Leslie and David's Wanderings: 8 April 2019 Salinas Pueblo Missions NM

Since David was going to be working for the next three days, and you never know what the weather is going to do, we decided to snag the last NM in this area today rather than waiting until next weekend. This turned out to be a good choice since it ended up raining/snowing/blowing Friday and Saturday. The drive down to Mountainair New Mexico where the visitor center for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument took us across some very wide open prairie. The National Monument actually has four sites (each with their own Passport Stamp) spread out over quite a distance. The main visitor center is located in the town of Mountainair. On our way to the visitor center, we came upon the Abo Pueblo Mission portion of the NM and stopped to see it before the visitor center. Then there are the Quarai Pueblo Mission and Gran Quivira Pueblo Mission (the furthest away from the visitor center). The Spanish explorers arrived in this area in 1582 and noted there was a thriving trade route through the Salinas Valley. There were three large Pueblo villages along the trade route with several thousand Pueblo Indians in the valley. The Spanish Crown decided that New Mexico was never going to be a rich source of gold and treasure and had all but written off the area when the Franciscan Monks convinced the Crown that the Indians needed to be “saved”. The Crown then order the installation of Spanish civil authorities and the Monks sent priest to the valley to convert the Puebloans to Christians. The first Franciscan Priests arrived in the valley in 1618. The Pueblo Indians, who had survived over the centuries by accepting the customs and believes of others, quickly decided to accept the new religion in addition to maintaining their own. The Franciscans conscripted the Indians to build large churches (women were charged with the building of the churches, while the men tended the fields) of the native rock. In the meantime, the appointed civil authorities were also conscripting the Indians to provide goods to be sent back to the Crown. By the 1670s, the tussle between the church and the civil authorities over which was more important for the Indians to be working for, reach a breaking point. In addition, a massive drought hit the area in 1668 to 1674. Crop yield plummeted and the enslaved Pueblo Indians began dying by the hundreds. In addition, the Comanche Indians were raiding the Pueblo villages in retaliation for their part in helping the Spanish in raids on Comanche villages to get slaves. By 1678, all three Pueblos had been abandoned and the survivors moved to the Rio Grande Valley Pueblos. In 1680, the Pueblo Indians rose up and kicked the Spanish out of New Mexico. The Spanish later “re-conquered” New Mexico but the missions and Pueblos were never reoccupied.

We toured the Abo Mission on our way to Mountainair. The church was in pretty good shape but the pueblo buildings were just mounds of dirt. The church was built out of soft rock mined from the near by dry wash. Original wooden beams held up the rock above the windows and doors even after centuries of being exposed to the elements. Interestingly, there was a Kiva built on the church grounds. Kivas were used by the Pueblos for their religious ceremonies. There was a nice paved trail through the ruins and around the mounds where the pueblo structures had once been. We talked with the Ranger on duty at the contact station for quite a while and collected a Passport Stamp (#31) (We will only count the NM as one stamp, not four). We then drove on to the visitor center in Mountainair (interesting little town by the way) we watched the park movie and got our NPS passport stamp.

From the visitor center, we decided that the 40-mile drive to and back for Gran Quivira Pueblo Mission was to far (we are starting to get burned out on Pueblo ruins) and drove to Quarai Pueblo Mission, which was on a route back to Albuquerque. Similar to Abo, the church was in ruins and the pueblo structures have been reduced to just mounds of dirt. The church was built of the same local rock as at Abo. We stopped in the contact station and strolled the paved path around the ruins before heading back to Albuquerque along the Salt Mission Trail Scenic Byway (New Mexico 337). The drive was very scenic as it went through the heart of the Cibola National Forest.