Part 9 (2/2)
3. Doc.u.mentary period.
THE PRE-TRADITIONAL PERIOD.
I have not been able to detect as yet among the confused traditions current about the pueblo of Pecos any tale concerning occupation of their grounds by human beings prior to the settlement of which the ruins now bear testimony. It is true that the proper traditions of the tribe of Pecos are now preserved only at the pueblo of Jemez, about eighty miles N.W. of Pecos and fifty miles W. of Santa Fe, and that I have not as yet visited that place.[131] But it must be remembered that I now report ”up to date,” and that subsequent information will, or at least should, come in time.
My reason for admitting a pre-traditional period is, then, simply that I have found human remains at Pecos older than those of the present ruins and different in kind. These remains, as it may already have been inferred from the ”personal narrative,” are those found on the west side of the arroyo, in the basin (or rather the bank encircling it) opposite the rock carvings.
One fact is certain, the human bones, the walls protruding from the banks, and the grave found by Mr. 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 doc.u.mentary times, any other than the painted pottery in greater or less degree of perfection. Even Gaspar Castano de la Sosa, when he made his inroad into New Mexico in 1590, mentions at the first pueblo which he conquered: ”They have much pottery,--red, figured, and black,--platters, caskets, salters, bowls.... Some of the pottery was glazed.”[132] The corrugated and indented pottery, as I am a.s.sured by Sr. Vigil, is rarely met with over New Mexico, except at old ruined pueblos, and only when digging (en cavando).[133] I feel, therefore, justified in a.s.suming it to have been the manufactured ware of a people distinct from the Pecos tribe or the pueblo Indians of New Mexico in general, and their predecessors in point of time. This pottery, however, is frequently met with among the cliff dwellings of the Rio Mancos and in Utah.[134] Its relation, then, to the painted pottery has, as far as I know, not yet been investigated.
But what could have been the purpose in covering originally a s.p.a.ce of over 100 m.--327 ft.--in length with the products of combustion and fragments of one and the same industry in such a manner as to form an uninterrupted layer of 0.45 m.--18 in.--at least in thickness? Those who subsequently buried their dead over the seam certainly did not collect these ashes and spread them there as a floor on which they rested their structures afterwards. The combustion of a large wooden building would not have given the same uniformity on such a large scale. Sr. Vigil has suggested to me the following very plausible explanation: 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. Fragments of broken objects, etc., are not removed.
The combustible material is thus reduced to ashes, and the broken pieces remain within them; their convex surfaces, of course, falling outwards, and thus resting on the floor. In this manner a thick layer of ashes and charcoal, with pottery, is easily formed. These ”hogueras” are still from 20 to 40 feet in diameter; but, as they accommodate themselves to the size of the pueblo, it is certain that they were formerly much larger. The a.n.a.logy between such a ”potters'-field” and the layer in question is very striking, and the inference appears likely that the people who made this corrugated and indented pottery made it in the same manner as the pueblo Indians now make their painted ware, and as they made it at the time of the conquest.
These very old manufacturers of indented ceramics were also a horticultural people, for they raised Indian corn. The cob found in the ashes, or rather cut out with the knife at some distance inside the bluff, is charred and small. To what variety of Zea it belongs the specialist must decide.
I hold it to be utterly useless, and even improper, on my part to speculate any further on these ”pre-traditional” people. Perhaps I have already said too much. Excavations alone can throw further light on the subject.
THE TRADITIONAL AND DOc.u.mENTARY PERIOD.
The term ”traditional” is applied to this period, because the people occupying the site of Old Pecos have left some traditions behind them, and not because we know when it commenced. In fact, I am much inclined to divide it, for the sake of convenience, into two periods again, one of which includes the occupation of the area within the circ.u.mvallation and its necessary annexes (field, etc.), whereas the other includes the area without. Of the former, we have definite knowledge in regard to its inhabitants; of the latter, we have none whatever. It is therefore also pre-traditional as yet. Nevertheless, I have included it in the second epoch, as its ruins indicate that its people possessed arts identical with those of the present pueblo Indians. Their pottery, wherever exposed, was painted, figured, and vitrified in places; its ornamentation is exactly similar to that of the pottery of the interior area, and different from that of Zuni. They used flint, but no trace of obsidian is found. This may be purely accidental; still, why should it occur at three places so totally different in regard to erosion and abrasion as the slope south of the church, the west bank of the creek directly opposite, and, if thorough examination should confirm the results of my cursory observations, the ap.r.o.n of the high mesa? The graves, wherever found, are identical with those of the _mesilla_; the plan of building, and consequently of living,[135] appears similar to that exhibited in houses _A_ and _B_; the material used is the same, but the walls are more ruinous, and apparently of a much older date. The inference is therefore not unreasonable, that the inhabitants of the three areas named, as outside of the great circ.u.mvallation, were of the kind now called ”pueblo Indians,” who preceded the tribe of Pecos proper in point of time. It is not improbable that one or the other of these ruins may have been erected by the Pecos themselves before they settled on the mesilla. Still, there is neither proof nor disproval of this surmise extant.
