Still ascending the Rio Grande, you reach (by a pleasant drive of 10 miles from Domingo Station) the pueblo of Cochití (co-chee-teé), where the ethnologist Bandelier once lived for a time, and studied the race he came to know so well. It has more the appearance of a Mexican village than of an Indian pueblo, for the houses are generally of one story and detached one from another. The people, too (there are about 250), seem more or less Mexicanized, but are hospitable and good-natured. The local tradition is that it was the ancestors of the Cochiteños who occupied the cliff dwellings of the Rito de los Frijoles. One who is robust enough for horseback tours may secure a guide at Cochití and ascend to that wild and beautiful region by immemorial trails through a rugged mountain country dotted with ruins of several former homes and shrines of the Cochití people, who in prehistoric times seem to have been confirmed wanderers. The principal public fiesta at this pueblo occurs on July 14, Saint Bonaventure’s Day, and is well worth attending, though I know of no especial features distinguishing it. Pottery is made here, too—some of it of a queer type running to animal forms, corpulent and impossible. Both Cochití and Santo Domingo may be readily visited in one day, if arrangements are made in advance through the Santa Fe agent at Domingo. They are equally easy of access from Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEAD CITIES OF THE SALINES
Southeasterly from Albuquerque some 20 miles the Manzano Mountains lift their piny crests and drift southward to the Gallinas. From their feet eastward stretches the wide treeless Estancia Valley, and in the lap of it lies a noteworthy cluster of saline ponds and lagoons, whose bitter waters, shining in the blistering sun, are a mockery to the thirsty. These are “the accursed lakes”[23] of Pueblo tradition—originally fresh and abounding in fish, they say, but now lifeless and undrinkable, cursed of the ancient gods because of the sinfulness of a witch who dwelt there once. If you would know how this change came about, you should read the tale called “The Accursed Lake” in Mr. Charles F. Lummis’s delightful book “Pueblo Indian Folk Stories.” These lakes are all heavily alkaline except one and that is saline—a source of salt from time immemorial to the Indians of the pueblos. Coming from near and far, they would plant their prayer plumes by its white margin and sprinkle its waves with sacred meal in recognition of the divine largesse they were about to receive. For the Indian tradition is that this lake was the abode of a divinity whom they called Salt Old Woman or Salt Mother, and the salt was her free gift to men. She is circumstantially described as wearing white boots and a white cotton dress, and carrying in her hand a white abalone shell, which was so soft and pliable that she could fold it like a handkerchief.[24] It is said the salt of this lake has found its way through barter to Parral in Old Mexico.
To the tourist the attraction in the Estancia Valley is the presence of some quaint old plaza villages dating from the days of the Spanish occupation, and certain imposing ruins of Franciscan Mission churches of seventeenth century construction standing in the midst of crumbled Pueblo towns. These are not in the open valley but in the foothills of the Manzanos and the Gallinas, and are easily visited from Mountainair, an American town on the “Belén Cut-off” of the Santa Fe Railway. Here is a small hotel, and automobiles may be hired.
The most famous of the ruins is the Gran Quivira at the edge of the Gallinas foothills, 24 miles south of Mountainair. They are the remains of a large pueblo of low, stone houses, covering altogether about 80 acres and once housing perhaps a couple of thousand souls. There are the ruins of several estufas, of irrigation works, and of two Christian churches. The pueblo occupies the narrow crest of a ridge overlooking a vast, lonely, cedar- and piñon-dotted plain that reaches to far-off, dreamy mountain ranges. It is in a solitude of solitudes wrapped in the silence of death, and as almost everywhere in the plateau region of northern New Mexico and Arizona, one has the feeling of being alone on the roof of the world, though the elevation here is really but 6800 feet. The most conspicuous feature of this shattered town is the larger of the two churches whose gaunt, gray, roofless walls of flat limestone pieces laid in mortar and rising to a height of 30 feet, are visible to the traveler long before he reaches the place. Seen “from the northeast, through vistas of cedars and junipers,” to quote Bandelier, “the ruins shine in pallid light like some phantom city of the desert.” Adjoining the church, are the ruins of a convento of several small rooms and a refectory, built about an interior courtyard. The whole has an unfinished appearance, and Bandelier believed that work on the building was suddenly interrupted and never resumed.
Indeed, the whole place is shrouded in mystery—its beginning and its end are alike in the twilight. No record has been left by the old chroniclers of any mission called Gran Quivira; but there is frequent mention by them of Tabirá, whose location fairly corresponds to this. That was a town of the Piro Pueblos, where an important Mission was established about 1630 by Padre Francisco de Acevedo. It ceased to be heard of after half a century, and it is believed that repeated raids of the barbarous Apaches—the red terror of the peacable Pueblos—caused the abandonment of the village. In all human probability that Tabirá is this Gran Quivira, but how the latter name became attached to these ruins has never been satisfactorily explained; for, as has already been stated, Quivira was Coronado’s name for the country of the Wichitas, far away in Kansas. The Piro people, who are believed to have inhabitated this pueblo (and that of Abó, of which something shortly), are about as extinct as their towns. Only an insignificant remnant, and these speaking an alien tongue, exist today, in the Mexican State of Chihuahua.
