A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EXPLORATION OF

TEXAS NATIVE AMERICAN PAST

III  -  TEXAS IN CONTEXT - MAIZE

The Chihuahua desert - Barrier or Gateway?

Figure 11 - The Chihuahua Desert

5.       THE CHIHUAHUA DESERT AND THE MAIZE REVOLUTION

        Another marginal borderland that influences Texas is also its main connection with the south. The Chihuahua desert could easily be considered a barrier to the flow of people because of its harsh conditions.  In fact, much as it happens today, it is the gateway from the central mountains and highland plateau of Mexico, and from the lowlands of the Pacific coast. Although a desert, it is crossed by several major tributaries of the Rio Grande system. The Pecos flows from the plains on the Texas side, and the Conchos, the Florido, the Salado and the San Juan flow from the southern Sierra Madre.

Figure 12 - From Teosinte to corn

       
       These rivers are the routes that introduced maize or Indian corn from earlier groups that settled in the fertile soils of Mesoamerica. Corn was a man-made variety of a small grass called “teosinte”, a weed that produced seeds similar to sesame. It was genetically modified  by a slow selective process. Some 7,000 years ago, early farmers in what is today southern Mexico and Central America, developed this new crop. It allowed the cultural evolution from hunting and gathering to farming.  Farming leads to permanence and material accumulation, to a process we call civilization. Although it was a slow process, this food technology spread throughout the continent.


      Maize, combined with beans and squash, became the most important source of food security for humans in North America, and the origin of the great Mesoamerican civilizations: Olmec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Mayan,  Toltec and Aztec.  It is also the basis of the agricultural societies that developed 4,000 years later in the American Southwest, and all the way up and across the Mississippi River Basin. Corn, beans and squash, the aboriginal trinity, 1,000 years ago became the common staple even in the northeast, where the people of the forests shared this knowledge with the starving Europeans in the XVII century.  Corn is this continent’s gift to the world.

Figure 13 - Some varieties of Indian Corn, maize

Figure 13 - Mogollon pottery Casas Grandes Chihuahua

The Chihuahua desert was initially the natural gateway from the Great Plains to the south. The trail later known as the Santa Fe Trail connects the plains with the Rio Grande.  The animal herds established it. Something similar happens again at the tip of the plains when one reaches the Pecos.  The evident cut in the mountains created by the Rio Grande leads to a natural gateway we now know as El Paso. This was the main route traced by the ancient beasts and the earlier human migrations from the plains to the south.

It was also the route followed much later from the south to the north.  Corn, beans, squash, exotic birds, metals, shells, building technologies, pottery, and cloth weaving flowed north. Turquoise and opals flowed south. It is no accident that the Spaniards followed the same routes on their way north to explore their new possessions after conquering the Aztec empire.

 

Figure 14 - Mogollon pottery from Mimbres, New Mexico

The western part of Texas is the eastern borderland of the ancient Mogollon people of northern Mexico. It is also the southern tip of the later Pueblo people. It is the meeting place where the people of the plains, the people of the mountains, and the people of the desert converged. 

          

15 - Turquoise rock

17 - Anasazi turquoise beads - a form of money

 16 - Turquoise stones from New Mexico

18 - Turquoise covered Aztec Masks at British Museum - Turquoise from New Mexico mountains

Key words: Texas 4th-7th grade Social Studies, Native American tribes, habitat and lifezones, cultural adaptation, Anazasi, Ancestral Pueblo, Rio Grande cultures, New Mexico and Colorado tribes, Paleo-Indians, Archaic and Classic Indians of the Southwest, Geography of the Rio Grande, Mesa Verde, Chaco, Taos, Acoma, Indian ruins, archaeological artifacts, teacher resources, Fund for Teachers, Texas.