There appears to be also a slight difference between the different ruins of this period themselves. The ruins south of the church and those along the mesa are similar, in that they are more ruined, and not covered with _debris_, and in that their surfaces are also devoid of pottery. The s.p.a.ce west of the creek has pottery and also heaps of rubbish, and I therefore conclude that it was the most recent of the three locations,--or at least the one last abandoned. To it must be added the small mound or promontory found further south on the east bank of the arroyo. One fact is certain: all these places were deserted, and perhaps as badly ruined as now, at the time when Coronado first visited Pecos.[136] (The partial removal of the surface material may have been effected by the Pecos Indians themselves in order to build their own houses.)
Referring now to the inhabitants of the two houses, whose ruins are situated on the mesilla, north of the church, it is a thoroughly well-authenticated fact that they spoke the same language as the Indians of the pueblo of Jemez. Jemez lies 80 miles N.W. of Pecos, beyond the Rio Grande. It is possible that the Pecos Indians came to the valley from that direction. But it is singular that, while there are no other settlements speaking this same idiom but Jemez and Pecos, these two pueblos should be separated, as early as at Coronado's time (1540), by three distinct linguistical stocks, different from theirs and lying across, intervening between them. Directly W. of Pecos the Queres, S.W.
the Tanos, N.W. the Tehuas--all at war with the Jemez and the Pecos, and often with each other--lay like a barrier between the latter two. The point is an interesting one, as the pueblo of Pecos defines (together with Taos at the north) the utmost easterly limit to which the pueblo Indians seem to have penetrated.
Who were first in the valley of the Rio Grande? Did the Queres, Tanos, Tehuas, etc., drive out the Pecos, then already settled to the S.W., into the Sierra, or did the Pecos, migrating from Jemez, force their pa.s.sage through the other tribes? I conjecture that the Jemez, etc., were the first; that they migrated down the Rio Grande, and on the same area, between Sandia to the S. and Santa Fe, were gradually displaced by the others successively coming in,--one branch, the Jemez, recoiling into the mountains towards San Diego;[137] the other, the Pecos, driven up the canon of San Cristobal,[138] and finally, when the Tanos moved up into that valley, crossing over to the valley of Pecos.
This is to a great extent conjecture; still there are other singular indications. I give them with due reserve, however, formally protesting against any imputation that they are intended for anything else than to suggest problems for future study.
According to my friend Mr. A. S. Gatchet, of Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., an excellent linguist, the Tanos and the inhabitants of Isleta, the most southerly pueblo on the Rio Grande still occupied, speak the same language.[139] The same is a.s.serted here, as a known fact, to be the case with the Taos and the Picuries in the north, and the Isletas at the south. If this be true, then the supposition that the Queres and Tehuas are the latest intrusive stock would become a certainty. More than that: the Tanos prior to 1680, had their chief pueblo at San Cristobal, N. E.
of Galisteo, on the slope of the mesa of Pecos. They also had become dispossessed of the Rio Grande valley, and divided into (originally) two branches,--the Picuries and Taos north, and the Tanos, of Galisteo, east. Isleta itself is a later agglomeration.[140] There being no pueblo E. and S. E. of Pecos, then it appears that the Jemez, or rather Emmes, were the first migration, the Tanos the second, and the Queres and Tehuas the last.
The earliest traditions of the Pecos are preserved to us by Pedro de Castaneda, one of the eye-witnesses and chroniclers of Coronado's ”march” in 1540. They told him that, five or six years (?) before the arrival of the Spaniards, a roaming tribe called the ”Teyas” (Yutas) had ravaged the surroundings of their pueblo, and even, though fruitlessly, attempted to capture it.[141] This tribe was afterwards met by Coronado in the plains to the N.E. and E.[142]
Another tradition, very well known,--so well, indeed, that it has given to the name of the unlucky ”capitan de la guerra” of the ancient Mexicans the honorific t.i.tle of an aboriginal ”cultus-hero,”--is that of Montezuma.
I hope, at some future time, to be able to give some further information on this Spanish-Mexican importation. Suffice it to say for the present, that not a single one of the numerous chronicles and reports about New Mexico, up to the year 1680, mentions the Montezuma story! The word itself, Mon-te-zuma, is a corruption of the Mexican word ”Mo-tecu-zoma,”--literally, ”my wrathy chief,”--which corruption that eminently ”reliable gentleman,” Bernal Diez de Castillo, is to be thanked for. He wrote in 1568.[143]
What the Indians themselves say of this tale I have not as yet ascertained; but the people of the valley all a.s.sert that the people of the pueblo believe in it,--that they even affirmed that Montezuma was born at Pecos; that he wore golden shoes, and left for Mexico, where, for the sake of these valuable brogans, he was ruthlessly slaughtered.
They further say that, when he left Pecos, he commanded that the holy fire should be kept burning till his return, in testimony whereof the sacred embers were kept aglow till 1840, and then transferred to Jemez.
There is one serious point in the whole story, and that is the ill.u.s.tration how an evident mixture of a name with the Christian faith in a personal redeemer, and dim recollections of Coronado's presence and promise to return,[144] could finally take the form of a mythological personage. In this respect, for the study of mythology in general, it is of great importance. That the sacred fire had, originally, nothing at all to do with the Montezuma legend is amply proven by the earliest reports.
It will also become interesting to ascertain in the future how many pueblos, and which, concede to Pecos the honor of being the birthplace of that famed individual, and how many, as is the case with other great folks in more civilized communities, claim the same honor for themselves.
I cannot, therefore, attach to the Montezuma tale any historical importance whatever,--not even a traditional value.
<script>