Conquest and Catastrophe

Changing Rio Grande Pueblo Settlement Patterns in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Elinore M. Barrett

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780826324122
• eBook ISBN: 9780826324139
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book forces a rethinking of our understanding of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico between the beginning of Spanish exploration in 1540 and the aftermath of revolt and reconquest at the end of the 1600s. Specifically, Pueblo losses of settlements and population are reinterpreted in a masterful synthesis of history, archaeology, and human geography, including discussion of the natural environment based on paleoclimate reconstructions. Barrett shows that the greatest loss of Pueblo settlements occurred in the 1630s when 51 percent of the Rio Grande pueblos were abandoned in the wake of Spanish colonization and mission building that began in 1600. Between 1600 and the revolt of 1680 the number dropped by 62 percent, from 81 to 31 pueblos.

By providing the first multifaceted and holistic account of Pueblo settlements in the Rio Grande region over a period of 160 years, Barrett offers a new perspective on the dynamics of Pueblo-Spanish interactions. Spanish exploitation and disruption of the Pueblo economy, Apachean raids, and the impact of droughts are re-assessed. But a major epidemic from 1636-40 likely proved the most crucial factor in the reduction of Pueblo population and settlements. Moreover, the gradual realization of the extent of their losses and grasping what it would mean for their continued existence was probably the most important factor, more than religious or civil persecution, in galvanizing the Pueblo peoples to achieve the unprecedented unity that made possible their successful uprising in 1680. They were unable to sustain this unity when the Spanish returned in 1692 and suffered further losses of pueblos, population, and territory as a result of the reconquest.

No serious future work on the Pueblos can be undertaken without reference to this one. The text, simply put, clarifies the entire framework of early Spanish-Indian relations.--Marc Simmons

PART
ONE

Rio Grande Pueblos and
Spanish Exploration,
1540–1598

Map 1. Rio Grande Pueblos, 1540–1598.

Introduction

Previous works concerned with Pueblo settlement during the period of Spanish exploration of New Mexico in the sixteenth century have only dealt with parts of the Rio Grande Pueblo Region or with the reports of a single exploratory expedition. Part I therefore presents an overview of Pueblo settlement in the entire Rio Grande Pueblo Region in the 1540–98 contact period. By integrating all of the chronicles of the sixteenth-century Spanish explorers with the work of archeologists who have reported on the pueblos of the protohistoric period in this region, it has been possible to work out an approximation of the Pueblo settlement pattern during the contact period.¹ The area of the Rio Grande Pueblo Region is shown on map 1.

Greatly exaggerated reports received by Spanish authorities in Mexico City about the settled agricultural villages in what came to be known as New Mexico led them to launch a full-scale expedition to explore the area. This expedition, headed by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, was the first to penetrate Rio Grande Pueblo territory and was followed by six others in the ensuing fifty-eight years (table 1). Reports with useful information about settlements were produced by members of all except the Morlete and Leyva-Humaña expeditions. Failure to find new sources of wealth and a disabling accident that befell Coronado brought an end to his expedition and, apparently, to Spanish interest in New Mexico; but knowledge of a numerous settled population remained, offering an opportunity for spreading Christianity. This challenge was taken up forty years later when an expedition jointly led by Fray Agustín Rodríguez and Captain Francisco Sánchez Chamuscado engaged in both proselytizing and exploration. Growing hostility by local people who resented their demands for food prompted withdrawal after a few months, although Rodríguez and another priest insisted on remaining behind. Investigation of reports that they had been killed was the reason for sending another expedition to New Mexico. A small party under the leadership of Antonio de Espejo reached Pueblo country a year later, following the same route up the Rio Grande. After confirming that the priests had been killed and unsuccessfully exploring the region for mines, his party returned to New Spain via the Pecos River.

Despite such disappointments, the perception of New Mexico as an attractive place persisted and seven years later lured a group of colonists, who had become discontented with the poverty of resources in their province of Nuevo León, to set out for New Mexico, although they did not have permission from authorities in Mexico City. The leader, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, and a small advance party were able to explore part of the region before they were arrested by Juan Morlete, who had been sent to apprehend the colonists and return them to New Spain. This arrest did not deter Captain Francisco Levya de Bonilla and Antonio Gutiérrez de Humaña from making another unauthorized entrada two years later. A Mexican survivor of this expedition reported later to Juan de Oñate that they had spent about a year exploring Pueblo country, making their headquarters at San Ildefonso Pueblo. While exploring the eastern plains, all members of this expedition were killed except Oñate’s informant, eliminating the possibility of a report that could have added much valuable information about Pueblo settlements. Finally, five years later, in 1598, an authorized colonizing expedition arrived in New Mexico. The initial exploration of the region carried out by its leader, Juan de Oñate, provides additional settlement data, as do the lists of pueblos to which he assigned priests and the lists of pueblos from which he obtained pledges of loyalty. One of his soldiers, Juan Rodríguez, returned to Mexico City in 1602 and provided the cosmographer Enrico Martínez with information for a map of New Mexico for use by the viceroy. A redrawn version of this map, map 2 of this study, will be referred to as the 1602 map.²

Map 2. New Mexico in 1602. Based on the Enrico Martínez map of 1602.

