Part 7

The year 1926 was marked by the first of a series of important archeological finds in New Mexico that were eventually to demonstrate that man had occupied this area as much as 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. During this period, Late Pleistocene ice sheets of continental glaciers still blanketed parts of the northern tier of states in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, and elephants (both mammoths and mastodons), horses, camels, giant bison, tapirs, and ground sloths roamed the Southwest. Excavations begun in 1926 near the small town of Folsom, in northeastern New Mexico (fig. 1), disclosed a number of fossil skeletons of a large form of extinct bison, forerunners of the modern bison or buffalo. Among these bones were dart or spear points of distinctive form and workmanship, characterized by broad, shallow flutes or channels on each face (fig. 2). These artifacts, now known as Folsom points, have since been recovered from a number of sites in New Mexico and elsewhere in North America, commonly in association with the remains of extinct bison. Evidently Folsom “Man” (whose skeletal remains have not been discovered) was a nomadic hunter particularly dependent upon the bison for his food supply, much as were the later Plains Indians of historic time. Ages of from 10,000 to 11,000 years have been obtained from charcoal and other organic remains at Folsom camp sites by the radiocarbon method.

Succeeding years have seen an increasing number of valuable archeological discoveries at camp and game-kill sites of Folsom Man and other Early Hunters. Unquestionably, the most important of these sites is the Blackwater Draw locality between Clovis and Portales in extreme eastern New Mexico, where excavations for gravel disclosed a stratified sequence of sediments that were deposited in an ancient pond and spring. Here, too, were the characteristic Folsom points in association with the bones of fossil bison. Below the Folsom layer, still older deposits contained the fossil bones of mammoth, horse, camel, and bison associated with fluted spear points that resembled those from Folsom but were generally larger and less skillfully chipped and fluted. These points, now known as Clovis points, are so commonly found beside the remains of mammoths in a number of sites in the High Plains and the Southwest that their makers are believed to have been adept at hunting these extinct elephants. Radiocarbon dates place Clovis points in a time range of from 11,000 to 12,000 years ago.

In a layer above that containing Folsom points at Blackwater Draw, several varieties of unfluted lanceolate points were found to be associated with the bones of fossil bison. These points have been identified by various specific names such as Plainview, Milnesand, Eden, and Scottsbluff from excavated sites elsewhere in the High Plains region, and probably range in age from 8000 to 10,000 years. Although the giant bison still survived into this level of stratigraphy and time, the elephant, camel, and horse of the Clovis level had disappeared from the area.

Early Hunter Sites 1. Folsom State Monument 2. Sandia Cave 3. San Jon 4. Blackwater Draw 5. Manzano Cave 6. Lucy 7. Milnesand 8. Burnet Cave Prehistoric Pueblo and Cliff-Dwelling Ruins 9. Aztec Ruins National Monument 10. Chaco Canyon National Monument 11. Puye Cliff Dwellings 12. Bandelier National Monument (Tyuonyi) 13. Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument Historic Pueblo Ruins 14. Jemez State Monument 15. Pecos State Monument 16. Coronado State Monument (Kuaua) 17. Paako State Monument 18. Quarai State Monument 19. Abo State Monument 20. Gran Quivira National Monument Modern Pueblos 21. Taos 22. San Lorenzo (Picurís) 23. San Juan 24. Santa Clara 25. San Ildefonso 26. Nambé 27. Tesuque 28. Cochiti 29. Santo Domingo 30. San Felipe 31. Sandia 32. Santa Ana 33. Zia 34. Jemez 35. Isleta 36. Laguna 37. Acoma 38. Zuni 39. Ojo Caliente Navajo, Ute, and Apache Reservations 40. Navajo Indian Reservation 41. Ute Mountain Indian Reservation 42. Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation 43. Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation

Modern pueblos Historic pueblo ruins Prehistoric pueblo and cliff-dwelling ruins Early Hunter sites

Another important discovery was made in Sandia Cave northeast of Albuquerque. Below cave deposits containing Folsom points was an earlier type of point among the bones of mammoth, horse, camel, and other large Pleistocene mammals. Now identified as Sandia points, these projectile tips are distinguished by an asymmetric stemmed form with a shoulder on one side. The age of the Sandia points has been a subject of some controversy, but the latest available data from charcoal in Sandia Cave indicates an age of nearly 12,000 years, which is within the accepted range of the Clovis points.

