Sacred Mesas: Pueblo Time, Space, and History in the Aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680

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Sacred Mesas: Pueblo Time, Space,and History in the Aftermath of

the Pueblo Revolt of 1680

Joseph R. Aguilar and Robert W. Preucel

From the hindsight provided by nearly three hundred years ofhistory, the Pueblo Indian Revolution of 1680 is to be understoodmost profoundly as a great act of restoration by the ancestors oftoday’s Pueblo Indian people.

—Ortiz (2005: 2)

On 5 August 1980, thirty-four Hopi and six Taos runners gathered in theplaza at Tuahtah (Taos Pueblo) in northern New Mexico (Sockyma andSockyma 1980). They said their morning prayers with sacred corn meal,washed their faces in the nearby stream, and then received instructionsfrom the governor of Tuahtah. They were told of the solemnity andimportance of their mission and then one Hopi and one Taos runnerwere given a leather pouch. This pouch contained a message written onbuckskin inviting all the Pueblo people to gather on 9 August for ahistoric meeting at Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo). It also contained acord with two knots to commemorate the day when Catua and Omtua,the two runners from Tetsugeh (Tesuque Pueblo), were captured andkilled by the Spaniards. These two runners then led the group out of theplaza on their long journey to Second Mesa at Hopi. So began the run tore-enact the dedication of their ancestors and celebrate the tricentennialof the famous Pueblo Revolt of 1680.The Pueblo Revolt or, the first American Revolution as Joe Sando

(1998: 3) calls it, is an American story of freedom and resistance totyranny. After eighty-two years of living under Spanish rule, PuebloIndian people and their Navajo and Apache allies rose up in a

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coordinated attack to throw off the yoke of Spanish authority. First atTetsugeh and then at many other villages, Pueblo warriors attacked theirmission priests and set their mission churches on fire. For nine days, theybesieged the Spanish capital of Santa Fe, finally forcing GovernorAntonio de Otermín to retreat in disgrace to El Paso del Norte (nowCiudad Juárez, Mexico). A total of 401 Spanish settlers and 21 Franciscanpriests lost their lives in the uprising. The number of Pueblo peoplekilled, however, is not recorded. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was thus theearliest and most successful native insurrection along the northernSpanish frontier. And yet, the revolt is almost never mentioned in UShistory textbooks (but see Weber 1999). This fact speaks to the ongoingmarginalization of Native American histories and their segregationwithin contact period scholarship.The Pueblo Revolt period has not been a focus of sustained archaeo-

logical research. Although southwestern archaeology was founded on thestudy of mission villages, particularly Pecos (Bandelier 1881; Kidder1916, 1924, 1958), Hawikku (Hodge 1918, 1937), and Awat’ovi(Montgomery et al. 1949) (some of which were burned during therevolt), the focus quickly shifted to the study of the "prehistoric" past,in particular the archaeology of sites such as Chaco Canyon and MesaVerde. The colonial encounter came to mark a convenient break betweenmodern Pueblo life, the domain of ethnographers, and the deep past, thepurview of archaeologists. The segmentation of time created an implicitbarrier to holistic research linking Pueblo pasts to Pueblo presence. Onlyrecently, with the emergence of resistance and identity as scholarlytopics, has the field returned to the colonial encounter as a researcharea. This is now expressed by the renewed interest in mission pueblos(Adler and Dick 1999; Ivey and Thomas 2005; Lycett 2002), mesatop‘refugee’ villages (Ferguson 1996a, 2002; Liebmann 2006; Liebmann et al.2005; Preucel 2000a, 2000b, 2006; Preucel et al. 2002; Wilcox 2009),pueblitos (Towner 1996, 2003; Towner and Johnson 1998), and theSpanish capital of Santa Fe (Shapiro 2008; Snow 1974).In our chapter, we wish to contribute to the study of the Pueblo Revolt

period by introducing a place-based approach emphasizing the ontologicalinterdependence of time, space, and history. Our starting point is the ideathat places embody history both physically and spiritually and that histor-ical memories are given life when people re-encounter these places. Forexample, the 1980 re-enactment of Catua and Omtua’s run by selectedPueblo youth not only brought forth the memory of the revolt but it alsopublicly reconfirmed the same social values that made the Pueblo Revoltsuccessful. Similarly, our choice to do archaeology at the post-Revolt mesavillages occupied by Pueblo ancestors not only provides us with an


268 Perspective Arising Out of the Americas


opportunity to engage with Pueblo history, but it also requires us toconsider the implications of our research for contemporary Pueblo com-munities. At the same time, it causes us to reflect upon our differentsubjectivities. One of us (Aguilar) is a member of Powhoge owingeh (SanIldefonso Pueblo), conducting research on a village occupied by hisancestors, while the other (Preucel) is a Philadelphian collaborating withCochiti Pueblo in the study of their ancestral village. Both of us share acommitment to providing opportunities for Pueblo youth to visit theseancestral places and learn about their ongoing significance.This place-based perspective is essential for the further development

of indigenous archaeology (Smith and Wobst 2005; Watkins 2000; seeGould, Mrozowski, this volume). There are several reasons for this. First,a place-based approach embraces the strong link that the Pueblo andother indigenous peoples maintain with their past. For Pueblo people,there is no disconnect between place and time—the contemporary worldand that of their ancestors are embedded in the same place—it is thisreality that generates their continuing attachment to these places.Second, a place-based perspective furthers the aims of an indigenousarchaeology by rejecting the false dichotomy between history and pre-history and the implicit assumption that places of history are linked toentangled European/indigenous encounters, while places linked exclu-sively to an indigenous past are part of prehistory (see Pawlowicz andLaViolette, this volume). This approach also resonates with perspectivesdeveloped in African archaeology, especially how the presencing of thepast occurs in ritual settings where deep time histories and more recenthistories figure prominently in the lives of people today (Lane, Schmidt,and Walz, this volume).

