By James Abarr
For the Journal
PECOS NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK— On the southern flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 25 miles east of Santa Fe, the ruins of a large and once powerful Indian pueblo spread out across the top of a narrow ridge in an area surrounded by distant peaks, piñon forests and rugged mesas.
At one edge of the ridge, which rises above a shallow valley cut by the meandering Pecos River, the weathered rust-red walls of a Spanish colonial mission church tower over the ancient village.
This is legendary Cicuye, "village of 500 warriors," and the splendor of its setting matches its long and storied past.
More than 500 years ago, Cicuye, now called Pecos, was a major trading center, an important cultural melting pot and a dominating force in the Pueblo Indian world.
Today, the historic village and its guardian church are part of Pecos National Historical Park.
A trading magnet
At the pinnacle of its power, from about 1450 to 1600, Pecos recorded a population of 2,000 or more. It was a pueblo of strong military and economic influence, and neighboring pueblos lived at its bidding.
Because it commanded a strategic mountain pass between the Plains Indians to the east and the Rio Grande pueblos on the west, Pecos was a magnet for a lucrative trade. Comanches and Plains Apaches traveled regularly to Pecos for bartering sessions that could last for days. They brought buffalo hides, slaves, seeds, flint and shells and exchanged them for the pottery, textiles, corn and turquoise of the river towns.
As middlemen, the people of Pecos absorbed the cultures and wealth of two worlds.
In the fall of 1540, Pecos welcomed a strange, armor-clad visitor who would prove to be the harbinger of momentous changes in the life of the fortress-pueblo.
Hernando de Alvarado, scouting with a small force in the vanguard of the Spanish army of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the first European to explore what is now New Mexico, was greeted with friendship and ceremony. In his journal, Alvarado recorded:
"There is one (pueblo) called Cicuye that is larger than any of the others and very strong. Its houses are four and five stories high."
Pedro de Castañeda, chronicler of the Coronado expedition, wrote this description:
"Cicuye is a pueblo containing about 500 warriors and is feared throughout that land. In plan, it is square, perched on a rock. In the center is a vast patio, or plaza, with its kivas. The houses are all alike, four stories high. The people pride themselves in the fact that no one has been able to subjugate them, while they dominate any pueblo they wish."
A 40-year lull
In the spring of 1542, Coronado abandoned his futile two-year quest for the rumored gold and other riches of the new land and led his dispirited army back to New Spain (Mexico). It would be 40 years before Spaniards would again cast their shadow over Pecos.
In 1581, the expedition of Francisco Chamuscado and Augustine Rodriguez marked a rebirth of interest in the vast country to the north of New Spain. Over the next 17 years, three more expeditions visited Pecos, and during the explorations of Gaspar Castaño de Sosa in 1590, ancient Cicuye became Pecos.
Castaño had stopped at Jemez Pueblo, 70 miles west of Pecos. There he learned of a large pueblo in the mountain pass to the east. In the Jemez language, it was called "Pe-kush," which to Spanish ears sounded like "Pecos." The name survived.
In late 1598, Spaniards came to stay when Juan de Oñate arrived with the first permanent settlers. Gone were visions of gold and great wealth. These newcomers— soldiers and about 200 families with their possessions and livestock— were intent on planting a royal colony of farms, ranches and settlements.
With the colonists came a group of dedicated Franciscan friars. They focused on the potential harvest of souls in the new land and the conversion of the Pueblo people to Christianity.
Monumental church
Although a small chapel was built at Pecos about 1600, it wasn't until about 1619 that the Franciscans made a major missionary effort. In that year, Fray Pedro de Ortega, employing Indian labor, guided initial building of a large mission which he called Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles de Porcíuncula (Our Lady of the Angels of Porcíuncula).
In 1621, a new missionary, Fray Andres Juarez, took over construction of the church, which was completed about 1625.
For its time and place, Nuestra Señora was a stunning achievement. Built with more than 300,000 uniform adobe bricks, the monumental church stood in sharp contrast to the stone and mud dwellings of the pueblo it served. The nave, or central worship hall, was 145 feet long and 37 feet wide. Its ceiling, 40 feet high, was braced by elaborately carved and carefully fitted vigas and corbels. The massive walls, 22 feet thick in places, were reinforced by rows of ground-to-roof buttresses. Six bell towers rimmed the outer roof.
On the south side of the church, a large convento provided living quarters for the priests and church staff, a kitchen, library, studies and storage rooms.
On an inspection tour in 1630, Fray Alonso de Benavides, the father custos, or Franciscan chief administrator in New Mexico, was impressed. He described Nuestra Señora as "a convento and most splendid temple of singular construction amd excellence on which a friar expended very great labor and diligence."
