CHAPTER ONE ❈ Ancient Santa Fe TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF HIGH DESERT LIVING

Stephen S. Post

In the summer of 2006, my research way of life. Farming and living in vil- team from the Museum of New Mex- lages, attributes of both Pueblo Indians ico’s Office of Archaeological Studies and Spanish colonists, formed the foun- uncovered five highly unusual storage dation that defines Santa Fe and its pits with fire-reddened interior walls people today. This was but one part of only a few blocks from Santa Fe’s cen- a rich story that reaches back ten thou- tral plaza. They lay within El Pueblo de sand years. Santa Fe, a centuries-old settlement underlying part of downtown. After col- lecting and processing archaeomagnetic Early Santa Fe Archaeology samples, our laboratory director For more than a century, Santa Fe’s informed me that five of the pits dated rich and diverse multicultural past has from 400 to 600 CE. In amazement, I fascinated archaeologists. While early realized they were six hundred years archaeologists focused on large pueblo older than anything else found at this site ruins and cliff dwellings, researchers and could place farmers in the Santa Fe today are more likely to study the area four hundred years earlier than pre- smaller and less prominent sites left by viously known. More than a century early hunter-gatherers, Ancestral Pueblo before, Adolph Bandelier had described farmers, and historic Spanish and Anglo- this same site, which lies right under our American settlers. Each of these cultural noses, but, with the passage of time and groups lived, or still lives, in the Santa growth of the city, we were no longer Fe area with its high desert landscape certain of its exact location. Now, after backdropped by the Sangre de Cristo analyzing the unique storage pits, we Mountains. realized we were looking at evidence of In the late nineteenth and early twen- the emergence of the Ancestral Puebloan tieth centuries, antiquities collectors and Adolph F. Bandelier at an archaeological ruin. www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 1 archaeologists sought out ancient cliff which was a military chapel on the animal life, however, its inhabitants dwellings and ruins in search of fine south side of Santa Fe’s plaza, and La sometimes found it to be a challenging artifacts to send back to museums or Garita, a torreon (tower) and guard environment. sell to collectors in the East. Scholars house on the slopes of Fort Marcy Hill. Around Santa Fe, most precipitation like Adolph Bandelier, Edgar Hewett, In the late 1980s, both the city and falls as winter snow in the high moun- and Alfred V. Kidder tried to define a the county of Santa Fe enacted ordi- tains and intense summer thunder- historical link between the then dwin- nances requiring that archaeological storms in the valley and piedmont hills. dling population of Pueblo Indians of and historical study precede commercial The growing season averages 170 days, the Rio Grande and the Ancestral and residential developments. Since with the last frost in May and the first Puebloan sites in the Four Corners then, archaeologists have had opportu- killing frost in October. Annual vari- region. At Pecos, Cieneguilla, and San nities to study many small sites in ability in the length of the growing sea- Cristóbal pueblos, all within twenty- diverse environments on private land. son and the timing and amount of five miles of Santa Fe, they employed As a result, we have been able to look precipitation affects both wild and new methods to an emerging field of beyond the melted walls of pueblos and domesticated plant productivity. During archaeology. the city and report on such topics as historic times, unpredictable precipita- Santa Fe, a far inland outpost of the seven-thousand-year-old hunter-gatherer tion made irrigation farming risky, with Spanish Empire, was contemporary camps, population increases in the first the result that downstream farmers with St. Augustine, Florida; Jamestown, centuries of the Common Era, pottery- often struggled to water their crops. Virginia; and Quebec City in Canada. firing kilns left by Pueblo Indian ances- Periodic droughts or temperature In the 1950s and 1960s, in order to tors, metalworking of Spanish settlers, extremes adversely affected everyone learn more about the early colony, his- and the vast Spanish acequia systems regardless of culture or technology. torical archaeologists Bruce Ellis of the that predated Santa Fe’s earliest munici- Reaching nearly 13,000 feet in eleva- Palace of the Governors and Stanley pal water systems. tion, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains Stubbs of the Laboratory of Anthropol- and foothills are covered by dense ogy excavated several seventeenth- forests watered by narrow, fast-running century sites in Santa Fe, including La A Good Place to Live streams that feed into the Santa Fe and Parroquia (the predecessor of today’s St. Santa Fe’s natural beauty captivates all Tesuque rivers below. In the past, both Francis Cathedral), San Miguel Chapel, who live there. Meandering river val- Indian and Spanish people hunted elk, and parts of the Palace of the Gover- leys, grasslands, wooded hills, and high bighorn sheep, and mountain goats in nors. Their interest in Spanish institu- mountains combine with a temperate the high-elevation stands of fir, spruce, tions also led them to excavate the climate to make it a desirable place to and aspen. They transported game and eighteenth-century sites of La Castrense, live. Even with its diverse plant and plant foods long distances over difficult terrain to valley settlements and camps. On lower slopes, pinon-juniper and ponderosa pine forests supplied wood for fuel and building. Rocky outcrops of sandstone and limestone contained abundant deposits of fine-grained, multicolored chert used by Native Americans and Europeans to make tools for hunting, plant processing, and starting fires, as well as for gunflints for flintlock rifles and pistols. Men hunted deer and small game near the quarries, while women and children foraged for yucca, cactus, pinon nuts, and other La Garita ruins, ca. 1910. seeds, nuts, and berries in season.

