Marsha and I never met the person from whom we bought our home in the Village at Rancho Viejo in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We knew her name of course – and a little bit about her from the way she furnished and decorated her house. We also are learning the names of other previous occupants from the catalogs and solicitations that still arrive for them in our mailbox. It is just human nature to want to know something about those that came before you. To discover who the very first residents of our property were however required some serious research.
But first a brief note on date terminology. In researching this paper I came across several conventions for expressing dates. There is of course the BC (Before Christ) & AD (Anno Domini) nomenclature that many of us grew up with – which was replaced in scientific and academic circles in the 1990s by BCE (Before Common Era) & CE (Common Era) because they “do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog.”
But first a brief note on date terminology. In researching this paper I came across several conventions for expressing dates. There is of course the BC (Before Christ) & AD (Anno Domini) nomenclature that many of us grew up with – which was replaced in scientific and academic circles in the 1990s by BCE (Before Common Era) & CE (Common Era) because they “do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog.”
In
addition, in the Archaeological writings that I was reading there was YBP
(“Years Before Present Time”) – instead of X number of years ago. And my own personal favorite “uncal RCYBP” (“uncalibrated
Radiocarbon Years Before Present”.) In
this paper I used the BCE & CE convention because most of the quotes that I
used already contain those abbreviations.
“I sure hope we run into some bison”
When Pedro
de Peralta came to Santa Fe in 1610, he and his fellow colonists were probably
aware that they were not the first people to live here. The area in fact already had a name – “Ogapoge” (“down at the Olivella shell-bead
water”) – given to it by the local Tewa-speaking Indians who had arrived on the
scene in the late 1300s or early 1400s CE.
And they themselves were preceded centuries earlier by a groups of
people referred to archaeologically as the “Paleoindians” and the “Archaics.”
12,000 years ago the landscape and climate of
Santa Fe were quite different than today.
According to Jason Shapiro in his book “Before Santa Fe”, “The area around Santa Fe would have been
heavily forested with varieties of spruce, pines and conifers, interspersed
with grasslands, with a climate much like that in British Columbia or other
parts of the northwest today except that these Late Pleistocene environments
were more complex with a mixture of both existing and extinct species.” The trend toward warmer and drier began
around 9,500 BCE and became what is basically today’s landscape and climate
around 5,000 BCE
Around 12,000
years ago the people referred to as Paleoindians or Paleoamericans entered, and
subsequently inhabited, the Americas – and New Mexico. These hunter-gatherer people were spread over
a wide geographical area, resulting in wide regional variations in lifestyles.
However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production
– the so-called lithic reduction method.
Paleoindians,
including those in the Santa Fe area, would have hunted such game as mammoths
and mastodons; bison that were as much at 1,500 pounds heavier (almost twice
the size) than today’s species; caribou, elk and prong-horned antelope; ground
sloths, one-humped camels and glyptodonts (an extinct subfamily of large,
heavily armored armadillos); as well as grizzly bears and mountain lions.
The number
of Paleoindian sites that have been discovered is quite small, probably because
of the destruction caused by natural processes like flooding, freezing, erosion
and (what Shapiro calls) “the underappreciated actions of plants and
animals.” Plus – “if
we make the reasonable assumption that contemporary and historically identified
hunting and gathering societies are acceptable models for Paleoindians, we are
talking about small mobile bands of somewhere between fifteen and forty
people…[in short] there were not very many Paleoindians, they left relatively
small amounts of stuff in the archeological records, and much of the material
that they created and used has not been preserved.”
(Paleoindians hunting a glyptodont)
Still fifty-nine sites have been identified in the Albuquerque Basin, fifty miles south of New Mexico’s capital city. And several miles west of the Santa Fe the Caja del Rio site contained evidence of projectiles and tools made in the Clovis (11,500 – 13,000 years ago) and subsequent Folsom, Plano, Midland, Angostura and Cody/Scottsbluff time periods – indicating this site’s desirability as a camping place for a period of time in excess of 4,000 years
In a
November 20, 2015 Albuquerque Journal
article Santa Fe Assessor Gus Martinez is reported as saying that, “of the
30,451 residential homes within the city limits of Santa Fe, 4,932 have
out-of-state addresses on their property tax bill. That works out to be about
16.2 percent, or close to 1 in 6.
Outside the city limits [where Marsha and I live], 2,485 of the 22,283
homes in Santa Fe County, about 11.2 percent, are owned by out-of-staters.”
