Part 10 (1/2)

Of course, Castaneda reports the story which every Indian tribe tells of themselves; namely, that the Pecos Indians were the bravest and the most warlike of the pueblos, and that in every encounter they were always victorious.[145]

Historical data, founded upon positive written records, begin for Pecos towards the fall of the year 1540, when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, then at Zuni or Cibola, sent the Captain Hernando de Alvarado with twenty men to visit a village called ”Cicuye.”[146] Indians from that village, ”situated seventy leagues towards the east”[147] from Zuni, had visited the latter town, and offered to the Spanish leader ”tanned hides, s.h.i.+elds, and helmets.” The hides were buffalo-robes, for the woolly hair was still on them.[148] Alvarado reached Cicuye, pa.s.sing, as I have elsewhere stated, through Acoma and Bernalillo. I have already identified Cicuye with Pecos. Besides the proofs already given, a few descriptive abstracts from the report of Castaneda will add to the strength of the evidence:--

(p. 71.) ”Five days' journeys further, Alvarado reached Cicuye, a well-fortified village, whose houses are four stories high.”

(p. 176.) ”It is built on the summit of a rock. It forms a great square, in the centre of which are the _estufas_.” (Compare general description and diagrams.)

(p. 177) ”The village is surrounded besides by a stone wall of rather low height. There is a spring which might be cut off.”

In regard to the wall, I refer to the plans and descriptions; as for the spring, it trickles out beneath a ma.s.sive ledge of rocks on the west side of the arroyo, nearly opposite to the field. Its water, slightly alkaline, is still limpid and cool, and a great source of comfort. The sketch upon the next page will give an idea of its appearance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spring]

There is no trace of work about it. At sunset of the 3d of September, Mr. Bennet and I saw a herd of many hundred sheep and goats driven to this spring by Mexicans for water, although the creek still had a fillet of clear water running, and the pond in the old field was filled nearly to its brim; they still preferred the old source.

Finally, it must be borne in mind, that the name of Pecos, in the language of its former inhabitants and of those of Jemez, is ”aqiu,” and that, in an anonymous report of the expedition of Coronado from the year 1541, Cicuye is spelt Acuique.[149]

Castaneda gives some few details concerning the mode of life and the customs of the inhabitants. Aside from those which I have already mentioned, he notices the ladders (p. 176); that at night the inhabitants kept watch on the walls, the guard calling each other by means of ”trumpets” (p. 179); that the unmarried females went naked until their marriage (p. 177); that the pueblo could muster 500 warriors (p. 176); and finally, that it was situated in a narrow valley in the midst of mountains covered with pines, and traversed by a small river where excellent trout is caught; very large otters, bears, and good hawks are found there (p. 179). The inhabitants received Alvarado with the sound of ”drums and flutes, similar to fifes, which they use often.”

They presented to him a great quant.i.ty of cloth and turquoises, which are common in this province (p. 72). I must here add that the turquoise mines of ”Serrillos” are, in a direct line, only about twenty miles nearly west of Pecos, in a country between the former pueblos of the Tanos and those of the Tehuas. I have seen splendid specimens of the mineral from that locality, and Mr. Thurston found and I have sent on a perforated bead of bluish color which he picked up among the rubbish of the house _B_.

When, in 1543, Coronado left Nuevo Mexico with his whole army to return to Mexico, two ecclesiastics remained there,--Fray Juan de Padilla, who was subsequently killed by the Indians near Gran Quivira,[150] and a lay brother called Luis, who took up his abode at Pecos. Before Coronado left Bernalillo (”Tiguex”), he sent to brother Luis the remainder of the sheep. He was then of good cheer, but still expected to be killed some day by the old men of the tribe, who hated him, although the people were friendly to him in general.[151] Nothing was afterward heard of him.

Thus Pecos was the first ”mission” in New Mexico; perhaps, also, the first place where domestic quadrupeds became introduced.

Forty years elapse before we again hear of Pecos. The unfortunate father, Augustin Ruiz, who, in 1581, attempted to convert the pueblos, did not reach further north than Puaray, where the Tiguas killed him, with his two companions.[152] 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. His visit to the pueblo was of very short duration.