13.1 PUEBLO PLACEMAKING

Placemaking is sometimes defined as the social practices of constructingplace (Preucel and Matero 2008: 84). From this point of view, it is ascharacteristic of indigenous cultures as it is of modern Western capitalistsociety. Because the making of place is an inherently political process,certain places may be incorporated into sanctioned views of the socialimaginary. Places of resistance, such as battlefields, may be sanitized anddepoliticized as they are incorporated into specific narratives emphasiz-ing the continuity of past and present. Alternatively, they may be recu-perated and used to deny continuity as a means of challenging thedominant social order. What is and is not considered to be a place is


Pueblo Time, Space, and History 269


thus part of an ongoing dialogue involving contestation and negotiation.The refashioning of space into place is a technology of reordering reality,and its success depends on the degree to which this refashioning isconcealed in the details of material culture and site plan and the degreeto which it generates habitual action.This perspective, as useful as it is, can be critiqued for being somewhat

one-sided. It considers how people make places, but unfortunately paysless attention to how places make people. One of the central premises ofcontemporary indigenous studies is that place has its own agency andlife-force (Cajete 2000). Places and people exist within a moral landscapestructured by reciprocal relationships of obligation such that places givepeople wisdom and people give place respect. It is the balance of obliga-tions that simultaneously constructs personal identity and ensures cul-tural survival. As Keith Basso (1996) notes, places offer a remarkablecapacity for triggering acts of self-reflection, inspiring thoughts andmemories. He suggests that places ‘animate the ideas and feelings ofpersons who attend to them’, just as ‘these same ideas and feelingsanimate the places on which attention has been bestowed’ (Basso 1996:107). Many indigenous peoples recognize a set of responsibilities associ-ated with being-in-the-world that requires honouring all living things,from plants and animals to mountains and spirits. Because things are notalways in balance, there are forces of chaos at work that can make someplaces dangerous; places require respect and spiritual preparation.For Pueblo people, places are given meaning through the movements

of sentient beings (people, animals, and deities) and their encounterswith one another. For example, when the Hopi emerged from theunderworld and entered the Fourth Way of Life, they entered into aspiritual covenant with the deity Maasaw to journey until they reachedtheir destiny at Tuuwanasavi (‘the centre place’) (Kuwanwisiwma andFerguson 2004: 26). They were instructed to leave ang kuktota (‘foot-prints’) to demonstrate that they met their spiritual obligations. Today,Hopi point to the ruins of former villages and the potteries, stone tools,petroglyphs, and other artefacts left behind as offerings as the footprintsof their ancestors. These footprints are thus tangible proof of ancestralclan migrations and land stewardship (Kuwanwisiwma and Ferguson2004: 26). But they are also intangible evidence since they embody place-names that are incorporated into prayers and songs as part of specificceremonies.Locating past events in absolute time in the manner that archaeologist

have traditionally favoured is not a priority with Pueblo people. Rather,what is important is not so much when things occurred, but where theyoccurred and what these places can reveal about Pueblo society and



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cultural values that is useful in the present. This place-based perspectivecollapses the standard distinction between prehistory and history andallows people an ongoing dialogue with their ancestors to guide appro-priate behaviours. That dialogue is essential for building closer tieswithin the community and unveils how history is produced and memor-ialized (see Lane, Schmidt, Walz, this volume). Places are nodes in asacred geography that links together mountains, mesas, rivers, andvillages. Alfonso Ortiz (1969) and Rina Swentzell (1993) have eloquentlydescribed how the Tewa world is organized according to blessings andenergy flows radiating outward from the village plaza to the mountain-tops and back again to the village. This general principle, if not thespecific details, is widespread among all the Pueblos.The mesas located in the cardinal directions near villages are especially

venerated. For example, Tunyo pin (‘spotted mountain’) or Black Mesa islocated due north of Powhoge (Fig. 13.1). It figures prominently in manySan Ildefonso stories. It contains a cave where a giant lives with his wifeand daughter (Harrington 1916: 295). This giant was known to eat littlechildren until he was killed by the War Gods. Parents today still warntheir children to be careful or they will be taken away by the giant.Traditional stories mention that the mountain once emitted smoke and

Fig. 13.1. Tunyo, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico (photo: Joseph Aguilar)




fire. The mesa is also the location of one of the most famous of the TewaRevolt period villages. This village is called Tunyo kwaje teqwakeji (‘oldhouses on the top of Tunyo’) (Harrington 1916: 297). Because its wallswere built of cobblestones from the Rio Grande gravels and have longago collapsed, there are no room block alignments visible. The import-ance of place is perhaps best indicated by the fact that dances weretraditionally performed on top of the mesa (Harrington 1916: 295).Similarly, the Pajarito Plateau is a sacred place for the people of

Powhoge. It is the location of many ancestral villages, such as Potsuwi(‘village at the gap where the water sinks’), Sankawi (‘village at the gap ofthe prickly pear cactus’), Navawi (‘village at the gap of the gamepit’) andNake’muu (‘village on the edge’). Nake’muu is the revered place that wasrebuilt and reoccupied during the Reconquest period. The name refers tothe location of the village at the confluence of Water Canyon and Cañonde Valle, on the narrow point at the end of a mesa. The physiographicsetting of Nake’muu is quite dramatic, and a visit to the site leaves nodoubt as to why the site was used as a place of refuge. Perhaps due to itsclandestine location, where very few if any Spanish soldiers had everventured, miles away from the stronghold of Tunyo, there is no mentionof Nake’muu in the historical literature. However, the site is well knownto archaeologists ever since Edgar Lee Hewett (1906) visited the site andproduced the first sketch maps of the village, calling it the ‘the bestpreserved ruin in this region’. Although no archaeological excavationshave taken place, the site has been extensively remapped and photo-graphed by Los Alamos National Laboratory in consultation withPowhoge as a part of a long-term monitoring project (Vierra 2003).Hahn Mesa (people’s mesa), or Cochiti Mesa, located 7 miles north-

west of Cochiti, is a sacred place for Cochiti people (Fig. 13.2). It is thelocation of one of their ancestral villages occupied after the Revolt of1680. It is known as Hanat K’otyiti (‘Cochiti above’). Other Cochitinames include K’otyiti shoma (‘old Cochiti’), K’otyiti kamatse shoma(‘old Cochiti settlement’), and K’otyiti haarctitc (‘Cochiti houses’)(Harrington 1916: 432). The main village is a large double plaza pueblo.There are at least 137 ground-floor rooms distributed in six room blocksand a kiva in each plaza. All of the rooms are constructed of shaped tuffblocks set into an adobe mortar. The masonry work is generally quitegood and, in some places, the walls stand 3 m high. Viga and latilla holesare present in upper levels of several walls and these provide directevidence for roofs and possibly second-storey rooms. Many roomshave well-preserved wall features such as doorways, vents, niches, andpole sockets. Quite a few walls have large expanses of intact plaster, andsome of this is discoloured from burning. Artefacts are concentrated in




