An exploration into the past

From the Coastal Plain to the High Desert

July 31-August 1, 2014

BANDELIER AREA AND PECOS PUEBLO

Fig. 1 - Location Map

     Travelling south along the Rio Grande from the Taos area along the many existing Pueblos now landmarked by casinos and travel stations, lies Bandelier National Monument. This site is easily accessible, and is surrounded by a large protected wilderness area. It is interesting because in the same location can be found examples of several different periods of the development of the Pueblo culture. Across the river, and past the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that rise above Santa Fe, is the ancient site of Pecos Pueblo. This site is of particular interest to Texas as it lies on the banks of the Pecos River, a major route connecting the plains and the southern deserts.

BANDELIER 

AN ANCIENT PUEBLOAN COMMUNITY

Fig. 2 - Entrance to the park

     Bandelier is not one site. It is a large area with hundreds of significant sites, out of which only about fifty have been explored. The area lies at the feet of the Jemez Mountains, themselves the remnants of a giant ancient caldera volcano,  with a crater six miles wide. Drainage from the mountains has cut deep ravines and isolated plateaus. It has also eroded and scarred the sides of the canyons with the appearance of thousands of caves.  Most of the rock is soft "tuff", a compacted pumice like material.

BANDELIER VIDEO

Fig. 3 - An eroded canyon wall.  Notice the erosion cavates. Some look more square that others.  Look for
sections of man made walls on the lower levels.  A unique characteristic of this site is the use of the natural cavates that once enlarged became rooms incorporated into room blocks. 

Fig. 4 - Long House
Room blocks merge into the
natural canyon wall cavates

       After 1100 AD, small groups of Ancestral Pueblo people arrived on the Pajarito Plateau, that includes the present-day Bandelier. They came with skills in farming, tool making, weaving, and pottery making.

   For generations people lived in small, scattered settlements. From AD 1150 to 1325, during the Rio Grande Coalition Period, the population increased. Pueblos [villages] often included up to 40 rooms. For the next 250 years, called the Rio Grande Classic Period, pueblos grew larger. Some exceeded 600 rooms. Ceremonial rooms called Kivas also grew larger, possibly reflecting ritual or social changes.

Fig. 5 - Cavates transformed into large rooms

Fig. 6 - Long House
3rd. level cavates clearly visible

Fig.  7 - Climbing to the upper levels

Fig. 8 - Up to the main Kiva

Fig. 9 - Kiva in an upper alcove dwellling

Fig. 9 - Talus House, a room block on a cliff

      The Ancestral Pueblo people lived here from approximately 1150 CE to 1550 CE. They built homes carved from the volcanic tuff and planted crops in mesatop fields. Corn, beans, and squash were central to their diet, supplemented by native plants and meat from deer, rabbit, and squirrel. Domesticated turkeys were used for both their feathers and meat while dogs assisted in hunting and provided companionship.

Fig. 10 - Tyuonyi Pueblo "Casa Grande" from the cliff

Fig. 11 - Tyuonyi Pueblo in Frijoles Canyon
The narrow fertile valley is permanently irrigated by a small stream.  The complex is a Chaco style Big House

       The Pueblo people left the area in the 1500s, before the Spanish arrived. They settled along the Rio Grande Valley not far from Bandelier. Their descendents live today in nearby pueblos including San Ildefonso and Cochiti.

PECOS PUEBLO - NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK

Fig. 12 - The Pecos River Basin

      Long before Spaniards entered this country, this pueblo village was the juncture of trade between people of the Rio Grande Valley and hunting tribes of the buffalo plains. Its nearly 2,000 inhabitants could marshal 500 fighting men; its frontier location brought both war and trade.

       At trade fairs, Plains tribes-mostly nomadic Apaches-brought slaves, buffalo hides, flint, and shells to trade for pottery, crops, textiles, and turquoise with the river Pueblos. Pecos Indians were middlemen, traders and consumers of the goods and cultures of the very different peo­ple on either side of the mountains. They became economically powerful and practiced in the arts and customs of two worlds.

     

PECOS PUEBLO VIDEO

Fig. 13 - Reconstruction of North Pecos Pueblo

       


 Pecos Indians remained Puebloan in culture -despite cultural blendings- practicing an ancient agricultural tradition borne north from Mexico by the seeds of maize (corn). By the late Pueblo period, the last few centuries before the Spaniards arrived in the Southwest, people in this valley had congregated in multi-storied towns overlooking the streams and fields that nourished their crops. In the 1400s these groups gathered into Pecos pueblo, which became a regional power.

Fig. 14 - Aerial perspective of the Pecos village with
the two Pueblos on the plateau

Fig. 15 - North Pecos Pueblo floor plan

          First to settle here were pre-pueblo people who lived in pit houses along drainages about 800 CE. Around 1100, the first Puebloans began building their rock-and-mud villages in the valley. Two dozen villages rose here over the next two centuries, including one where Pecos pueblo stands today. Sometime in the 14th century the settlement patterns changed dramatically. Within one generation small villages were abandoned and Pecos pueblo grew larger. By 1450 it had become a well-planned frontier fortress five stories high with a population of more than 2,000.

Fig. 16 - Ruins of mission church

Fig. 17 - Mission church at the town of Las Trampas,
near Taos.  Similar to the Pecos mission church

Fig. 18 - Entrance to Kiva on the side of mission church

     



      
          Location, power, and the ability to supply needed goods made Pecos a major trade center on the eastern flank of the Puebloan world. Pecos Indians bartered crops, clothing, and pottery with the Apaches and later the Spaniards and Comanche's for buffalo products, alibates flint for cutting tools, and slaves. These Plains goods were in turn swapped west to other pueblos for pottery, parrot feathers, turquoise, and other items. Trading could go quickly or take weeks. Rings left by tipi's set up for long spells of bartering are still visible in the area. Uneasy relationships between Pueblos and the Plains tribes made hostilities a continual threat. The rock wall circling the pueblo, a relic from trading days, was too low to serve a defensive purpose. It was probably a boundary other tribes were not allowed to cross.
     

Fig. 19 - 20 Entering a Kiva and
Inside Kiva with vent and deflector in view

         


   By the 1780s, disease, Comanche raids, and migration reduced the population of Pecos to fewer than 300. Longstanding internal divisions -those loyal to the Church and things Spanish versus those who clung to the old ways- contributed to this once powerful city-state's decline.

       







     The function of Pecos as a trade center faded as Spanish colonists, now protected from the Comanches by treaties, established new towns to the east. Pecos and the mission seemed almost ghostly when Santa Fe Trail trade began flowing past in 1821. The last survivors left the decaying pueblo and empty mission church in 1838 to join Towa-speaking relatives 80 miles west at Jémez pueblo, where their descendants still live today.  The disappearance of the buffalo and the people of the plains destroyed the economic trade foundation of Pecos. 

Fig. 21 -Inside the main exhibit hall at the site museum and visitor center

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.