El Morro National Monument and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail in the United States and Mexico

Contact between Americans and the Spanish

Traveling up the spine of Mexico and across the Chihuahuan Desert, Spanish explorers and then settlers pushed north from Mexico City, possibly following Native American trails. Forbidding deserts, waterless days, and harsh sun challenged the travelers. The interior lands can be an unforgiving landscape, especially as Contact between the Americans and the Spanish colonizers launched decades of war as well as exchange.

Spanish Encounter Native Americans

The Spanish made first contact with native peoples on the continent. In 1519, Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro marched on Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire in Mexico and home to over 200,000 people. After two years of siege, the Aztec fell to Cortes, his soldiers, and their Indian allies. The gold and other treasures of the Aztecs fueled Spanish explorers who then found more gold in the Incan empire in Peru.

Tlaxcalan allies with Spaniards attacking Aztecs (Florentine codex 1579)

In the 16^th century, Spaniards attempted colonies in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia; however, these efforts failed. Nonetheless, the Spanish believed that gold and other valuables waited in the far north of New Spain.

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján found no wealth during his expedition through the Southwest and into the Great Plains from 1540 to 1542.  These 300 Spanish were the first Europeans to encounter the Puebloan peoples, the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, the first Spaniards to fight Native Americans at the Zuni and Tiguex pueblos, and the first to witness the nomadic Plains Indians chasing the bison herds in Kansas. Despite traveling over 4,000 miles from Mexico to Kansas and back, Coronado found no gold.

 

Coronado's Route 154-1542

Spanish colony of New Mexico

“Pasó por aquí.” “I passed by here.” In 1605, Don Juan de Oñate carved these words into the soft stone at the base of a windswept mesa in western New Mexico. Hundreds of Native American petroglyphs preceded Oñate’s inscription at the place the Spanish called El Morro (the Headland).

Onate's Paso por acqui engraving in 1605 at El Morro (Photo by Hunner)

Several years earlier, Oñate led 700 settlers north and blazed El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road to the Interior Lands). This 1,500 mile trail from Mexico City to northern New Mexico opened up the Southwest to conquest, encounters, migration, and commerce. This trail linked New Mexico to the rest of the world for the next three centuries. Spain’s first successful colony in what would become the U.S. preceded the English’s one at Jamestown by almost a decade.

In July 1598, Oñate’s colonizing group  arrived in northern New Mexico and moved into a ruin near the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh. They arrived too late to plant crops, and in truth, few farmers had traveled with them. Instead most settlers knew mining, convinced that gold lay nearby. Consequently, the colony took food and clothing from the neighboring Puebloans. This made for strained relations.

Relations between the Spanish colonizers and the Puebloans worsened at the end of 1598. An exploratory party led by Juan de Zaldivar, Oñate’s nephew, sought to purchase corn flour from the people at the 1,000 year old Pueblo of Acoma. The Puebloans attacked and killed Zaldivar and many of his twenty soldiers, but several escaped by jumping off the mesa cliffs. In response, Oñate sent his soldiers to punish the Acoma people. A three day battle erupted around New Year’s Day 1599 and ultimately, the Spanish hauled up a canon to the mesa top and subdued the residents. In retaliation for their rebellion, Oñate enslaved the children and women of Acoma and cut off the right foot of all men over the age of twenty-five. With Contact came conflict and conquest.

Ladders to catch the rain clouds at Acoma (Photo by Hunner)

Homes at Acoma (Photo by Hunner)

The “Black Legend” posits that of all the Europeans who came to the Western Hemisphere, the Spanish treated the Americans the worst, killing and plundering native communities. True, some Spanish explorers did do that; however, so did the English in New England during the Pequot War in the 1630s. In fact, brutal warfare swept the continent from Contact until the late 19th century. Europeans from all lands harshly treated Native Americans.

Sometime between 1607 and 1615, as Jamestown struggled to establish itself in Virginia, the colonial capitol of New Mexico moved to La Villa Real de Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis (the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi). Soon, the Spanish built the Palace of the Governors, the final destination of the Royal Road. The Palace served as the capitol for the Spanish, the Mexican, and finally the U.S. governments of New Mexico. Today it houses the marvelous N.M. History Museum on the Santa Fe Plaza. 

The forbidding Chihuahuan Desert (Photo by Hunner)

Traveling on El Camino Real challenged the settlers, officials, priests, and traders. Mountains, deserts, hostile Native Americans, long distances, and fierce weather all contributed to the arduous journey. Covering ten to fifteen miles a day, it took about six months to go the 1,500 miles from Mexico City. Because of the long sea and land journeys to get to northern New Mexico from Europe, of all of the places in the worldwide Spanish empire, New Mexico was “remote beyond compare.” Due to the isolation, decisions from Spain took years to find their way back to New Mexico, so both governors and priests had a relatively free rein.

