Pecos National Historical Park, New Mexico

At midpoint in a passage through the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the ruins of a Pecos pueblo and Spanish mission share a small ridge. Long before Spaniards entered this country this village commanded the trade path between Pueblo farmers of the Rio Grande and hunting tribes of the buffalo plains. Its 2,000 inhabitants could marshall 500 fighting men.

With the arrival of the Spaniards and their material/religious quests in the late 1500s, and with decades of Spanish demands and Indian resentment, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 climaxed this period.

With the return (12 years later) of the Spaniards, peace prevailed. The Franciscans moderated their zeal. As allies and traders the Pecos became partners in a relaxed Spanish-Pueblo community.

But by the 1780s, disease, Indian raids, and migration had reduced the population of Pecos to fewer that 300. Long standing divisions between the Church and things Spanish and those that hung to the old ways, contributed to this once powerful city-state decline.

Pecos was almost a ghost town when the Santa Fe trade began flowing past it in 1821. The last survivors left a decaying pueblo and empty mission church in 1838. They joined their Towa-speaking relatives 80 miles west of Jémez pueblo, where their descendents still live today.