the shallow midden areas to the north, east, and south of the village.Approximately nine single room structures and several indeterminatefeatures are located immediately outside the room blocks. Tree ring datesindicate an occupation date as early as 1684 (Preucel et al. 2002).A secondary village, or rancheria, is situated approximately 150 m south-

east of the plaza pueblo. It consists of an informal grouping of approxi-mately twenty-seven non-contiguous structures, ranging from one to tworooms in size. These structures are all highly eroded and, in some cases, thewall alignments are completely obscured. The building materials are tuff,and there is a markedly higher proportion of irregular to shaped stones thanat the plaza pueblo. The spatial arrangement of the structures is ratherloosely organized and extends in a linear fashion approximately 160 mdown the mesa. Some structures possess a general northwest–southeastorientation, while others have a northeast–southwest alignment. There isno evidence for ritual architecture. The pottery indicates that the rancheriadates to the Reconquest period and may be contemporary with the plazapueblo or possibly built during the 1696 Revolt (Preucel 2000a).

13.2 RESTORING THE TEWA WORLD

The San Ildefonso Indians preserve traditions of this siege. BraveIndians used to descend every night through the gap and get water

Fig. 13.2. Cochiti Mesa, New Mexico (photo: Robert Preucel)




from the river for the besieged people to drink. The Spaniards wereafraid to come near enough to be within range of rocks and arrows.The stone wall and the ruined houses probably date from the siegeof Vargas, but still older remains of walls and houses may bediscoverable on the mesa.

—Harrington (1916: 294–5)

Although only occupied for nine months, Tunyo was a major centre ofresistance during the Reconquest of New Mexico. Of all the mesa villagesestablished in the northern Rio Grande, it was the largest, possiblyhousing as many as 2,000 people. At different times, it served as thehome for people from seven Tewa villages: Powhoge, Kha’po (SantaClara), Nanbé, P’osuwaege (Pojoaque), Tetsugeh, Kuyemuge (Cuyamun-gue), and Sakona (Jacona), and two Tano villages: Yam p’hamba (SanCristobal) and Ipere (San Lazaro). Vargas attacked the mesa three timesbut never succeeded in capturing the village; the final encounter was nota military defeat but a negotiated surrender. Vargas first mentions thatthe Tewa had taken refuge on Tunyo on 9 January 1694 (Kessell et al.1998: 41), shortly after and in response to a devastating battle and theexecution of seventy pueblo defenders and leaders in Santa Fe just daysearlier. A day later, Vargas describes his conversation with Domingo, awar captain from Tetsugeh whom he met halfway up the mesa in aneffort to secure the Tewa surrender. Vargas states ‘he spoke, saying thathe was not coming down because he was not well. He and the othersrepeated that they were not coming down. They were afraid because ofwhat happened to the Tanos (in Santa Fe)’ (Kessell et al. 1998: 44).Vargas, however, does not mention the people from Powhoge who

took refuge on the Pajarito Plateau at their ancestral village of Nake’muu.Oral tradition records the journey of women and children from Powhogeto Navawi and then up the canyons to Nake’muu (Vierra 2003: 12).Nake’muu is a small plaza pueblo originally constructed during the LateCoalition period (1275–1325 ad) and containing at least fifty-fiveground-floor rooms distributed in four room blocks. A close inspectionof the wall construction sequence indicates that two separate linear roomblocks were initially built. Sometime later a series of lateral northern andsouthern room blocks were added, enclosing a central plaza. The outsidedoorways were subsequently sealed, and the focus of the pueblo becamethe central plaza area (Vierra 2003: 3). The walls are constructed ofshaped tuff blocks quarried from the local bedrock and held togetherby adobe mortar. One possible explanation for excellent condition of thewalls is that the roofs may have been repaired during the Reconquest.Traditional knowledge about this sacred place has been passed down at




Powhoge through oral traditions and annual visits to the village by tribalmembers. These oral traditions stand as strong testimony to the linksbetween the recent and deeper pasts and their role in shaping notions ofthe sacred.Despite its historical significance, virtually no systematic archaeo-

logical work has been conducted at Tunyo, and it remains relativelypoorly understood. One reason for this neglect is that the mesa lies onPowhoge lands, allowing the Pueblo to exert strict control over who isallowed access. Just as Pueblo people defended the mesa in 1694, so, too,do they defend it today from perceived modern threats, such as unwel-come visitors. Another reason may be the popular belief that archaeologycan contribute little to an understanding of the historic period (a viewclearly contradicted by the success of historical archaeology). Surpris-ingly, Adolph Bandelier was sceptical of the archaeological value ofPowhoge and Tunyo, stating, ‘the pueblo of San Ildefonso, or Po-juo-ge,offers nothing of archaeological interest. Neither does the black mesacalled Tu-yo, two miles from the village, deserve attention except from anhistoric standpoint’ (Bandelier 1892: 82).In 2009, Joseph Aguilar began preliminary archaeological fieldwork at

