August 31, 1997
Once-Mighty City
By James Abarr
Of the Journal
Midway in a pine-covered passage through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe, the crumbled remains of an Indian pueblo bear witness to the golden age of a once-powerful people.
Weathered, rust-red walls of a Spanish church rise above the pueblo ruins, which extend for a quarter-mile along a narrow ridge rising from the floor of a shallow valley cut by the meandering Pecos River.
This is legendary Cicuye, "village of 500 warriors," and the grandeur of its setting matches its long and storied past.
Surrounded by towering mountain peaks and majestic mesas, Cicuye, better known today as Pecos, was one of the largest and most powerful Indian communities in the ancient Southwest. Today, the site is part of Pecos National Historical Park, administered by the National Park Service.
Because it commanded the mountain gateway between the Plains tribes to the east and the Pueblo villages of the Rio Grande Valley to the west, Pecos became a major trading center, a cultural melting pot and a dominating force in the Pueblo world.
Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches and other tribes came regularly to Pecos for bartering sessions that could last for days. They brought slaves, buffalo hides, flint and shells and exchanged them for the pottery, crops, textiles and turquoise of the river settlements.
As middlemen, the Pecos people absorbed the cultures and wealth of two worlds and grew economically and militarily strong.
At the zenith of its power, from about 1450 to 1600, Pecos had a population of 2,000 or more. It could field a fighting force of 500 warriors, and neighboring communities lived under the dominance of the great pueblo.
Hernando de Alvarado, a captain in the army of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, the first European to explore New Mexico, visited Pecos in the fall of 1540 and noted in his journal:
"There is one (pueblo) called Cicuye that is larger than any of the others and very strong. Its houses are four and five stories high."
A year later, in 1541, Pedro de Castañeda, chronicler of the Coronado expedition, recorded this description:
"Cicuye is a pueblo containing about 500 warriors and is feared throughout that land. In plan, it is square, perched on a rock. In the center is a vast patio, or plaza, with its kivas. ... The houses are all alike, four stories high. ... The people pride themselves in the fact that no one has been able to subjugate them, while they dominate any pueblo they wish."
It was from Pecos that Coronado set forth in the spring of 1541 to search for fabled Quivira, a land of reported great wealth that the Pecos people said lay far to the east. The ensuing journey took the gold-seeking Spaniards, guided by a Plains Indian who had been a captive at Pecos, as far as present-day Kansas. The guide assured Coronado that he could lead the Spaniards to rich cities festooned "with golden bells that tinkle in the wind."
Actually, Don Francisco was the target of a plot to destroy him and his army.
Pecos had welcomed the arrival of the Spaniards with displays of friendship, celebration, the music of drums and birdbone flutes and gifts of food, but it was a facade.
Secretly, the pueblo's leaders feared the strange visitors with their horses, swords and armor and sticks that spat fire. They had instructed the guide to lure the Spaniards onto the Great Plains and then abandon them. There, the Pecos leaders reasoned, the Europeans would become lost and eventually perish.
When Coronado found no golden cities, but only the mud huts of the Wichita Indians, the guide confessed his role in the Pecos plot. The angry Spaniards promptly executed him.
Coronado's army turned back to New Mexico, and after spending a bleak winter on the Rio Grande near present-day Bernalillo, the disillusioned expedition returned to Mexico in the spring of 1542.
Spanish expeditions
It would be 40 years before the people of Pecos would again see Spaniards, but beginning in 1581, they would see them in growing numbers. In that year, the expedition of Franciso Chamuscado and Augustine Rodriguez heralded a rebirth of Spanish interest in the vast land to the north of New Spain (Mexico).
Over the next 17 years, three other Spanish expeditions visited the pueblo, and during the explorations of Gaspar Castaño de Sosa in 1590, ancient Cicuye became Pecos.
Don Gaspar and his men had stopped at the Pueblo of Jemez, 60 miles west of Pecos, where they were told of a great pueblo in the mountain pass to the east. In the Jemez language, it was called "Pe-kush." To Spanish ears, this sounded like "Pecos," and the name survived.
With the arrival of Don Juan de Oñate, who brought the first settlers to New Mexico in 1598, the Spanish had come to stay, and the life of Pecos would forever change.
Gone were Spanish hopes of finding gold and silver in the new land. The focus now was on serving the "Two Majesties" of Cross and Crown — converting the Indians to Christianity and building a royal colony of new settlements and farms.
In keeping with the first objective, Fray Francisco de San Miguel of the Catholic Order of Friars Minor (Franciscan) erected a crude chapel at Pecos in 1598. However, it wasn't until 1620 that the padres launched their major effort to convert the strategic pueblo.
In that year, Fray Pedro de Ortega, using Indian labor, began construction of a huge church, which he called Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles de Porcíuncula (Our Lady of the Angels of Porcíuncula).
In 1621, Fray Andres Juarez took over construction of the church, which was completed in 1625.
For its time and place, Nuestra Señora was an impressive achievement. The nave, or central worship hall, was 150 feet long and 40 feet wide. Its massive adobe walls, 22 feet thick in places, rows of buttresses and six bell towers provided a sharp contrast to the pueblo it served.
To the south of the church, a sprawing convento, which provided living quarters for priests and church staff, covered hundreds of square feet.
Unfortunately, this stunning church did not survive. After a half-century of bringing Christian teachings and new ways of life to Pecos, Nuestra Señora was destroyed in the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Revolution
It was an uprising that for more than a decade would cost Spain the loss of her newest and most-distant colony. Burdened by the heavy-handed rule of Spanish authorities, demands for tribute and virtual slave labor coupled with attempts to annihilate the native religion, the Pueblo people's resentment grew until they could endure no more.
Led by Popé, an ambitious and embittered medicine man from San Juan, the Indians rose in fury, lashing out at everything Spanish.
