Aztec Ruins Administrative History

SPANISH KNOWLEDGE OF THE RUINS

Had the men of Spain's most northerly seventeenth-century colony of Nueva Mejico named these ruins, one could rationalize it as an illogical but understandable transfer of known experience to the unknown and take the name as evidence that the Spaniards had been the first non-Indians on the site. The Aztec Indians were 1,500 miles away in the central Mexican highlands from which the borderland Spanish colonists had moved but undoubtedly to them were the prototypical natives. The Spaniards would not have known that the Aztecs had not emerged as a cultural entity until long after the Animas houses had been deserted. However, it was later settlers and explorers from the United States rather than the colonial Spaniards who were responsible for the designation of Aztec Ruins.

Regardless of the inappropriate modern name, details of Spanish soldiers in pursuit of marauding Native Americans must have spotted some of the Animas valley ruins and passed their observations along by word of mouth. Random traces of Spanish parties have been found in the vicinity. These include Spanish bridle bits, hand-hammered bridle ornaments of bronze, and more than 125 armor scales recovered in the late 1930s in Hart Canyon and near Hampton Arroyo, short distances northeast and due east from Aztec Ruins. [5] A copper pot owned by Scott Morris was reclaimed from the surface of Aztec Ruins in 1877. It was theorized to have been discarded by a wandering Spaniard, who may have spent the night in the protection of the structure. Modern analysis shows it to be of mid-nineteenth-century workmanship and more likely to represent littering by an early Euro-American settler. [6]

There must have been some bank of oral history behind the report of October 26, 1777, to the King of Spain made by the military cartographer for the Escalante-Dominguez expedition, Miera y Pacheco. He wrote that a presidio and settlement of families should be founded near the junction of the San Juan and Animas rivers, where beautiful meadow land was suitable for agriculture and pasture. He noted ancient buildings and irrigation canals in the meadows. [7]

The Miera y Pacheco reference is thought to have been to a large cobblestone village called the Old Fort situated at the confluence of the Animas and San Juan rivers and other settlements in the area, but probably not including Aztec Ruins. Earl Morris, excavator of the main Aztec Ruin, believed they may have been sighted. [8] Regardless, the information must have been second-hand since the expedition crossed this stretch of the terra incognita at least 40 miles to the north.

A second indication that Spaniards knew of the Animas River appeared in the journal of Antonio Armijo, leader of a 60-man Mexican expedition from Santa Fe to Upper California, which stated that on November 17, 1829, his command arrived at the banks of the river. If these men made the first sighting of Aztec Ruins, Armijo failed to mention it. [9] From lack of documentation, it can only be assumed that the Spaniards were either unaware of or not impressed with the specific grouping of Aztec Ruins.