John L. Kessell

Scholarly and a moderately difficult read but still full of interesting stuff. The Pecos National Historical Park is just off I-25, east of Santa Fe. In the spring of 1989 I lost my programming job in Boulder, Colorado, and thought I would need to move back to the family home in the Chicago suburbs. The prospect depressed me; I resolved on a “farewell to the West” trip and headed south, stopping at various scenic attractions along the way. I was the only visitor at Pecos and had the whole place to myself; the site induces meditation and introspection, and I resolved to stay in the West somehow. Didn’t know quite how, but I expected something would turn up.


As the title suggests, author and University of New Mexico history professor John Kessell undertakes a three-way story between the Pecos natives, the Franciscan missionaries to them, and the Spanish government. Despite being the nominal subject of the book, the Pecos natives get the least print; this isn’t Kessell’s fault. The Pecos natives left no histories; thus the only real information about them comes from archaeology or the accounts of Spanish and Mexican settlers. What’s known from excavation is the first Puebloans showed up about 1250 CE, erecting small household blocks around the area. The best known of this is the Forked Lightning Ruin, about half a mile downstream from Pecos. It’s probably significant that these sites were in the open, with no eye toward defense. By around 1450 CE, though, the separate sites had consolidated on Pecos Mesa, a low hill with a good view in all directions and a water source. This was the easternmost of all the Puebloan city-states, and it did a considerable trade with the peoples of the plains. So it was in 1540 when a detachment of Coronado’s expedition arrived, headed by Captain Hernando de Alvarado. They announced that the Indians were now Christians and under the protection of Spain, set up a cross, and departed. The name of the place in Towa was Cicuye (or Acuique or Cicúique or Cicuic); “Pecos” was used by the Keres speakers further west. The Cicuye people – henceforth called Pecos – had already sent a delegation to meet Coronado at Hawikuh in Zuñi territory (about 200 miles west) and exchanged some buffalo robes for trinkets. After wandering around the plains for a while – as far as southern Kansas – Coronado eventually returned to Pecos; this time he left Fray Luis de Úbeda (probably – the only records are from a chronicler writing more than 100 years later). If the accounts are true – Kessell is skeptical – Fray Luis was the first cleric at Pecos to run into a problem that plagued the mission there: the Pecos (and most other Puebloans) refused to teach their languages to outsiders. The Franciscans built a series of churches (the ruin at the site is the remains of the fourth) and the Pecos dutifully assembled on Sunday and feast days to hear Mass. But they almost never went to confession, and generally continued to practice their own religion. Depending on the current mood of the Church and State, this was sometimes prohibited with prejudice, sometimes tolerated if done discretely, and sometimes encouraged (this last usually when Church and State were on the outs).


In fact, most of the conflicts in the book are not between natives and settlers (with the exception of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt), but between Franciscans and the colonial government. The government complained that the Franciscans were charging the natives for services that they were supposed to be performing for free – baptisms, marriages, etc.; that the Franciscans were forcing the natives to build elaborate churches to the detriment of their own homes and farms; that the Franciscans deserted their missions and came to live in Santa Fe; and that the Franciscans failed to learn native languages and therefore were unable to minister to their charges. The Franciscans countercharged that the governors allowed natives to continue their idolatrous customs; that they arbitrarily enslaved natives or allowed settlers to enslave them; that the government levied excessive taxes; and that the government allowed settlers to occupy native land. All of the charges on both sides seem to have been true at one time or another. The conflict sometimes waxed vituperative; at one point a Franciscan accused an official of unspeakable acts with a goat and later another official promised that if the Franciscans continued to resist him he would “…scour their a$$holes”. Both sides invoked the Inquisition when it began operating in Mexico; at one point the Inquisition impatiently told the Franciscans that every minor disagreement with the secular government was not a matter for the Holy Office. Now and then the administration seized and jailed Franciscans; at one point the Franciscans organized a mob and seized and jailed a governor.


The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (see The Pueblo Revolt) interrupted things until the reconquest in 1692. The Pecos natives – like pretty much all the pueblos – displayed mixed loyalties. They sent one of their Franciscans away to Galisteo (he was killed by Tanos there) but killed the other one and a Spanish family in the vicinity. They also joined in the attack on Santa Fe – but left early. And they demolished the church at Pecos – a considerable undertaking; it was larger than the ruined church there now. Apparently some did try to warn that a revolt was coming. When the Spanish returned to New Mexico, Pecos was treated kindly and things were restored to more or less what they had been before.


Pecos’ relation with other tribes illustrates the defects of politically correct history; the New Age theory of Indian affairs holds that the New World was a New Eden of peace and sustainability until Europeans showed up and taught the natives how to murder, scalp, and discard recyclables. Part and parcel is the idea that the natives had occupied whatever territories they had in 1492 since time immemorial. Pecos’ relationship with the plains tribes belies this. The pueblo was well situated for trade with the plains – buffalo hides and slaves for maize and cotton cloth – but at first the plains people they traded with were Apaches. My raised-in-the-1950s impression of Apaches put them in the southwestern mountains, not on the plains, but Kansas through New Mexico was their original habitat. They had no horses but walked and used dog travois for transport. The Apaches were not necessarily averse to raiding now and then but if you’re limited to the same walking speed as your opponents evading pursuit is dicey, so most contact with Pecos was at least superficially peaceful. That all changed when the horse-mounted Comanche started showing up – around the 1730s. They quickly drove the Apache off the plains into the mountains, and began to make things miserable for Pecos; they had no particular incentive to trade when they could ride in, loot, burn, rape, and pillage, and ride out again without much chance of pursuit. Eventually they were bought off with extensive presents from the Spanish authorities but now and then the gift supply ran low and they raided again.


The Comanche raids and concomitant loss of trade goods plus a particularly nasty smallpox outbreak started Pecos on a steep decline. The Pecos were afraid to cultivate fields at any distance from the pueblo, lest they be picked off by Comanche. Spanish settlers began moving into the area, founding the town of San Miguel el Vado downstream from the pueblo. Ironically, if the Santa Fe Trail traffic had got started just a little bit earlier Pecos might have regained its importance as a trading center, but San Miguel el Vado became the port of entry instead. The last families moved out of Pecos to Jemez Pueblo in 1838; the last person who had lived at Pecos died in 1919.


Pot hunters and curio seekers visited the ruins in the 19th century – including digging up many of the burials under the church floor, looking for relics. Archaeologists began working there in the late 1800s; Alfred Kidder, considered the founder of American southwestern archaeology, worked out the standard pottery sequence relative dating method at Pecos and is buried there (along with many of the skeletons he had excavated, returned and reinterred under NAGPRA). The site became a New Mexico State Monument in 1935, Pecos National Monument in 1963, and with the addition of the Glorieta Battlefield site, Pecos National Historical Park in 1990.


As I mentioned, although there’s lots of interesting things this is not a page-turner. There’s a lot of history involved and an extensive cast of characters. The book would benefit from an introductory chapter explaining the Spanish government of New Spain and the organization of the Franciscan Order, and a glossary of Spanish political and religious terms (these are usually defined when first used in the text). There are extensive illustrations, but they often have little relevance to the text; Kessell is especially fond of facsimiles of signatures of the participants, title pages of Spanish documents, and little vignettes drawn from contemporary works. Sometimes these give the book a pleasant sort of “illuminated manuscript” look; at other times they’re just annoying. There are extensive endnotes; sometimes these have information that would have been better presented in the body text or as footnotes. Appendices include a list of all the Franciscans resident at Pecos, a list of notable Pecos natives, and a list of encomenderos and alcaldes mayores at or responsible for Pecos.… (mais)