Castañeda says (p. 188): "In order to understand how the country is inhabited in the centre of the mountains, we must remember that from Chichilticah, where they begin, there are eighty leagues; thence to Cicuyé, which is the last village, they reckon seventy leagues, and thirty from Cicuyé to the beginning of the plains."
Juan Jaramillo, another eye-witness of "Coronado's march," intimates a similar fact.[158]
In regard to Pecos being "quite alone," Castañeda is positive; so is Juan de Oñate, who received and registered its submission. It is true, however, that Castañeda mentions a small pueblo as subject to Cicuyé, which pueblo, however, he says was half destroyed at his time. He locates it "between the road and the Sierra Nevada."[159] This may have been the small ruin noticed near Kingman.
These facts are very interesting in their bearings upon the[p. 118] older ruins of Pecos. It goes far towards furnishing additional proof that they were indeed abandoned and decayed already in 1540. In regard to building B, it is ignored in the reports, A, with its vast court and its estufas, claiming exclusive attention. Still there is no room left for doubt that B was occupied during this period. But it is evident, from the statements of the eye-witnesses, that A was the principal abode of the Pecos tribe in 1540 and afterwards.
THE DOCUMENTARY PERIOD,
commencing in 1598, and running up to the present time. Here we should be entitled to find, of course, ample and detailed documentary evidence. Two unfortunate occurrences, however, have contributed to destroy the records of the territory of New Mexico.
In the month of August, 1680, when the pueblo Indians rose in successful revolt against the Spanish rule, and captured the "villa" of Santa Fé, they brought the archives, ecclesiastical and civil, into the plaza, and made a bonfire of the entire pile. This was an act of barbarous warfare. But few papers escaped the general destruction; these were saved by Governor Don Antonio de Otermin, and sent to El Paso del Norte, where they are still supposed to remain. We are, therefore, as far as the period of 1598-1680 is concerned, almost exclusively reduced to general works like the "Teatro Mexicano" of Fray Augustin de Vetancurt, and to the collections of documents published at Mexico and at Madrid. That, nevertheless, some documents were saved, and subsequently carried back to Santa Fé, is proved by the fact that Mr. Louis Felsenthal, of this city, has recovered one, a copy of which it is hoped will appear in the Journal of the Institute in time.
Subsequent to the return of the Spaniards, the archives of[p. 119] Santa Fé were kept in good order by its administrators, the last revision thereof being made by Governor Donaciano Vigil. In 1870, however, the man who then acted as Governor of the Territory, although otherwise of irreproachable character, permitted an act of vandalism almost without its parallel. The archives had accumulated in the palace to a vast extent: the original good order in which they were kept had been totally neglected during and since the war of secession; there was not even a custodian for them. So the head of the executive of this territory suffered its archives to be sold as waste paper, even sometimes used as kindling in the offices. Of the entire carefully nursed documentary treasures, the accumulation of 190 years, the Hon. Samuel Ellison, of this city (notwithstanding his feeble health), has been able to register about fifty bundles (legajos), whereas wagon-loads were scattered or sold for wrapping.
Many of the intelligent inhabitants attempted to save what they could, and there are some who succeeded to a limited extent; but of what yet remained in the palace, reduced to a sufficiently small bulk as not to be "in the way" any longer, even the valuable journals of Otermin and Vargas were considerably reduced through further decay.
This has been, in times of profound peace and in the nineteenth century, the fate of the archives of New Mexico.