day 254 - Pueblo Ruin

Sonya’s Blog - Day 254 - March 2nd - Pueblo Ruins

There are quite a few areas where you can see Pueblo Ruins, evidence of the civilizations that have lived in this area since the 1300’s. The ruins we are going to today, also have mission ruins. When the Spanish Conquistadores came in the 1500’s, their monks came with them. The monks goal was to convert the native populations to christianity. How they went about this, was indeed questionable, but that is what they did.

The closest ruins to us were the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. These ruins are on the Abo Pass Trail, which was an ancient trading route between the Pueblo and the Plains Indians. It links with the Camino Real Scenic Byway and the Salt Missions Trail Scenic Byway and we will be driving along all of these paths today.

Our first stop was the town of Mountainair, this has the Visitor’s Centre for the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. We popped in there to map out our visits to the three separate sites of the ruins. While we were there, we saw a short video on the ruins and the history behind them.

People have been in this area for about 20,000 years, an estimated guess at the arrival of the first nomadic people. The Ancestoral Puebloans, that became the people who would eventually establish Abó, Gran Quivira and Quarai have roots that go back to 7000 years ago. Permanent villages were being established in the 900’s. By the 1100’s, contiguous stone and adobe homes were being built, these were the earliest stage of the pueblo society. As time went on, the Salinas Valley became a major trade centre between the Rio Grande villages and the plains tribes to the east. Materials traded were maize, piñon, nuts, beans, squash, salt and cotton goods for dried buffalo meat, hides, flints and shells. It is estimated that the population of the area was around 10,000 people by the 1600’s.

The Pueblo People were doing just fine in this harsh environment, until the Spanish showed up. Within a hundred years of the Spanish arrival, all the villages were abandoned and the Pueblo people were forced to flee to safer places. In that hundred years, the Pueblo people suffered from disease, starvation and harsh working conditions. They were forced to build the missions and provide the food for the mission, leaving them without their food stores, which lead to starvation. To top it all off, they were forced to give up their religious practices in favour of Christianity and if they were caught practicing their native religion they were whipped and punished. Nice! Nothing drives home the values and “benevolence” of Christianity like the fear of being whipped. Furthermore their were plenty of power struggles between the friars and the encomendaros (these were appointed by the governor to oversee the pueblo in exchange for collecting tribute from the Indians. The friars also put heavy demands on the people, to support the missions and build their churches. At the end of the video, the narrator wonders whether the Pueblo people would have declined without Spanish involvement or whether this was something that would have happened anyhow. Well, seems pretty clearcut. They were fine for hundreds of years, prior to the Spanish arrival. They had learned to live within the confines of the harsh environment and eke out a sustainable living. The Spanish show up, their populations are decimated and on the run within a hundred years. It seems unlikely that the decline would have come that quickly, without the Spanish speeding it along. The villages were unsafe, due to Apache raids. The Apache were, formerly, trading partners of the Pueblos. Due to Spanish slave raids (in which the Pueblo Indians had participated) the Apache started to raid the villages. Would this have happened had the Spanish never shown up. The drought, during the 1660’s and 1670’s, would have certainly have happened, but how the people dealt with the drought would have probably been different. I am going to guess that there had been other drought years in the area previously (just judging by the landscape and the area), yet the pueblo people continued to survive in the area.

There is evidence that not all the Spaniards were horrible people and that the early friars attempted to incorporate the native religion with their religion (there are Kiva’s in every single church that we visited). However, as the Inquisition gained momentum, the Franciscans were under increasing pressure to fully convert the native population and to have no tolerance for their religious beliefs. In the end, however, the Spaniards ways were so out of sync with the environment and the people of the area that everything came crashing down.

Our first stop was Abó. This was a thriving community when the Spaniards arrived in 1581. The Franciscans showed up in 1622 and immediately began converting the residents and building a church. The first church was finished in the late 1620’s and construction began on a larger church. Between 1672 and 1678 the people of Abó left and sought refuge in towns along the Rio Grande.

Kiva in the middle of the church grounds, evidence that the early friars tried to incorporate the native religion to get them to convert:

Riverbed, where the stone for the church was quarried from.

Our second stop was Gran Quivira, which was also known as Las Humanas. This was the larges of the Salinas pueblos and was a very important trade centre long before the Spanish showed up. The people of the pueblo originally resisted the Spanish, but being that they were a peaceful people, they eventually resigned themselves to the Spanish presence and included them in their trading. During the 1600’s there was a lot of strife between the friars and encomendaros, regarding who had more of a right to the Indian labour and the collecting of tributes. By the 1660’s the friars were determined to wipe out the native religions and they burned and filled the Kiva’s (the centre of native religious activity). In 1672, due to Apache raids drought and faimine, the pueblo was abandoned. This was a great site, because excavation had been done and you could see the pueblo buildings as well as the mission. The people constructed stone and adobe pueblos, which evolved into rectangular complexes with hundreds of rooms (all attached) for living and storage. In the centre of the village were Kiva’s, which was where the religious ceremonies took place.

Isaac needed to get a ribbon from each site, in order to complete his Junior Ranger's program for the area. We stopped in the Gran Quivira centre and Isaac got his ribbon. We also explored the small museum, which had examples of the pottery from the area that was excavated. The Ranger on duty let Kizmet come in as well.

We stopped at the Visitor’s Centre in Mountainair, once more, so that Isaac could collect his ribbon from them for his Junior Rangers badge. He has to complete certain activities in the booklet, in order to get his ribbons and badges, which is why he didn't get it the first time we were there. We then rushed to our last stop, Quarai, as it was closing at 5. We got there with 15 minutes to complete our explorations. Like Abó, only the mission is left standing. Their are large mounds, which are visible, and they are the buried pueblos. This was another thriving pueblo when the Spanish arrived in 1598. We quickly walked to the church and had a look around. This was a very large church, that was never completed. This pueblo was abandoned around the same time as Gran Quivira.

Isaac then collected his final ribbon, to attach to his badge, and was very excited:

Gran Quivira was along the Salt Missions Scenic Byway and we took this all the way back to Albuquerque. It was a pretty drive through the mountain pass and through many of the small towns.

It was quite late when we got back, so we had a quick supper and then watched an episode of Merlin. We were tired from our travels, so we called it a night after that.

Sonya