Clovis, Sandia, and Folsom points, together with related stone implements, are at many places enclosed in sediments deposited in or adjacent to ponds, lakes, streams, and wet meadows. These environments indicate a former cool and more humid climate in areas that are now semiarid. The food requirements of many of the large herbivores that lived at this time also suggest more abundant vegetation and surface water than prevails here today. It is not unreasonable, then, to presume that climatic conditions contributing to the advance of continental glaciers in the Great Lakes region, and to valley glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, should have been reflected in lower summer temperatures and higher rainfall in non-glaciated areas. The ultimate extinction of the large Pleistocene mammals and the similar time of disappearance of the hunters who preyed upon them may both be related to the climatic changes that followed the end of the Ice Age in America.

HUNTERS AND GATHERERS

Groups of people dependent upon a different way of life from that of the Early Hunters are known to have occupied much of the present area of New Mexico. Although there is some suggestion of overlap in time of these people with the Early Hunters, they appear to have become prominent during the several thousand warm, dry years following the end of the Pleistocene. Adapted, as they were, to a fuller utilization of the resources of the area through the hunting and trapping of smaller game and an emphasis on the gathering of a wide variety of wild plant foods, these people ranged extensively across the varied terrain of the state. Similar patterns of subsistence and artifacts are known from the Great Basin region west of the Rocky Mountains, where they have been categorized under the term _Desert Culture_. Local manifestations of the Desert Culture in southeastern Arizona, extending eastward into western and southern New Mexico, are identified as the Cochise Culture. Other groups showing similarities with Archaic cultures to the east penetrated the northeastern part of New Mexico at a time when the area was still populated by Pleistocene bison.

Habitation sites of these gatherers are distributed in open situations and in shelter caves. Such sites are commonly marked by milling stones that characterize the preparation of wild foods (fig. 3), hearths, chopping and scraping implements, and stemmed projectile points markedly different from those used by the Early Hunters. These points were affixed to dart shafts that were propelled with a spear thrower or _atlatl_, a device that preceded the bow and arrow in America but is still used by Australian Aborigines.

Seasonal changes in the local availability of wild foods must have necessitated a nomadic or seminomadic way of life. The development of agricultural techniques in the later years before the beginning of the Christian Era, however, probably contributed to the development of a semisedentary existence that was eventually to lead to the village life of the later periods. The exact time of introduction of the principal agricultural crops, corn, squash, and beans, is unknown, but evidence from west-central New Mexico indicates their use by the Cochise people by 2500 B.C.

PUEBLOAN FARMERS

Having acquired the techniques of deliberately planting and raising food crops that could be stored against future needs, local populations of Hunters and Gatherers became less dependent upon the gathering of wild foods and began to construct clusters of more permanent dwellings near cultivable land. Among the earliest recognized houses of this period are the semisubterranean pit houses of the early Mogollon people in the San Francisco River drainage of west-central New Mexico (fig. 4) and of the Anasazi Basketmakers in the San Juan River drainage of northwestern New Mexico. These cultural advances, together with the acquisition of techniques for the manufacture of fired pottery, foreshadowed the development of the Mogollon and Pueblo cultures at a time beginning perhaps as early as 300 B.C. for the Mogollon area and at least by 1 A.D. for the Anasazi area.

These two cultural groups, the Mogollon in southwestern and southern New Mexico, whose roots extend back through the ancestral Cochise to before 6000 B.C., and the Anasazi in the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico, probably developed independently during the early years. From about 500 A.D., however, there is increasing evidence of trade relationships and eventual fusion of traits. Other groups to the west, such as the Hohokam of Arizona, were sources of cultural influence on the indigenous people of New Mexico. In the Mogollon and San Juan Anasazi heartlands and in the Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico, a pattern of village life with elaboration of social and religious organization emerged from the relatively simple cultures of the early years. Villages began to assume organized form, dwellings were combined in rows of adobe and stone structures containing a number of contiguous rooms, and subterranean ceremonial chambers or _kivas_ assumed larger and more specialized architectural distinctiveness from the ancestral pit-house dwellings. In the Mogollon area, the characteristic brownware pottery of the Mogollons was used side by side with decorated black-on-white pottery of Anasazi origin. The bow and arrow slowly replaced the less efficient _atlatl_ and dart. The significance of these early stages in the evolution of the Pueblo Culture in the San Juan and upper Rio Grande areas is indicated by their designation as the Developmental Pueblo period (Pueblo I and II).

The climax of these developments occurred in the interval between 1050 and 1300 A.D. in the Classic or Great Pueblo period (Pueblo III). Among the most impressive manifestations of this period are large stone-masonry apartment houses, some rising to five stories in height and housing hundreds of people. Dwellings of this type are highlights of several well-known tourist attractions, among which are the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado and the monumental ruins of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon (fig. 5), both products of the ingenuity of the Anasazi Indians.

