It would be a guess to say where these other Indians came from. It has been suggested that they might have come from villages on the [Jemez] River when they heard of the arrival of the Spanish. There is still another explanation which is also conjectural but possible. These people could have come from villages in the mountains. Archæologists and historians are unable to give us the exact extent of the [Keres] villages in those days although careful study and research suggest that only seven remained extant at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Yet, who can say that towns were not still being occupied back in the hills? On the forested [mesa] tops and in the deep water-worn [canyons] northwest of [Cachiti], the Indian [Pueblo] known today as [Cochiti], are hundreds of Indian villages now in ruins. They were occupied, hundreds of years ago, by Indians who were probably speaking the Keres language like the folks at Cochiti, [Santo Domingo], [San Felipe], [Santa Ana] and [Sia]. These people have told some interesting tales, legends mostly, about how all their present villages came to be: about their wanderings, about their Gods and about their troubles with Indians who spoke different languages.
Why was it that Espejo’s chroniclers did not leave us more information about the town of [Los Confiados] and its people? Was it not important? They told us about [Zuñi] and its Seven Cities, about the [Tiguex] villages and [Cochiti]. [Coronado]’s little group, some forty years before, had visited the Province of [Hemes], now [Jemez], whose people spoke yet another language, the [Towa]. And history tells us that Espejo made a two-day visit to the town of Los Confiados in 1583. This ended his contact with the Indians at Cochiti and other Keres-speaking villages. Could it be that Espejo’s soldiers looked back up into those forbidden and forested hills against a high range of snow-covered mountains northwest of Cochiti and decided that they had seen enough of the Indian? Or were they told that they would have to leave their horses behind and go afoot if they wanted to visit the villages on streams running into the [Rio Grande]? The thought of wearing heavy armor might not have been too fascinating. And if these people were from villages in the mountains, what was their motive in attempting to lead the Spanish there? Was it a trap? Did they have some other motive in mind, or was their mission one of peaceful intent? Archæologists now tell us that it probably has been centuries since Keres-speaking people lived in these mountains northwest of Cochiti.
If one had sufficient imaginative ability he might work up a hypothetical case of what could possibly have taken place during this February of 1583. To get at the basis of our story and the things to be talked about hypothesis seems to be our only recourse. Nothing seems exact when dealing with early New Mexican history, but this hypothesis could be as correct, possibly, as some of the accounts given by the Spanish possessed of romanticism. But how close were the explorers to Hidden Valley, the like of which they would never again be able to see! They stayed clear of the mountains and kept to the valleys. In all of their travels and wanderings, the Spanish kept out of the watershed between the [Jemez] Mountain Range and the [Rio Grande] Valley. It is today known as the [Pajarito] (little bird) Plateau. The [Cañada de Cochiti] is its southern boundary, not far from the [pueblo] of [Cochiti]. The Rio Grande bounds it on the east, the [Rio Chama] on the north and the Jemez Mountains on the west. The entire plateau is made up of deposits of soft volcanic ash, known as tuff, and deposits of black basalt. Geologists tell us that all this happened an inconceivably long time ago—three million years, let us say, in geological times known as the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods.
Today the [Pajarito] Plateau is a profusion of high potreros (narrow [mesas]), and deep [canyons] cut by streams and [arroyos] which carry off seasonal rains. Some of the canyons have sheer vertical cliffs of volcanic ash, hundreds of feet high in places, and this ash is soft enough to be carved and hewn into various shapes and forms. The cliffs are even soft enough for the wind to carve what appear to be statues which stand out as exceptional works of nature. The mesa tops are beautiful. They are covered with thick growths of pine and juniper, [piñon] and scrub oak. A profusion of flowers dot the landscape during the summer months.
