A totally “ruin”ed Saturday
We’ve been living here in Santa Fe for quite while now, but haven’t seen much of the state. Things should change this Saturday and by the end of the day we both would agree that it was a totally “ruin”ed day.
Early in the morning we packed the dog, some food, the camera gear and an umbrella to go towards Eldorado to the south-east of Santa Fe (via 25 and 285). We picked up 41 at Lamy and soon were in the middle of nowhere. One can’t believe that only a few miles out of Santa Fe you are in wide-open country with farmland to the left and right of the road.
Candice had heard a lot of nice things about Galisteo, but this time just pass through it and don’t stop there.
At Moriarty both of us are hungry and we need a bio-break anyway. Just past Interstate 40, there is this road lined with gas-stations, fast-food-joints and other trucker-friendly places. It had to happen one day, why not this Saturday: we stop at McDonalds and get one of those greasy little muffin-bricks for breakfast. Candice complains for the next 30 mins that she broke down and got food from there. The lady behind the counter at McDonalds asks us where we are from and whether we are here for the “air show”. We find out that this Saturday there is an air-show in Moriarty and decide to drop by the nearby airport to check it out. When we reach the airport a few minutes later and see the sign that asks for 5 dollars parking fee, we agree that we are not that desparate to see a few planes and turn around to go back to 41, continuing further to the south.
McIntosh … Witt … Estancia … right on 55 in western direction, we end up at Manzano park. Slightly disoriented, Candice asks the park rangers for directions to the nearby ruins and we are happy to hear that we are only a few miles away from the ruins at Quarai.
At Punta De Agua we see the signs towards the “Quarai ruins” and soon make our first scheduled stop.
Like Abo and Las Huma-nas, red-walled Quarai was a thriving pueblo when Ofiate first approached it in 1598 to “accept” its oath of allegiance to Spain. Three of Quarai’s Spanish priests were head of the New Mexico Inquisition during the 1600s, including Fray Estevan de Perea, Custodian of the Franciscan order in the Salinas Jurisdiction and called by one historian the “Father of the New Mexican Church.” Despite the horrors associated with the word “Inquisition,” records from hearings show that the early inquisitors, in New Mexico at least, were compassionate men usually capable of separating gossip from what the church regarded as serious transgressions.
In one case, tensions between church and state peaked when Perea charged the alcalde mayor of Salinas with encouraging the native Kachina dances. That case was dropped, but the alcalde’s continued disruptions at the mission prompted the Inquisition to banish him. Testimony recorded by Perea and others for trials at Mexico City provides a valuable picture of Spanish-Indian relationships in the 1600s. Spain’s sophisticated legal system was applied (when it worked as intended) to protect the Indians’ civil and property rights. And perhaps the Spanish colonists learned the patience and endurance that the Pueblos had practiced for hundreds of years.
The text above is taken from one of the pocket guides distributed at the ruins. It’s incredible to see this kind of structure in the US. It just comes so unexpected: Castles in Germany? Sure! Ruins in France? Of course! But here?
We walk around the structures and read the excellent little guide booklet (which is, by the way something I haven’t see before: You get a “loan” copy at the entrance and return the booklet when you leave the ruins). There are about 20 marker stones on the ground and the booklet has a few paragraphs of explanation for every marked point.
It’s a beautiful day and the fluffy clouds in the clear blue sky make for a nice contrast to the brick-red ruins. The fact that almost nobody else is there adds to atmosphere of the place.
40 minutes later we head back south towards Mountainair. The dog needs water, so we stop on the side of the road and I take the snapshot below.
In Moutainair our bellies begin to growl and we decide to look for a place for lunch. A few weeks ago Bill Manns had told us about this place and had shown us photographs of a diner that features “Swastikas” on the facade. Bill was disappointed that the place was closed when he took the pictures then. We are luckier - the restaurant is open for business and we get our second grease-fix for the day. This is the view right when we left the diner after lunch:
After lunch 55 takes us further to the south towards Gran Quivira.
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 ecomenderos, 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 1659, 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.
Text above again shamelessly stolen from our small booklet about the place. “Gran Quivira” is the grandest site we are going to see today. Nicely placed on the top of a hill, overlooking hundreds of miles in each direction, we see some massive structures. Even more surprising is the fact that all around us there is still a lot of stuff not excavated. It takes us almost an hour to explore the site and read the descriptions in the booklet.
Back in the car, back up on 55, back towards Mountainair, laugh about the Enron-sign …
… take 60 towards West … past Abo take 513 for 1 mile to the North and end up at the Abo ruins.
On an expedition to investigate the Salinas district in 1853, Maj. J. H. Carleton came upon Abo at dusk. “The tall ruins,” he wrote, “standing there in solitude, had an aspect of sadness and gloom.. The cold wind… appeared to roar and howl through the roofless pile like an angry demon.” Carleton recognized the ruins as a Christian church, but didn’t know that the “long heaps of stone, with here and there portions of walls projecting above the surrounding rubbish,” marked the remains of a large pueblo. Located on a pass opening onto the Rio Grande Valley, Abo had carried on a lively trade with people of the Acoma-Zuni area, the Galisteo Basin near Santa Fe, and the plains. Salt, hides, and pinon nuts passed through this trading center. Springs provided water for households, crops, and flocks of turkeys. Abo was a thriving community when the Spaniards first visited the Salinas Valley in 1581. Franciscans began converting Abo residents in 1622, and by the late 1620s the first church was finished. Later, a second church was built with a sophisticated buttressing technique unusual in 17th-century New Mexico. It had an organ and trained choir. But the good times did not last. Battered by the same disasters that struck the other Salinas pueblos, the people of Abo departed sometime between 1672 and 1678 to take refuge in towns along the Rio Grande.
Don’t have to tell you any more that the paragraph above is stolen. Abo is the last ruin-stop for today and compared to the previous two ones, the least impressive one. That opinion may be influenced by the fact that the site is undergoing restoration which makes parts inaccessible. However, we still enjoy walking around and reading up on the history of the place.
As you leave the Abo ruins and are about to merge back onto 60, you can see this when you look out of the left side of your car:
The rest of the journey is uneventful and we enjoy driving through the suburbs of Albuquerque to the south of the city on 47. Once we hit 25 it takes us another hour to go back to Santa Fe.
The dog has been perfect the whole day and we invite him for a party at the dog-park in Santa Fe (geez - there are a lot of people on a Saturday evening) - after that, Mummy and Daddy get takeout dinner from Jinja …
What I learned that day:
- America has ruins too …
- Loan booklets at tourist attractions save trees …
- You get a headache when Candice closes the trunk …
- New Mexico has the longest shadows …
Told you it was a totally “ruin”ed Saturday …
So I whacked Tobi on the forehead when I was closing the gate to the car (a “trunk” on an SUV). He really shouldn’t have been standing in the way…I mean, really…