THE TRADITIONAL AND DOCUMENTARY PERIOD.
The term "traditional" is applied to this period, because the people occupying the site of Old Pecos have left some traditions behind them, and not because we know when it commenced. In fact, I am much inclined to divide it, for the sake of convenience, into two periods again, one of which includes the occupation of the area within the circumvallation and its necessary annexes (field, etc.), whereas the other includes the area without. Of the former, we have definite knowledge in regard to its inhabitants; of the latter, we have none whatever. It is therefore also pre-traditional as yet. Nevertheless, I have included it in the second epoch, as its ruins indicate that its people possessed arts identical with those of the present pueblo Indians. Their pottery, wherever exposed,[p. 108] was painted, figured, and vitrified in places; its ornamentation is exactly similar to that of the pottery of the interior area, and different from that of Zuñi. They used flint, but no trace of obsidian is found. This may be purely accidental; still, why should it occur at three places so totally different in regard to erosion and abrasion as the slope south of the church, the west bank of the creek directly opposite, and, if thorough examination should confirm the results of my cursory observations, the apron of the high mesa? The graves, wherever found, are identical with those of the mesilla; the plan of building, and consequently of living,[135] appears similar to that exhibited in houses A and B; the material used is the same, but the walls are more ruinous, and apparently of a much older date. The inference is therefore not unreasonable, that the inhabitants of the three areas named, as outside of the great circumvallation, were of the kind now called "pueblo Indians," who preceded the tribe of Pecos proper in point of time. It is not improbable that one or the other of these ruins may have been erected by the Pecos themselves before they settled on the mesilla. Still, there is neither proof nor disproval of this surmise extant.
There appears to be also a slight difference between the different ruins of this period themselves. The ruins south of the church and those along the mesa are similar, in that they are more ruined, and not covered with débris, and in that their surfaces are also devoid of pottery. The space west of the creek has pottery and also heaps of rubbish, and I therefore conclude that it was the most recent of the three locations,—or at least the one last abandoned. To it must be added the small mound or promontory found further south on the east[p. 109] bank of the arroyo. One fact is certain: all these places were deserted, and perhaps as badly ruined as now, at the time when Coronado first visited Pecos.[136] (The partial removal of the surface material may have been effected by the Pecos Indians themselves in order to build their own houses.)
Referring now to the inhabitants of the two houses, whose ruins are situated on the mesilla, north of the church, it is a thoroughly well-authenticated fact that they spoke the same language as the Indians of the pueblo of Jemez. Jemez lies 80 miles N.W. of Pecos, beyond the Rio Grande. It is possible that the Pecos Indians came to the valley from that direction. But it is singular that, while there are no other settlements speaking this same idiom but Jemez and Pecos, these two pueblos should be separated, as early as at Coronado's time (1540), by three distinct linguistical stocks, different from theirs and lying across, intervening between them. Directly W. of Pecos the Queres, S.W. the Tanos, N.W. the Tehuas—all at war with the Jemez and the Pecos, and often with each other—lay like a barrier between the latter two. The point is an interesting one, as the pueblo of Pecos defines (together with Taos at the north) the utmost easterly limit to which the pueblo Indians seem to have penetrated.
Who were first in the valley of the Rio Grande? Did the Queres, Tanos, Tehuas, etc., drive out the Pecos, then already settled to the S.W., into the Sierra, or did the Pecos, migrating from Jemez, force their passage through the other tribes? I conjecture that the Jemez, etc., were the[p. 110] first; that they migrated down the Rio Grande, and on the same area, between Sandía to the S. and Santa Fé, were gradually displaced by the others successively coming in,—one branch, the Jemez, recoiling into the mountains towards San Diego;[137] the other, the Pecos, driven up the cañon of San Cristóbal,[138] and finally, when the Tanos moved up into that valley, crossing over to the valley of Pecos.
This is to a great extent conjecture; still there are other singular indications. I give them with due reserve, however, formally protesting against any imputation that they are intended for anything else than to suggest problems for future study.
According to my friend Mr. A. S. Gatchet, of Washington, D. C., an excellent linguist, the Tanos and the inhabitants of Isleta, the most southerly pueblo on the Rio Grande still occupied, speak the same language.[139] The same is asserted here, as a known fact, to be the case with the Taos and the Picuries in the north, and the Isletas at the south. If this be true, then the supposition that the Queres and Tehuas are the latest intrusive stock would become a certainty. More than that: the Tanos prior to 1680, had their chief pueblo at San Cristóbal, N. E. of Galisteo, on the slope of the mesa of Pecos. They also had become dispossessed[p. 111] of the Rio Grande valley, and divided into (originally) two branches,—the Picuries and Taos north, and the Tanos, of Galisteo, east. Isleta itself is a later agglomeration.[140] There being no pueblo E. and S. E. of Pecos, then it appears that the Jemez, or rather Emmes, were the first migration, the Tanos the second, and the Queres and Tehuas the last.
The earliest traditions of the Pecos are preserved to us by Pedro de Castañeda, one of the eye-witnesses and chroniclers of Coronado's "march" in 1540. They told him that, five or six years (?) before the arrival of the Spaniards, a roaming tribe called the "Teyas" (Yutas) had ravaged the surroundings of their pueblo, and even, though fruitlessly, attempted to capture it.[141] This tribe was afterwards met by Coronado in the plains to the N.E. and E.[142]
Another tradition, very well known,—so well, indeed, that it has given to the name of the unlucky "capitan de la guerra" of the ancient Mexicans the honorific title of an aboriginal "cultus-hero,"—is that of Montezuma.
I hope, at some future time, to be able to give some further information on this Spanish-Mexican importation. Suffice it to say for the present, that not a single one of the numerous chronicles and reports about New Mexico, up to the year 1680, mentions the Montezuma story! The word itself, Mon-te-zuma, is a corruption of the Mexican word "Mo-tecu-zoma,"—literally, "my wrathy chief,"—which corruption that emi[p. 112]nently "reliable gentleman," Bernal Diez de Castillo, is to be thanked for. He wrote in 1568.[143]