Same as it
ever was, according to the above-cited Jason Shapiro. “This contemporary phenomenon is not the first
instance of transient, seasonal, and part-time residency in Santa Fe, but the
belongings of the early seasonal residents were fairly minimal – yucca fiber
sandals, spear throwers and stone-tipped darts, a few stone or bone tools, some
baskets, cordage-woven nets, and maybe a rabbit fur blanket or two. Several thousand years ago, these few things
were enough to make it in Santa Fe.”
"I know exactly where the
antelope herd hangs out."
The next wave of short-term residents are referred to by Archaeologists as “Archaic” hunters, gatherers, and foragers – and they lived in the Santa Fe area about 1,500 to 1,600 years ago – the Paleoindians having left the scene some 6,000 years earlier. The Archaics’ food menu was no longer large herd animals, which were now less available due to climatic changes, but instead smaller animals such as antelope and deer – and a wider assortment of wild plants.
Again Jason
Shapiro: “all Archaic foragers relied to a greater or lesser degree upon
mobility. The earliest hunter-gatherers
seem to have been more dependent upon ‘encounter based’ strategies…(‘Gee, I
sure hope that we run into some bison.’)
As people became more familiar with smaller territories they modified
this approach…Later Archaic groups were very familiar with all aspects of their
locales and knew what plants and animals would most likely be available at
specific locations during particular times of the year (‘I know exactly where the
antelope herd hangs out.’)”
The Archaic
sites around Santa Fe range in age from 7,000 to 1,500 years ago with one of
the most significant being La Bajada near Tetilla Peak about fifteen miles
southwest of downtown Santa Fe. Camps
have been discovered to the northwest of the city in Las Campanas and south in
the Tierra Contenta subdivision. Others
have been found near the Cochiti Reservoir.
“People living near Santa Fe could have shifted their temporary residential camps from the riparian areas near the Rio Grande and lower Santa Fe Rivers, where fish, turtles, and water-loving plants such as cattails and arrow-weed would have been available in the spring, through the grassland savannah on the broad plains west of the city, where Indian grass, amaranth, dropseed, goosefoot, and other small seed plants provided early summer greens and, later in the summer, ripe seeds. In the fall, people would have moved into the pinon-juniper woodlands located to the north and east of the city for the collection of pinon nuts, cactus fruits, and juniper berries, and finally into the higher Ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests of the Sangre de Cristo mountains for fall deer and elk hunting. Finally they would return to the lower valley of the Santa Fe River near the Rio Grande.”
The next
cultural periods and sets of locals reflect the change in lifestyle to what is
sometimes called the “triumvirate of Puebloan traits” – agriculture,
sedentariness (the practice of living in one place for a long time), and
village-scale organization. During this
period 400/600 CE to 1325 CE Pueblo life in Santa Fe developed such that (according to Shapiro):
“If you climbed Atalaya peak [in southeast Santa Fe] eight hundred years ago and had a decent pair of binoculars, you could probably pick out, or at least see the smoke from, most of the Coalition Period pueblos that occupied various parts of the city. Right in the center of downtown was El Pueblo de Santa Fe, as well as a pueblo on Fort Marcy Hill. On the south side of town one could see Mocho and Upper Arroyo Canyon and possibly Los Alamos Pueblo located several miles southeast of Santa Fe along state route 285. Continuing on the west side of town where Agua Fria Street and the Alameda bracket the Santa Fe River, you could find several settlements beginning with the largest pueblos, Agua Fria Schoolhouse and Pindi, and continuing with several others positioned like beads on a string for three miles along the river. These were not the almost tentative pueblos that appeared during the Developmental period but were the successful results of a couple hundred years of maize-fueled village growth…Pindi had no less than 175 rooms…and Agua Fria Schoolhouse…upwards of 500.”
El Pueblo
de Santa Fe (possibly settled as early as 400 CE) was located at the site of
the new Convention Center. And the Fort
Marcy settlement included the large village of Kwapoge whose eight-foot trash
heap indicates principal occupancy took place 1050 – 1150 CE. The refuse heap
also included samples of Red Mesa black-on-white pottery from the Cibola Region
near Gallup, NM suggesting a long-distance trade connection.
One
identifying marker that distinguishes this new Coalition Period pottery from
Developmental is the use of organic, carbon-based paint (instead of
mineral-based) on what is now called Santa Fe black-on-white pottery.
By
archaeological convention 1325 CE marks the beginning of the Classic Period
“when virtually all of the inhabitants of the northern Rio Grande region gave
up small and medium-sized villages in favor of big settlements.”