It was the [Pajarito] Plateau that both [Coronado] and Espejo failed to plunder, not because of any lack of desire on their part, perhaps, but because it was a forbidden land to them and was marked by defying cliff boundaries which rose to terrific heights. Could one say that the Spanish did not wonder what these hills possessed when they heard about villages on streams which ran into the [Rio Grande]? And no doubt, if these peaceful people, whom the Spanish followed to [Los Confiados], were of the [Keres] nation—and they likely were—then they knew every valley, stream, trail and water hole in the Pajarito country. Espejo dispatched some of his men to accompany these Indians. Where were they led? Did they go up into the sandy foothills below the [Jemez] Mountains and its finger-like plateaus or did they penetrate almost inaccessible territory northwest of [Cochiti]? Or did they march straight north up the almost inaccessible White Rock [Canyon] of the Rio Grande? They were gone two days from the [pueblo] of Cochiti. Where did they go? Where was this town of Los Confiados to which Espejo was invited and about which he gave us no fact?
The Keres-speaking people are possessed with legends of having been driven from the [Pajarito] by a race of “dwarfs” at some time in the remote past. But no one is sure that this race of “dwarfs” was not the Tewa-speaking people from the northern part of the Pajarito region who descended into Frijoles [Canyon] and drove the [Keres] from their Hidden Valley long before the Spanish came to America. Nor can one be certain that Keres people were not still living in Frijoles Canyon with the Tewas during [Coronado]’s time in 1540 or even some forty years later during Espejo’s time. Could one go so far as to suggest that Keres groups still remembered how their ancestors perhaps had been driven from their homes by “the little strong people” and that now they could have a well-earned revenge by directing the attentions of the Spanish toward the Valley of the Frijoles?
Had Espejo been gullible enough, and had the spirit of adventure been strong enough; had it been summer and not February, and had these peaceful Indians been [Keres] bent on revenge against the Tewas, his soldiers might have been led northwest up the [Cañada de Cochiti]. After an hour or so the trail would have become so difficult that the Indian method of travel would have been an issue. Horses would have been left behind and the little party would have ascended to the [potrero] tops on foot; over snow-covered precipitous trails; up and down [canyon] walls and deep into ancient Keres land.
It would have been no “picnic” even on foot. So rough is the country it is even doubted that the wily [Navaho] used these trails as has been so often suggested. The [Keres] might have picked a more direct route; up the banks of the [Rio Grande] to the mouth of [Capulin] [Canyon], over high potreros, following a dim rough trail which skirted the Rio Grande for several miles then north to the [mesa] bordering Frijoles Canyon. And it is quite possible that the Spanish could have gone horseback deep into Keres territory, up Capulin Canyon to La Cueva Pintada, the Painted Cave. The cave gets its name from the many pictographs on its walls. Around it are the ruins of many houses built against the cliff at the top of the [talus] slope. Some of the Indian legends have it that the Painted Cave was one of six towns occupied when their ancestors were driven from the Valley of the Frijoles.
Travel from the Painted Cave on into [Keres] land probably would have been on foot. Up the rough [Capulin] [Canyon] [** Error: possible line-wrapped glossary phrase]for an hour’s march, over snow-covered [potrero] tops, they would have passed the ruins of innumerable villages. There they might have rested and drunk the icy water from a running creek during this cold month of February. And from there they made their way up to the potrero tops again, winding and twisting, half walking and half climbing and stopping somewhere, in a cave perhaps, to spend the night. And then they marched on to the [pueblo] of the Stone Lions, now bleak and desolate and worn by time. The pueblo of the Stone Lions, according to the Cochitenos, was the first village built and occupied by the Keres-speaking people after they were driven from the Valley of the Frijoles. The village is known as [Yapashi] which means “sacred enclosure.”
Only a half-mile away is the Stone Lions Shrine. Carved out of native tuff are the life-size images of two mountain lions and around them is an enclosure—a low wall of blocks of volcanic tuff. It is said that even the [Zuñi] Indians made pilgrimages to this shrine because they believed this to be the entrance to [Shipapolima], the underworld from which their ancestors emerged. It is important even today to the Cochitenos who visit it frequently and leave bits of their ceremonial paraphernalia. Moving along slowly, Espejo’s little party would have trudged up the slopes to the high [potrero] tops again and then across the steep-walled [Canyon del Alamo]. They would have had a long march to Frijoles over trails known only to Indians. No, this could hardly have happened. The Spanish might never have survived.