LATE PUEBLO PERIOD.
The upsurge of population and the main construction activity in Bandelier began after A. D. 1300. Large towns grew up and down the Rio Grande drainage, and their people achieved in most respects as high a standard of living as their forebears had known in the Great Pueblo centers of 200 years earlier. Very possibly the Rio Grande pueblos might have gone ahead to a new peak of cultural development if they had not been interrupted and demoralized by the coming of the Spanish. In 1598, some 400 farmers and soldiers led by Don Juan de Onate, the first permanent Spanish settlers, came from Mexico, and with the entry of these land-seekers the ascendancy of the Pueblos was finished.
Life of the Early People at Bandelier
The typical male inhabitant of Frijoles Canyon in the early 1300’s, then, was a newcomer to the area. He was a man of Mongoloid cast of countenance, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches in height, with medium red-brown skin and black hair. His wife measured 5 feet or perhaps a little less, and was inclined to a stout build. A few children and a dog or two completed the family circle. These newcomers had arrived in their chosen valley with only such belongings as they could carry on their backs, and were immediately faced with the problems of wresting a livelihood from a somewhat grudging environment. In the pattern of all mankind before and since, this Indian migrant’s first requirements were food, water, shelter, and clothing for himself and his family.