Popé had never forgotten the day in 1675 when he was arrested by Spanish authorities for encouraging Indian rejection of Christian teachings. He was publicly flogged and banished from his pueblo by order of Gov. Francisco Treviño. However, the punishment merely heightened the medicine man's resentment and hatred of the Spaniards, and he bided his time to even the score.
On Aug. 10, 1680, the time was at hand, and the vengeful Popé led all the pueblos in an orgy of destruction and murder.
Settlers across northern New Mexico were slain and ranches burned. In a single day, 28 priests and lay brothers were killed while churches, vestments, crosses and holy images were destroyed in the rebel bid to eradicate every symbol of the new religion.
At Pecos, Fray Juan de la Pedrosa, the resident priest, two Spanish women and three children died in the first hours of the revolt.
Hundreds of warriors laid siege to the royal capital of Santa Fe. After a 10-day standoff, the besiegers agreed to spare the lives of Gov. Antonio de Otermin and the surviving colonists if they would agree to leave New Mexico. The following day, the governor and more than 1,000 settlers with their belongings began the long trek to El Paso. The Europeans had been driven from the province.
For the next 12 years, the Pueblo people enjoyed their newfound freedom, but without Popé. Less than a year after the revolt, Popé was ousted by his followers, who grew weary of his brutality and swaggering efforts to establish himself as a dictator.
Province reclaimed
In 1692, Don Diego de Vargas, newly appointed royal governor of New Mexico, led a Spanish army of 300 soldiers up the Rio Grande from El Paso to reclaim the province. On a fall afternoon in October of that year, De Vargas, scion of the prominent and influencial Vargas family of Madrid, rode into the plaza at Pecos with a mere 50 men.
As one historian described him, De Vargas was "an aristocrat of aristocrats eager to perform great deeds" — and he succeeded.
Perhaps mesmerized by Don Diego's boldness and supreme confidence, the hundreds of Indians gathered in the plaza at Pecos watched and listened as De Vargas told them he had come a great distance to restore what had belonged to the king, "for he was their lord, their rightful king, and there was no other."
De Vargas ordered the royal banner hoisted over Pecos and led his men in a salute to "Charles II, king of Spain, of all this New World and the kingdom and provinces of New Mexico and of their subjects newly won and conquered."
With this ceremony completed, the Spaniards "left the pueblo at peace," and De Vargas reported:
"Having taken my leave of these natives and having reiterated to them that they should pray and live as Christians, which they promised me they would do, I set out" to Santa Fe.
Pecos was the 14th pueblo on Don Diego's tally sheet of pueblos returned to Spanish rule, a reconquest that would make him a national hero in Spain.
In 1716, Fray José de Arranegui completed a new church at Pecos. Far less ambitious than the original mission, it was built over the ruins of the church destroyed in 1680. The smaller structure was designed to serve a diminishing population, for the once-powerful pueblo was on the decline. By the late 1700s, it counted less than 300 souls.
Pecos had become a victim of factors beyond its control.
As one historian noted: "The threat of warring Comanches led to abandonment of farm land. This, coupled with drought, brought famine. Hundreds died from epidemics and many moved away. By 1800, new Hispanic settlements in the area had taken over the trade that had made Pecos prosper."
Once-mighty Pecos was now a virtual ghost town, and in 1838, the last 17 residents simply walked away and moved in with their cousins at Jemez.
As National Park Service historian John Kessell noted: "The era of Pecos as monument had begun. The living pueblo was dead."
Fading into ruins
For years after its abandonment, Pecos weathered away under the battering of rain, snow and wind. The great multi-storied community houses with their hundreds of rooms melted down, and much of the church, stripped of its roof and wooden beams by area settlers, partially collapsed into the reddish soil from which it had come.
To travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, which closely parallels modern-day I-25 to the south, the ruins wore an aura of mystery, which gave birth to legends of lost Spanish gold and ghosts of Indian deities.
For many years, Pecos was protected as a New Mexico State Monument, but in 1965, the ruins became a national monument when they were transferred to the National Park Service.
Today, a walk along the trails through the ruins reveals a community that is a mere shadow of its former greatness. Rough, poorly fitting stones in uneven rows mark the lower tiers of the two terraced community houses that once towered four stories high.
Residents of Pecos may have been superb traders and warriors, but they were short on building skills. Alfred V. Kidder, the prominent Andover Academy archaeologist who pioneered excavations at Pecos from 1915 to 1924, reported: "These people weren't builders, they were stackers. As one dwelling fell into ruins, a new one was simply constructed on top of the old one."
In one area, excavations have uncovered six levels of dwellings.
Remains of more than 20 kivas, the underground ceremonial chambers that play a dominant role in Pueblo religion, dot the ruins. Perhaps one of these — 40 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep — is the kiva of the Snake God and the Sacred Fire.
Pecos legend tells of a giant snake, fed by human sacrifice, that lived in a great kiva and guarded the pueblo. On the kiva altar, the Sacred Fire, attended by two warriors, perpetually burned. Should the fire ever die, the Snake God would desert the pueblo and Pecos would perish.
When Christianity gained a foothold at Pecos, the legend says, the people neglected the old ways, and the Sacred Fire was allowed to flicker out. The angry Snake God abandoned the pueblo, and Pecos was doomed.
On the southern edge of the mesa, the trail leads through the ruins of the church built in 1716. Sunlight streams in through a roofless nave outlined by reddish walls still many feet thick. Adjoining the sanctuary is the remains of the convento.
Perhaps the crowning disappointment in a visit to Pecos is that we must supplement these crumbled and lonely remains with imagination, and we are somewhat frustrated, because we wish, somehow, we could see this Indian city as it was at the height of its greatness.
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