Tunyo. The overarching goal of his project is to assess the archaeology ofTunyo as well as to evaluate the ethnographic and historical data withinthe context of Powhoge cultural preservation initiatives. Aguilar’sresearch is beginning to shed new light on our understanding of thehistorical events that took place there, especially the role the mesa playedas a place of refuge for Pueblo people during the Reconquest. Needless tosay, an understanding of the archaeological history at Tunyo by Pueblopeople is not necessary for their appreciation of the sanctity and signifi-cance of the mesa. However, such information can only enrich Pueblopeople’s perspectives, as these new ways of knowing and understandingthe past can supplement their already strong convictions about place.The same is true of archaeologists seeking to make better use of Pueblooral traditions in their own research, thereby embracing an indigenousperspective concerning the production and maintenance of history (seeSchmidt, this volume).The scope of Aguilar’s work thus far has focused on documenting the

defensive features located along the perimeter of the mesa that were usedas part of a defensive strategy against the Spaniards. These features takeon two main forms: linear rock alignments and caches, or piles of river-rolled quartz cobbles. The linear rock alignments consist of stackedcourses of shaped and unshaped basalt rock. These alignments rangefrom one to seven courses high, and range from less than 1 m to no morethan 1.5 m in height. The lengths of these alignments range from less




than 1 m up to 10 m, although it appears that some segments haveeroded away and may have been longer. Furthermore, some alignmentsmay have been connected to others, making some even longer still. Thealignments are straight or curvilinear, while in some instances align-ments are to the topography of the mesa edge. The rock caches consist ofconspicuous piles of river-rolled quartz cobbles, but at least two of thesecaches are composed of basalt slabs. All of these caches, like the wallsegments, occur along the perimeter of the mesa, and in some instancesare located directly behind and/or adjacent to the rock alignments. Thenumbers of individual cobbles within each cache vary. Some contain nomore than thirty cobbles, while others contain hundreds. Some cachesare small (less than 1 m in diameter) dense aggregations of cobbles, andothers are distributed over a relatively larger area (a few metres indiameter). The diameter of individual cobbles within these caches alsovaries from approximately 3 cm to 10 cm. Most of these cobbles areroughly the size of an average man’s fist.The geology of the mesa is quite distinctive. The mesa itself is a large

basaltic extrusion, with a highly eroded centre. Geologists from LosAlamos National Laboratory and Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. have identi-fied a stratigraphic layer of river gravels, approximately 10 m thick thatsits atop the mesa (Steve Reneau and Paul Drakos, personal communi-cation, 2008). The gravel cap suggests that an ancient riverbed onceexisted at the present summit of the mesa but has since eroded away,only to be remarkably preserved atop the hard basalt. Given the naturalabundance of basalt and river cobbles on the mesa, and that the archaeo-logical features are composed of these materials in an unmodified form(e.g., rocks composing the alignments are not shaped), the distinctionbetween what is natural and what is archaeological is somewhat challen-ging. However, closer scrutiny of the spatial distribution of these featuresand their physical composition clearly indicate that they are not natur-ally occurring phenomena but are better interpreted as part of a defen-sive strategy employed by Pueblo people during the Spanish sieges.Preliminary surveys have identified seventy-one rock caches and

seventeen rock alignments, including segments and fragments. Thespatial distribution of these features shows that both types, rock cachesand rock alignments, occur only on the perimeter of the mesa and not onall parts of the perimeter. The topography of the mesa may lend someexplanation to this irregular distribution along the perimeter. Where thetopography of the mesa is at its absolute steepest on the western side ofthe mesa, where cliff walls are at least 60 m (200 ft) high, neither featuretypes are present. There are instances where rock caches do occur atrelatively steep portions of the mesa; however, these are points where




known trails traverse the mesa top. The majority of both feature types arespatially distributed near or along areas where the topography of themesa is significantly less steep, or relatively easily accessible, and/orwhere known trails traversing the mesa top exist.It is impossible to give absolute dates to the construction of these

features. But inferential evidence strongly suggests that they were used aspart of a defensive strategy. First, an examination of the topography ofthe mesa, in conjunction with the spatial distribution of these features,shows that these features were distributed with defence of the mesa inmind. These features are concentrated at places where there are knowntrails, so we can infer that they were strategically positioned at thesepoints for the purpose of defending these routes up the mesa. It isprecisely at these points that a potential enemy wishing to attack themesa would make their attempt. Indeed, Vargas reported on the Pueblouse of fortifications and the hurling of stones against Spanish forcesduring the siege. For example on 11 March 1694, during the first battle,Vargas notes that a squadron of twenty men attacked the main path upthe mesa, which was said to be heavily fortified (Kessell et al. 1989: 160).Furthermore, Vargas observed the Pueblo defenders atop the mesacountering the Spanish offensive by throwing large slabs or rock andhurling stones from above. At other points, where the topography of themesa is more pronounced, the mesa was naturally defensible and did notrequire any artificial defence. Where known trails traverse the steep cliffsthrough natural gaps, there are a few rock caches, presumably defendingthese passageways. Harrington (1916: 298) identifies one of these gaps asTsampije kutsipo’e or ‘little trail of the notch in the rock at the west side’.He describes this gap through which ‘brave young Tewa went down tothe river to get water at night when the San Ildefonso people werebesieged by Vargas on top of the mesa in 1694’ (Harrington 1916:298). This trail is still well known to the people of San Ildefonso today,and two rock caches have been identified at this point (Fig. 13.3).The layout and organization of the mesa village is not yet clear. There

are no ethnohistorical descriptions of the village because Vargas neverclimbed the mesa. The fact that it was built to house people frommultiple Tewa villages suggests that it would have involved planningby the Powhoge cacique and a number of other Pueblo leaders. Duringthe siege, the village had to accommodate the people from multiplevillages. Vargas mentions that he observed 1,000 people defending themesa, although, as Hendricks (2002: 185) has noted, there is some debateabout this. Although we do not yet know the exact architectural formof the village, the extent of the village area has been recorded andits boundaries defined. Preliminary research suggests the village area




encompasses approximately 100,000 m2. This is certainly not all residentialliving space, and includes what appear to be several separate room blocks,distributed in an irregular pattern, and a possible plaza area. It seems likelythat the topography of the mesa and the defensive features helped securethis defensive position rather than the form of the village. A similarconclusion has been drawn at the refugee community of Dowa Yalannenear Zuni, where it has been shown that the mesa itself, and not thearchitecture of the village, provided defensibility (Ferguson 1996a: 119).By the time of the last battle from 4 to 9 September 1694, Nanbe had

joined the community. At this time, there may have been as many as2,000 people on the mesa, several hundred of whom could have beenwarriors, although the actual number is difficult to estimate (Hendricks2002: 193). After nearly nine months of isolated living on Tunyo, andafter three major and bloody battles, the siege finally came to an end on9 September 1694. The Tewa of Tunyo negotiated a peaceful settlementand thus avoided the fate of the Keres at Hanat Kotyiti, where 342 non-combatants and 13 warriors were captured and their village destroyed,and the defeat of the Jemez at Astialakwa, where 84 Jemez defenderswere killed, some of whom jumped to their deaths or were burned intheir homes. The Tewa were not defeated in battle and came down