Although the Spanish explorers did not find the fabulous cities initially sought, they were favorably impressed with the Pueblo settlements, especially as they contrasted them to those of the nomadic and seminomadic peoples of surrounding areas. What the Spaniards encountered in the Rio Grande Pueblo Region was a type of sedentary society composed of a number of linguistically distinct peoples who shared some basic characteristics. They lived in villages, in substantial, well-built houses, and sustained themselves principally by the crops they grew in their fields. They clothed themselves with cloth woven from the cotton they raised. They made fine pottery as well as utility types in which to store the surpluses of maize (corn) and other foods they produced. Many aspects of their way of life were derived from the cultures of the Anasazi people of the San Juan Basin to the northwest and the Mogollon people to the southwest, who, in turn, were influenced by the Mesoamerican civilization of central Mexico.

At the time they were first contacted by Spaniards, the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande region were experiencing an era of cultural florescence, according to scholars who named the period—which began about 1300/1325—the Classic Period.³ They lived in clusters of terraced multistory roomblocks separated by plazas that contained subterranean religious structures called kivas. Some of the largest pueblos contained more than one thousand ground-floor rooms. These large pueblos, surrounded by extensive areas of garden plots and numerous small, seasonally occupied field houses, were distinctive features of Classic Period settlements by the early fifteenth century. They rarely occupied defensive sites, but were typically located on the margins of river floodplains where conditions were more favorable for agriculture than in previous upland locations. Such large pueblos were the result not only of population growth but of a trend toward abandoning smaller pueblos and aggregating into larger communities. The implication is that methods of food production, trade networks, and techniques of social integration were adequate to maintain such population concentrations. However, some settlement instability within the region continued. A number of areas were abandoned after the mid-fifteenth century, and elsewhere even large pueblos were frequently deserted, with some partially reoccupied later. Of the 295 pueblos established in the Rio Grande Pueblo Region at various times during the Classic Period (1300—1600), 93, and possibly 102, were occupied at some time during the contact period.⁴

It was this late Classic Period society that Spanish explorers encountered, adding their own element of instability—although their impact on the overall Pueblo settlement pattern was slight. Major change did not come until permanent Spanish colonization was initiated in 1598.

CHAPTER ONE

General Regional Settlement Pattern

By the sixteenth century the greatest concentration of settled farming villages in the American Southwest was in the Rio Grande Pueblo Region. Some ninety-three pueblos were located in an area that stretched 215 miles along the Rio Grande rift valley from Taos Pueblo on the north to Senecu on the south, in addition to outlying areas to the east and west (map 1).¹ Forty-four of these contact-period pueblos were located along the margins of the Rio Grande floodplain in the several structural basins through which the river flows. The majority of these riverine pueblos were in the central and southern parts of the region—in the Albuquerque-Belen and Socorro Basins. North of the Albuquerque-Belen Basin most of the pueblos—some twenty-eight—were located along tributary streams that drain the slopes of the southernmost ranges of the Rocky Mountains: the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east and the Jemez Mountains on the west. Some fifty miles to the west of the Rio Grande, one lone pueblo, Acoma, was still occupied in the contact period. The remaining twenty were located east of the Rio Grande: fifteen in the Galisteo and Estancia Basins, four on the periphery of the Sandia Mountains, and one—Pecos—forty miles east of the Rio Grande.

An additional nine pueblos might have been occupied at some time during the contact period but are not mentioned by any of the explorers. Archeological evidence supports the possibility that on the Pajarito Plateau, on the eastern side of the Jemez Mountains, as many as six pueblos continued to be occupied, in addition to three in the Rio Salado drainage west of the Socorro Basin. Also within the Rio Grande Pueblo Region were several “empty” areas where substantial and lengthy Pueblo settlement had come to an end prior to 1540. They include the Rio Puerco Valley, Las Huertas Canyon, Santa Fe River Valley, Santa Cruz River Valley, and possibly the Chupadera Basin. The numerous pueblos in the Chama Basin have been considered abandoned by the end of the fifteenth century, but the explorers provide some limited evidence that such was not entirely true.

Within the Rio Grande Pueblo Region the general settlement pattern consisted of loose groupings of linguistically related pueblos that occupied specific drainage areas. The pueblos reported by the explorers fall into ten such subregions in addition to the isolated pueblos of Acoma and Pecos. Whether the settlement pattern during the contact period included field houses that were occupied seasonally is not certain, although the work of archeologists has established that they were a common part of the precontact landscape.² Salvage work done prior to construction of the Cochiti Dam (on the Rio Grande in the Santo Domingo Basin) reveals that in an area where three pueblos were found—two of them occupied as late as 1525 and 1539—there were also fifteen one-room, fourteen two-room, and two three-room structures that have been interpreted as places for use in the summer season.³ Spanish documents of the contact period are, however, virtually silent about field houses. Pedro de Castañeda, chronicler of the Coronado expedition, in summing up the population of the Pueblo provinces visited, notes that his figure is all-inclusive because between the pueblos there were no houses (caserías) or other buildings (habitaciónes).⁴ Although this observation could be interpreted to mean that there were no field houses, it could also mean that he ignored them because their occupants were counted at their main residence in the larger pueblo. When the Espejo expedition was travelling north through the Piro subregion, its recorder, Diego Pérez de Luxán, notes that all the land along the Rio Grande was bordered by sown fields, but he does not mention any field houses.⁵ He does, however, mention them when the expedition passed through the Rio Grande–Rio Conchas confluence area south of the Rio Grande Pueblo Region, and he may have felt it unnecessary to do so again.⁶ There he notes that the people lived in pueblos but they also had flat-roofed houses in their fields where they resided during harvest time. Later, when the expedition was in the vicinity of Acom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One Rio Grande Pueblos and Spanish Exploration, 1540–1598
• Part Two Colonization and Its Consequences, 1598–1680
• Part Three Revolt, Reconquest, and Resettlement
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Appendix Tables
• Index