Pecos Pueblo: Where Cultures Meet

Frances Levine, Gini Griego, Wendy Leighton, and Dino Roybal

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
14 (Summer 2000). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2000, Organization of American Historians
 

We are teachers in New Mexico schools, and although we teach different levels we all use site visits to Pecos National Historical Park in our curriculum. The invitation to create a lesson plan for a historic place in New Mexico for the Organization of American Historians gave us an opportunity to collaborate and bring together the assignments that each of us has designed for our classes. We began our curriculum design by first discussing why we each use Pecos Pueblo in our teaching, and what students outside the region might gain from an understanding of the history of Pecos. At least part of our emphasis on Pecos Pueblo has to do with its long history of occupation and its central place in so many of the dramatic events of the region.

Pecos National Historical Park is located about twenty-five miles southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico, at a pass in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The central features of the park are the archaeological remains of a Pueblo Indian community, Pecos Pueblo, which was occupied from the mid fourteenth century until the 1830s. The site is still held in reverence by Pecos Pueblo descendants now living in other communities in the region. Also interpreted at the site are architectural remains of four mission churches, built of adobe and used for over three centuries following Spanish conquest of the region in 1598. Events that occurred at and near Pecos provide additional historical themes. Trade fairs brought Plains Indian groups to Pecos Pueblo, where for many centuries they interacted with the Pueblo and Hispanic people of the area. Pecos Pueblo was a rest stop along the Santa Fe Trail that connected the frontier regions of the Spanish world with the frontier of the expanding American nation. Two U.S. Civil War battles were fought near this historic place, and the last conquest of New Mexico was witnessed by Pecos Valley residents when the United States conquered the area in the Mexican-American War.

Lastly, but of equal importance, the staff at Pecos National Historical Park welcomes school groups, no small incentive for Gini, who travels to the park each year with more than ninety students and a dozen chaperones for a day of experiential education. For Dino's and Fran's students, Pecos is more than a national park--it is close to the community where some of their ancestors have lived for many generations. For these students, Pecos Pueblo and the Pecos Valley are part of the living history of the region--a place where Pueblo and Hispanic students have their roots.

For students outside the region, Pecos Pueblo has the distinction of having a well-documented history that can introduce them to a historic place spanning more than seven centuries. Texts, videos, historic photographs, and Internet web sites can tie the lessons of Pecos Pueblo to the larger context of the Spanish Borderlands history of the United States. Below we outline a series of activities that use Pecos Pueblo to examine these larger questions of cultural contact, cultural change, and the continuity of traditions in the Spanish Borderlands. Many published works on Pecos Pueblo and the history of the Hispanic community of Pecos, New Mexico, are available. We include a partial bibliography of texts and videos below.

The following lessons are suited for a social studies and history curriculum that examines how people interact and adapt, and how their cultural institutions may be modified by contact with others. Specifically, we examine the nature of the interaction between the people of Pecos Pueblo, a culture that was centuries old when its people were contacted and ultimately conquered by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. At the conclusion of these lessons students should be able to:

1. locate New Mexico, and the Spanish Southwest borderlands on a map of the United States;

2. articulate a broad overview of the history of the Spanish and American conquests of the region;

3. describe the major cultural changes that were introduced to the region and to Pueblo Indian culture by Spanish conquest;

4. discuss the ways that Pueblo Indian people responded to Spanish contact and conquest; and

5. apply their understanding of Pueblo responses to conquest to a larger understanding of how Hispanic people responded to American conquest in the mid nineteenth century.

Pecos Pueblo served as the gateway between the Pueblo communities of the Rio Grande Valley and the Plains Indian people of the Southern High Plains. From the fourteenth to the late eighteenth centuries, Pecos seems to have played a critical role in regulating the flow of trade goods and information between the Puebloan Southwest and the Plains. Pecos people may have exploited their strategic location and relationship with both Plains and Pueblo social groups to serve as brokers or intermediaries in the trade. At Pecos National Historical Park, and through the extensive archaeological literature of the region, students become acquainted with a history that has greater time-depth than may be readily apparent in a standard history of the United States.

Spanish exploration of the Southwest began in 1539 with entry into the Zuni pueblos of southwestern New Mexico. Pecos was first described by the Coronado expedition of 1540, and was visited by numerous explorers in the sixty years of Spanish exploration that preceded the establishment of a permanent Spanish colony in New Mexico. John Kessell's Kiva, Cross, and Crown offers the most comprehensive history of Pecos Pueblo and of the Hispanic settlement of the Pecos Valley, and Frances Levine traces the impact of Spanish conquest on Pecos in Our Prayers Are in This Place. Although the Pecos were active participants in the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in 1680, they were often allies of the Spanish throughout much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1). Pecos men became skilled carpenters whose work was commissioned in Santa Fe to build the Spanish capital. It is this tension between Pueblo alliances with the Spanish and Pueblo resistance to Spanish impositions that characterized the seventeenth century at Pecos and other pueblos. In 1680, Pueblo communities united to drive the Spanish from New Mexico.