The Spanish brought profoundly foreign concepts and shockingly unusual items up the Camino Real. Concepts such as private land ownership, a Christian faith, metal tools and weapons, and deadly microbes entered with force. With Contact, both peoples adapted and adopted elements from the other. Each side changed through cultural code switching (discussed in the Columbian Exchange chapter) which in turn transformed the rest of the world.

Spanish officials and soldiers received an encomienda for their service which granted them land and forced labor. Nearby Puebloans had to work for the Spanish, often when their own crops were ready for harvesting. This encomienda system made life difficult for the Americans.

Catholicism also injected strife into the colony. Priests tried to convert Native Americans by establishing missions at pueblos and quashing native religious practices and beliefs. Some Indians did embrace Christianity as a fatih, others converted to acquire things like metal tool technology or to avoid persecution by the priests. Despite these conversions, many Puebloans continued to follow their traditional beliefs, and the destruction of sacred ceremonies and sites only angered the indigenous peoples.  Native discontent erupted in 1680.

The decade before 1680 devastated the Puebloans. A drought wasted their crops, disease struck many communities hard, and the Spanish settlers and priests demanded labor and obedience. Some pueblo elders attributed these hardships to the abandoning of their traditional religion for Christianity. On August 10, 1680, Native Americans exploded in a colony wide rebellion called the Pueblo Revolt which killed more than four hundred of the estimated 2,000 colonists and a significant number of Pueblo warriors. Twenty-one Franciscan priests also died, some on their own altars.

The settlers who survived the original onslaught found refuge in the Palace of the Governors. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting on the plaza and streets of Santa Fe threatened the lives of the Spanish in the Palace. On August 21, Gov. Antonio de Otermín negotiated an escape from Santa Fe and abandoned the colony in New Mexico. Under the watchful eyes of the Puebloan warriors, the settlers stumbled south down El Camino Real for over 300 miles until they reached El Paseo de Norte on the Rio Grande.

Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza with the flag of New Spain
(Photo by Hunner)

The Spanish remained south until 1692, when the new colonial governor, Don Diego de Vargas, led supporters up the Camino Real to resettle New Mexico. Rumors of new revolts swept New Mexico, and warfare did periodically erupt for the rest of the century.

Why did the Spanish reopen El Camino Real and recolonize New Mexico? Partially for geo-political purposes and partially for religious. By the turn of the 17^th century, France had made inroads into North America and had started its own colonies at Quebec, Montreal, Detroit, Green Bay, St. Louis, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. (We'll look at the French in North America in a future chapter). To counter the French threat to the Spanish empire, New Mexico served as a buffer protecting the silver mines at Zacatecas and elsewhere. Additionally, the Catholic church argued that the many converted Puebloans had been abandoned, and that it was the crown’s duty to provide for the souls of those peoples.

The Pueblo Revolt had many consequences. As the most successful Native American rebellion against Europeans in North America, it illustrated the tenuous nature of colonization, even after decades of settlement. At recolonization, the Spanish changed, abolishing the encomienda labor system and allowing native religious practices to live in concert with Catholicism. In fact, an interesting syncretism exists today after mass on feast days, traditional dances take place on the pueblo's plaza. Some Pueblo peoples attribute the preservation of their ancestral cultures and lands to the Revolt. The Puebloans still inhabit their core lands while most other tribes in the U.S. were forcefully moved to far flung reservations.

A last legacy of the Revolt was the spread of horses through the Great Plains and the West. Native Americans captured the animals left behind, and horse trading spread throughout the Great Plains. This put Indians on fast moving mounts that transformed their way of life and gave rise to the mobile bands of Commanches, Apaches, Kiowas, Lakotas, and other tribes. As famed Native American scholar N. Scott Momaday commented: "It must have been the realization of an ancient dream to be elevated, to be severed from the earth, cut free. What a sense of life that must have been, different from anything they'd ever known. With the horse, their ancient nomadism was realized to the fullest extent, and they had conquered their oldest enemy, which was distance."[1]

We have examined the Spanish Colonial experience at two National Park units in this chapter, but many more preserve the Spanish presence at places across the country. The Spanish explored vast portions of the Americas, and their contacts and exchanges were early encounters between the native peoples and Europeans. Traveling through one of the largest deserts in the world on El Camino Real and living in an isolated part of their empire, the Spanish explorers and settlers faced hardship and rebellion. The society they created helped shape our country and continues to impact our nation. 