Fig. 13.3. Rock caches or ammunition piles overlooking the main trail to the topof Tunyo (photo: Joseph Aguilar)



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voluntarily from their mesa stronghold to begin the long process ofrepairing their villages and mission churches.Today, Tunyo and Nakemuu are held in the collective memory of the

different Tewa villages involved in the siege. The events that occurred arenot recalled as specific dates in history, but rather as part of an unfoldingpast that is inseparable from the present and that require prayer and ashow of reverence when the mesas and their villages are visited. Tunyo isnot just a site of refuge occupied during the Reconquest period, but aplace where supernatural deities and Pueblo ancestors are alive. Thesignificance of Tunyo and Nake’muu, therefore, is anchored in thoseplaces themselves, and in their associations with deities and ancestorswhich are continually memorialized through pilgrimage and prayer. Thisholistic understanding is an example of the value of an indigenous, place-based archaeology that embraces the strong connections between placeand history and rejects the notion of absolute time embedded in theconcept of prehistory.

13.3 RESTORING THE KERES WORLD

All these pueblos had already come down off their mesas and havebeen given lands by the Spaniards. Only the people of Cochiti werestill on their mesa. There was only one trail up to the pueblo, and atthe top the people had piled boulders. When any enemy came upthe trail, they rolled down a boulder and killed him.

—Santiago Quintana, Cochiti Pueblo (Benedict 1931: 185)

In 1995, Robert Preucel established the Kotyiti Research Project withPueblo of Cochiti as a multi-year collaborative research project focusingon the archaeology of their post-Revolt period village of Hanat Koytiti.The central goal of the project is to identify the social processes sur-rounding the founding and occupation of Hanat Koytiti and to under-stand the meaning and significance of the village and mesa to the Cochitipeople today. The project has four main components: the production of amap of the two villages constituting the Hanat Kotyiti community; anarchaeological survey of mesatop and adjacent areas; an oral historyproject; and an internship programme for Cochiti youth. Hanat Kotyitiis well known in the archaeological literature. Adolph Bandelier firstmapped the village for the Archaeological Institute of America in 1880;Nels Nelson then mapped and excavated the village for the AmericanMuseum of Natural History in 1912; and, most recently, Julia Dougherty




surveyed and mapped the village and mesa for the US Forest Service in1979.Our research reveals that Cochiti Mesa was an early and persistent

stronghold of resistance throughout the Reconquest period. When JuanDominguez de Mendoza arrived at Sandia Pueblo on 10 December 1681,as an advance guard of Antonio de Otermin’s entrada, he learned thatthe people of Sandia, Puaray, and Alameda had all taken refuge withAlonso Catití in the mountains of Cochití or Cieneguilla (Hackett andShelby 1942: 226). Catití was known as the ‘supreme leader’ of the Kerespeople and he, along with Po’pay and other leaders, played an importantrole in planning the Revolt of 1680 (Hackett and Shelby 1942: 241–2). Inseveral interviews, Mendoza discovered the people of Cochiti, San Felipe,and Santo Domingo had all fled to Cochiti Mesa (the sierra of Ciene-guilla) upon news of the Spanish attack on Isleta and that they weremeeting in a war council (Hackett and Shelby 1942: 236). There is,however, no evidence for a village on the mesa at this time. Twelveyears later, Don Diego de Vargas, the new governor of New Mexico,climbed the mesa and found a thriving pueblo. He entered the village andlearned that the rebels were from the three villages of Cochiti, SanMarcos, and San Felipe (Kessell and Hendricks 1992: 515–16). Hepleaded with the people to come down and reoccupy their missionhomes; however, only the San Felipe people complied. Because theCochiti warriors were raiding the livestock of Santa Fe, he returned tothe village on 17 April 1694 and made an early morning attack (Kessellet al. 1998: 192).The decision by Cochiti leaders to move their village from their home

near the Rio Grande River to the mesa would not have been taken lightly.Life on the mesa would have been quite difficult, in part because of thedaily need to carry up water from the stream below. Several Cochitistories relate these difficulties, emphasizing both the rigours of travel aswell as the ever-present danger from enemies (Benedict 1931: 189). Thedecision to move onto the mesa was likely an attempt to start over, to fleea home that had become polluted by the deaths of the mission priests andthe burning of the church, and to build a new community that con-formed to the ‘laws of the ancestors’. Following the revolt, Po’pay andCatiti made a grand inspection tour of the pueblos. They instructed thepeople to cast off Spanish customs and practices and embrace theirtraditions, as when they came out of the lake of Copala (Hackett andShelby 1942: 246–7). This account, emphasizing the mythic time ofemergence, is clear evidence of a popular revitalization discourse incorp-orating aspects of nativism and revivalism (Liebmann 2006; Preucel




2002, 2006). Here, time and space converge as the Pueblo people literallyrecreate their world.The Cochiti cacique likely planned the location of the village and

entrusted specific work groups with the task of building room blocksand excavating the kivas. The homes of the ritual leaders may have beenconstructed first, followed by those of the villagers, and then the ritualstructures. The construction of a new village enabled traditional socialrelations to be renewed. Perhaps the most fundamental of these relationsis the moiety structure. At Cochiti, there are two kiva groups or ‘sides’known as Turquoise and Pumpkin (Lange 1990: 389). This is paralleledat most of the other Keres villages. These dual divisions serve as exog-amous social groups and facilitate the balance of political and religiouspower within the village since officials are to be appointed from alternatemoieties each year. Hanat Kotyiti was laid out with two plazas eachcontaining a kiva to embody and reproduce the moiety structure(Fig. 13.4). The westernmost kiva likely belonged to the Pumpkin moietyand the easternmost kiva to the Turquoise moiety, on the basis ofethnography analogy to the modern Cochiti Pueblo (Lange 1990).There is some intriguing historical information on the relative signifi-

cance of the two kivas. On his second visit to the village in 1693, Vargasremarked on ‘the main plaza’ (Kessell et al. 1995: 200), and a year later hestated that he incarcerated the prisoners in the ‘main kiva’ (Kessell et al.1998: 194). This reference to a main plaza and kiva might simply refer tosize characteristics (the east plaza is slightly more than twice the size of