In the early eighteenth century, Spaniards managed to reconquer their northern borderlands, and New Mexico was ruled once again by Spain. Hispanic settlement of the Pecos Valley did not occur until the late eighteenth century, after Spaniards secured a lasting peace with the neighboring Comanche and Apache nations. Pecos Pueblo maintained its prominent place in regional trade until about 1790, when it was gradually bypassed by Hispanic traders who traveled to the plains from their newly established Pecos River villages. A period of competition between the Pueblo traders and Hispanic merchants ensued but eventually the markets won over the traditional basis of the trade. Pecos lost its place as a result of Hispanic political dominance and because of its diminishing and devastated population.

The population of Pecos dwindled steadily from the time of Spanish conquest until the late eighteenth century for several reasons (2). The earliest records of Spanish contact with Pecos indicate that it was a village of considerable size. During nearly three centuries of Spanish rule, from 1540 to 1821, Pecos declined to about 1 percent of its size at contact. From its estimated size of two thousand people in the sixteenth century, it shrank to about twenty people in the 1830s. Epidemic and episodic diseases were clearly major factors in the decline of the Pecos population. While epidemic disease apparently accounts for a substantial portion of the population loss, out-migration and intermarriage with the Hispanic population are also evident in the historical records. Some Pecos Pueblo people seem to have left the pueblo to take advantage of economic opportunities that lay in the frontier towns of the Upper Pecos. Others may have left to escape the ravages of cyclical epidemics that swept through Pecos. In time, a number of the Pecos Valley Hispanic villages incorporated people from Pecos Pueblo and from other Rio Grande Pueblo communities. Some Pecos individuals seem to have chosen to live as or among Hispanics in the growing communities of the Upper Pecos Valley. For others the choice was to remain Pueblo as long as possible. With increasing non-Indian settlement on the Pecos Pueblo lands by 1825, however, Pecos Pueblo was unable to withstand the encroachments.

Finally, the remaining Pecos Pueblo residents emigrated to Jémez Pueblo, some hundred miles west of the Pecos Valley. For them, emigration to Jémez was not an acknowledgment that Pecos Pueblo was being "abandoned." Rather, it was an affirmation of Pecos's continuing ties to the larger Pueblo world. Today Pecos Pueblo traditions remain a vibrant part of the ritual life of Jémez Pueblo (3). Each year Pecos Valley residents and Jémez Pueblo people of Pecos descent renew their mutual ancestral ties to Pecos in a mass held at the park and ritual dances held at Jémez Pueblo.

Below we have divided the lessons of Pecos history into four parts. For each topic we list appropriate videos, source materials, and activities that can form the basis of curriculum units. The Internet sites listed at the end of this article contain many links to the history and contemporary situation of the New Mexico Pueblos. (click here for a Spanish Borderlands vocabulary list)

I. Pueblo Culture at the Time of Spanish Contact

Linda Cordell traces the long archaeological history of the Southwest and places the region's spectacular archaeological sites in a temporal scheme that connects the ancient and modern Pueblos in a longer continuum than many student may be familiar with. Cordell's 1994 work, Ancient Pueblo Peoples, is the more popular of her two texts, written in a style that may be more useful to a general historical and social science curriculum. A monograph entitled The Pueblo, by the late San Juan Pueblo anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz, is a fine summary of Pueblo history and ethnography. Activities for younger students can be found in the works of Walter Yoder. Instructors can use the listing of Internet sites at the end of this article to connect students with a variety of sites created by and about Pueblo Indian communities. The film Surviving Columbus, produced during the Columbus Quincentenary by a group of Pueblo scholars, offers a powerful recounting of the impacts of Spanish conquest on the Pueblos of the Southwest and the ways in which Pueblo people have survived despite centuries of acculturative pressures. The National Park Service also has a short interpretive film summarizing the history of Pecos, which can be ordered directly from the park (see below).

Following a viewing of the videos and an exploration of the related Internet sites, students should be able to describe the characteristic architectural plan of Pueblo communities. They should also know that there are many Pueblo languages, and that each village is governed by a village-based form of government--appointed by religious leaders in some villages and elected by popular vote in a small number of cases. They should comprehend that the Pueblos of the Southwest have lived in their native villages in many cases since the thirteenth century, and continue to practice traditional ways of life while also living very much in the present.