2 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org The Santa Fe River, spring 2007. A characteristic piedmont landscape west of Santa Fe.

The Santa Fe River flows out of the offered grazing for antelope and, later, North American continent. Archaeolo- foothills into a valley cut through a cattle and sheep. In ancient times, just gists find evidence of these Paleoindian twenty-million-year-old hilly piedmont as today, Santa Fe’s environment hunters throughout the New World. bordering a grassy plain. Springs, strongly influenced where and how However, despite an abundance of local arroyos, streams, and the Santa Fe people lived. resources, we know of only one Pale- River contributed to a high water table oindian site in the Santa Fe area. that formed a swamp north and east of Ancient Peoples Located on an isolated butte west of today’s downtown plaza. Over the cen- town, these early nomadic Native turies, this swamp and the surrounding By studying the implements, stone tools, Americans left many spear points dating braided floodplain with its deep soils broken pottery vessels, and architecture from the Clovis, Folsom, Midland, and surface water first attracted hunter- that people left behind over ten thou- Cody, and Plainview periods (9500 to gatherers and, later, Ancestral Puebloans sand years, archaeologists can assemble 6000 BCE). From this elevated setting, and Hispanic settlers. Farmers culti- a rich story about Santa Fe’s cultural these nomadic people could monitor vated the floodplain downstream all the history. This long span of time is nearby watercourses for game animals way to Caja del Río canyon ten miles divided into four eras peopled by such as bison, elk, and deer. In addition west of Santa Fe. In the foothills, people Paleoindian big game hunters, desert- to meat, their diet consisted of fruits, gathered wood to use for building mate- adapted Archaic hunter-gatherers, nuts, seeds, and the roots of edible rials and fuel. They also collected Ancestral Pueblo farmer-foragers, and plants. All such food resources could be plants, such as yucca, to make fiber for European-descended colonists from gathered from the surrounding rolling clothing and hunted animals for meat. Spain, Mexico, and the United States. piedmont hills and the distant alpine Chert, washed down from the moun- meadows. This diverse landscape sup- Paleoindian Hunters tains, supplied Ancestral Puebloans plied everything they needed for food, with a valuable resource for fashioning At the end of the Pleistocene era (around shelter, clothing, and toolmaking. sharp-edged tools such as knives, scrap- 9500 BCE), bands of hunters roamed the Why have archaeologists found only ers, and projectile points. South of the vast open grasslands as they followed one Paleoindian site in this resource- foothills, juniper-covered grasslands herds of large mammals across the rich area? One reason may lie in the

www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 3 Paleoindian spear points. Left to right: Clovis, Folsom, and Plainview. fact that nomadic people lived in their camps for short periods of time and had few possessions, most of which were perishable and did not preserve in open settings. Another factor is erosion, which either erases or buries sites of great age, rendering them invisible to Artist’s reconstruction of an Archaic camp. archaeologists. Due mostly to late Pleis- tocene climate changes, large game mammals migrated to the Great Plains. selected their leaders according to age, made tools and consumed rabbit and By 6000 BCE, Paleoindian culture skill, and knowledge. While living mostly deer. An atlatl dart point, made from around Santa Fe and throughout the in isolation, they occasionally met with basalt acquired while hunting and gath- Southwest had disappeared. At about other bands to exchange food and infor- ering along the Rio Grande, lay nearby, this time, it was replaced by the Archaic mation, conduct rituals, and meet poten- along with a hand stone (or mano) used culture (5500 BCE to 600 CE), of which tial marriage partners. to process fruits and seeds. These rarely archaeologists find abundant evidence. Early Archaic times (approximately found small camps were the mainstay of 5500 to 3300 BCE) were dry in New Early Archaic settlement. Their scarcity Archaic Hunter-Gatherers Mexico with expansive grasslands is attributable to low population, We describe the Archaic people of the barely able to support a hunter-gatherer patchy distribution of food resources, Southwest as hunter-gatherers because lifestyle. A few sites around Santa Fe and the destructive effects of natural they lived in many environments and give us fleeting glimpses of early processes on site preservation. relied on a full spectrum of edible and Archaic life. I excavated one site where By 3000 BCE, a cooler climate and utilitarian plants and game animals for a small family from this period camped, an increase in annual rain and snow food and clothing. As the seasons located on a wind-sheltered and warm spurred greater plant productivity, changed, they traveled across the land southeast-facing hill slope overlooking resulting in more abundant game in search of places with plentiful food the middle and upper reaches of the throughout much of the Southwest, resources. In a single year, a band of up Santa Fe River. From the camp, the including Santa Fe. Although these to twenty members might move around family enjoyed easy access to plants and favorable conditions did not last, they within a territory of thousands of animals of the piedmont hills. They left led to increased population. From this square miles—in a lifetime, hundreds of obsidian and chert flakes and bone time forward, archaeologists find that thousands of square miles. They were splinters in a ring around a collapsed Archaic people often returned to the bound by kinship and marriage and cobble-lined fire pit, evidence of having same well-maintained camps year after

