COURTESY NAT’L. PARK SERVICE RUINS OF THE LARGE [KIVA]
The most common type known to the archæologist today is Biscuit ware. It is so-called because it is exceptionally thick and porous. These Indians made flat squatty bowls, and [ollas]—the common wide-necked jars. These were inferior types and not nearly as good pottery as was made by other Indian women at other villages. It was tempered with soft volcanic ash. Tiny particles were worked into the soft clay to keep it from cracking and resulted in a soft powdery ware which was easily broken. It is possible that these women were not very well satisfied with their pottery made from local materials. The same thing was true at all the villages on the [Pajarito]. When water was put in the jars and bowls they became soft. It certainly was not a satisfactory type of ware. And the Indian women might have been very much ashamed. Pottery making was their work, their art and their pride. But the materials in this country simply did not make good hard pottery despite the ability of any individual potter.
However, the [Keres] women made good hard pottery. They had the clays and the tempers with which to work. They were still making the ware with the slick red finish and glaze designs on the outside which was developed in the Little Colorado district of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. They were even making the polychromes or multi-colored wares by this time. Trading this pottery might have been the solution to the problem of the Tewas even after the Keres-speaking people had been driven from the [Tyuonyi]. New generations of Keres might have had a different way of looking at things. Although the red glaze ware had become coarse and heavy by this time, it surpassed the soft Biscuit wares made by these valley women. They were probably glad to accept it in trade. From about 1400 A.D. all through to the abandonment of Frijoles [Canyon], the glaze wares were present. The glazes did not stop here but are found at [Tewa] villages far to the north. These people, too, had been making the same soft ware as did the dwellers in the Frijoles. So it does appear that some sort of a relationship could have existed between Keres and Tewa-speaking groups of people even during these late times.
The main occupation, it seems, lasted well up toward the close of the sixteenth century. Several generations of Indians had lived here either in cliff homes or [pueblos] on the floor of the [Canyon]. Any night might have witnessed hundreds of tiny smokes emerging from smoke holes in roofs. The glow from tiny fires inside the cliff rooms lighted the doorways in the front walls. A sentry, perhaps, with bow and sharp-pointed arrow was posted at the entrance to [Puwige], the big community house, or on some nearby high point where he could comb the landscape with sharp eyes and would warn the pueblo dwellers that warriors were approaching. A summer day would suggest men basking in the sun or attempting to net out fish from the little river below. Women had jars on their heads. Others were gathering berries and greens. A hunter was greeted as he strolled forth triumphantly with wild game for a meal or two. A sudden summer cloudburst of rain or hail—delightful and refreshing and good for the corn too, interrupted the sameness of things. The tiny drops sent an Indian mother with baby on her back scampering for shelter. Children were running and laughing but ever alert. These are only a few of the incidents of six hundred years of living, primitive and insecure living, which went on in the Valley of the [Tyuonyi].
Toward the close of the century the waters from the heavens stopped. Corn fields dried up and the waters of the little river were no more. The curse of the Southwest had hit again. The lands became drier and drier as the days passed. Cliff homes were like ovens as the hot sun beat down upon them. The same thing happened here as happened to their ancestors in the west centuries before. The Tewas, living in the big villages to the north, were experiencing the same thing. There was no water in the [canyons]. Water holes had gone dry. And there was no water from the heavens to be caught in great rock cisterns. Small groups began to move. Others hung on. Could it be that Hidden Valley was to go the way of all the rest? It was true. Moving was a necessity now.
It is not known how many Indians lived at this place during those last days of drought and it is possible that those who might have remained did not wish to be left in Hidden Valley close to [Keres] land to the south. So, slowly but surely, group after group trickled out of the Valley of the Frijoles, leaving their homes to the mercy of the elements. Within the course of a very short time the entire population had evacuated. They crossed deep [canyons] and high [potrero] tops—dry now—and helped to cut just a little deeper the very same old trails in the soft rock, which had been worn down by thousands of moccasined feet for countless generations. Before they left it seems that they must have destroyed almost everything they possessed. Fire was set to the roof of their large [kiva]. This was the end of the [Tyuonyi]. Hidden Valley had witnessed its last great occupation. It had been occupied by Indians for six centuries—Indians who had lived, raised corn and beans and squash and pumpkins, and who had fought and died. The occupation of Frijoles possibly was tottering at the time the Espejo expedition came up the [Rio Grande] Valley in February of the year 1583. A few stragglers could have still been here—who knows? But certainly by the close of the century Tyuonyi was a thing of the past. The roofs to the houses were falling in—timbers were rotting and cracking under the tremendous weight of poles and brush and mud. Walls fell. It was a deserted town with a background as colorful as any other [pueblo] in the Southwest. Hidden Valley was still here but its actors were no more.