II. When Cultures Meet

Seventeenth-century New Mexico was characterized by conflicts between secular authorities, who demanded Pueblo labor for their farms and ranches, and by ecclesiastical demands for Pueblo conversion to a Christian way of life. Students should be aware of what the Franciscan missionaries were trying to accomplish, and in what ways they succeeded. Kessell's Kiva, Cross, and Crown argues that in addition to Spanish pressures for change, there were factions in the Pueblo communities who embraced the new economic opportunities that were afforded by interacting with Spaniards. Other Pueblo factions sought to keep their traditions separate from Spanish secular and religious influences. The very presence of Spanish missionary fathers at Pecos initiated many changes in the village. New crops and herd animals were introduced, changing the indigenous diet. New beliefs were imposed, and new structures were built by Pueblo laborers to serve the missions.

Students should be able to list the numerous changes to Pueblo traditional ways of life imposed by Spaniards, and to explain what the Spanish priests, secular authorities, and Pueblos were trying to accomplish.

III. The Pueblo Revolt

David Weber's anthology, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, contains selections from five authors who examine different causes of the Pueblo Revolt. A discussion of these factors serves as a stimulating point of departure for lessons on Pecos history. The revolt illustrates how cultures respond to coercive changes introduced by conquest, as well as offering a focused discussion of how both the conquered and the conquering cultures are modified by contact with the "Other." The video series Surviving Columbus contains a sixty-minute segment devoted entirely to the Pueblo Revolt. The study questions outlined in Weber's monograph will help guide students in a discussion of the many reasons why the Pueblos rebelled against Spanish rule.

Students should be able to enumerate the various causes of the Pueblo Revolt, including the suppression of native religious practices; Spanish impositions on Pueblo food supplies and lands; the aggravating conditions of drought, famine, and disease; and the desire to restore native hegemony. They should be able to evaluate the merits of the alternate explanations for what caused the Pueblo Revolt.

IV. Continuity and Change in the Southwest

Following the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico after 1680, the relationship between the Spanish and the Pueblos was markedly different. The intolerance and impositions that were so common in the seventeenth century were replaced with what John Kessell has termed a "pragmatic accommodation." The Church no longer punished native practices, and there developed a fusion of native religion with Catholicism that still characterizes Pueblo communities. The film Una Promesa, available from Pecos National Historical Park, illustrates the blending of rituals that characterized eighteenth-century New Mexico, and illustrates a feast day that is still observed by Pecos descendants. It is this blending of native and Hispanic traditions that makes New Mexico such a distinctive regional culture.

Hispanic New Mexico is visible and regionally distinctive in its architectural history, cuisine, and language. Adobe buildings, chile-spiced foods, and a Spanish vocabulary that retains expressions of more archaic forms of Spanish are some of the elements of New Mexico history that students should be able to identify following their readings and exploration of Internet sites. Students should be wary of stereotyped images of Hispanic and Pueblo people that come from superficial characterizations of the region. Have students distinguish what they see and read about Indians and Hispanic people from what they might observe in tourist brochures, advertising images, and postcards from the area. The long continuity of Pecos history will teach students about accommodation and persistence in places where cultures meet.

1. See John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540-1840 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979); and David J. Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1999).

2. See Frances Levine and Anna LaBauve, "Examining the Complexity of Historic Population Decline: A Case Study of Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico," Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 75-112; and Frances Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity through the Centuries. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).

3. See Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons, The Pueblo of Jemez. Phillips Academy Papers of the Southwestern Expedition, no. 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press for Phillips Academy, 1925); and Levine, Our Prayers.

Cordell, Linda S. Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1994.

------. Archaeology of the Southwest. 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc., 1997.

Elliott, Melinda. Great Excavations: Tales of Early Southwestern Archaeology, 1888-1939. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1995.

Hall, G. Emlen. Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant, 1800-1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Kessell, John L. The Gateway Pueblo of Pecos: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial New Mexico. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.

------. Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540-1840. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979.

------. "The Presence of the Past: Pecos Pueblo." Exploration: Annual Bulletin of the School of American Research (1981): 12-14.

------. "Spaniards and Pueblos: From Crusading Intolerance to Pragmatic Accommodation." In Columbian Consequences. Vol. 1, Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West. Edited by David Hurst Thomas, 127-38. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

Kidder, Alfred Vincent. An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology with a Preliminary Account of the Excavations at Pecos. New Haven: Yale University Press for Phillips Academy, 1924.

Levine, Frances and Anna LaBauve. "Examining the Complexity of Historic Population Decline: A Case Study of Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico." Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 75-112.

Levine, Frances. Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity through the Centuries. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Ortiz, Alfonso A., ed., Handbook of North American Indians. Vols. 9-10, The Southwest. Series edited by William C. Sturtevant. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979.

------. The Pueblo. Indians of North America Series. New York: Chelsea House, 1994.

Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews. The Pueblo of Jemez. Phillips Academy Papers of the Southwestern Expedition, no. 3. New Haven: Yale University Press for Phillips Academy, 1925.

Sando, Joe S. Nee Hemish: A History of Jémez Pueblo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

------. Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1992.

------. "The Pueblo Revolt." In Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 9, Southwest, 194-97.

Schroeder, Albert H. "Pecos Pueblo." In Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 9, Southwest, 430-37.

Simmons, Marc. "History of Pueblo-Spanish Relations to 1821." In Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 9, Southwest, 178-93, 206-23.

Webb, Dave. Adventures with the Santa Fe Trail. Dodge City: Kansas Heritage Center, 1993.

Weber, David J. What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Yoder, Walter D. The American Pueblo Indian Activity Book. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1994.

------. The Santa Fe Trail Activity Book: Pioneer Settlers in the Southwest. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1994.

Pecos Interpretive Film. Pecos National Historical Park, P.O. Box 418, Pecos, NM 87552. Videocassette.

Surviving Columbus. 122 min. Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium, 1992. KNME TV, 1130 University Boulevard, NE, Albuquerque, NM 87131. Videocassette.

Una Promesa: 1971 Feast Day at Pecos National Historical Park. Distributed by INTERpark, P.O. Box 3590, Farmington, NM 87499. Videocassette.

The following web sites can help students explore some of the historical sites and literature relating to Pecos National Historical Park, and to the larger topics of New Mexico history.

Pecos National Historical Park: <http://www.nps.gov/peco/>. The home page for the park describes park resources, hours of operations, and travel information. In the future, the park plans to expand the web page to include more information on the resources and activities at the park. Other national parks in the Southwest can be accessed by state:
<http://165.83.219.77/parksearch/State/statelist.html>. The National Park Service offers curriculum at its Teaching with Historic Places web site: <http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/>.

The New Mexico Genealogical Society: <http://www.nmgs.org/>. This site provides an overview of more than four hundred years of New Mexico history, as well as opportunities for genealogy researchers and family historians to network online. The site also offers links to the society's publications.

The Eight Northern Pueblos: <http://www.santafe.org/pueblos.html>. This organizational umbrella for the Tewa- and Tiwa-speaking Pueblo communities of Northern New Mexico provides links to Picuris and Taos, Tesuque, Pojoaque, Nambe, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and San Juan Pueblos. Each of these Pueblo sites illustrate the ways these communities hold on to their traditions while at the same time taking part in modern life.

Cultural Treasures of New Mexico: <http://www.nmculture.org>. This regional directory links New Mexico's many museums, archives, and state and national parks in a database.

Following is a list of historical web sites you might find interesting:
Open Directory Project:
<http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/US/New_Mexico/History/>.

New Mexico History:
<http://www.rr.gmcs.k12.nm.us/dNMhist.htm>.

Northeast New Mexico Legends and Lores:
<http://nenewmexico.com/history/legends/maxwell_land.html>.

The Mexican-American War and Hispanic Land Dispossessions:
<http://www.uwec.edu/Academic/Geography/Ivogeler/w188/
border/mexhist.htm>.

U.S.-Mexican Borderlands: <http://www.uwec.edu/Academic/ Geography/Ivogeler/w188
border/mex1.htm>.

Frances Levine is the division head of Arts and Sciences at Santa Fe Community College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she teaches New Mexico history and ethnohistory of the Pueblo and Hispanic communities of the Southwest. She holds a doctorate in anthropology from Southern Methodist University. Her doctoral research examined historic settlement and land use on three Pecos River land grants in New Mexico. Her most recent publication is a study of sacramental records from the mission churches at Pecos Pueblo entitled Our Prayers Are in This Place (1999).

Gini Griego received her Associates of Arts degree with highest honors from Santa Fe Community College in 1995. She continued her education at New Mexico Highlands University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, in 1997, with a major in elementary education. Ms. Griego teaches seventh grade New Mexico history at DeVargas Middle School in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Wendy Leighton is a full-time faculty member at the Santa Fe Preparatory School, where she teaches middle school classes in New Mexico history and film. She holds a master's degree in anthropology and film from Temple University. Her master's research and video documentary examined land and water conflicts surrounding the use of irrigation ditches (acequias) in northern New Mexico.

Dino Roybal (M.A., San Jose State University) is a teacher for the Pecos Independent Schools. He is director of the History Revival Project for the Pecos Schools, which seeks to bring students and communities together to preserve cultural resources and to teach middle school students about historical identity, genealogy, and oral history. As part of the project, students use the Internet to communicate with students in other communities throughout the United States, thus crossing cultural boundaries and better understanding other cultural groups in our diverse society.