4 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org Remains of three types of roasting pits after excavation. year and built substantial dwellings and dug pits for parching and roasting food. To obtain food and critical resources, Archaic bands moved their base camps from one resource-gathering area to another through the seasons. They often situated these camps on gentle slopes above major arroyos affording access to water and to fuel wood from snags and fallen dead trees. Set back from river valleys, these camps provided a certain amount of seclusion from prospective game animals and other nearby bands of people. Some base camps I have exca- vated took advantage of low sandstone outcrops for protection from the wind. Archaeological remains of an Archaic hut base. At its base camp, a family typically lived in a small hut made from juniper and piñon boughs, brush, and mud. tain two or three bases of huts. During The occupants of a camp dug a vari- These easily built dwellings were dug clement weather, former inhabitants ety of pits in the ground outside their partly into the ground and, with an carried on many of their activities— houses in which to prepare food on a interior diameter rarely more than 7 making tools, parching grass seeds, daily basis. During a typical season, feet across, could sleep only three or roasting nuts, treating hides, cooking these might number eight to ten. Some four tightly packed family members. meals, conducting ceremonies—out of are shallow, contain fire-cracked cobbles, Most had a small interior hearth for doors. We usually recover the debris and are heavily burned from repeated heat and one or two small subfloor pits from making stone tools, as well as use. (The edges of the camps often con- for secure storage of food or valuable tools used to grind or pound seeds, tain piles of these discarded burned goods. nuts, and fruit and to scrape and shred rocks.) People used these pits to parch When excavating Archaic camps, we plant fibers. We also find dense concen- such foods as rice grass seeds and goose- find many clues to the life these people trations of obsidian chips (as many as foot (a leafy plant sometimes called lived. Some camps, which were used twelve thousand) from manufacturing “wild spinach”) or roast piñon nuts and repeatedly season after season, cover three or four dart points dumped yucca roots. Sometimes they abutted more than 5,000 square feet and con- around campsite perimeters. unburned, or slightly burned, pits used