In 1906, President Teddy Roosevelt designated El Morro a National Monument as one of the first such units allowed by the Antiquities Act. The bi-national route of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro became a National Historic Trail of the National Park Service in October 2000.

The trail ruts of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro today in southern New Mexico (Photo by Hunner)

El Morro National Monument

HC61, Box 43

Ramah, New Mexico  87321-9603

505.783.4226

www.nps.gov/elmo

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail

National Trails Intermountain Region

P.O. Box 728

Santa Fe, New Mexico  87504-0728

505.988.6098

www.nps.gov/elca

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[1] N. Scott Momaday—PBS The West

Chaco Culture National Historic Park near Nageezi, New Mexico

On the plateau above Chaco Canyon rests the multi-room ruins of Pueblo Alto. The human made trail up the cleft in the canyon’s cliff and along the plateau dates back a thousand years. During the summer monsoon season with its afternoon thunderstorms, a person climbing up out of the canyon and hiking to Pueblo Alto sometimes dodges downpours and sees nearby lightning strikes. Standing in the ruins of Pueblo Alto, buffeted by wind, I saw a broad road sweeping north toward the Salmon and Aztec ruins some thirty miles away. In fact, Pueblo Alto is one of the gateways into Chaco Canyon, the end of a massive network of roads which funneled peoples and goods to this desert center from around North and Central America.

Artist's Recreation of Pueblo Bonito in 12th Century (NPS)

Set at 5,000 feet above sea level amidst a parched landscape which gets less than ten inches of annual rainfall, the Four Corners region of the Southwest holds a sparse beauty of earthy tones, hardy plants, and wide open spaces. Mountain ranges fifty miles away frame the horizons, and mesas punctuate the foreground like desert islands. Chaco Canyon cuts through the landscape with its mile wide trough which runs east to west for twenty miles. Scattered along the canyon floor and interspersed on the plateau tops are over a dozen major ruins and numerous smaller ones, all illustrating the many skills of the Chaco builders.

The Chacoans created a sophisticated civilization between 900 and 1200 Current Era (CE). They grew corn which like elsewhere transformed their ancestors from hunters and gatherers to farmers. To this day, Native Americans in New Mexico talk about the three sisters of food—corn, squash, and beans. Perhaps the most important of these sisters is corn, sometimes called the Corn Mother. Other foods, unknown to the rest of the world, also developed in the Americas. Squash, beans, chiles, manioc, potatoes, chocolate, and tobacco are some of the unique crops that provided healthy nutrition. In fact, these foods provided Americans a better diet than the Europeans had at the time. Once these crops crossed over to Europe, they continued to revolutionize people’s lives with better nutrition and even prevented starvation. We will explore this “Columbian Exchange” more in a later posting.

As the largest complex in the Chaco valley, Pueblo Bonito had 650 rooms spread out over two acres in a D shaped structure. The long edge of the D faces south for solar gain but also for the important orientation along the cardinal points treasured by the Chacoans. Pueblo Bonito, with its earliest construction begun in the 10th century, rose five stories. Until the 20th century, Pueblo Bonito was the largest built structure in the United States.

Pueblo Bonito (Photo by J. Hunner)

Room at Pueblo Bonito with vigas (Photo by J. Hunner)

It grew over three centuries in a way that entailed planning on a complicated and massive scale.  Take for instance the wood roof beams (or vigas). Excavations of the earliest vigas show that they came from nearby piñon trees. The Chacoans quickly deforested the piñon trees so they had to go to the nearby mountain ranges for their timber. At the Chuska Mountains some fifty miles west, work crews felled large Ponderosa Pine trees with stone axes. While still green and soft, Chacoans chopped them up into the right size for the various rooms. The vigas then dried for two years to make them lighter to carry. Men then carried these logs fifty miles and built the rooms of the great pueblos and kivas at Pueblo Bonito. Archeologists estimate that 215,000 vigas were used in building the Great Houses and the other structures in Chaco Canyon.

In the middle of the pueblos’ plazas and interspersed among their numerous rooms are often circular kivas where clans gathered to worship, socialize, teach, and work. At Pueblo Bonito, thirty-five kivas grace the ruin. These numerous places show that the Chacoans were likely a deeply religious people.

