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1997-98

Mission to Quarai

By Frank Zoretich
For The Journal
   

Editor's note: The following story was written as part of a series called "Cheap Thrills" for the Albuquerque Journal. The criteria for these "thrills" are 1) a day-trippable circle roughly 150 miles from Albuquerque and 2) fees of no more than $10. Enjoy.

PUNTA DE AGUA—It was a day of light and shadow at the Quarai ruins here.
Clouds swept in ranks across the sky. Each time the sun fell through them, a rooster crowed as if dawn had come again.
The rooster was out of sight on one of the ranchitos just beyond the boundary fence that encloses the 15 acres of Pueblo Indian and Spanish mission ruins at Quarai.

The Quarai Ruins Location: Eight miles north of Mountainair on NM 55. Hours: Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Call 847-2290 for more information. Cost: Free Features: Fifteen acres of Pueblo Indian and Spanish Mission ruins.

As the light varied moment by moment, the rough stone walls of Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion -- a church that was abandoned in 1677 -- alternated in color between dark rust-red and glowing fire-orange.
At Marker 19, a good vantage for a middle-distance view on the self-guided tour of paths through the ruins, tourist photographers tried to keep their camera exposures matched to the changing light. "Here comes the sun again," said one. "And I'm not ready!"
Leaning against the trunk of a fallen cottonwood, watching the ruins dim and glow, listening to the crowing of the rooster and the mutter of photographers twisting their exposure controls, I took time to read some of the informational literature I'd picked up at the visitors center.
The entry for Marker 19 begins:
"The cottonwood trees up and down the valley mark the course of the spring-fed arroyo. The multiple springs played an important part in the valley's settlement and use . . ."
The entry ends:
"When drought came in the 1660s the water level of the springs dropped, and possibly they dried up completely. Eventually there was not enough water for crops, livestock and humans. This was a major factor leading to the abandonment of Quarai in the 1670s."
The drought, combined with an increase in Apache raiding, made life impossible here. In the last three years of the mission's existence, wrote a Franciscan priest, the people were reduced to eating the hides of their cattle.
The church, tucked into a final fold of the Manzanos where the mountains merge with the vast eastern Plains, once served nearly 700 Spanish and Indian parishioners. With associated dwellings, it was built on the site of an existing pueblo in 1630. Artifacts from the mostly unexcavated mounds surrounding the church show that Indians had been living at Quarai at least 400 years before the Spanish first arrived in 1628. Quarai, eight miles north of Mountainair on NM 55, is one of three units in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. The others are Abo, nine miles west of Mountainair on U.S. 60, and Gran Quivira, 26 miles south of Mountainair on NM 55.
There is no admission charge to visit any of them. Although they're close enough together to be visited in a single jaunt from Albuquerque, I decided to save Abo and Gran Quivira for future trips. (They're all open from 9 to 5 each day. Telephone numbers: Quarai, 847-2290; Abo, 847-2400; Gran Quivira, 847-2770. There's also a headquarters visitors center right in Mountainair, 847-2585).
On this afternoon in mid-April, in the first major bloom of fine-weather tourism, I was content to follow Ranger Carol Chilton as she moved from one small cluster of brightly T-shirted tourists to another, pollinating each group with facts and informed speculation about Quarai.
She pointed out the original wooden beams in the church, which was reconstructed to its present ruined state in the 1930s.
She eyed the stone walls of the church, which rise to about 40 feet on top of foundations seven feet deep. "Those walls represent a lot of woman-hours," she said. "The men did the carpentry, but the women hauled and stacked the stone and plastered the inside of the walls."
She was asked how to pronounce the name of the place.
"It's like 'quart' without the 't' and 'rye' as in rye bread," she said.
"But that's just what it's called now. It was originally called 'Cuarac' and in 1846 it was 'Quarra.' The change is the result of language drift through time -- it's like that party game where one person says something to another and it's repeated down the line and comes out different. It's like gossip."
From Marker 19, I watch the ruins continue to dim and glow. Clouds of forgetting, light of rediscovery. The ancient gossip continues to whisper -- and crow -- at Quarai.