www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 5 to warm already cooked foods. In other, ter of six residences spread across a mile larger pits, located farther away from the of low river terraces. Each extended camps, they roasted meat, such as veni- family had access to prime farmland. son. Camps that were repeatedly occupied The inhabitants of this small settle- may contain up to forty roasting pits. ment lived in subterranean pithouses We assume that women and children (about 14 by 22 feet in diameter), foraged daily for edible plants up to a which had upright posts that supported distance of three to five miles from domed roofs made from cottonwood home. Such foraging activities left little limbs and branches, reed mats, and in the way of tools or other detectible mud. People entered them by way of a evidence on the surrounding landscape. ladder reaching down an open hatch in Men and some women staged multiday the roof. The floors of the houses had trips in the mountains to hunt game, central fire pits to provide warmth, such as elk and bighorn sheep. At their smaller cobble-lined hearths for light hunting camps, they butchered the cooking, and small floor pits and wall game and dried the meat for easier Excavated bell-shaped storage pit dating from niches to store daily food, personal transport back to their homes. We rec- 400–600 CE at the Civic Center site in down- items, and tools. The air intake for each ognize their hunting camps by the accu- town Santa Fe. house consisted of a floor-level, hori- mulations of tools and waste chips of zontal tunnel 3 or 4 feet long that went obsidian, chert, or quartzite found in plants. In addition, the low regional through the south or east wall to a ver- them, along with one or two hearths. population allowed people to move tical airshaft. The air outlet was the In the Santa Fe area, the Archaic way freely to food sources as seasons and hatched roof entry. Floor space was suf- of life continued with some variation climate changed. ficient to accommodate four to eight until 800 or 900 CE. We now recognize Until recently, archaeologists people comfortably; however, most that this robust, resilient, and successful believed that farmers moved into the daily activities occurred outdoors. way of life, which lasted for six thou- Santa Fe area from elsewhere after 850 Following a harvest, families stored sand years, forms an important part of CE. Excavations I directed at the Santa corn kernels and cobs in large, deep, Santa Fe history. Fe Civic Center in 2006 may change bell-shaped pits placed near their home. that view. At this well-watered setting One or two storage pits, which were with deep soil, we uncovered large, deep sometimes burned on their interior to Ancestral Pueblo Farmer-Foragers bell-shaped storage pits with burned harden the walls, held enough corn to First Farmers in the Santa Fe Region. In interiors. The pits, which dated to feed a family for a year. Similar to southern Arizona, corn cultivation was between 400 and 600 CE, contained the Archaic people, household members under way by 2500 BCE, and on the remains of charred corn and squash and excavated a wide range of earthen and Colorado Plateau it started between corn pollen, irrefutable evidence of rock-lined pits to process, prepare, and 1600 and 1200 BCE. Hunter-gatherers in Santa Fe’s earliest farmer-foragers. cook foodstuffs. Using local clay, they the northern Rio Grande region, on the The closest early farming community fashioned rough-surfaced jars for tem- other hand, did not adopt farming to a to Santa Fe that we know of is in the porary storage and cooking and made significant degree until after 500 CE Peña Blanca area at the confluence of bowls in which to prepare, serve, and (with a few exceptions, such as in the the Santa Fe River and the Rio Grande. eat their meals. Cooking corn in Albuquerque area and around Jemez In 1998, I was part of a team from the ceramic pots enhanced its nutritional Cave). Archaeologists attribute this late University of New Mexico and Museum value by making starch more digestible. occurrence to a number of factors, of New Mexico whose excavations illu- Domesticated beans and squash were including unsuitable temperature and minated the lives of these first farmers. important to the diet as well. To obtain rainfall patterns and an abundant and We learned that around 750 CE, Pueblo meat protein, they hunted rabbits, diverse ecology that forestalled hunter- people established a farming commu- squirrels, prairie dogs, gophers, and the gatherer’s reliance on domesticated nity in this location consisting of a clus- occasional deer around their gardens.

6 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org Black-on-white. The unpainted cooking and storage jars exhibit banded, finger- tip-indented, and tooled exterior pat- terns on the neck and shoulder. Later, this decoration covered the whole ves- sel. Because villagers expected to stay for years, rather than seasons, they invested more energy and creativity in personal and household items. This more settled life allowed them to domesticate turkeys for food and feath- ers and keep surprisingly large numbers of dogs as work animals and pets. Daily activities and rituals revolved around households. Later on, after 1100 CE, these Puebloans built communal reli- gious structures, such as kivas.

The First Pueblos. By the early 1100s, Santa Fe’s farmers moved to the pied- mont hills north of the Santa Fe River, where they built homes with puddled- adobe walls. The Arroyo Negro site, located three miles west of the plaza, is a good example. Over the course of fifty years, its inhabitants erected seven buildings in this community, each of Plan view of one site in the farming community in Peña Blanca, s outhwest of Santa Fe, with pit- which had between two and twenty-five house-drawing insert. rectangular rooms averaging 10 feet long by 7 feet wide and about 7 feet high. Like the Peña Blanca dwellings, We think the residents stayed in their They Came to Stay. Ancestral farmers people entered a main room from the village during most of the year; how- established permanent communities in roof. They accessed other interior ever, they also traveled to hunting the Tesuque and Santa Fe river valleys rooms through doors. Rooms used for grounds for game animals that did not between 850 and 1000 CE. In Santa Fe, living and cooking had hearths and a venture into their fields. Most ritual they settled on Fort Marcy Hill and its few subfloor storage pits. In other activities, we believe, were carried out lower terraces. Living in pithouses, they rooms they stored harvest surpluses; by members of a given household. Able- depended mostly on agricultural har- raw materials, such as yucca fibers; bodied individuals made periodic trips vests for food; however, they also went personal adornments fashioned of shell, to communities south along the Rio up into the mountains to quarry stone bone, and stone; clothing and feather Grande Valley and up the Jemez River and hunt large game. In addition, they blankets; and other personal posses- to trade, exchange news (information), foraged widely in the foothills to obtain sions used in rituals and ceremonies. find marriage partners, and participate piñon nuts and seeds. Potters now made Small houses of two to four rooms in communal rituals of renewal and more elaborately decorated black-on- accommodated single families of three blessing. The Peña Blanca community white bowls, water jars, and canteens. to eight individuals. One building had thrived until 900 CE, when the farmers Archaeologists have named these pot- a twenty-five-room linear arrangement, left and did not return. tery types Red Mesa and Kwahe’e two or three rooms wide—it could have