Fig. 13.4. The two plazas of Hanat Kotyiti (photo: Robert Preucel)




the west plaza), but it may also refer to the social meaning of thesefeatures.The houses of the cacique and other religious leaders were larger than

average to accommodate ritual practices and storage. Three of the sixroom blocks (RB 3, 5, and 6) contain extra large room suites that werevery carefully constructed of unusually large tuff blocks and exhibit someof the finest masonry at the village. They may have been used by theleaders of specific religious societies, such as the Shi’kame, Snake, orGiant societies, all known ethnographically at Cochiti (Lange 1990).However, ritual leaders may have occupied some of the smaller roomsas well. For example, Room 44 in RB 2 may have been occupied by a rainpriest since Nelson found ritual paraphernalia associated with rain-making ceremonies (Preucel 2000a).Hanat Kotyiti is composed of six room blocks, two of which (RB 1 and

RB 2) are joined together. It is likely significant that modern Cochiti isalso divided into six sectors. These are named Ha’ñi satyu (‘East Group’),Gi’ti satyu (‘North Group’), Po’ni satyu (‘West Group’), Kwi’ satyu(‘South Group’), Ko’lash kule (‘Round Mesa’), and Ka’ katche (‘PlazaGroup’) (Lange 1990: 48). The room blocks at Hanat Koytiti certainlywould have been named, possibly with some of the same names.There is historical and architectural evidence regarding the village’s

construction sequence. When Vargas first visited the village on 21 October1692, he noted that:

the Keres Indians had set up a large cross and arches. All the people of thepueblo were a musket shot away. I received them with all kindness, and theygreeted me saying the Praised be. I walked to the pueblo’s plaza, which hasthree cuarteles and another large separate one, where they had prepared ahouse for me. (Kessell and Hendricks 1992: 515)

The three cuarteles are likely RB 2, 3, 5, and the large separate one islikely RB 6 for reasons discussed above. If this interpretation is correct,RB 1 and 4 were constructed sometime after 1692. Significantly, thebonding and abutment data reveal that both of these room blocks werebuilt in multiple, rather than unitary, building episodes.The historical record also provides valuable information on the lead-

ership of Hanat Kotyiti and the identity of some of the refugees joiningthe village. Vargas indicates that El Zepe was the leader of the Cochitipeople and identifies Mateguelo as his lieutenant (Kessell et al. 1998: 30,200, 248, 771, 823). El Zepe, unfortunately, is not well documented in thehistorical accounts. We do know that he welcomed a contingent ofpeople from Ya tse (San Marcos Pueblo) led by Cristobal (Kessell et al.1995: 409, 425) and a group of people from Katishtya (San Felipe)




(Kessell et al. 1995: 200; White 1932: 9). However, tensions quicklyemerged and El Zepe eventually ordered Cristobal and Zue, his brother,to be put to death because of their pro-Spanish leanings (Kessell et al.1998: 200). Perhaps because of this event, some Katishtya people subse-quently left to found the mesa village known as Old San Felipe or BasaltPoint Pueblo along with local Spanish settlers (Harrington 1916: 498,Lange et al. 1975: 69).Vargas also identifies Antonio Malacate as one of the leaders of the

village (Kessell et al. 1995: 404, 540; Kessell et al. 1998: 30, 53, 67).Malacate, the governor of Zia Pueblo, is one of the most famous of thepost-Revolt leaders. Serendipitously, he was absent from Zia in 1689when Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate attacked and burned his village(Kessell et al. 1995: 113, 117, 201). The Zia people that survived estab-lished a new mesa village on Cerro Colorado in the Jemez Valley (Kessellet al. 1995: 117). Malacate subsequently left Cerro Colorado to join theCochiti at Hanat Kotyiti and assist in their resistance.To restore the Keres world, the Cochiti cacique (probably not El Zepe,

since the Spanish term him their captain and governor) may havemodelled the village as Kasha K’atreti (White House). Kasha K’atretiwas the primordial village of mythological time, built immediately afterthe emergence of people from the underworld (Ferguson and Preucel2005). Stevenson (1894: 57–8) provides ethnographic evidence of the Ziapeople building a village in the form of White House. While it is impos-sible to know if this story dates to the time after the Pueblo Revolt whenmesa villages were being established throughout the Rio Grande, itclearly indicates a relationship between mythology and architecture. Ifour interpretation is correct, then the Cochiti people physically restoredtheir world through architecture, thereby presencing a past in the activeshaping of the future. The shape and layout of Hanat Kotyiti would havere-established a moral order linked to the Revolt-period discourse aboutliving according to the laws of the ancestors. It would have channelledpeople’s movements through specific gateways and into the plazas and,in the process, reminded them of their connections to a pre-Spanishworld and their ancestral way of life.As discussed above, Hanat Kotyiti attracted a number of refugees

seeking to join with the Cochiti people for protection. In some casesthe new arrivals would have had family or social relations with theCochiti people and been invited to join room blocks in the plaza pueblo.This might explain some of the room blocks and the room suites addedat the ends of several room blocks. However, in other cases, their familyor social relations with the Cochiti may have been attenuated or non-existent. Because of this, some families may have been directed to build




their community apart from the village. The rancheria, located some 200m east of the plaza pueblo, was either built as part of this process orslightly later during the Second Pueblo Revolt of 1696. The potteryevidence is somewhat inclusive since the same historic period glazewaresare present at both the rancheria and the plaza pueblo. The only excep-tion to this is the greater proportion of Tewa grey and blackwares at therancheria that could index Tewa refugees. Juan Griego, an influentialOkeowinge war captain, who fought alongside the Cochiti against Vargas,likely joined the community with some people from his village (Kessellet al. 1998: 206). It is also possible that the rancheria was built in 1696when Lucas Naranjo of Cochiti led his people back up to the mesa(Espinosa 1988: 51). Vargas notes that the Cochiti and Santo Domingopeople had their rancheria ‘in the heart of the sierra, which is oppositetheir pueblo on the mesa’ (Kessell et al. 1998: 819).For the Cochiti people, Hanat Kotyiti is much more than a mesa

containing a collection of archaeological sites. It is a venerated placewhere their ancestors reside; it deserves respect and requires appropriatebehaviour on the part of all people, Pueblo and non-Pueblo visitors alike.It is recalled as one of the ancestral villages mentioned in oral narrativesand described in the southward journey of the Cochiti people fromFrijoles Canyon in Bandelier National Monument to their current villagealong the Rio Grande (Lummis 1897: 133–54). Each summer, the CochitiSummer Language programme organizes a day trip to the mesa toacquaint Cochiti youth with this ancestral place. In 2003, part of themesa was returned to the Cochiti as part of a land exchange with theState of New Mexico. In a press release, Governor Simon Suina says,‘Cochiti mesa was our forefather’s land and we are happy to get it backfor our future generations’ (New Mexico State Land Office 2003).

