PO Box 418
Pecos, New Mexico 87552
Tours and Special Use Permits
The idea of a "new"
Mexico, another land of great cities weighted with
gold, appealed to the latecomers who thronged Mexico
City after the conquests of the Aztecs and Incas.
These ambitious seekers needed only direction.
Shipwrecked Cabeza de Vaca stumbled back into Mexico
in 1536 after wandering over new Spain's northern
His tales of rich cities
farther north combined with tantalizing legends
of-lost bishops and their seven cities out somewhere
in the wilds to provide that direction. This was the
vision quest Francisco Vasquez de Coronado pursued
Leading an army of 1,200
Coronado made his way into he country north of
Mexico. Six months into the march he rode into a
cluster of Zuni pueblos, Cibola, near present day
Gallup. He attacked the Zuni an Hawikuh, taking over
that principle town and its food stores for his
At Cicuye-later called Pecos-
150 miles east the reception was different. The
Indians welcomed the Spaniards with music and gifts.
A Plains Indian captive at Pecos told of a rich land
to the east, Quivira, and Coronado set out in spring
1541 to find it. Wandering as far as Kansas he found
only a few villages. His Indian guide confessed he
lured the army on to the plains to die, and Coronado
had him strangled.
The expedition turned back.
After a bleak winter along the Rio Grande the broken
army went back to Mexico empty handed, harassed by
Indians most of the way. In Coronado's sojourn the
Pecos Indians and their Pueblo neighbors had felt
the warmth of a powerful world. They had seen the
gray-clad priests plant crosses for their gods. But
the strangers went away, and the Pueblos settled
back into their old ways.
Colonizers and Missionaries
Nearly 60 years now passed
before Spaniards came to New Mexico to stay. New
Spain's frontier had slowly advance with the
discovery of silver in nothern Mexico. In 1581
explorers began prospecting for silver in the land
of the Pueblos.
Their failures foreshaowed a
truth that determined much of Spanish New Mexico's
history: that province held neither golden cities
nor ready riches. But the fact that settlers could
farm and herd there focused the joint strategies of
Cross and Crown: Pueblo Indians could be converted
and their lands colonized.
Don Juan de O�ate was first
to pursue this mixed objective, in 1598. Taking
settlers, livestock, and 10 Franciscans he marched
north to claim for Spain the land across the Rio
Grande. Right away he assigned a friar to Pecos,
richest and most powerful New Mexico pueblo.
The new religion got off to a
shaky start. After episodes of idol-smashing
provoked Indian resentment, the Franciscans sent
veteran missionary Fray Andr�s Ju�rez to Pecos in
1621 as healer and builder. Under his direction the
Pecos built an adobe church south of the pueblo, the
most imposing of New Mexico�s mission churches�with
towers, buttresses, and great pine-log beams hauled
from the mountains.
The ministry of Fray Ju�rez
from 1621 to 34 coincided with the most energetic
mission period in New Mexico, now a royal colony. It
was a Franciscan-led time of mission building and
expansion. Its success bred conflict�church and
civil of�ficials vied for the Pueblo Indians�
labor, tribute, and loyalty. The Indians suffered
these struggles as religious and economic
War and Reconquest
Decades of Spanish demands and
Indian resentments climaxed in the Pueblo Revolt of
1680. Indians in scattered pueblos united to drive
the Spaniards back to Mexico. At Pecos loyal Indians
warned the local priest, but most followed a tribal
elder in revolt. They killed the priest, destroyed
the church, and�symbolizing the discontent�
built a forbidden kiva in mission�s convento
Twelve years later, led by
Diego de Vargas, the Spaniards came back to their
lost province, peacefully in some places but with
the sword in others. Vargas expected fighting at
Pecos, but opinion had shifted. The Indians welcomed
him back and supplied 140 warriors to help retake
Santa Fe. A smaller church built on the old one�s
ruins was the first mission reestablished after the
Reconquest, and most Pecos sus�tained Spanish rule
until it ended.
In return the Franciscans
mod�erated their zeal. Tribute was abolished. As
allies and traders the Pecos became partners in a
relaxed Spanish-Pueblo community. But by the 1780s
disease, Comanche raids, and migration reduced the
pop-ulation of Pecos to fewer than 300.
divisions�between those loyal to the Church and
things Spanish and those who clung to the old ways�may
have contributed to this once powerful city-state�s
decline. The function of Pecos as a trade center
faded as Spanish colonists, now protected from the
Comanches by treaties, established new towns to the
Pecos was almost a ghost town
when Santa Fe Trail trade began flowing past in
1821. Last survivors left a decaying pueblo and
empty mission church in 1838 to join Towa-speaking
relatives 80 miles west at J�mez pueblo, where
their descendants still live today.
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