www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 7 Santa Fe Black-on-white bowls. housed thirty to fifty people related by buffalo meat (and maybe buffalo robes) and El Pueblo de Santa Fe. marriage and kinship. Arroyo Negro to barter for shells, exotic bird feathers, Today, all that remains of Pindi Pueblo had several kivas that were and lapidary materials (such as jet) with Pueblo is a cluster of low mounds cut architecturally similar to pithouses of distant tribes. These long-distance rela- by residential roads. The site is located an earlier period: central hearths, venti- tionships proved critical to people living on the north side of the Santa Fe River lation systems, and roof entries. Their in the San Juan Basin as deteriorating in the village of Agua Fria about six few floor pits, apparently, had a more environmental and social conditions miles downstream from the Santa Fe symbolic than utilitarian function. In forced them to migrate to Santa Fe and Plaza. Agua Fria is named for the cold kivas, residents participated in rituals or surrounding areas after 1150 CE. springs that attracted Pueblo and Span- ceremonies that renewed and reinforced ish settlers alike. Excavated between their place in the social, natural, and Big and Bigger Villages. In the early to December 1932 and June 1933 by Lab- sacred worlds. This roomblock/kiva mid-1200s, families began leaving their oratory of Anthropology archaeologists layout became the design model for the settlements, which had been founded a Stanley Stubbs and W. S. Stallings Jr., large villages built after 1300 CE. century before, and moving to new the project was a cooperative effort As population in the region grew, locations on the floodplains of the with the Civil Works Administration residents of Arroyo Negro and its con- Santa Fe River and its southern tribu- relief program during the Depression. temporary villages chose to live closer taries. There they built new villages, The archaeologists and their hardy together. Strength in numbers increased some of which grew into rectangular crew excavated more than one hundred the ability of each community to control or C-shaped blocks of multistoried, rooms, recovered tens of thousands of its prime farmland. Inhabitants of each puddled-adobe buildings that encircled artifacts, and collected tree-ring samples village participated in local and long- plazas with kivas. From tree-ring dat- that documented the pueblo’s 150-year distance trade, some communal rituals, ing, we know that this amazing popula- occupation history and served to firmly marriage, and shared hunting and gath- tion growth and change in village date decorated pottery types named ering territories with other local com- layout occurred in stages as settlements Santa Fe Black-on-white and Galisteo munities, including people living in the grew from within, as well as through Black-on-white. Archaeologists still rely Tesuque Valley. The inhabitants of vil- the influx of uprooted households from on this ceramic chronology. lages in the greater Santa Fe area traded the Colorado Plateau and its margins. Pindi was first settled in the early with one another and sustained rela- These large villages with their long his- 1200s by one or two families who lived tionships with people as far away as tories have been of great interest to in pithouses. Between 1250 and 1310, the Socorro and Chupadero areas to archaeologists because they are critical the settlement grew into a village of the south and the Chaco, Chuska, and to understanding the origin and devel- twenty to thirty puddled-adobe rooms Mesa Verde regions of the Colorado opment of modern Pueblo Indian occupied by three or four related fami- Plateau. Their access to mines in the villages. Since 1932, archaeologists lies. The inhabitants built this small Cerrillos hills and to the plains provided excavated portions of three ruins: hamlet in a style and form similar to that them, respectively, with turquoise and Pindi Pueblo, Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, of Arroyo Negro Pueblo, with a linear