In 1590, Gaspar Castano de la Sosa, ”being then Lieutenant-Governor and Captain-General of the kingdom of New Leon,” made a raid into New Mexico. It is possible that the pueblo which he came to on the 11th January, 1591, may have been Pecos.[154]

The ”Spanish conquest of New Mexico” proper took place in the years 1597 and 1598, under Don Juan de Onate. He met with little opposition, and his conquest amounted to little else than a military occupation, followed by the foundation of Santa Fe. On the 25th of July, 1598, he went to ”the great pueblo of Pecos,”[155] and on the 9th of September, 1598, in the ”princ.i.p.al _estufa_” of the pueblo of San Juan, the Pecos pledged fidelity to the crown of Spain. On the same occasion, Fray Francisco de San Miguel became the first regular priest of the pueblo.[156] Here terminates the second period of the second epoch; and the last one begins where the history of the Pecos tribe, whatever is left of it, becomes almost exclusively doc.u.mentary.[157]

Before, however, leaving this period, I must recall here two facts elicited by the reports of the forays and travels above mentioned. One is, that the Pecos Indians, however warlike they may have been towards outsiders, still were of an orderly, gentle disposition in every-day intercourse. This is a natural consequence of their organization and degree of development. The other and more important one is, that Pecos was the most easterly pueblo in existence in 1540, and that even at that time it was quite alone.

Castaneda says (p. 188): ”In order to understand how the country is inhabited in the centre of the mountains, we must remember that from Chichilticah, where they begin, there are eighty leagues; thence to Cicuye, which is the last village, they reckon seventy leagues, and thirty from Cicuye to the beginning of the plains.”

Juan Jaramillo, another eye-witness of ”Coronado's march,” intimates a similar fact.[158]

In regard to Pecos being ”quite alone,” Castaneda is positive; so is Juan de Onate, who received and registered its submission. It is true, however, that Castaneda mentions a small pueblo as subject to Cicuye, which pueblo, however, he says was half destroyed at his time. He locates it ”between the road and the Sierra Nevada.”[159] This may have been the small ruin noticed near Kingman.

These facts are very interesting in their bearings upon the older ruins of Pecos. It goes far towards furnis.h.i.+ng additional proof that they were indeed abandoned and decayed already in 1540. In regard to building _B_, it is ignored in the reports, _A_, with its vast court and its _estufas_, claiming exclusive attention. Still there is no room left for doubt that _B_ was occupied during this period. But it is evident, from the statements of the eye-witnesses, that _A_ was the princ.i.p.al abode of the Pecos tribe in 1540 and afterwards.

THE DOc.u.mENTARY PERIOD,

commencing in 1598, and running up to the present time. Here we should be ent.i.tled to find, of course, ample and detailed doc.u.mentary evidence.

Two unfortunate occurrences, however, have contributed to destroy the records of the territory of New Mexico.

In the month of August, 1680, when the pueblo Indians rose in successful revolt against the Spanish rule, and captured the ”villa” of Santa Fe, they brought the archives, ecclesiastical and civil, into the plaza, and made a bonfire of the entire pile. This was an act of barbarous warfare.

But few papers escaped the general destruction; these were saved by Governor Don Antonio de Otermin, and sent to El Paso del Norte, where they are still supposed to remain. We are, therefore, as far as the period of 1598-1680 is concerned, almost exclusively reduced to general works like the ”Teatro Mexicano” of Fray Augustin de Vetancurt, and to the collections of doc.u.ments published at Mexico and at Madrid. That, nevertheless, some doc.u.ments were saved, and subsequently carried back to Santa Fe, is proved by the fact that Mr. Louis Felsenthal, of this city, has recovered one, a copy of which it is hoped will appear in the Journal of the Inst.i.tute in time.

Subsequent to the return of the Spaniards, the archives of Santa Fe were kept in good order by its administrators, the last revision thereof being made by Governor Donaciano Vigil. In 1870, however, the man who then acted as Governor of the Territory, although otherwise of irreproachable character, permitted an act of vandalism almost without its parallel. The archives had acc.u.mulated in the palace to a vast extent: the original good order in which they were kept had been totally neglected during and since the war of secession; there was not even a custodian for them. So the head of the executive of this territory suffered its archives to be sold as waste paper, even sometimes used as kindling in the offices. Of the entire carefully nursed doc.u.mentary treasures, the acc.u.mulation of 190 years, the Hon. Samuel Ellison, of this city (notwithstanding his feeble health), has been able to register about fifty bundles (_legajos_), whereas wagon-loads were scattered or sold for wrapping.