Kiva at Pueblo Bonito (Photo by J. Hunner)

For decades, archeologists have wondered why humans established a dense urban complex in a harsh desert setting. Some have speculated that the canyon served as a distribution center to share the harvest around the Chacoan region to communities whose crops had failed. Others proposed that it was a seasonal ceremonial center, visited by a large number of peoples from the outlying communities spread around the region. A peculiar fact uncovered by the archeologists is that there are relatively few burials at Chaco Canyon. They concluded that the large pueblos with hundreds of rooms housed only a couple of thousand people, whose population swelled during the seasonal periods of ritual and festivals.

Here’s where it gets pretty interesting. Rising up out of the east end of the canyon lies Fajada Butte, a tall lone mesa where Anna Sofer found a spiral petroglyph she calls the Sun Dagger half way up the mesa. This spiral, carved into a rock hidden behind three large slabs, is a time keeper. A dagger of sunlight bisects the shadowed spiral on the summer solstice. At the equinoxes, a dagger of light frames the spiral. On the solstices and equinoxes, signal fires spread the news to the whole Four Corners region. Using their built environment as time pieces, the Chacoans had a precise seasonal calendar.

Slab casting sunrise shadow on spiral with inset of Sun Dagger (Photo from www.solsticeproject.org/lunarmark.htm)

Some Chaco buildings perform an even more amazing feat: they track the 18.2 year progression of where the moon rises in the east. At the pueblo of Chetro Ketl on the canyon floor, one of the walls runs along a straight line for about 300 feet. This alignment points to the spot on a nearby cliff where the moon rises on the farthest northern point of its 18.2 year cycle. Few if any other buildings in the world orient so precisely to this subtle lunar cycle.

Prehistoric Stairways climbing out of the Canyon 

Roads radiate out from the canyon as straight avenues. Ancient stairs carved into the cliff faces funneled people into and out of the canyon where they then used eighteen feet wide roads lined with stone curbs to travel to the over 150 other Great Houses and beyond. Sea shells from the Pacific Ocean, soapstone from the Midwest, and amazingly, parrot feathers from the tropics of Central America have surfaced in the excavations at Chaco.  For example, in 1941, park personnel, wanting to stabilize a cliff face that towered over Pueblo Bonito, cleaned out the cleft at the base of the cliff. After they removed the rock and debris, they found a Macaw parrot feather used as a prayer stick deposited there 1,000 years ago. They removed that too. Within a couple of months, this part of the cliff calved off and smashed a section of Pueblo Bonito. Parrot feathers, soapstone, seashells provide evidence that Chacoans traded with faraway places.

Chacoan Road network (Map by USGS)

The end of the human habitation at Chaco Canyon lies in as much mystery as its purpose. Here’s some theories: perhaps communities collapsed as a fifteen year drought around 1150 fried the region’s corn fields. Or perhaps warfare doomed the culture, as a new wave of migrants swept forcefully through area. Whatever the reason, the Ancestral Pueblo peoples left in a well ordered manner. Kiva roofs came off, and the vigas set on fire. This took weeks to do which indicates that the end of Chaco was not a panicked retreat, but an orderly and, not surprisingly for the master builders of the Southwest, planned event.

The diaspora from Chaco spread to all directions. When they left the Chaco region, the Ancestral Pueblo people migrated to places with more abundant and steady sources of water like the San Juan River to the north and the Rio Grande to the east. Many of the modern pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona are descendants of the Chacoan people.

Pot hunters in the late 19th century destroyed the ruins looting the valuable artifacts left behind by the Chacoans. Protection and preservation began with Richard Wetherill, an amateur archeologist and cowboy. He hired 100 Navajos to help with his excavation of the ruins and sent more than 60,000 pieces of turquoise, pottery, and stone tools to the American Museum of Natural History on the East Coast.

In 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt created the Chaco Canyon National Monument under a provision of the Antiquities Act of 1906.  Chaco Canyon then became part of the NPS at its creation in 1916. In 1987, UNESCO designated Chaco as a World Heritage Site.

Walking through the impressive ruins of Chaco Canyon, climbing out of the valley on ancient stairs 1,000 years old, hiking across the desert plateaus on wide roads lined with boulders to outlier complexes, I feel in awe of the people who lived here so long ago. With stone tools, they fashioned a complex civilization which documented the movement of the heavens and passage of the seasons with the alignments of their large structures. They built roads to bring their far flung peoples to the canyon and to trade with other civilizations 1,500 miles away. It is one of the most amazing and inspiring places in the United States.

Fajada Butte looking southwest (Photo by J. Hunner)

Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Box 220
Nageezi, New Mexico 87037
505.786.7061
www.nps.gov/chcu

Related NPS sites:
Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico
Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico
Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, New Mexico
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico
Salinas Pueblos Missions National Monument, New Mexico