8 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org feathers, which they wove into warm blankets and also used as ritual adorn- ment and to trade for scarce commodi- ties. Archaeologists find open-air sites with hearths and fire pits three to five miles from these villages. We think vil- lagers were foraging for edible plants, fruits, nuts, and seeds in these areas and hunting game. Near these hunting camps, we also found the remains of kilns and fired but shattered Santa Fe Black-on-white bowls and a dipper. This surprised me as I had expected that people fired most of their pottery nearer to their village. The kilns consisted of oval-shaped, shallow pits lined with cobbles on which the pots rested. Dur- ing firings, the potters covered these pit kilns with a dome of juniper and pinon boughs. Temperatures could have exceeded 800 degrees centigrade. While not unheard of, kilns so far from the village suggest that some villagers vol- untarily or forcibly acted outside of nor- mally expected ways. Dendrochronological studies indicate that Pindi’s residents left around 1360 Drawing of Arroyo Negro site plan. CE; we are unsure where they went. Archaeologists speculate that they left because of unsafe buildings, poor sani- arrangement of two rows of one- and Daily life at Pindi probably differed tation, or disputes among residents that two-story rooms. The east-facing room- little from that of Arroyo Negro Pueblo were resolved by moving away. block faced three circular kivas, where except that the need and competition for Pindi Pueblo had two neighbors: the families conducted seasonal rituals. farmland, water, and other important Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, ten miles to the Between 1320 to 1350, the village grew resources may have increased village southeast, and El Pueblo de Santa Fe. to two hundred rooms arranged in rows tensions. People farmed the floodplains In addition to being contemporaneous, of one to four rooms that were one to and fields, covering more area than ever these three pueblos shared many simi- three stories high. Housing more than before. As soils became depleted, fields larities, including building construction one hundred people, these roomblocks produced less, and villagers had to culti- styles, the presence of circular subter- were built in a rectangular layout form- vate increasingly more distant fields, ranean and surface D-shaped kivas, ing interior plazas that held D-shaped possibly encroaching on another com- Santa Fe and Wiyo Black-on-white pot- surface kivas and circular subterranean munity’s lands or competing with new- tery, and a heavy reliance on farming kivas. The new and old kiva forms comers. Now, domesticated animals supplemented by foraging and hunting. accommodated founding and immigrant began to play a more important part in Arroyo Hondo was partly excavated family ritual needs. The villagers held subsistence. Inhabitants raised turkeys by Nels Nelson in 1915 and by the their seasonal community functions in in well-made wattle-and-daub pens in School of American Research from the open, but secluded, outdoor plazas. their village plazas. They prized turkey 1970 to 1974. As at Pindi, Arroyo

www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 9 in the 1880s, Alfred E. Kidder in the 1910s, and Harry P. Mera in the 1920s, its low mounds remained visible until the building of Santa Fe High School in the same location in 1934. The village, and especially its aboveground struc- tures, sustained considerable damage as a result of urban development in down- town Santa Fe up until 2005. Recent excavations by the Office of Archaeo- logical Studies revealed occupation from 1250 to 1425, six hundred years after the early farmers. As at Pindi Pueblo, its first residents lived in pit- An excavated pottery kiln west of Santa Fe. Note houses but soon built and moved into dipper on right edge. puddled-adobe houses. Four surviving circular kivas resemble those of Arroyo Archaeological excavations at Pindi Pueblo Hondo and Pindi in their size, orienta- showing outlines of turkey pens under the plaza. from such rapid growth; analysis of tion, floor and wall pits, and niches. skeletal remains have shown that many Archaeologists collected archaeomag- had poor health. The catastrophic death netic samples that show a sequence of Hondo started small, but between 1310 of eight villagers combined with the occupations through the late 1200s, and 1330 it grew to around one thou- sudden closing of one kiva suggests that middle 1300s, and early 1400s. sand rooms. These were contained in Arroyo Hondo experienced more severe Although we do not know the full twenty-four one- and two-story room- internal conflict than its neighbors. As extent of El Pueblo de Santa Fe, we sur- blocks enclosing ten plazas in which at Pindi, Arroyo Hondo villagers moved mise from the large number of outdoor were four kivas 12 to 24 feet in diame- away by 1360 when decreased rainfall storage and food-processing pits that it ter. A fifth kiva (33 feet in diameter), reduced food availability and exacer- was equal or larger in size than Pindi not enclosed within a roomblock, may bated social stress. Where they went is Pueblo. Whereas Arroyo Hondo Pueblo have served greater community ceremo- unclear. However, the Arroyo Hon- residents showed signs of nutritional nial needs. At its zenith, Arroyo Hondo doans had long maintained relations stress, most of El Pueblo de Santa Fe’s Pueblo was the largest pueblo in the with villages in the Galisteo Basin; per- population appears to have been Santa Fe area, attaining a population of haps they took refuge there. The village healthy. When a twelve-year drought about eight hundred residents, a num- reformed between 1370 and 1420, ending in 1425 forced El Pueblo de ber four to five times greater than Pindi when some villagers or their descen- Santa Fe and Arroyo Hondo villagers Pueblo. dants returned to build two hundred to leave, their strong ties to villages in One theory holds that Arroyo rooms in ten roomblocks on top of the the Galisteo and Tewa basins offered Hondo Pueblo housed groups of people earlier buildings. At a time when most new opportunities to carry on. from diverse geographical areas and villagers in the northern Rio Grande After 1425, indigenous travelers cultural traditions. By building exten- used glaze-decorated or biscuit ware passed through Santa Fe for 185 years sive roomblocks around plazas, each black-white pottery, Arroyo Hondo res- but maintained no permanent settle- group had privacy and also was able to idents continued to use mostly Santa Fe ments. As villages grew in the Tewa and monitor who came and went and to Black-on-white pottery, suggesting that Galisteo basins, Santa Fe’s villages maintain its own public space in which they were a socially distinct group. melted back into the earth. When don to hold ritual and community events. El Pueblo de Santa Fe is less well- Pedro de Peralta arrived in 1610 and Ultimately, Arroyo Hondo residents may known than Arroyo Hondo or Pindi laid out the Villa de Santa Fe, he found have suffered negative consequences pueblos. Described by Adolph Bandelier only mounds.

