One of the best-preserved ruins on Middle Mesa is called Payüpki by
the Hopi, and is interesting in connection with the traditions of the
migration of peoples from the Rio Grande, which followed the
troublesome years at the close of the seventeenth century. In the
reconquest of New Mexico by the Spaniards we can hardly say that
Tusayan was conquered; the province was visited and nominally
subjugated after the great rebellion, but with the exception of
repeated expeditions, which were often repulsed, the Hopi were
practically independent and were so regarded. No adequate punishment
was inflicted on the inhabitants of Walpi for the destruction of the
town of Awatobi, and although there were a few military expeditious to
Tusayan no effort at subjugation was seriously made.
Tusayan was regarded as an asylum for the discontented or apostate,
and about the close of the seventeenth century many people from the
Rio Grande fled there for refuge. Some of these refugees appear to
have founded pueblos of their own; others were amalgamated with
existing villages. Payüpki seems to have been founded about this
period, for we find no account of it before this time, and it is not
mentioned in connection with ancient migrations. In 1706 Holguin is
said to have attacked the "Tanos" village between Walpi and Oraibi and
forced the inhabitants to give hostages, but he was later set upon by
the Tano and driven back to Zuñi. It would hardly seem possible that
the pueblo mentioned could have been Hano, for this village does not
lie between Oraibi and Walpi and could not have been surrounded in the
way indicated in the account. Payüpki, however, not only lay on the
trail between Walpi and Oraibi--about midway, as the chronicler
states--but was so situated on a projecting promontory that it could
easily have been surrounded and isolated from the other pueblos.
The Hopi legends definitely assert that the Payüpki people came from
the "great river," the Rio Grande, and spoke a language allied to that
of the people of Hano. They were probably apostates, who came from the
east about 1680, but did not seem to agree well with the people of the
Middle Mesa, and about 1750 returned to the river and were domiciled
in Sandia, where their descendants still live. The name Payüpki is
applied by the Hopi to the pueblo of Sandia as well as to the ruin on
the Middle Mesa. The general appearance of the ruin of Payüpki
indicates that it was not long inhabited, and that it was abandoned at
a comparatively recent date. The general plan is not that common to
ancient Tusayan ruins, but more like that of Hano and Sichomovi, which
were erected about the time Payüpki was built. Many fragments of a
kind of pottery which in general appearance is foreign to Tusayan, but
which resembles the Rio Grande ware, were found on the mounds, and the
walls are better preserved than those of the ancient Tusayan ruins.
A notable absence of fragments of obsidian, the presence of which in
abundance is characteristic of ancient ruins, was observed on the site
of Payüpki. All these evidences substantiate the Hopi legend that the
Tanoan inhabitants of the village of Middle Mesa, above the trail from
Walpi to Oraibi, made but a short stay in Tusayan.[39]
There is good documentary evidence that Sandia was settled by Tanoan
people from Tusayan. Morfi in 1782 so states,[40] and in a copy of the
acts of possession of the pueblo grants of 1748 we find still further
proof of the settlement of "Moquinos" in Sandia.[41]
When Otermin returned to New Mexico in his attempted reconquest, in
1681, he reached Isleta on December 6, and on the 8th Dominguez
encamped in sight of Sandia, but found the inhabitants had fled. The
discord following this event drove the few surviving families of the
Tiwa on their old range to Tusayan, for they were set upon by Keres
and Jemez warriors on the plea that they received back the Spaniards.
Possibly these families formed the nucleus of Payüpki. It was about
this time, also, if we can believe Niel's story, that 4,000 Tanos went
to Tusayan. It would thus appear that the Hopi Payüpki was settled in
the decade 1680-1690.