RÍO GRANDE REGION
Straddling the river for which it is named from a point near Taos, New Mexico, on the north to about 50 miles south of Albuquerque, the region includes many pueblos, some of them actively occupied for over 1,000 years, and many ancient ruins. (See
the Río Grande Region Map).
Bandelier National Monument
Named for historian and archaeologist Adolph Bandelier, Bandelier National Monument, in the Frijoles Canyon area adjacent to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is one of the more accessible Anasazi sites. Bandelier's novel,
The Delightmakers, was the first literary attempt to describe the life of an ancient Puebloan people.
About a million years ago, the Valle Grande volcano exploded and collapsed in the
Jemez Mountains above Bandelier, covering the surrounding area with a thick layer of volcanic rock. Anasazi clans found the rock soft enough to carve cave dwellings into the cliff walls with their stone tools. The area was occupied from about 800 B.C. till about A.D. 1590.
Around 1100 Tewa and Keresan speaking
clans moved into the area and built a two- and three-story pueblo called Tyuonyi that included 400 rooms. Petroglyphs and pictographs adorn the walls of houses, kivas and canyons.
Avanyu, the horned water-fertility serpent can be seen there. Twenty-one clans are identified with Bandelier. Keresan speakers from this area eventually moved south on the Río Grande and established Cochiti and San Felipe pueblos, which are still occupied today.
Coronado State Monument
Kuaua ("evergreen tree") Pueblo at the Coronado State Monument, stands near the Río Grande outside Bernalillo, New Mexico. It was built after the Anasazi vacated Chaco and Mesa Verde at the end of the 13th century. Behind
Pecos and Pueblo
Bonito, Kuana is the third largest Great House in New Mexico with a perimeter of 350 meters.
A small but very important part of the pueblo remains. In the visitors' center and on the walls of a reconstructed kiva is one of the few remaining narrative murals of the Anasazi era. Painted in the 15th and 16th centuries, the mural represents pueblo life and dress at a time just before the arrival of Europeans in the area. Beautifully illustrated are rainmaking and fertility ceremonies and the desired outcomes - rain and blessings falling from the sky. Ceremonial attire like that in the murals is still made and used at Acoma, Hopi, San Felipe and San Juan pueblos. Kuana was occupied until about 1680.
Pecos National Historical Park
Located a few miles south and east of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the river for which it is named, Pecos was populated by the infusion of different groups over time. Some of the
Towa-speaking ancestors of the people who called themselves
Pe-Kush ("the people") migrated from Gallina, northwest of Santa Fe. Commencing about 1100, three groups converged on the Pecos River valley and the nearby mesas. One group built adobe homes with unique back doors after 1200. A century later another group arrived and began constructing circular houses and kivas. Another 100 years passed and construction began on a multi-story pueblo on the site.
The arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century changed everything for the Pe-Kush. They were forced to build a mission church and honor the Spanish, and suffered numerous other indignities. The people of the Pecos Pueblo joined the
Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692 and temporarily deposed the Spaniards. By 1838, years of smallpox epidemics and warfare with the Comanches had reduced the population from about 2,000 to 20. The survivors abandoned Pecos and moved to live near their Towa-speaking relatives at the Jemez Pueblo.
Petroglyph National Monument
Located on West Mesa, overlooking Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the only federal facility focusing exclusively on aboriginal art in rock. In 1990, when the U.S. Congress established the national monument, they also created a federal Rock Art Research Center to study the examples at Petroglyph and elsewhere in the Southwest. Though there is little evidence that the Anasazi lived near these elaborately decorated cliffs before about A.D. 400-500, it appears that symbols were being pecked into the volcanic rock from
Archaic times through the Pueblo
era. Despite the fact that Spanish expeditions passed nearby as early as 1540, it was probably the 18th century before the rock art on the east face of the mesa became common knowledge among Europeans.
Among the thousands of pictures scratched into the rock are images of human figures, human hands, clouds, star faces, birds, reptiles and other animals. Also represented are life and death, the cycles of the heavenly bodies and other human experiences of life on Earth. The famous Southwestern fertility figure,
Kokopelli, is seen with his hump back and his flute. The water spirit,
Avanyu is also represented here as are other figures and symbols which articulate the Puebloan spirituality and world-view. Nearby lies a
1,000-room adobe pueblo which, when cleared, excavated and explored, may shed more light on the meaning and importance of this ancient rock art museum.
Puye Cliff Dwellings
Located on the Santa Clara Pueblo, the "cliff dwellings," like many of those at Bandelier National Monument a few miles to the south, are carved out of the relatively soft walls of volcanic
tuff. Rectangular above-ground habitations made of cut stone stand in front of the cliffs. Inhabited for more than three centuries,
Puye ("where the rabbits run" in Tewa) was home to over 1,500 people. Tours of the Puye Cliffs require advance arrangements with the Santa Clara Pueblo.
Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument
Each of three largely unrestored sites at this national monument - Gran Quivara, Abó and Quarai - include the ruins of Spanish mission churches and pueblos alongside
Great Houses occupied by Anasazi from about A.D. 1300. Gran Quivara is the largest pueblo, estimated by a Spanish observer in 1627 to house 3,000 people. One building, abandoned in 1672, included about 200 rooms and five kivas. At the three sites, pueblo structures reached at least three stories in height.
Like many of the Río Grande pueblos, the settlements at Salinas suffered under the Spanish demands for taxes or donations of food and clothing. The name of the place says a lot about the difficulty of survival.
Salinas is a Spanish word for saline or salty lagoons.
HOME
- CONTACT
US - GIFT
SHOP - GLOSSARY
- MUSEUM -
HISTORY
PLAN
YOUR VISIT - PRESERVE
- TABLE
OF CONTENTS - WELCOME
Manitou Cliff
Dwellings Museum, P.O. Box 272, Manitou Springs, Colorado 80829
GPS Address: 10 Cliff Dwellings Road
719-685-5242 / 800-354-9971
Copyright 2011