At the very apex of the cultural efflorescence of the Great Pueblo period, some unknown circumstance or series of events caused abandonment of most of the urban centers of the San Juan Anasazi and Mogollon areas. A prolonged drouth is recorded by tree rings formed during the period from 1276 to 1299 A.D. Surely a drouth of this magnitude would have had serious effects on people as dependent upon agriculture as were the Pueblo Indians. There are some indications that alien and perhaps enemy people were drifting into these areas at about this time, perhaps predecessors of the modern Navajos and Apaches. The congested living conditions of Pueblo villages undoubtedly contributed to unsanitary conditions and social pressures that also may have contributed to shifts in population. Many of these migrants moved into the homeland of the Rio Grande Anasazi in the upper Rio Grande Valley, and to a lesser extent in the central Rio Grande Valley. Some may have relocated at Zuni and other areas along the Little Colorado River drainage extending westward into Arizona.

During the Great Pueblo period, another group showing characteristics of both the Anasazi and of non-Puebloan people occupied an area on both sides of the Continental Divide along the eastern margin of the San Juan Basin. This cultural phase, known as the Largo-Gallina because of the distribution of sites in the Largo and Gallina drainage basins, is represented by pit houses, surface rooms, and towerlike structures with some similarities to the dwellings of the Anasazi. The black-on-white pottery also suggests Puebloan relationships, whereas the culinary vessels resemble those of the Navajo.

Beginning at about 1300 A.D. or shortly thereafter, a different cultural group began to move westward from the Texas Panhandle into the plains of northeastern New Mexico. These people of the Panhandle Aspect built single-room structures and contiguous room pueblos resembling those in use by the Anasazi of the Rio Grande and were skilled bison hunters, farmers, and traders. This combination of traits suggests both Puebloan and eastern traditions. Panhandle Aspect villages were abandoned suddenly not long after 1400, perhaps as a result of the drouth recorded by tree rings for the period from 1439 to 1454.

Following the shift in population of the Pueblo region, cultural changes occurred that have led to the designation Regressive Pueblo period (Pueblo IV) for the interval between 1300 and 1700 A.D. Noteworthy changes during this period include a tendency toward enlargement of villages and the creation of new styles of pottery, accompanied by some deterioration of the artistic creativity of the Classic period. Major ruins of this period that are readily accessible to the public include Puye Cliff Dwellings, Tyuonyi Pueblo in Bandelier National Monument, and Pecos Pueblo in Pecos National Monument.

At the time of Coronado’s _entrada_ in 1540, there were from 60 to 70 Pueblo villages in New Mexico, most of which contained fewer than 400 inhabitants. Four or five mutually unintelligible languages were spoken, each with several dialects, making communication between Spanish and Indian extremely difficult. Language barriers contributed to an inadequate documentation of the Pueblo way of life during the early years of Spanish contact, so that we must continue to depend upon the archeological record during the first century of Spanish colonization of the area. The beginning of the Historic Pueblo period (Pueblo V) accordingly is commonly set at 1700 A.D.

APACHES AND NAVAJOS

Little is known concerning the origin of these two related groups, who differ markedly from the Pueblo Indians in language and cultural traits. Their closest ties are with other Athapaskan-speaking tribes in northwestern Canada, and available evidence indicates that they are comparative newcomers to the Southwest. A correlation between the abandonment of sections of the Pueblo region and pressures exerted by ancestral Apaches and Navajos has been suggested, but definite proof of this is still lacking. Raids against the eastern pueblos of the Galisteo Basin are reported to have occurred in 1525. Coronado’s expedition encountered nomadic hunters in the plains east of Pecos in 1541, observing that they followed the movements of herds of bison or buffalo on whom they were highly dependent for food and shelter, lived in portable tents of tanned buffalo hides supported by a framework of poles, and used dogs as beasts of burden. Trade contacts with the Rio Grande pueblos included exchange of hide “cloaks” for corn grown by the Pueblo Indians.

Related groups in western and northwestern New Mexico are even more poorly known, as there was still less contact between them and the Spanish explorers. Evidently some agriculture was practiced as a supplement to a subsistence based largely on hunting and gathering, a pattern of livelihood reminiscent of that of the pre-Puebloan Cochise people.

The succeeding years of Spanish and American colonization of New Mexico were to be highly influenced by the Apaches and Navajos, and also by another group of Plains Indians, the Comanches. The events of this period, however, are discussed in a separate article.