10 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org holders, and condiment containers, all made by Pueblo potters living in the Galisteo and Tewa basins. Intermingled with these artifacts have been a few sherds of Mexican majolica and Chinese porcelain, which were brought to Santa Fe on triannual caravans from the south following the Camino Real. These few imported items were often inherited or recycled when broken before being discarded.

The Pueblo Rebellion of 1680 and the Resettlement of Santa Fe after 1692. Joseph P. Sánchez relates in chapter 3 that longstanding grievances over View of a portion of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo during excavations in 1971. oppressive Spanish rule led to a success- ful rebellion by the Pueblo Indians and their allies in August of 1680. With the Historic-Period Colonists from Spain, ranches, granted to citizens in exchange Spaniards in exile in El Paso del Norte, Mexico, and the United States for military service, extended down the the victorious Indians destroyed most Santa Fe River. The colonists built irri- of Santa Fe and its surrounding settle- A Villa on the Edge of Empire. In 1599, gation or acequia systems on both sides ments and built their own village within under the leadership of Juan de Oñate, of the river to distribute water to house- the downtown quadrangle. Historical Spanish colonists arrived at Ohkay holds and farms. The remnants of these accounts from Diego de Vargas, who Owingeh at the confluence of the Rio early ditches, which archaeologists have reconquered the villa in 1693, describe Grande and Chama rivers. Eleven years found in the plaza and Palace of the it as four stories high with two plazas later, Governor Pedro de Peralta led the Governors and on Santa Fe’s east side, and kivas and housing one thousand failed settlement to a low rise between attest to the complex irrigation network people. Below the Palace of the Gover- the Santa Fe River and Arroyo Mascaras necessary for raising Old World native nors, archaeologist Cordelia Snow floodplains adjacent to a swamp. This plants, including wheat, barley, lentils, uncovered the foundations of small was the site of the future city of Santa grapes, and fruits, as well as corn, rooms, human burials, fire pits, and Fe. Peralta laid out a quadrangle-shaped beans, and squash. The early colonists storage pits left by the Pueblo residents plaza to be surrounded by government also kept small herds of sheep, goats, of 1680–1693. The Spaniards demol- buildings and a parroquia. The casas cows, pigs, and chickens. ished this pueblo in 1699; except for reales (later known as the Palace of the Archaeologists rarely find physical Snow’s work, conclusive evidence of Governors) had generously sized rooms evidence of early colonial residences; a Revolt-period pueblo has eluded with ornate adobe-brick floors that instead, working in such sites as the archaeologists working in downtown reflected the governor’s high status in Palace of the Governors, Cathedral Park, Santa Fe. the colony. As for the town’s early pri- Sena Plaza, and San Miguel Chapel, we Returning Spanish citizens reclaimed vate residences, they were modest have unearthed pits filled with butchered their properties, and an influx of new dwellings with cobble foundations, animal bone, charred seeds, grains, and families revitalized the villa. Throughout adobe walls, small gardens, and outdoor fruit pits. We also have unearthed frag- the eighteenth century, neighborhoods kitchens. Their occupants furnished ments of serving bowls (hemispherical grew up around newly built and resur- them with rugs, tapestries, and furniture plain and decorated), cooking jars of rected churches, including La Castrense, of wood and leather. Most clustered indigenous forms, European-style soup Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, and San around the plaza for safety, but small bowls, plates, platters, cups, candlestick Miguel Chapel. Tree-ring dating of roof

