CHAPTER II

The Pueblo Indian Meets the White Man

Could there be, in the Southwest, a man or woman who has not heard something of the Spanish expeditions into the New World during the sixteenth century? And, narrowing it down, about Coronado’s famed Seven Cities of Cibola and how they turned out to be six instead of seven poor little pueblos of stone and mud. They are now reduced to but one called Zuñi. Marcos de Nisa, a Franciscan friar, had led the little army of conquerors to nothing here except grief and disappointment in trade for fabulous stories about gold and silver.

New Mexico was a new country and besides extending the domain of His Majesty, King Charles, and forcing Christianity on the Indians, there were many wonders that would stand investigation. Had it not been for an Indian who was named Bigotes by the Spaniards, the conquerors might never have reached the Rio Grande during that expedition. Bigotes means “whiskers” and his appearance must have been a sight to His Majesty’s soldiers when this half-clad native came strolling into their camp with a few companions from Pecos far to the east. Unlike most of his kind, Bigotes wore a long mustache. He had brought buffalo hides to trade to the Spanish and he persuaded them to visit his country. It was on August 29, 1540, that the little band pushed out under the guidance of Bigotes. On September 7 of that year they reached the Province of Tiguex, which was between the present towns of Albuquerque and Bernalillo.

There were twelve Indian villages on the banks of the Rio Grande within a distance of some fifteen miles or so. The Rio Grande was described by the Spanish, at that time, as large and mighty in a spacious valley two leagues wide. Although the valley was broad and fertile, the Spanish description was certainly an over-estimation. Two leagues equalled five or six miles. They also said that the river froze so hard that laden animals and carts could cross over it. Tiguex was the winter camp of the entire Spanish expedition. It was here that Coronado and his band of weary and disappointed explorers spent that miserable and never-to-be-forgotten winter of 1540-1541. Glowing accounts of how Indians lived were told by the romantic Spanish chroniclers. Still, they found only a poor simple people living by the soil and a little hunting—but no gold.

Tiguex was not the only province along the river. There were others whose people had the same ways and peculiar customs as the people at the Tiguex villages. One of these provinces was that of Quirex. It has been determined that this was the district where the Keres language is spoken today by five very primitive Indian Pueblos. They are Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana and Sia. Moved by an indomitable spirit and determination, a small band of soldiers pushed far north from Tiguex, past the Keres-speaking villages where another province was discovered on the upper Rio Grande. It was reported that two very fine villages were to be seen. According to some students these were in the vicinity of the present Tewa-speaking village of San Juan. The entire Indian population moved out at the sight of the Spanish. They retreated into the mountains where they said they had four very strong villages in a rough country where it was impossible for the Spanish to follow on horseback. Had they followed these people they would, no doubt, have found almost inaccessible Indian trails. Instead, they returned to Tiguex and left this northern province in peace. Little did the Spanish realize what extensive villages they might have seen in the rough mountains mentioned by the Indians.

Indians also spoke of villages on rivers flowing into the Rio Grande. Could these villages have been on the banks of the Rio Chama or were they on the Pajarito Plateau? They likely were in the Pajarito region and could have been the same villages mentioned by the Indians living near San Juan. But the towns of the Pajarito remained unexplored, unplundered and unstripped of what little they had. How fortunate were these people to have escaped the attentions of the Spanish with their shining armor, pointed lances and firearms. Otherwise, these poor Indians might have found themselves without adequate clothing and food for the approaching winter of 1541-1542 as did the Indians at Tiguex. But the passing of that second uneventful winter by disheartened and spirit-broken Spanish soldiers ended a chapter which was never to be forgotten by the other little pueblo dwellers. In the spring of 1542, the remnants of the Spanish were gathered together and the return to Mexico was begun. This must have been a day of rejoicing for the Indians at Tiguex. They had experienced a great deal. Murder, insincerity on the part of the Spanish, and violation of their living standards were just a few of their trials.

Life went on in the pueblos. Slowly but surely the Indians reorganized. Summers and winters passed and the Indians tilled their fields of corn for two generations before the Spanish came again. This next expedition up the Rio Grande in 1581 was that of Captain Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado with nine soldiers. This combined treasure-hunt and missionary expedition ended in tragedy. Chamuscado died before he returned to Mexico, and two padres, who accompanied the little party, were murdered by the Indians at Tiguex. So elated were the Indians with their success that they drew pictures of the killings.