Unfortunately, Nuestra Señora did not survive. After a half-century of carrying the faith to Pecos, the church was destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
A time of terror
Burdened by 80 years of heavy-handed Spanish rule, the Pueblo people nursed a bitter and growing resentment. Continual Spanish demands for tribute, the use of slave labor, and tenacious efforts to destroy native religion and customs ultimately erupted in a bloody uprising.
On Aug. 10, 1680, Pope, a medicine man from San Juan and Taos, led all the pueblos in an orgy of destruction and death.
Scores of settlers across northern New Mexico were slain, and ranches were put to the torch. In a single day, 28 priests and lay brothers were killed as churches, crosses and other religious symbols were destroyed in an effort to eradicate the new religion.
At Pecos, Fray Juan de la Pedrosa, the resident priest, two Spanish women and three children died in the first hours of the revolt, which ultimately drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
For 12 years following the uprising, Spain bided its time. Finally, in 1692, Don Diego de Vargas, an accomplished administrator who would emerge as one of New Mexico's best remembered colonial governors, led a Spanish army north from El Paso to reconquer the lost province.
A new church
When De Vargas arrived before the walls of Pecos to seek the pueblo's submission, he found that a new attitude prevailed. After a brief show of hostility, the Pecos people, impressed with De Vargas' boldness and diplomacy, welcomed the return of the Spaniards. They even offered the aid of 150 warriors to help recapture the royal villa of Santa Fe.
Returning to New Mexico with De Vargas were a dozen Franciscan padres, who faced the daunting task of rebuilding the missions and restoring Christianity.
A small chapel was built at Pecos about 1705, but it wasn't until 1716 that a new church was erected. Built over the ruins of the great mission destroyed in 1680, the new church, also called Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, was a smaller, more modest undertaking. It was designed to serve a diminishing population, for the once populous pueblo, a victim of events beyond its control, was on the decline.
As historian John Kessel noted: "The threat of warring Comanches led to the abandonment of farm land. This, coupled with drought, brought famine. Hundreds died from epidemics and many moved away. By 1800, new Hispanic settlements in the area had taken over the trade that had made Pecos prosper."
In 1838, the last 17 residents abandoned the ancient town to move in with relatives at Jemez.
Said Kessell: "The era of Pecos as monument had begun. The living pueblo was dead."
Fading into ruins
For years after abandonment, Pecos and its fourth and last church weathered away under the eroding forces of the elements. The once towering house blocks with their hundreds of rooms melted away or were buried beneath wind-blown soil.
Area settlers contributed to the decline by stripping the church of its roof, support beams and anything built of wood to erect ranch houses, corrals and barns. With support gone, the adobe walls partially collapsed into the reddish soil from which they came.
To travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, which parallels present-day Interstate 25 to the south, the ruins of Pecos were shrouded in mystery. Legends of lost Spanish gold and the ghosts of Indian deities were rampant.
From 1915 to 1927, archaeologist Alfred Kidder and his team spent 10 summers excavating the ruins. In 1935, Pecos was set aside as a New Mexico State Monument, and in 1965, the ruins became a national monument under the protection of the National Park Service.
In 1967, the Park Service undertook new excavation work at Pecos. It was during this period that archaeologist Jean Pinkley uncovered the foundation of Fray Juarez's great mission of 1625 beneath the ruins of the 1715 church. Her discovery laid to rest the doubts of some historians that the church had ever existed.
Pecos was expanded in 1990 with the addition of three nearby areas of historical importance and the national monument was renamed Pecos National Historical Park.
The new units, as yet unopen to the public, include the 5,500-acre Forked Lightning Ranch, southeast of the main Pecos Pueblo ruins, which encompasses the 1858 Koslowski's ranch and stagecoach station, a stop on the Santa Fe Trail. The Forked Lightning also contains remains of a Hispanic frontier settlement and ruins of prehistoric Indian sites along the Pecos River.
Other new units to the west are Pigeon's Ranch and Glorieta Battlefield. In late March 1862, these were the sites of a three-day Civil War clash in which Union forces routed a Confederate cavalry brigade and preserved New Mexico for the Union.
With the new units, the story of Pecos spans the centuries of Indian settlement, Spanish conquest, Hispanic emergence and the arrival of the Americans.
As one archaeologist described Pecos: "An educational monument not to be rivaled in any other part of the Southwest."
If you go
WHAT: Pecos National Historical Park. Administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior; visitor information: 757-6414, Ext. 1.
WHERE: 25 miles east of Santa Fe via I-25 to Exit 299 and the village of Pecos; then south two miles on N.M. 63.
FEES: $3 a person
FACILITIES: Visitor Center offers information, a brief film on the centuries of Pecos, a large museum and bookstore.
Paved trails provide easy access to the ruins of the historic pueblo and Spanish colonial mission church.
TOURS: Guided tours are not regularly scheduled, but groups can arrange for a guided tour by calling 757-6032.
CAMPING: No camping is allowed in the park, but a picnic area is provided. Camping is available in Santa Fe National Forest, just north of the park.
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