Salinas Pueblo Missions

National Monument

Gran Quivira Ruins

Grand Quivira Ruins in winter
Las Humanas, largest of the Salinas pueblos, was an important trade center for many years before and after the Spanish entrada. The people resisted the newcomers at first, but they reconciled themselves to the Spanish presence, and borrowed freely from them, as they had from other cultures. The pueblo's black-on-white pottery took on new forms reflecting European styles. Other artifacts from the site recall the Spanish presence: Chinese porcelain, metal tools, religious medallions, and evidence of cattle, goats, sheep, horses, and pigs.

Documents of the 1600s tell of strife between missionaries and encomenderos, who complained that the friars kept the Indians so busy studying Christianity and building churches that the encomenderos could neither use Indian labor nor collect their tributes. In the 1660s, friars burned and filled kivas in an effort to exterminate the old religion. Hurriedly altered above-ground rooms converted to kivas attest to the Pueblo priests' response.

A second church was begun around 1569, but was never completed, partly because Apache raids had begun. In 1672, further weakened by drought and famine, the inhabitants (only 500 by that time) abandoned the pueblo.

Map

Last Updated:Friday, 17-Jul-1998 16:07:53 Eastern Daylight Time
http://www.nps.gov/archive/sapu/quivira.htm