Mosaic of New Mexico's Scenery, Rocks, and History

by Unknown

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.

Figure 3. Milling stones of the type used by the Cochise People
Plant foods were ground in a shallow basin metate with the small one-hand mano (hand stone). Socorro, New Mexico.

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).

(Photograph of museum diorama courtesy of the Chicago Natural History Museum)
Figure 4. Mogollon pit-house village of the period 200 B.C.

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.

(Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service)
Figure 5. Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon National Monument
A multistory pueblo containing 800 rooms.

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.