www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 11 beams shows that some eighteenth- Spanish expanded the city’s acequia century houses still survive in the Barrio system to distribute water to the de Analco and along Canyon Road. immediate area and miles downriver The Palace of the Governors and the as well. Artifacts recovered from a Presidio (a military complex) dominated newly discovered residential site in the north side of the plaza. My 2002– this rural area should provide new 2007 excavations behind the Palace insights into Santa Fe society and exposed buried cobble foundations offer interesting comparisons with from adobe-walled barracks and store- those excavated at the Palace of the rooms used by soldiers stationed in Governors and the Civic Center Santa Fe. We also uncovered three rows hacienda. of adobe buildings divided into 25-foot by 20-foot rooms with corner fireplaces The Santa Fe Trail and a Territory in and compacted dirt floors. The poor the United States. Dramatic social and soldiers living in these spartan accom- economic changes followed the open- modations had few imported table- ing of the Santa Fe Trail. Merchants wares or luxury goods and relied on became successful as they gained Historic-period refuse pit excavated behind the Pueblo-made tableware and utilitarian access to US manufactured goods Palace of the Governors. pottery. Behind the barracks, we found and took advantage of a new market a large volume of sheep, goat, and cattle for New Mexico’s products. Initially, bone and a circular butcher shop that much of the new wealth passed through served the many people who lived and Santa Fe; consequently, archaeologists took their meals in the Palace in the find little evidence of widespread pros- 1700s. perity. Many Santa Fe Trail ruts still Santa Fe had many prosperous fami- exist from this time period, meander- lies. At the Civic Center site, archaeol- ing across the southeast neighborhood ogist Stephen Lentz excavated the close to major modern roads. remains of a large residence, which is General Stephen Kearny and the US shown on the 1766–1768 map of Santa Army of the West occupied the Palace Fe created by José de Urrutia (see p. 49). and presidio barracks and corrals in Only a small portion of its cobble foun- 1846 (see chapter 7). For the first dation remained, the rest having been twenty years, the military used the demolished in 1789 to build a new pre- old presidio buildings, adding glass win- Tewa red soup plate. sidio. However, its affluent residents dows, new fireplaces, and cobble floors left pits filled with burned animal bones in some. By 1868, they had rebuilt or and pottery made by Pueblo Indians, as renovated all buildings in what became US artifacts, such as bottles, shoes, well as assorted Mexican, European, the Fort Marcy military reservation. boots, dishes, dolls, some medical appa- and Oriental dishes. Lentz also found The territorial governors lived in the ratus, and a variety of other personal the remains of a well, corrals, and even Palace, which was surrounded by the items. They all reflect the burgeoning metal-working facilities. The family’s military installation. North of the consumerism that accompanied military prosperity rivaled that of the governor; Palace, the recent excavations at the life and the completion of the railroad undoubtedly, they were regular guests Civic Center site uncovered the lime- in 1879. at his table in the nearby Palace. stone foundations of officers and Southwest of the plaza, residences enlisted men’s quarters, as well as the The Railroad and New Mexico Statehood. and subsistence farms lined the Camino post hospital, the hospital steward’s Leading up to statehood, major changes Real (today’s Agua Fria Street) after the quarters, and rock-lined privies and took place in Santa Fe. Many old adobe middle 1700s. As Santa Fe grew, the wells. We also found hundreds of other buildings were torn down and replaced

12 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org ings associated with railroad activities. With the railroad came huge quantities of manufactured goods that are found at territorial period sites large and small. When New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912, Santa Fe once again became the distant political and economic center for a country and people defined by their deep-rooted traditions of independence and self-reliance. As archaeological investigations in Santa Fe continue, I expect new findings to reinforce some old knowledge and challenge other long-held concepts. By striving to better understand Santa Fe’s past, we honor the people whose ten- thousand-year-old story we tell. At the same time, we must guard against the temptation to build monuments to truths that may be only a shovel’s depth away from change.

The foundations of a water storage tank west of Guadalupe Street. Acknowledgments The author acknowledges all the arch- by brick and frame Victorian-style resi- were constructing the Community Bank aeologists who have contributed to a dences. In 1884, Bishop Lamy com- on Guadalupe Street in 1990, they were greater and richer understanding of pleted construction of St. Francis surprised to uncover the long-buried Santa Fe’s past. More specifically, I Cathedral, using sandstone quarried in masonry roundhouse, which now is would like to thank Stewart Peckham, Lamy, New Mexico, and transported to incorporated into the building. Excava- David Snow, Cordelia Snow, Cherie Santa Fe by the rail line that was com- tions at the Santa Fe Railyard also Scheick, Janet McVickar, Jason Shapiro, pleted in 1880. Speculators subdivided uncovered the massive sandstone foun- James Snead, my Office of Archaeologi- land at the railhead and sold lots to the dation for a water storage tank and cal Studies colleagues, and, of course, Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway pumphouse, the engine house founda- Frances Levine, who authored the Santa for its station, water tank, engine tions, impressions of track beds, huge Fe archaeology essay in the 1989 vol- houses, and turnstile. When workers quantities of cinders, and other build- ume, blazing the trail that I followed.

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