Bibliography Records

In an article which recently appeared in the AMERICAN ANTHRPOLOGIST Paul S. Martin furnished evidence that the bow-drill, hitherto thought to be confined to northern North America, was used by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. I am able to confirm Dr. Martin’s conclusion of a southern extension of the distribution of the bow-drill by data I have gathered from the Mescalero Apach Indians, who ranged, before reservation days, over what is now western Texas, southeastern New Mexico, and northern Mexico. According to my Mescalero ifnormants the bow-drill was employed for making fires by those who had difficulty with the hand-drill. The use of the latter was much more common, however.

In the fall of 1644 Don Pedro de Perea, governor of the province of Sonora, arrived in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. Don Pedro was seeking Spanish colonists to settle and serve as soldiers in his recently created jurisdiction. During the preceding decade, prospectors from the mining towns of Parral and Santa Barbara in Nueva Vizcaya had traveled west, crossed the Siera Madre, and found evidences of rich silver and gold deposits near the headwaters of the Bavispe, Sonora, and San Miguel rivers in northeastern Sonora. News of these discoveries was welcomed in New Mexico, for the inhabitants depended upon limited trade relations witht he merchants of Parral and saw the mineral districts as possibly offering new markets for their products. During the years that followed, New Mexicans – merchants and govenrment officials in Santa Fe – sought to develop trade with Sonora, but found their efforts hampered by the absence of a highway, hostile Indians, and vast distance. Although no direct road was opened between New Mexico and Sonora during Spanish times, the repeated attempts that were made to establish such a route revealed a great deal about the rugged terrainand the ongoing Apache problem on the Sonora-New Mexico border.

In this article, 1 present (1) the results of ax-ray fluorescence (XRF) sourcing analyses and (2) the relative frequencies of archaeological obsidian artifacts from three Late Prehispanic and Early Colonial period (A.D.1300 to 1670s) Jumanos pueblos in central New Mexico: Gran Quivira, Pueblo Blanco, and Pueblo Colorado. The XRF data suggest that the villages were relatively independent from one another in terms of the nonlocal social and economic relationships through which obsidian was acquired. At the same time, the analysis of the relative frequencies of obsidian suggests that at first the residents of Gran Quivira, adn then those of Pueblo Blanco, had greater access to obsidian than the inhabitants of the other two villages. Taken together, the results of these two analyses sugest that seemingly opposing relations of autonomy and differentiation may have characterized the long-distance social and economic activities of the residents of these pueblos and their relationships to each other.

The Hormiguero site is a large mountainside Apache residential site int he Peloncillo Mountains of southern Arizona that lies int eh heart of historically documented Chiricahua Apache territory. It represent an encampment at an important caching location, a category of residential site that has not been previously described archaeologically. Ethnographic data are enlisted to understand this unique type of Apache residential site and a previously unknown cache form – the platform cache. Archaeological evidence is combined from a number of sites with caches like those at Hormiguero to interpret aspects of cultural identity and chronology including the presence of ancestral Apaches in southern Arizona as early as the 14th century AD.

When the earliest Spanish explorers arrived in the Paso del Norte area, they found it already inhabited by native populations. These groups, the Mansos and Sumas (along with the Jumanos and Apaches), have provided a rich ground for debate as to their origins and relationships with each other. Few early contacts were reported by the Spaniards, and little ethnographic and/or linguistic information was recorded, leaving researchers a scant account from which to draw in explaining the background and origin of these groups. For the same reasons, relationships with surrounding native groups, such as the Janos and Jocomes are difficult to ascertain. Historically, vision becomes more clouded with the introduction of the Tiguas and Piros into the area after the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Four months had passed since the pueblos of New Mexico had rebelled, and now the Spaniards were back in an attempt to recoquer their lost land. By mid-December 1680, Governor Antonio de Otermín and a small army were camped on high ground along the Rio Grande in view of the pueblos of Alameda, Sandia, and Puaray, all near present Albuquerque. The north wind blew gusts of cold air, cuasing the loose ends of their tents to flap incessantly, and the snow-bearing clouds reflected a pale light throughout the night across “the fields and sierras all covered with snow.” Otermín and his men hoped to understand the immediate causes fo the revolt that stemmed from long-range issues revolving around Spanish sovereignty and Indigenous territoriality.

Spanish colonization of the northern Southwest in the seventeenth century coincided with extensive abandonment of large Pueblo villages. This period of abandonment has been conventionally understood as a consequence of population decline. An examination of archaeological settlement patterns in two areas of the Rio Grande region of New Mexico, the Jemez Plateau and the Rio Abajo, during the period A.D. 1515-1700 reveals occupation at many more sites than those identified in historic documents. The patterns of settlement indicate the maintenance of long-standing mobility practices on the Jemez Plateau. In the Rio Abajo, there are significant population shifts as a consequence of movement to communities outside of the area, and from large to small settlements. These settlement changes during the first centuries of colonial rule demonstrate the use of established Pueblo settlement and mobility practices to respond to the new challenges of Spanish domination. They also indicate that abandonment during the early historic era cannot automatically be equated with population decline.

Among the hundreds of folios of archival dcuments pertaining to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and its aftermath, one item of singular interest is a letter to the Viceroy, dated 19 June 1693, from the Franciscan procurador general, Fray Francisco de Ayeta. Drawing feely on his own and Governor Otermin’s eyewitness testimony, Ayeta describes, in a succinct, and compelling narrative, events of the Pueblo Revolt, including the siege of Santa Fe and the governor’s providential escape, the precarious conditions for the survivors, and their eventual entrenchment in El Paso.

Spanish archives and libraries hold immense documentary source materials bearing directly and indirectly on the history of the Native peoples of North America. This survey hopes to provide some stimulus to specialists in the field who are contemplating the possibilities of research in Spain, although in these few pages only the most general orientations regarding location and potential interest of the materials can be given.