South of
Santa Fe the Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, for example, “started out as a 100-room
hamlet in about 1300. Within the next 30 years, it exploded into a 1,000-room
pueblo,” according to Douglas Schwartz of School for Advanced Research as,
reported in the Santa Fe New Mexican
January 29, 2016. Schwartz was the
Principal Investigator on the 1971 excavation of the site and developer of the arroyohondo.org
website.
Click here
for Arroyo Hondo Pueblo animation. http://dennisrhollowayarchitect.com/ArroyoHondo.html
So,
throughout the prehistory of Santa Fe –
from the Paleoindians, to the Archaics, to the Puebloans – Native Americans
have hunted, foraged, and lived in the city and some of its surrounding
areas. But other than inference of likelihood
– is there any real evidence that these early indigenous people actually set
sandal-clad foot on the 23,000 acre Rancho Viejo property?
“A lovely little pueblo.”
In my
research as to whether Prehistory Indians were actually present in Rancho
Viejo, I found references to two reports mentioning Rancho Viejo by name and archived
at the New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies: "An Archaeological
Inventory of 302.5 Acres, Rancho Viejo Phase I” and "Request approval to
vacate a platted [planned] archaeological easement on 118.670 acres within
Rancho Viejo.”
Ian Norrish
cited the second study in his column in the August 2014 “Rancho Viejo Roundup” newsletter. At that time he was able to access the paper
online and he reported on it in his article.
“At the
request of Rancho Viejo de Santa Fe Inc., the prior developers of Rancho Viejo
1 and 2 the archaeologist of the Museum conducted an archaeological inventory
of an area of Rancho Viejo.”
They found
that the area was not “archaeology significant” and allowed the developer to
proceed with construction. However the
report did go on to say, “The site(s) represent a important aspect of human
occupation of the Southern Santa Fe and Eastern Galisteo River basins…[and]…
reflect occupations during the late Archaic to Basketmaker II periods (800 BC.
to A.D. 400), the Coalition and early Classic periods (A.D. 1200 to 1425), and
the late Territorial to Statehood periods (A.D. 1880 to 1941.”
Ian Norrish
concludes that he no longer considers himself to be just “an ‘old guy’ from
back east settling into retirement in Santa Fe, but a modern time-traveller
hiking and biking these ancient lands.”
The paper
is no longer online, so I requested both reports from the Office of
Archaeological Studies. However current New
Mexico State Statute, enacted some years after Ian Norrish’s online research, prevents
the OAS from sharing such data with the general public in order to keep the location
of unprotected sites private – and thus not provide a map to treasure-seekers
who might plunder them. Also these
papers seem to concern themselves with the 6,000 acres of Rancho Viejo now
occupied by its HOA communities, and therefore might not have answered
questions about the entire 23,000 acre Rancho Viejo property, which is my area
of interest for this chapter.
Then –
while in the back-and-forth process of setting up a meeting to discuss my query
with Dr. Eric Blinman, OAS Director – I came across a November 1995
"Interview with Four Archaeologists", published in "Windmills and Dreams: A History ofEldorado and Neighboring Areas."
The Census Designated place of Eldorado at Santa Fe abuts Rancho Viejo
land at Eldorado’s north and west borders – so perhaps historically and
archaeologically they have some things in common. And Dr. Blinman was one of the quartet of
scientists who were asked if pueblos existed in the Eldorado area.
Stew
Peckham, also part of the panel, replied first, “…there was the one called
Pueblo West which was a little more west of [excavation site] LA 8 which was
really off the old road of Eldorado, the original first entrance.”
And Eric
Blinman continued, "It is very well
hidden, that is one reason why it has not been damaged very much by vandalism,
it is in excellent shape. It is a
lovely little pueblo and will be part of Rancho Viejo subdivision when they develop
that. There is no choice to preserving
it. It is such a nice pueblo, they want
to preserve it. Right now they have the local residents being site stewards of
it…keeping track of who comes and goes.
The earliest possibilities of anyone being out there would probably be
as early as 12,000 years ago with hunters chasing after mega-fauna in the
area….Eldorado would be a transitory gathering ground."
Dr. Blinman
and I met on a Sunday morning at his office in the Center for New Mexican
Archaeology on Caja del Rio Road in Santa Fe.
The short
answer to the hunter/gatherer/resident question is that, what is now Rancho
Viejo was one part of the “mosaic of resources” in the Santa Fe area utilized
by the Prehistory Indians for food and housing.