Frontier Forts of New Mexico

_by_ Robert A. Bieberman

Following President Polk’s declaration of war against Mexico in May 1846, a United States Army force was sent from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, against the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and California. This army, known as “The Army of the West,” was led by Gen. Stephen W. Kearny. Upon his arrival in Santa Fe in August 1846, General Kearny issued a proclamation which informed the citizens that New Mexico was now a part of the United States and that he and his army and the forces to follow would protect them and their property. General Kearny remained in Santa Fe only one month, but during that month he appointed a governor, judges, and other officials, started construction of a fort in Santa Fe, and sent troops against the Navajo Indians in fulfillment of his promise to protect the people. Kearny and his “Army of the West” left Santa Fe in September 1846 to conquer California, leaving behind a detachment of troops under the command of Col. Alexander W. Doniphan. Thus began the role of the U.S. Army, which was to continue for the next half century, in securing the frontier in what we now know as the State of New Mexico.

History has shown that the troops stationed in New Mexico were called upon to participate in the Mexican War and the Civil War and to protect the newly established border between Mexico and New Mexico from violations from both sides. However, the basic role of the military, the role which continued for fifty years, was to protect the traveler, the farmer, the miner, and the settler from Indian attack. Its task was made no less difficult by the changing, unrealistic, discriminatory Indian policies which came out of Washington during this period. When relative calm was established, promises were forgotten and violence erupted anew.

The defense policy in New Mexico did not follow a set plan but gradually evolved. Military posts were established at different places when the need arose and were abandoned when the need diminished. A few of the posts were occupied and used by the army throughout most of this period. Others existed but a few months or years.

FORTS

Fort Union

Located twenty-seven miles northeast of Las Vegas, Fort Union became the most important and most famous fort in the New Mexico Territory. Established on the Santa Fe Trail in 1851, it served as supply depot for the territory and as a base for troops engaged in the protection of traffic along the Santa Fe Trail and of the settlements in the area from the depredations of the Apaches, Utes, Comanches, and Kiowas. The site can be reached by traveling eight miles of paved road which leaves U.S. Highway 85 one mile north of Watrous.

During its forty-year history, Fort Union occupied three different sites, all within the same general area. The original fort was of log construction which rapidly fell into disrepair. In August 1861, amid rumors of the possible invasion of the territory by Confederate forces, construction was begun on a new fort. This fort was of earthworks, in the form of an eight-pointed star. It was here that the troops waited for the attack which never came. With the passing of the Confederate threat, work was begun in 1863 on the third fort, the remains of which are seen today.

Fort Union soon became the largest fort in the territory. It was constructed in two sections, one for the garrison and one for the supply depot. The garrison area consisted of four infantry and two cavalry barracks facing a row of nine officers’ quarters across the parade ground. A sixty-bed hospital was constructed. The depot area included five warehouses, mechanics corral, transportation corral, and administration buildings. An arsenal was built about one mile from the fort proper.

The buildings were constructed of adobe on stone foundations. The roofs were flat and the walls were capped with brick copings in what has become the territorial style of architecture.

Fort Union was a community within itself and a lively social center. Weary travelers on the Santa Fe Trail eagerly anticipated their arrival. Few complaints were heard when soldiers were transferred to Fort Union, for this was a popular assignment.

With the coming of the railroad and peace at last descending on the frontier in the 1880’s, the need for the fort diminished. But it clung to life for a few more years, mainly because of the fond memories which lived in the hearts of the military leaders who had been stationed there. Finally, the end came and Fort Union was abandoned in February 1891.

New life came to the fort in 1955 when it became a National Monument. The ruins have been excavated and stabilized and a fine visitors’ center and museum has been established. Fort Union has at last assumed its rightful place as a shrine of history. Stand on the parade ground and survey the majesty that was Fort Union, listen for the sounds, the bugle calls, the barklike commands of close-order drill, the creak of wagons, and the thunder of horses’ hooves. These are the sounds of Fort Union. They are still there if one will only pause and listen.

Fort Marcy

Fort Marcy was established in 1846 at Santa Fe and was named for the then Secretary of War, W. L. Marcy. The fort was located on a hill overlooking the city some 1000 yards northeast of the plaza. A deep ditch or moat surrounded the massive adobe walls of the fort and a blockhouse, within musket range, protected the only entrance. At the time of Colonel Manfield’s inspection trip in August 1853, the troops were quartered in public buildings in Santa Fe, there being no quarters provided at the fort; however, it could be occupied on a moment’s notice. The original Fort Marcy was abandoned in 1867 and a new one was constructed a short distance to the west. This new site is now occupied by business and residential properties. The War Department abandoned Fort Marcy in October 1894, the troops and equipment being moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The site was turned over to the city of Santa Fe in 1897.

Fort Marcy played an important role during the military occupation of New Mexico. It served as a base of operations against marauding Indians, was captured and occupied for a short time by Confederate forces in 1862, served as headquarters for the Ninth Military Department (changed to Department of New Mexico in 1853) throughout most of this period, and was a center for the social life of Santa Fe. Only low mounds of earth now mark the site of Fort Marcy.

Fort Wingate