Having acquired the techniques of deliberately planting and raising food
crops that could be stored against future needs, local populations of
Hunters and Gatherers became less dependent upon the gathering of wild
foods and began to construct clusters of more permanent dwellings near
cultivable land. Among the earliest recognized houses of this period are
the semisubterranean pit houses of the early Mogollon people in the San
Francisco River drainage of west-central New Mexico (fig. 4) and of the
Anasazi Basketmakers in the San Juan River drainage of northwestern New
Mexico. These cultural advances, together with the acquisition of
techniques for the manufacture of fired pottery, foreshadowed the
development of the Mogollon and Pueblo cultures at a time beginning
perhaps as early as 300 B.C. for the Mogollon area and at least by 1
A.D. for the Anasazi area.
[Illustration: Figure 3. Milling stones of the type used by the
Cochise People
Plant foods were ground in a shallow basin metate with the small
one-hand mano (hand stone). Socorro, New Mexico.]
These two cultural groups, the Mogollon in southwestern and southern New
Mexico, whose roots extend back through the ancestral Cochise to before
6000 B.C., and the Anasazi in the Four Corners region of northwestern
New Mexico, probably developed independently during the early years.
From about 500 A.D., however, there is increasing evidence of trade
relationships and eventual fusion of traits. Other groups to the west,
such as the Hohokam of Arizona, were sources of cultural influence on
the indigenous people of New Mexico. In the Mogollon and San Juan
Anasazi heartlands and in the Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico, a
pattern of village life with elaboration of social and religious
organization emerged from the relatively simple cultures of the early
years. Villages began to assume organized form, dwellings were combined
in rows of adobe and stone structures containing a number of contiguous
rooms, and subterranean ceremonial chambers or _kivas_ assumed larger
and more specialized architectural distinctiveness from the ancestral
pit-house dwellings. In the Mogollon area, the characteristic brownware
pottery of the Mogollons was used side by side with decorated
black-on-white pottery of Anasazi origin. The bow and arrow slowly
replaced the less efficient _atlatl_ and dart. The significance of these
early stages in the evolution of the Pueblo Culture in the San Juan and
upper Rio Grande areas is indicated by their designation as the
Developmental Pueblo period (Pueblo I and II).
[Illustration: (_Photograph of museum diorama courtesy of the
Chicago Natural History Museum_)
Figure 4. Mogollon pit-house village of the period 200 B.C.]
The climax of these developments occurred in the interval between 1050
and 1300 A.D. in the Classic or Great Pueblo period (Pueblo III). Among
the most impressive manifestations of this period are large
stone-masonry apartment houses, some rising to five stories in height
and housing hundreds of people. Dwellings of this type are highlights of
several well-known tourist attractions, among which are the cliff
dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado and the monumental
ruins of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon (fig. 5), both products of the
ingenuity of the Anasazi Indians.
At the very apex of the cultural efflorescence of the Great Pueblo
period, some unknown circumstance or series of events caused abandonment
of most of the urban centers of the San Juan Anasazi and Mogollon areas.
A prolonged drouth is recorded by tree rings formed during the period
from 1276 to 1299 A.D. Surely a drouth of this magnitude would have had
serious effects on people as dependent upon agriculture as were the
Pueblo Indians. There are some indications that alien and perhaps enemy
people were drifting into these areas at about this time, perhaps
predecessors of the modern Navajos and Apaches. The congested living
conditions of Pueblo villages undoubtedly contributed to unsanitary
conditions and social pressures that also may have contributed to shifts
in population. Many of these migrants moved into the homeland of the Rio
Grande Anasazi in the upper Rio Grande Valley, and to a lesser extent in
the central Rio Grande Valley. Some may have relocated at Zuni and other
areas along the Little Colorado River drainage extending westward into
Arizona.
[Illustration: (_Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service_)
Figure 5. Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon National Monument
A multistory pueblo containing 800 rooms.]
During the Great Pueblo period, another group showing characteristics of
both the Anasazi and of non-Puebloan people occupied an area on both
sides of the Continental Divide along the eastern margin of the San Juan
Basin. This cultural phase, known as the Largo-Gallina because of the
distribution of sites in the Largo and Gallina drainage basins, is
represented by pit houses, surface rooms, and towerlike structures with
some similarities to the dwellings of the Anasazi. The black-on-white
pottery also suggests Puebloan relationships, whereas the culinary
vessels resemble those of the Navajo.
Beginning at about 1300 A.D. or shortly thereafter, a different cultural
group began to move westward from the Texas Panhandle into the plains of
northeastern New Mexico. These people of the Panhandle Aspect built
single-room structures and contiguous room pueblos resembling those in
use by the Anasazi of the Rio Grande and were skilled bison hunters,
farmers, and traders. This combination of traits suggests both Puebloan
and eastern traditions. Panhandle Aspect villages were abandoned
suddenly not long after 1400, perhaps as a result of the drouth recorded
by tree rings for the period from 1439 to 1454.
Following the shift in population of the Pueblo region, cultural changes
occurred that have led to the designation Regressive Pueblo period
(Pueblo IV) for the interval between 1300 and 1700 A.D. Noteworthy
changes during this period include a tendency toward enlargement of
villages and the creation of new styles of pottery, accompanied by some
deterioration of the artistic creativity of the Classic period. Major
ruins of this period that are readily accessible to the public include
Puye Cliff Dwellings, Tyuonyi Pueblo in Bandelier National Monument, and
Pecos Pueblo in Pecos National Monument.
At the time of Coronado’s _entrada_ in 1540, there were from 60 to 70
Pueblo villages in New Mexico, most of which contained fewer than 400
inhabitants. Four or five mutually unintelligible languages were spoken,
each with several dialects, making communication between Spanish and
Indian extremely difficult. Language barriers contributed to an
inadequate documentation of the Pueblo way of life during the early
years of Spanish contact, so that we must continue to depend upon the
archeological record during the first century of Spanish colonization of
the area. The beginning of the Historic Pueblo period (Pueblo V)
accordingly is commonly set at 1700 A.D.