Pecos: The Archaeological Record

Mission remains

From the New Mexico Office of the State Historian, quoted from an article, Cicuique (Pecos Pueblo), by Richard Flint, and Shirley Cushing Flint:

Archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, working during the years 1915-1929, uncovered the general plan of the north and south pueblos, their construction techniques, their pottery and other daily artifacts. Kidder determined that, in fact, the north pueblo had a rectangular configuration and that "excavation has so far fully confirmed" Castañeda de Nájera's description from the Coronado expedition.

Mission monastery remains

His excavations ascertained the existence of 660 rooms housing approximately 110 families, staggered passageways, seventeen subterranean round kivas, and four above-ground square kivas he called "guardhouse kivas." He determined that the pueblo had as many as four stories, with some flimsy superstructures accounting for some five-story units. In several rooms he uncovered remains of the covered walkways and subterranean connecting passageways...

The Pecos Pueblo in 1540

Along the trail

The Pecos people called their pueblo Cicuye (also spelled by the Spaniards as Acuique, Cicuique, or Cicuic). When the Spanish expedition led by Captain Hernando de Alvarado arrived in 1540, they found an impressive and well-fortified structure, as described by Pedro de Castañeda:

[Cicuye] is a pueblo of as many as five hundred warriors. It is feared throughout that land. In plan it is square, founded on a rock. In the center is a great patio or plaza with its kivas (estufas). The houses are all alike, of four stories. One can walk above over the entire pueblo without there being a street to prevent it. At the first two levels it is completely rimmed by corridors on which one can walk over the entire pueblo. They are like balconies which project out, and beneath them one can take shelter.

The houses have no doors at ground level. To climb to the corridors inside the pueblo they use ladders which can be drawn up; in this way they have access to the rooms. Since the doors of the houses open on the corridor on that floor the corridor serves as street. The houses facing open country are back to back with those inside the patio, and in time of war they are entered through the inside ones. The pueblo is surrounded by a low stone wall. Inside there is a spring from which they can draw water.

The people of this pueblo pride themselves that no one has been able to subdue them, while they subdue what pueblos they will.

Wall fragment today

Pecos; Witness to an Historical Procession

Trail at the Pecos National Historical Monument

Herbert Eugene Bolton, an authority on Spanish American history, had this to say* about Pecos:

[Pecos] was the gateway for Pueblo Indians when they went buffalo hunting on the Plains; a two-way pass for barter and war between Pueblos and Plains tribes; a portal through the mountains for Spanish explorers, traders, and buffalo hunters; for the St. Louis caravan traders with Santa Fe; for pioneer Anglo American settlers; for Spanish and Saxon Indian fighters; for Civil War armies; and for a transcontinental railroad passing through the Southwest.

It is no wonder that, to me, the silences of this very still place are amplified by the sensation that thousands of voices have, just the moment before, stopped talking, laughing, singing, crying out, and shouting.

Looking out from the Pecos Mission ruins

* Source for the Bolton quote: Pecos, Gateway to Pueblo and Plains; The Anthology. Edited by John V. Bezy and Joseph P. Sanchez. Tucson: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1988.

Pecos National Historical Park

This northern New Mexican park, which contains ruins going back to 800 A.D., just gets better and better. If we are lucky enough to move to the Pecos area, we will get an annual pass. There is so much to explore, experience, and think about. And then, there is all that magic to soak up, up there on the trails in the deep, deep silence.

At the base of the trail in the visitor's center, there is a display table that contains some of the pottery shards picked up by visitors who didn't know any better. As the sign explains, removing such artifacts from the site where they are found makes it very hard to learn more about what they are and how (and when) they were used. I was stunned to realize that all those little bits of clay that litter the sides of every trail are actual pieces of ancient pottery! I had just assumed that they were sharp little rocks.

Over the next little while, I am going to be learning more about this amazing historical park. You can be sure that I will share what I find with you.

A Palpable Silence: Pecos

When you first come to Pecos you are struck by the beauty. Walking up the trail toward the old kiva and the remains of the mission, I always remember the words from the Navajo: I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me. I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me. I walk with beauty around me.

But beyond the beauty and beneath the great palpable silence, you cannot help but be aware of the presence of those who have gone before; those who have lived here in peace, those who came to trade, those who came to enslave, those who sought to overthrow, and those who killed to empower themselves.

As you walk along the trail, a closer look at the trailside rocks and soil shows you a ground littered with pieces of ancient pots. History is overlaid with history here. You stand at the site of an ancient pueblo, two Spanish colonial missions, part of the Santa Fe trail, a Civil War battle, and a 20th century working ranch.

Go down the old ladder into the ancient underground kiva and spend some moments alone with your thoughts and all the swirling fragments of the past. Absorb some of that great silence into yourself and make it your own. Climb back up into the hot sunshine and walk with beauty all around you.

Pecos National Historical Park

We Went Up to Pecos

We went up to the Pecos National Historical Park over the weekend, a 400-mile round trip from Clovis. Pecos is some kind of touchstone for both of us. Beez goes down into a kiva and stays for a while and comes out a newly refreshed man. I stay up top and take photos, as I'm not much for going underground here in snake country.

It is a very haunted and mystical place and one of the reasons, I believe, that New Mexico deserves to be called "enchanted." The air was absolutely incredible there--each breath smelled like sunshine and juniper and pine and distant snows. The elevation is almost 7000 ft., so even though it wasn't hot we had to be careful of getting burned in the sun.

It seemed like the most beautiful place in the world.

Haunted, haunted Pecos

I don't think that you can go to Pecos National Historical Park without feeling a connection to the past. I've never been anywhere else where there is such a sense of disturbing history. The Indians there were forced to convert by the Franciscan fathers; their land was colonized, they were forbidden their kivas, and they were made to build an adobe church south of their pueblo. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, they rose up, killed the priest, and "built a forbidden kiva in the very convento of the mission."* When you visit today and look from that kiva to the ruined church, you can easily imagine the Pecos taking back the adobe bricks from the church they were forced to build and using them to reconstruct their sacred kiva.
Each time we have visited Pecos it has been hot and still, with only the sound of birds and the occasional quiet words of another visitor carrying down the trail on the wind. We step lightly, respecting the rattlesnakes' right to privacy. We look over our shoulders often, for there is always a strong feeling that the current peacefulness of the place is only lightly superimposed on the violence of the past.

I am reading The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook, a novel set in Pecos. The narrative moves back and forth between the modern day and the late 1890s, and from Pecos to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Pecos is described as fantastic...unsettling...and eerily romantic. I think that you will agree, if you have the chance to go there.


Information source:

*Pecos; U.S. National Park Service brochure 404/952-40107, 1996.