13.4 THE POWER OF PLACE

Places exist within a delicate tapestry of social relationships and obliga-tions. With the arrival of the Spanish colonists in 1598, these relation-ships were systematically disrupted. Juan de Oñate physically displacedthe people of Oke owinge from their village at Yungue owinge to appro-priate it as the base for his fledgling colony (Ellis 1989). During thegovernorship of Juan Manso, the people of Sevilleta Pueblo wererelocated to Alamillo Pueblo so that the Franciscan friars might moreeasily convert them and monitor their behaviour (Scholes 1942: 29).These, and some forced dislocations due to introduced diseases like




smallpox, made it impossible for Pueblo people to maintain their obliga-tions to their ancestors. By 1640, less than a third of the 150 pueblosoccupied when Oñate arrived were still inhabited (Gutiérrez 1991: 113).To compound matters even further, the Spanish friars actively suppressedthe primary way in which Pueblo people collectively honour their ances-tors, namely by ceremonial dancing. For example, in 1661, Fray Alonso dePosada, the new custodian of New Mexico, issued an order forbiddingdancing and requiring the friars to collect and burn all dance regalia(Scholes 1942: 98). It is reported that more than 1,600 masks, prayer sticks,and figures of various kinds were quickly gathered from the kivas anddestroyed. These acts, in addition to forced labour, slavery, usurious taxes,and the sexual violation of Pueblo women, led to specific revolts anduprisings that culminated in the famous Revolt of 1680.Nowhere was the influence of the Spanish colonial project on Pueblo

people’s sense of time more evident than at the mission villages them-selves, where the sound of the church bells regulated everyone’s activities(Hodge et al. 1945: 101–2). Every morning at dawn, a bell would call thechildren to church. There, they would be instructed in reading, writing,and singing. Then another bell would call the rest of the villagers to Mass.After receiving the day’s lesson, the people would go home for a day’s workand return at dusk for vespers. Fray Alonso de Benavides drew an analogybetween the working of the church and those of a clock: ‘all the wheels ofthis clock must be kept in good order by the friar, without neglecting anydetail, otherwise all would be lost’ (Hodge et al. 1945: 102).This refashioning of time occurred throughout the Americas. As the

Aymara archaeologist Carlos Mamani Condori (1989: 54) has observed,the Spanish colonization of Bolivia resulted in the loss of time, that is,power over history, but not over space. He explains that one of the waysthat the Aymara people think of their resistance to the rupture caused bySpanish colonialism is through mythic thought and the attempt toreunite time and space in pacha. The concept of pacha stands in starkcontrast to notions of time employed by most archaeologists. It is aconcept that sees time as a continuum rather than absolute or artificiallysegmented into history and prehistory. Yet, as our example of theimportance of place in the Pueblo world testifies, indigenous notions oftime not only differ from those employed by archaeologists, they repre-sent barriers to understanding the close relationship between time andplace that underlies much of Pueblo belief. Pacha not only provides analternative perspective on time, it also returns control over the produc-tion of history to the people who have shaped it and memorialize it.One of the most distinctive aspects of the post-Revolt period is the

wholesale movement of Pueblo peoples from their mission villages to the




mesas. We have focused our narrative here on Cochiti Mesa in the Keresdistrict and Tunyo in the Tewa district. However, this same pattern canbe seen up and down the Rio Grande at Guadalupe Mesa and San JuanMesa in the Jemez district, at Cerro Colorado, Canijlon Mesa, and OldSan Felipe Mesa in the Keres district, and at Dowa Yalanne (CornMountain) in the Zuni district (Liebmann et al. 2005). In each of thesecases, the new mesa villages were inhabited by people from severaldifferent home villages. This variety must have led to considerable socialreorganization and possibly new leadership structures based upon alli-ances. At Zuni, for example, the six Zuni villages consolidated on DowaYalanne (Ferguson 1996a, 2002). At Tunyo, seven Tewa and two Tanovillages joined together. At Cochiti Mesa, people from three differentKeres villages lived together. There is no question that these moves weremotivated, in part, by defensive purposes. However, these mesas must beunderstood as more than military redoubts. They were and are todaysacred places that played critical roles in restoring the Pueblo Indianmoral landscape in the aftermath of the Revolt. Their ongoing meaningsare literally anchored in place by past events and future experiences and,because of this, they are resources that can be continually drawn on byPueblo people to instil pride and provide cultural continuity.After the Spanish Reconquest, most Pueblo people moved off their

sacred mesas. In some cases, they reoccupied their mission homes, whilein other cases they decided to join permanently with their hosts. In othercases, they built new villages in new locations. For example, the Zuniwent up to Dowa Yalanne as six separate villages but they came downand re-established themselves as a single village at Halona:wa. The Tewacame down from Tunyo to re-establish Powhoge, Kha’po, Nanbé, andTesugeh. However, the people of Kuyemuge, Sakona, Yam p’hamba,and Ipere reoccupied their villages only briefly. The latter two villagesmoved north and established two new villages in the Espanola Valley andeventually moved west to found the village of Hano on First Mesa(Dozier 1966). The Keres came down from Hanat Kotyiti to re-establishthemselves at Cochiti Pueblo. The people of Ya tse, who had joined withthem apparently never reoccupied their home village. The people ofKatishtya were not part of this resettlement since they had previouslycome off the mesa to join with their pro-Spanish relatives at their ownmesa village known as Katishtya shoma (Old San Felipe) built sometimebetween 1683 and 1693 (Harrington 1916: 498). Only Haaku (Acoma)and the Hopi remained on their mesas where they had lived prior to theRevolt. The sacred mesas are visual testimony to Pueblo people’s settle-ment history. But, more importantly, they provide access to their ances-tors and deities and are accordingly a powerful reminder of their




sovereignty. The move off the mesas was thus the last major shift beforethe refounding of the villages in the locations where they exist today.

