The recorded history of the inhabitants of the Mimbres is brief. One
of the earliest descriptions of the valley, in English, is found in
Bartlett’s “Personal Narrative,” published in 1854. In his account of
a trip to the copper mines at the present Santa Rita, Bartlett records
seeing a herd of about twenty black-tailed deer, turkeys and other game
birds, antelopes, bears, and fine trout in the streams. He says very
little, however, about antiquities, although he passed through a region
where there are still several mounds indicating ruins. Bartlett writes
(_op. cit._, vol. 1, p. 218):
On April 29, hearing that there were traces of an ancient Indian
settlement about half a mile distant, Dr. Webb went over to examine
it, while we were getting ready to move. He found a good deal of
broken pottery, all of fine texture. Some of it bore traces of
red, black, and brown colors. He also found a stone mortar about
eight inches in diameter. I have since understood that this was the
seat of one of the earliest Spanish missions; but it was abandoned
more than a century ago, and no traces remain but a few heaps of
crumbling adobes, which mark the site of its dwellings.
This ruin was situated near the Rio Grande, twenty-three miles from
Mule Spring, on the road to the Mimbres. Bartlett does not tell us how
he learned that this was an early mission site, but from the pottery it
is evident that it was an “ancient Indian settlement.”
After having examined the configuration of the country through which
Bartlett passed, and having compared it with statements in his
description, the present writer thinks that Bartlett camped on May
1, 1853, near the Oldtown ruin and that the place then bore the name
Pachetehu. This camp was nineteen [eighteen?] miles from Cow Spring and
thirteen miles from the copper mines.
Bartlett records that he found, near his camp, “several old Indian
encampments with their wigwams standing and about them fragments of
pottery.” Although not very definite, these references might apply
either to the Oldtown ruin and some others a few miles up the river, or
to more modern Apache dwellings.
Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh claims that Coronado, in 1540, passed through the
valley of the Mimbres on his way to Cibola, and that this place was
somewhere in this region, instead of at Zuñi, as taught by Bandelier
and others. The present writer recognizes that the question of the
route of Coronado is one for historical experts to answer, but believes
that new facts regarding the ruins in the Mimbres may have a bearing
upon this question and are desirable. While it can no longer be said
in opposition to Dellenbaugh’s theory that there are no ruins in the
valley between Deming and the Mexican border, we have not yet been able
to discover whether the ruins here described were or were not inhabited
in 1540.
The fragmentary notice of the ruins in the Upper Mimbres and Silver
City region by Bandelier is one of the best thus far published,
although he denies the existence of ruins now known in the great
stretch of desert from Deming to the Mexican boundary. Regarding the
ruins on the Upper Mimbres, Bandelier writes:[4]
Toward this center of drainage the aboriginal villages on the
Rio Mimbres have gravitated as far south nearly as the flow of
water is now permanent. They are very abundant on both sides of
the stream, wherever the high overhanging plateaux have left any
habitable and tillable space; they do not seem to extend east as
far as Cook’s Range, but have penetrated into the Sierra Mimbres
farther north, as far as twenty miles from the river eastward....
The total number of ruins scattered as far north as Hincks’ Ranch
on a stretch of about thirty miles along the Mimbres in the valley
proper, I estimate at about sixty.... I have not seen a village
whose population I should estimate at over one hundred, and the
majority contained ten. They were built of rubble in mud or adobe
mortar, the walls usually thin, with overwings, and a fireplace in
the corner, formed by a recess bulging out of a wall. Toward the
lower end of the permanent water course, the ruins are said to be
somewhat extensive.
Professor U. Francis Duff, in an article on the “Ruins of the Mimbres
Valley,”[5] adds a number of new sites to those mentioned above and
contributes important additions to our knowledge of the prehistoric
culture of the valley.
Dr. Walter Hough, who compiled from Bandelier and Duff, and made use of
unpublished information furnished by Professor De Lashmutt and others,
enumerates twenty-seven ruins in the Silver City and Mimbres region
to which he assigns the numbers 147–174. Many more ruins[6] might
have been included in this list, but it is not the author’s purpose,
at this time, to mention individual pueblo sites but rather to call
attention to the evidences of ruins in the Lower Mimbres Valley as an
introduction to the study of pottery there collected. The ruin from
which the majority of the bowls here considered were obtained does not
appear to have been mentioned by Bandelier, Duff, or Hough.
The last-mentioned author makes the following reference to figures
on the pottery from the Mimbres region: “The decoration is mainly
geometric. From the Mimbres he [Professor De Lashmutt] has seen a
realistic design resembling a grasshopper, and from Fort Bayard another
representing a four-legged creature. Mrs. Owen has a specimen from
Fort Bayard bearing what is described as a ‘fish design.’”[7] Dr. Hough
likewise points out that
pottery from some sites [ruins] is also different from that of
any other [Pueblo] region and is affiliated, in some respects,
with that of the Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua which lies in the low
foot-hills of Sierra Madre. This is especially true in reference to
fragments of yellow ware found here [the Florida Mountains] which
in both form and color of decoration is manifestly like that of
Casas Grandes.[8]
The latest and thus far the most important contribution to our
knowledge of the prehistoric people of the Mimbres we owe to Mr. C.
L. Webster, who has published several articles on the antiquities of
the Upper Mimbres, in “The Archæological Bulletin.” He has made known
several new village sites along the valley and has mentioned, for the
first time, details regarding Mimbres ruins and the objects found in
them. Practically nothing has thus far been recorded on the antiquities
of the region immediately about Deming, nor of those south of that
important railroad center to the Mexican border.
In an article on “Some Burial Customs Practiced by the Ancient People
of the Southwest,”[9] Mr. Webster describes and figures a human burial
on the Lower Mimbres not far from the “Military Post,” situated near
Oldtown. It was found in the plain some distance from any indications
of prehistoric settlement. He says:
An exploration of it [a burial] revealed that originally a circular
excavation, perhaps three feet in diameter and slightly more in
depth, had been made in the ground; and afterwards the body placed
at the bottom of this excavation in a sitting posture with the
knees somewhat drawn up and arms to the side, and then a very large
earthen olla, of a reddish color, was set over it, bottom side up,
thus protecting it from the earth which was afterwards thrown in,
filling up the excavation.
Mr. Webster shows that the Mimbres aborigines did not always bury their
dead in a contracted or seated posture. He speaks also of intramural or
house burials in the valley of Rio Sapillo, a tributary of the Upper
Gila, not far from the source of the Mimbres. In this region he dug
down in one of the central rooms of a ruin about three feet below the
surface, where he says (p. 73):
Near the bottom of this excavation hard red clay was encountered,
which on opening up proved to contain the well-preserved skeleton
of an adult person which had been placed at length on its back
with arms at its side. Over the face of this one [human burial]
had been placed a rather large shallow dish, through the bottom
of which a hole about the size of a five cent piece, or a little
larger, had been carefully drilled. This hole was so located as to
occupy a position between the eyes when placed over the face. This
body was resting on a bed of red clay like that which had covered
it. Near the first body was a second body which had been buried in
exactly the same way, and had a similar perforated dish over its
face. Under this first or upper tier of bodies a second tier of
bodies was discovered which had been buried exactly the same way
as the upper tier—each one resting separate and alone, though near
together, each one tightly enveloped in stiff red clay.
All the vessels placed over the faces showed the action of fire,
and it was plain to be seen they had once been used in cooking....
The method practised here was to first spread down a layer of red
plastic clay, then lay the body upon it, place the perforated dish
over the face and finally plaster all with a covering of the same
clay. This same method was followed in every case observed.