The hill which the Gran Quivira ruins occupy is of limestone, and underlaid, as limestone hills often are, with hollownesses that give back in places an audible echo to one’s footfalls. Popular fancy has been caught by these givings-off of the underworld, and all sorts of fables have attached themselves to this desolate place. These have mostly to do with buried treasure. It has been thought, for instance, that here in the caverns of this hill is really the store of gold and jewels, the hope of which, like a will-of-the-wisp, lured Coronado on and ever on, to disappointment and a broken heart. Another tradition (quoted by Mr. Paul A. F. Walter, in “The Cities That Died of Fear”[25]) tells of a hidden cave in the hill where the last Piros are said to have retreated with their belongings, including vast treasure brought from Mexico by the Franciscan Fathers,[26] and that an earthquake sealed them and their treasure up together. Of course, such stories have brought hither innumerable treasure seekers, who for years have gophered the hill industriously but have got nothing but sore muscles, arrowheads, and broken pottery. The most picturesque of these delvers was a blind woman, a Mrs. Clara Corbyn, who acquired homestead rights on the north end of Gran Quivira. Lacking the wherewithal to finance excavations, she traveled the country over from the Pacific to the Atlantic, endeavoring to procure money backing for her scheme, and to that end even wrote a musical romance, which she called “La Gran Quivira.” Failing, she died not long ago in Los Angeles—of a broken heart, it is said—and the Museum of New Mexico eventually secured her homestead interest.[27] The major portion of these ruins belongs to the United States, forming the Gran Quivira National Monument.
Abó, that other dead pueblo of the Piros, is about 12 miles southwest of Mountainair, or 4 miles west of Abó station on the Santa Fe Railway. Gran Quivira you see on its hilltop for miles before you reach it, but of Abó your first view comes with the shock of an unexpected delight. Your car climbs a hill through a bit of wooded wilderness, and, the crest attained, there flashes on your sight from below, an exquisite little sunlit valley. In the midst of it is a hillock, and on and about this is scattered the desolated, roofless pueblo with its noble church, ruined too, of San Gregorio de Abó. A thread of living water—the Arroyo de Abó—cuts its way through the valley which is bounded on the west by the lovely chain of the Manzanos. Unfortunately, the ruin of the old church still goes on—the decay hastened, I believe, by the fact that latter-day settlers have borne off much of its stone and timber for their private use. As it now stands, the high, jagged walls of the building resemble as much as anything a gigantic broken tooth, and standing in this solitary place are picturesque to a degree. The material is red sandstone and the edifice dates from about 1630—the founder being the same Padre de Acevedo that is credited with establishing Gran Quivira. He died here at Abó, and was buried in the church on August 1, 1644. This pueblo, like Gran Quivira, is believed to have been abandoned because of Apache raids, and was extinct before the great rebellion of 1680.[28]
A few miles from the old pueblo, and close to the railway line there are some low cliffs, forming one side of a gorge once called El Cañon de la Pintada, or the Painted Rocks of Abó Cañon. This spot is a sort of aboriginal picture gallery worth a visit by the curious in such matters. The sheltered places on the cliff-face are adorned for a considerable distance with drawings of evident antiquity in various colors—yellow, green, red, white. They are mostly representative of human figures, one or two apparently of the clowns who play prankish parts in many of the present-day Pueblo ceremonies. Others are symbols that still survive in the religious rites of the Pueblos.
Eight miles northwest of Mountainair (and a little more due north of Abó) is Quaraí, another forsaken pueblo, the ruins of whose fine old Mission church may be seen a mile away. My own first view of it was dramatic enough, the red, sandstone walls 20 feet high or more, gaunt and jagged, silhouetted sharply against a sky black with storm clouds whence rain banners wavered downward, and athwart them now and then forked lightnings shot and spit. Quaraí was a walled town, and some excavation work, done recently by the Santa Fe archaeologists, has brought to light among other things the remains of a round community building resembling the Tyuonyi in the Cañon Rito de los Frijoles.[29] Close at hand is a cottonwood grove refreshed by an abundant spring, a favorite picnic ground for the country folk roundabout. Other ruins in the vicinity and signs of ancient fields here and there indicate that Quaraí was a place of importance in its day, and doubtless for a long time before the Spanish occupation. Its church is believed to have been built about 1628 and was dedicated to La Inmaculada Concepcion. This was the Mission of that Padre de la Llana whose remains, after much travel, are now at rest beneath the altar in the Cathedral at Santa Fe.