13.5 LIVING THE LEGACY OF THE PUEBLO REVOLT

The Pueblo Revolt occupies a central place in contemporary Pueblo Indianhistorical consciousness (Liebmann and Preucel 2007). In 1980, the Pueblosjoined together and commemorated its tercentennial anniversary. Theirgoals were to provide a focus for Pueblo people to examine their heritageand to reaffirm their beliefs and values; to further a broader understandingof Pueblo culture by promoting cultural identity, human dignity, and socialviability; to draw attention to the unique issues and concerns of Pueblocommunities; and to clarify issues that structure Pueblo and non-Pueblorelations (Agoyo 2005: 95). On 18 July, representatives frommost of the RioGrande pueblos plus the Hopi and Ute travelled to Oke owinge. For the nexttwo days, Pueblo people performed a series of dances to honour theirancestors and history. There was an outdoor Mass presided over by Arch-bishop Robert Sanchez held in the north plaza of the village. The Mass alsohonoured Kateri Tekawitha, theMohawk woman, now canonized as a saint,who died in 1680. The following day, the second annual Po’pay run was heldto commemorate Omtua’s and Catua’s run.In 1997, the Pueblos again joined together to sponsor the Po’pay Statue

Project. Herman Agoyo and other Pueblo Indian leaders petitioned theNew Mexico State Legislature to select Po’pay as the subject of the state’ssecond statue to be installed in the National Statuary Hall Collection at theUS Capitol Building (Agoyo 2005). The legislature agreed and created theNew Mexico Statuary Hall Commission to raise the necessary funds.A competition to sculpt the statue was held and, in 1999, Clifford Fraguaof Walatowa (Jemez Pueblo) was awarded the commission. He chose tocarve it from pink Tennessee marble to better represent the texture andcolour of Pueblo Indian skin (Fig. 13.5). According to Fragua, the bearfetish in Po’pay’s right hand stands for Pueblo religion, which is the core ofthe Pueblo world. The water jar symbolizes Pueblo culture, and thedeerskin robe is a symbol of his status as a hunter and provider. Theshell necklace is a constant reminder of the sacred lake where life began.His back is scarred by the whipping he received from the Spaniards in theSanta Fe plaza for his participation in Pueblo ceremonies. On 21 May2005, the statue was unveiled at Oke owinge and placed in the rotunda inWashington, DC, on 22 September 2005.The Po’pay Statue Project has given rise to a series of spinoff projects

designed to feature Po’pay and promote the incorporation of the Pueblo




Revolt into American history (<http://www.nativeart.net/affilpopay.php>).The projects currently underway or in the planning stages include a docu-mentary entitled ‘Po’pay, A True American Hero’, which presents the storyof the Po’pay Statue Project, ‘In the Spirit of Po’pay’, an educational websitefeaturing information about Po’pay and other influential leaders, and‘Po’pay, The Motion Picture’, a big-budget action film about Po’pay andthe Pueblo Revolt narrated from Rio Grande Pueblo and Hopi perspectives.In addition, the project has planned ‘The Knotted Cord Tour’, an inter-national touring event promoting language and cultural preservation,renewable energy sources, environmental protection, and sustainable living.This tour also includes ‘The Knotted Cord Documentary’, a feature-lengthdocumentary film to bemade by young people on the Knotted Cord Tour tohonour the visionary leaders among the cultures they visit.

13.6 CONCLUSIONS

The place-based approach advocated here extends the historical appro-aches to the post-Revolt period by considering Pueblo perspectives on time,space, and history. Southwestern historians and archaeologists have

Fig. 13.5. Po’pay statue inNational Statuary Hall, USCapitol, Washington, DC(photo: Robert Preucel)




traditionally interpreted the abandonment of mission villages and theestablishment of new villages on specific mesas following the Revolt of1680 as a defensive strategy. This view is only partially correct. Thesemesasare revered as powerful places in the sacred Pueblo geography because theyare the sites of mythical encounters with supernatural beings. Similarly, theorganization and layout of pueblo villages are not simply responses toenvironmental considerations. They also embody the values and beliefsof the people who constructed and lived in them. According to this view,the building of new villages on sacred mesas, the orientations of the roomblocks, the placement of the kivas and shrines, the entryways into theplazas, and the trail network are all part of how the Pueblo world wasrestored following the Revolt.We have drawn our inspiration from contemporary Pueblo perspec-

tives that emphasize the mutual obligations of places and people asgiving rise to a moral landscape, one that simultaneously constructspersonal identity and ensures cultural survival. More specifically, weseek to emphasize the ontological status of place—how place and peoplebring each other into existence. This indigenous approach shares somesimilarities with recent landscape perspectives that highlight phenom-enological experience (Snead 2008). However, it seeks to bring out thedistinctiveness of Pueblo lived experience in the same manner thatpeoples of North America (see Gould, Mrozowski, this volume), Africa(see Land, Schmidt, Walz this volume), India (see Rivzi, this volume)seek to do, rather than dwell on the general characteristics of universalexperience. Significantly, an indigenous approach challenges the stand-ard time-based perspective of southwestern archaeology, which onlyperpetuates the artificial history/prehistory divide.For Pueblo people, the sense of obligation and responsibility embodied

in the phrase, ‘living in accordance with the laws of the ancestors’,underlies the wholesale movement of Pueblo peoples from their missionvillages to the sacred mesas during the post-Revolt period. This sense of‘right living’ still structures people’s relationships to these sacred mesasto this day. If we are to understand more fully the Revolt and Reconquestperiod, which has been long dominated by historians of the Spanishborderlands, it is necessary to consider the Pueblo motives and beliefsthat enabled the restoration of their world and that persist up to thepresent. As Governor James Hena of Tetsugeh put it, ‘The Pueblo peoplewould not be here if it were not for the revolt of 1680. We would have lostour culture and disappeared’ (Pember 2007).



Documents

Sacred Mesas: Pueblo Time, Space, and History in the Aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680