Dreams of conquest and fabulous empires caused the launching of still another expedition into New Mexico in 1583. It was headed by Antonio de Espejo. Espejo, too, passed northward from the villages of the Province of Tiguex which had been visited by Coronado some forty years before and by Chamuscado in 1581. This little handful went north to a place called Cachiti. This was one of the pueblos of the Keres-speaking group mentioned by Coronado. People who were peaceful came from other pueblos and tried to persuade the Spanish to go with them. They told stories of most of the houses being three stories high. The Spanish named this place Los Confiados because the people were not disturbed. But where was Los Confiados? It has never been determined.

It would be a guess to say where these other Indians came from. It has been suggested that they might have come from villages on the Jemez River when they heard of the arrival of the Spanish. There is still another explanation which is also conjectural but possible. These people could have come from villages in the mountains. Archæologists and historians are unable to give us the exact extent of the Keres villages in those days although careful study and research suggest that only seven remained extant at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Yet, who can say that towns were not still being occupied back in the hills? On the forested mesa tops and in the deep water-worn canyons northwest of Cachiti, the Indian Pueblo known today as Cochiti, are hundreds of Indian villages now in ruins. They were occupied, hundreds of years ago, by Indians who were probably speaking the Keres language like the folks at Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana and Sia. These people have told some interesting tales, legends mostly, about how all their present villages came to be: about their wanderings, about their Gods and about their troubles with Indians who spoke different languages.

Why was it that Espejo’s chroniclers did not leave us more information about the town of Los Confiados and its people? Was it not important? They told us about Zuñi and its Seven Cities, about the Tiguex villages and Cochiti. Coronado’s little group, some forty years before, had visited the Province of Hemes, now Jemez, whose people spoke yet another language, the Towa. And history tells us that Espejo made a two-day visit to the town of Los Confiados in 1583. This ended his contact with the Indians at Cochiti and other Keres-speaking villages. Could it be that Espejo’s soldiers looked back up into those forbidden and forested hills against a high range of snow-covered mountains northwest of Cochiti and decided that they had seen enough of the Indian? Or were they told that they would have to leave their horses behind and go afoot if they wanted to visit the villages on streams running into the Rio Grande? The thought of wearing heavy armor might not have been too fascinating. And if these people were from villages in the mountains, what was their motive in attempting to lead the Spanish there? Was it a trap? Did they have some other motive in mind, or was their mission one of peaceful intent? Archæologists now tell us that it probably has been centuries since Keres-speaking people lived in these mountains northwest of Cochiti.

If one had sufficient imaginative ability he might work up a hypothetical case of what could possibly have taken place during this February of 1583. To get at the basis of our story and the things to be talked about hypothesis seems to be our only recourse. Nothing seems exact when dealing with early New Mexican history, but this hypothesis could be as correct, possibly, as some of the accounts given by the Spanish possessed of romanticism. But how close were the explorers to Hidden Valley, the like of which they would never again be able to see! They stayed clear of the mountains and kept to the valleys. In all of their travels and wanderings, the Spanish kept out of the watershed between the Jemez Mountain Range and the Rio Grande Valley. It is today known as the Pajarito (little bird) Plateau. The Cañada de Cochiti is its southern boundary, not far from the pueblo of Cochiti. The Rio Grande bounds it on the east, the Rio Chama on the north and the Jemez Mountains on the west. The entire plateau is made up of deposits of soft volcanic ash, known as tuff, and deposits of black basalt. Geologists tell us that all this happened an inconceivably long time ago—three million years, let us say, in geological times known as the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods.

Today the Pajarito Plateau is a profusion of high potreros (narrow mesas ), and deep canyons cut by streams and arroyos which carry off seasonal rains. Some of the canyons have sheer vertical cliffs of volcanic ash, hundreds of feet high in places, and this ash is soft enough to be carved and hewn into various shapes and forms. The cliffs are even soft enough for the wind to carve what appear to be statues which stand out as exceptional works of nature. The mesa tops are beautiful. They are covered with thick growths of pine and juniper, piñon and scrub oak. A profusion of flowers dot the landscape during the summer months.

