Archeology of the lower Mimbres valley, New Mexico

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

Geographically the Mimbres Valley is the northern extension of the drainage area of the large interior plateau, the lowest level of which is occupied by Palomas, Guzman, and other so-called lakes. The Casas Grandes, Mimbres, and other rivers contribute their scanty waters to these lakes, which have no outlets into the sea. As a rule the thirsty sands along the course of the river drink up the surplus waters of the Mimbres or cause them to sink beneath the surface, to reappear when the configuration of lower clay or rock formations forces them from subterranean courses. Considering the similarity in climatic and geographical conditions in the northern and southern ends of this plateau, we would expect to find cultural likenesses in the prehistoric inhabitants of the Mimbres and Casas Grandes valleys, but such is not the case. The absence of relief decoration combined with painting, so common in the pottery from the Casas Grandes region, separates the Mimbres ware from that found far to the south.[58]

There are evidences that the course of the Mimbres River through Antelope Plain has from time to time changed considerably, and although a section of its bed now lies east of the Florida Mountains, the river probably formerly made its way to the west of the same in its course to Mexico. Modifications or changes in the bed of this river have had in the past much to do with the shifting of population and obliteration of prehistoric sites, either by washing them away entirely or burying them out of sight or deeply below the surface. This concealment of evidences of prehistoric occupancy has also been aided by frequent sandstorms, when considerable quantities of soil have been transported from place to place and deposited on walls or covered implements lying on the surface of the ground. It is also possible that there has been a slow change of climate, causing a desiccation which may have been so widespread that the inhabitants of the plain were driven up river into the hills where water was more abundant, but it is well to remember that abandoned settlements or ruins exist on the banks of the Mimbres where there is still abundant water, as well as in the plain which is dry.

The depth of the present water level, as shown by drilling for wells, varies in different places in the valley, but in the neighborhood of the hills there are many springs. The configuration of the surface of the hard clay strata lying beneath the soil here and there often forces the water to rise to the surface, and ruins occur at points where at present there are no signs of surface water, although at the time they were inhabited there may have been more water.[59] Whether or not this water was brought to certain ruins by a system of artificial irrigation, the canals of which have been obliterated, we cannot say, but there is only scanty evidence that the climate here, as elsewhere, has radically changed since man occupied the valley.[60]

Although there is a remote likeness between the terraced house or pueblo community of northern New Mexico[61] and the prehistoric houses of the Lower Mimbres, its closest resemblance is to an antecedent type, for it is possible that the terraced pueblo culture in the Rio Grande Valley was preceded by another. This earlier type of habitation of the Mimbres Valley was like the fragile-walled house of the natives inhabiting a large part of Arizona and New Mexico before the Puebloan, and we have evidence that this older style of building was scattered over the present Pueblo area. There is no evidence of a terraced dwelling or pueblo more than one story high in the Mimbres or the inland basin in which it lies. In other words the ruins of the Mimbres may be regarded as older than true pueblo ruins, resembling an earlier type of dwelling that antedated, in the Rio Grande Valley, the terraced houses.

The author does not find any architectural features in the remains of the prehistoric habitations of the Mimbres Valley suggesting Casa Grande compounds, or those massive buildings with encircling walls which are characteristic of the plains of the Gila. Although the walls of the Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua, are constructed in the same way and out of material like those of Casa Grande on the Gila, the architectural feature, an encircling wall of the latter, has not yet been recognized on the Sierra Madre plateau.[62] Objects found in the Gila ruins are somewhat different in form from those of Chihuahua, while pottery from the Gila Valley ruins and that from the inland plateau in northern Chihuahua is markedly different, with very divergent symbolism. Not only do forms of stone implements of a shape unknown in southern Arizona occur in southern New Mexico, but also the methods of disposal of the dead differed among the two people. The latter practised inhumation only, the other both cremation and inhumation. The aborigines of the Mimbres Valley placed a bowl over the head or face of the dead, a practice which, so far as known, does not appear to have been so commonly in vogue in inhumation of the prehistoric people of the Lower Gila plains.

The conventional geometric symbols on prehistoric Mimbres pottery are readily distinguished from those on ware from Tulerosa, a tributary of the San Francisco. The most significant feature of the Mimbres pottery is that fifty per cent of the figures on it represent men or animals, while out of a hundred bowls from the Gila not more than two or three are ornamented with zoic designs. As we know comparatively nothing of the pottery of the sources of the Upper Gila and that part of its course which lies between the Tulerosa and the Mimbres, we can at present venture very little information on ceramic relations, but similarities or mixtures would naturally be expected, due to contact or overlapping, the type of the one valley overlaying that of the other or mingling with it.

The sources of the Upper Salt, the largest tributary of the Gila, lie far from the Mimbres, and close relationship in the pottery of the ancient people inhabiting its banks is not found or expected. It is not known whether the pottery from the Upper Salt and that from the Upper Gila is similar, for our museums have no extensive collections from the latter region from which to make comparisons and draw conclusions. We know practically nothing of the prehistoric culture of the Upper Gila.

The aborigines of the Mimbres, like those of some of the former dwellers in Pajarito Park in New Mexico, practised a modified form of urn burial, but the latter rarely decorated their pottery with figures of animals. As compared with known Pueblo ceramics, the Mimbres pottery appears to be more closely allied to ancient Keresan than to old Tewan. Judging from what remains, the houses architecturally had little in common with true pueblos.[63] There are no evidences of circular subterranean kivas with pilasters, ventilators, deflectors, and niches, as in northern New Mexico, although there is a fairly large proportion of subterranean rooms or pit dwellings which may have been their prototypes. Architecturally the prehistoric habitations of the Mimbres Valley represent an old house form widely distributed in the Pueblo region or that antedating the pueblo or terraced-house type before the kiva had developed.

There are not sufficient data at hand to determine satisfactorily the kinship of the prehistoric inhabitants of Mimbres Valley, but as far as may be judged by pottery symbols it may be supposed that their culture resembled that of other sedentary people of New Mexico and Arizona in early times, as well as that of peoples of Chihuahua. It appears to the author that there are so many cultural similarities among the sedentary people which inhabited the Sierra Madre plateau, of which the Antelope Plain of Mimbres Valley is only a northern extension, that we may regard their culture as closely related. A specialized high development of this inland culture took place along the Casas Grandes River, culminating in Chihuahua. The Mimbres Valley was inhabited by people somewhat less developed in culture.

Although the ancients of the Mimbres were related on the one side to the Pueblos of New Mexico and on the other to more southern people, that relationship existed between the ancestors of the same rather than with modern Pueblos, and reached back to a time before the terraced communal house type originated. This type of house arose in northern New Mexico and spreading from this center extended down the San Juan as far as the Hopi, while modifications are also found in certain ruins on the Gila and Little Colorado, which, like Zuñi, it profoundly influenced, but its influence never reached as far as the Lower Mimbres.