From The Pass To The Pueblos

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior, was a 1,600-mile braid of trails that led from Mexico City, in the center of New Spain, to the provincial capital of New Mexico on the edge of the empire’s northern frontier. The Royal Road served as a lifeline for the colonial system from its founding in 1598 until the last days of Spanish rule in the 1810s. Throughout the Mexican and American Territorial periods, the Camino Real expanded, becoming part of a larger continental and international transportation system and, until the trail was replaced by railroads in the late nineteenth century, functioned as the main pathway for conquest, migration, settlement, commerce, and culture in today’s American Southwest. More than 400 miles of the original trail lie within the United States today, and stretch from present-day San Elizario, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico. This segment comprises El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. It was added to the United States National Trail System in 2000 and is still in use today. This book guides the reader along the trail with histories and overviews of places in New Mexico, West Texas and the Ciudad Juárez area. It includes a broad overview of the trail’s history from 1598 until the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, and describes the communities, landscape, archaeology, architecture, and public interpretation of this historic transportation corridor.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior, was a 1,600-mile braid of trails that led from Mexico City, in the center of New Spain, to the provincial capital of New Mexico on the edge of the empire's northern frontier. The Royal Road served as a lifeline for the colonial system from its founding in 1598 until the last days of Spanish rule in the 1810s. Throughout the Mexican and American Territorial periods, the Camino Real expanded, becoming part of a larger continental and international transportation system and, until the trail was replaced by railroads in the late nineteenth century, functioned as the main pathway for conquest, migration, settlement, commerce, and culture in today's American Southwest. More than 400 miles of the original trail lie within the United States today, and stretch from present-day San Elizario, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico. This segment comprises El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. It was added to the United States National Trail System in 2000 and is still in use today. This book guides the reader along the trail with histories and overviews of places in New Mexico, West Texas and the Ciudad Juarez area. It includes a broad overview of the trail's history from 1598 until the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, and describes the communities, landscape, archaeology, architecture, and public interpretation of this historic transportation corridor. * * * George D. Torok completed a PhD in history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1991, and is a history professor at El Paso Community College. Since 1999, he has worked with the United States National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and countless regional agencies and associations to organize events, develop interpretive sites, and promote a greater public awareness of El Camino Real. In 2003, he served as the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association's first president. He has written numerous articles and a guidebook to historic Appalachian mining towns."

Prehistoric burial practices provide an unparalleled opportunity for understanding and reconstructing ancient civilizations and for identifying the influences that helped shape them.

In Pueblos, Plains, and Province Joseph P. Sánchez offers an in-depth examination of sociopolitical conflict in seventeenth-century New Mexico, detailing the effects of Spanish colonial policies on settlers’, missionaries’, and Indigenous peoples’ struggle for economic and cultural control of the region. Sánchez explores the rich archival documentation that provides cultural, linguistic, and legal views of the values of the period. Spanish dual Indian policies for Pueblo and Plains tribes challenged Indigenous political and social systems to conform to the imperial structure for pacification purposes. Meanwhile, missionary efforts to supplant Indigenous religious beliefs with a Christian worldview resulted, in part, in a syncretism of the two worlds. Indigenous resentment of these policies reflected the contentious disagreements between Spanish clergymen and civil authorities, who feuded over Indigenous labor, and encroachment on tribal sovereignties with demands for sworn loyalty to Spanish governance. The little-studied “starvation period” adversely affected Spanish-Pueblo relationships for the remainder of the century and contributed significantly to the battle at Acoma, the Jumano War, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Pueblos, Plains, and Province shows how history, culture, and tradition in New Mexico shaped the heritage shared by Spain, Mexico, the United States, and Native American tribes and will be of interest to scholars and students of Indigenous, colonial, and borderlands history.

In the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, the Pueblo world underwent nearly continuous reorganization. Populations moved from Chaco Canyon and the great centers of the Mesa Verde region to areas along the Rio Grande, the Little Colorado River, and the Mogollon Rim, where they began constructing larger and differently organized villages, many with more than 500 rooms. Villages also tended to occur in clusters that have been interpreted in a number of different ways. This book describes and interprets this period of southwestern history immediately before and after initial European contact, A.D. 1275-1600Ña span of time during which Pueblo peoples and culture were dramatically transformed. It summarizes one hundred years of research and archaeological data for the Pueblo IV period as it explores the nature of the organization of village clusters and what they meant in behavioral and political terms. Twelve of the chapters individually examine the northern and eastern portions of the Southwest and the groups who settled there during the protohistoric period. The authors develop histories for settlement clusters that offer insights into their unique development and the variety of ways that villages formed these clusters. These analyses show the extent to which spatial clusters of large settlements may have formed regionally organized alliances, and in some cases they reveal a connection between protohistoric villages and indigenous or migratory groups from the preceding period. This volume is distinct from other recent syntheses of Pueblo IV research in that it treats the settlement cluster as the analytic unit. By analyzing how members of clusters of villages interacted with one another, it offers a clearer understanding of the value of this level of analysis and suggests possibilities for future research. In addition to offering new insights on the Pueblo IV world, the volume serves as a compendium of information on more than 400 known villages larger than 50 rooms. It will be of lasting interest not only to archaeologists but also to geographers, land managers, and general readers interested in Pueblo culture.

This volume of proceedings from the fifteenth biennial Southwest Symposium makes the case for engaged archaeology, an approach that considers scientific data and traditional Indigenous knowledge alongside archaeological theories and methodologies. Focusing on the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, the contributors show what can be gained when archaeologists engage with Indigenous communities and natural scientists: improved contemporary archaeological practice through better understandings of heritage and identity, anthropogenic landscapes, and societal potential for resilience. Organized around the theme of interdisciplinary perspectives, the book highlights collaborations with those who have other ways of knowing the past, from the traditional and proprietary knowledge of communities to new scientific methods, and considers the social context of archaeological practice and the modern relationships that inform interpretations of the past. Chapters show how cutting-edge practices lead to new archaeological understandings when archaeologists work in partnership with descendant and stakeholder communities and across international and disciplinary borders. Authors work across anthropological subfields and with the sciences, demonstrating that anthropological archaeology’s methods are starting points for investigation that allow for the expansion of understanding by incorporating long-remembered histories with innovative analytic methods. Engaged Archaeology in the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico identifies current and near-future trends in archaeological practice in the US Southwest and northwestern Mexico, including repatriation, community engagement, and cross-disciplinary approaches, and focuses on Native American archaeologists and their communities, research, collaborations, and interests. It will be of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists working in the Southwest and to any researchers interested in interdisciplinary approaches to archaeology, heritage studies, and the natural sciences. Contributors: Christopher Caseldine, Chip Colwell, Guillermo Córdova Tello, Patrick Cruz, T. J. Ferguson, Cécile R. Ganteaume, Vernelda Grant, Neysa Grider-Potter, Christopher Grivas, Michael Heilen, Jane H. Hill, Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, Teresita Majewski, Debra L. Martin, Estela Martínez Mora, John A. McClelland, Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc, Darsita R. North, Scott Ortman, Peter J. Pilles Jr., Susan Sekaquaptewa, Arleyn W. Simon, Kimberly Spurr, Sarah Striker, Kerry F. Thompson, John A. Ware, Peter M. Whiteley, Lisa C. Young