It was the Pajarito Plateau that both Coronado and Espejo failed to plunder, not because of any lack of desire on their part, perhaps, but because it was a forbidden land to them and was marked by defying cliff boundaries which rose to terrific heights. Could one say that the Spanish did not wonder what these hills possessed when they heard about villages on streams which ran into the Rio Grande? And no doubt, if these peaceful people, whom the Spanish followed to Los Confiados, were of the Keres nation—and they likely were—then they knew every valley, stream, trail and water hole in the Pajarito country. Espejo dispatched some of his men to accompany these Indians. Where were they led? Did they go up into the sandy foothills below the Jemez Mountains and its finger-like plateaus or did they penetrate almost inaccessible territory northwest of Cochiti? Or did they march straight north up the almost inaccessible White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande? They were gone two days from the pueblo of Cochiti. Where did they go? Where was this town of Los Confiados to which Espejo was invited and about which he gave us no fact?

The Keres-speaking people are possessed with legends of having been driven from the Pajarito by a race of “dwarfs” at some time in the remote past. But no one is sure that this race of “dwarfs” was not the Tewa-speaking people from the northern part of the Pajarito region who descended into Frijoles Canyon and drove the Keres from their Hidden Valley long before the Spanish came to America. Nor can one be certain that Keres people were not still living in Frijoles Canyon with the Tewas during Coronado’s time in 1540 or even some forty years later during Espejo’s time. Could one go so far as to suggest that Keres groups still remembered how their ancestors perhaps had been driven from their homes by “the little strong people” and that now they could have a well-earned revenge by directing the attentions of the Spanish toward the Valley of the Frijoles?

Had Espejo been gullible enough, and had the spirit of adventure been strong enough; had it been summer and not February, and had these peaceful Indians been Keres bent on revenge against the Tewas, his soldiers might have been led northwest up the Cañada de Cochiti. After an hour or so the trail would have become so difficult that the Indian method of travel would have been an issue. Horses would have been left behind and the little party would have ascended to the potrero tops on foot; over snow-covered precipitous trails; up and down canyon walls and deep into ancient Keres land.

It would have been no “picnic” even on foot. So rough is the country it is even doubted that the wily Navaho used these trails as has been so often suggested. The Keres might have picked a more direct route; up the banks of the Rio Grande to the mouth of Capulin Canyon, over high potreros, following a dim rough trail which skirted the Rio Grande for several miles then north to the mesa bordering Frijoles Canyon. And it is quite possible that the Spanish could have gone horseback deep into Keres territory, up Capulin Canyon to La Cueva Pintada, the Painted Cave. The cave gets its name from the many pictographs on its walls. Around it are the ruins of many houses built against the cliff at the top of the talus slope. Some of the Indian legends have it that the Painted Cave was one of six towns occupied when their ancestors were driven from the Valley of the Frijoles.

Travel from the Painted Cave on into Keres land probably would have been on foot. Up the rough Capulin Canyon [** Error: possible line-wrapped glossary phrase]for an hour’s march, over snow-covered potrero tops, they would have passed the ruins of innumerable villages. There they might have rested and drunk the icy water from a running creek during this cold month of February. And from there they made their way up to the potrero tops again, winding and twisting, half walking and half climbing and stopping somewhere, in a cave perhaps, to spend the night. And then they marched on to the pueblo of the Stone Lions, now bleak and desolate and worn by time. The pueblo of the Stone Lions, according to the Cochitenos, was the first village built and occupied by the Keres-speaking people after they were driven from the Valley of the Frijoles. The village is known as Yapashi which means “sacred enclosure.”

Only a half-mile away is the Stone Lions Shrine. Carved out of native tuff are the life-size images of two mountain lions and around them is an enclosure—a low wall of blocks of volcanic tuff. It is said that even the Zuñi Indians made pilgrimages to this shrine because they believed this to be the entrance to Shipapolima, the underworld from which their ancestors emerged. It is important even today to the Cochitenos who visit it frequently and leave bits of their ceremonial paraphernalia. Moving along slowly, Espejo’s little party would have trudged up the slopes to the high potrero tops again and then across the steep-walled Canyon del Alamo. They would have had a long march to Frijoles over trails known only to Indians. No, this could hardly have happened. The Spanish might never have survived.

Had these Keres-led Spanish peered into the Frijoles—known to Indians as Tyuonyi—this Hidden Valley in the New World, they would have seen the unbelievable. They would have looked into a valley six hundred feet deep and several hundred feet across. The opposite or north side was a sheer perpendicular cliff of pinkish rock. There were houses terraced high in the air, three or four stories at the base of the cliff. There were cave openings in the cliff, over some of the houses, which led out to open porches built of poles and brush. Small houses of stone and mud extended up and down the north wall of the Canyon almost as far as the human eye could see. People were walking around, microscopic in size because of the distance, climbing up and down tiny ladders to and from the tops of their houses. They were clothed in cotton cloth, hides and furs.