And Pueblo Wells, better known (and searchable) as Chamisa Locita, was
in fact the first housing community in Rancho Viejo predating Marsha’s and my
home in “The Village” by over 600 years.
He directed
me to the “Galisteo Basin Archaeological Sites Protection Act" website, where it
said, “Chamisa Locita (LA 4) is a Coalition-period [1200 – 1325/50 CE] residential
complex first recorded by Nels Nelson in 1914. The site consists of a long,
primary east-west mound with four additional mounds abutting it perpendicularly
to the south. This roughly E-shaped configuration defines two primary plazas
sharing the long east-west mound. These plazas are partially enclosed by
additional detached mounds to the south. The detached mounds may define
additional, but more informal plaza areas.”
Nelson’s
excavation showed that, “the long east-west roomblock was actually continuous
and common to both plazas. Nelson depicted 16 roomblocks, and the scale of
Nelson's map suggests that there were between 280 to 300 rooms. Several roomblocks were probably two stories
tall.”
And, according
to a 2003 University of New Mexico Archaeology paper, “A circular depression
represents a probable kiva. The multistoried pueblo covers a 350 ft north-south
by 450 ft east-west area. Several nearly enclosed plazas are represented,
contrasting with the linear layout of Pueblo Alamo. Nelson (1915) excavated 44
rooms, including a room with walls decorated with red painted lines and thin
zigzag motifs. The Santa Fe Archaeological Society (1959) dug three additional rooms.
Outside of these poorly documented projects, no recent excavations have been
conducted at this important Coalition period pueblo. The ceramic artifacts
suggest an occupation between A.D. 1200 and 1400 (Dickson 1979:118). Chamisa
Locita and Pueblo Alamo are contemporary Coalition period village complexes,
but Pueblo Alamo was apparently abandoned before Chamisa Locita.”
Easy access
to water was the major need for any form of permanent housing – then as well as
during the 20th century development of the Rancho Viejo HOA
communities. The 2003 UNM Archaeology
paper addresses that issue for Chamisa Locita.
“The
spring-fed floodplain areas of the main Arroyo Hondo canyon seem to offer the
greatest agricultural potential. Additional springs are found at Pueblo Wells
in Canyon Ancho, 1 km west of Pueblo Alamo and
at the spring-supported Chamisa Locita
(LA 4), another large Coalition period pueblo. A windmill currently taps
the spring, and the water is used for grazing purposes at or near Arroyo Hondo
Pueblo slope.”
Pueblo Wells was occupied from
1200 – 1400 CE, (as mentioned above) a
time in which many similarly sized “smaller” pueblos were established in this
area by several different groups of people, from various tribes, speaking
various languages, and trying to live together in mutual tolerance despite
different ideologies, interests and native tongues. The formation of, and movement to, the much
larger eight Galisteo Basin Pueblos (Galisteo, San Cristobal, She, Colorado,
Largo, Blanco, San Lazaro, and San Marcos) indicates the success of this
attempt at coexistence – with the inhabitants of Chamisa Locita relocating to
the San Marcos Pueblo near the current town of Cerrillos.
One reason
for this ability to coexist might be the accretive nature of Pueblo Indian
culture – “the process of growth or increase, typically by the gradual
accumulation of additional layers or matter.”
Dr. Blinman said to think of the Pueblo Indian belief system as like an
onion with the core beliefs in the center and additional layers added as they adopted
new rituals and beliefs. The innermost
layer of the Tewa tribe, e.g., is the moieties – “each of two social or ritual
groups into which a people is divided.” For others such as the Keresan it would
be the Medicine and Clown Societies. The outer layer of all New Mexican Pueblo
Indian “onions” is the Catholicism, which was forced upon them by the Spanish
colonizers. This ability to add on
beliefs without sacrificing or even modifying existing ones allows today’s
Puebloans to legitimately profess to be both Tewa and Catholic in
religion. And, perhaps in the past, to
coexist more easily.
Chamisa
Placita is located near the north-south border of Rancho Viejo and Eldorado,
within walking distance of the Eldorado Community Center, where currently it is
watched over by volunteers from the nearby Alteza Estates.
Sources:
Before Santa Fe:
Archaeology of the City Different, Jason Shapiro, Museum of New Mexico
Press; August 16, 2008
Windmills and Dreams:
A History of the Eldorado Community and Neighboring Areas,
Eldorado Volunteers, Eldorado Community Association (1997)