In the center of the valley, seemingly equidistant from both sides, was a huge circular house comprised of many small rooms, one on top of another, with tiny ladders extending from the ground to the roofs. Indians were going in and out of small roof openings. Their house was a veritable fort of primitive style. Four hundred rooms, or more, were built in the form of a circle. The structure had an opening or hallway through one side which led to an inner court or plaza. A sentry was stationed inside the entrance which was a high, thick wall built in the shape of a semi-circle with a narrow opening. A lone Indian, or maybe two, with bow and arrow in hand, might have been seen carrying a deer down a narrow trail. Queer looking creatures were these Indians with long stringy hair tied down by a band around their foreheads. They wore moccasins of deer skin on their feet. Kilts covered their thighs. They could have been a short muscular sort of people much the same as our modern pueblo dwellers. But they were known as the “pygmies” or “the little strong people.”

Smoke emerged from tiny openings in the roofs. Occasionally an Indian woman would appear, black hair stringing and her body draped with a manta of cotton cloth or animal skins. The bark of a dog or the gobble of a turkey which the Indians had domesticated might have broken the silence. The waters of the little river far below could be heard rolling over and onward toward the Rio Grande. The occasional thud of a boulder was heard as it bumped down stream.

Only one side of the valley was occupied—the north side. The south side was covered with trees, bare now because winter was here. The south wall of the Canyon was not as conducive to habitation as the north because it was worn down at a sharp angle. There were no vertical cliffs from which to carve out caves and no talus slopes on which to build little houses of stone and mud. No sun directed its rays toward the south cliff. The snow lay there all winter and helped cut it down at a sharp angle from top to bottom. The north side was sunny and dry—a perfect place for habitation.

There were not many people here during these last years of the sixteenth century. Great numbers had gone: but where, and why? A few cronies could have been seen crouching against stone houses at the base of the cliff, basking in the afternoon sun. A woman or two could have been grinding corn on flat stone slabs inside a cliff house, keeping time to a weird monotonous chant sung by old men as they pounded drums. Things were hanging from the ends of roof poles protruding through the front walls of houses—perhaps a piece of highly prized venison. House tops were strewn with corncobs. A weather-beaten corn field had spent itself.

This was the valley known to the Keres as “Tyuonyi.” It was the place where their people had lived only a few generations before. It was a valley over which most any group of primitive people would fight and was a place where the water supply was constant except in times of intense drought. Tyuonyi is a Keres word which signifies a treaty or contract and was so-called because of a treaty made with Tewa-speaking people years before, marking it as the boundary between Keres and Tewa territory. But who was to occupy Tyuonyi, the Hidden Valley and the most ideal spot on all the Pajarito Plateau? It seems that the Tewas (the little strong people) were the ones who occupied it until the very last. This was perhaps the reason why the Keres became envious and that is why to this day they retain a feeling of criticism for the Tewa-speaking people. Legend has it that relations between the two groups in prehistoric times were normally unfriendly.

No Spanish expedition ever reached Hidden Valley, or at least, archæologists have never found anything to indicate such a visit. And I repeat, the Spanish expeditions clung to the low valleys and kept away from the mountains. Tyuonyi then, is our subject. The Spanish never visited it and if they ever heard of its extensive settlement by Pueblo Indians direct mention was never made of it. It was a Hidden Valley in the New World occupied before recorded history began in America. And today its ruins are mellowed with age. It has yet to give up all its secrets about the cliff dweller who hewed three hundred caves from its north cliff with stone axes and knives, and built over twice as many small houses at its base. They constructed five community villages on its floor, and raised corn and beans and squash and pumpkins. And in so doing, these prehistoric pueblo and cave dwellers, and I might say historic, too, left in Hidden Valley so much material evidence about the way they lived that in 1916 the entire area, including some of the ancient Keres land to the south, was created a National Monument. Later, a detached section of ancient Tewa territory, a few miles to the north, was added to the area. It is known today as Bandelier National Monument and is comprised of some 27,000 acres.

The thousands of interested visitors, who go to Bandelier every year to prowl through the ruined homes located in the Valley of the Frijoles, spend an hour or so turning the clock back to Neolithic times when man had only bone, stone and wood tools with which to work. They relax in Hidden Valley—and in imagination try to reconstruct the story connected with these ruins which hold so closely the secrets of the past.