Salinas Pueblo Missions "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions Historic Structures Report

In 1669, Fray Juan Bernal remarked on the twin misfortunes that had caused so much difficulty in the Province of New Mexico for the last three years and that threatened to "put it out of existence." These were the war with the Apache Indians, which had escalated in severity since the mid-1660s, and crop failure, which had been causing problems in one part or another of the Province of New Mexico since 1667. [1]

Bernal was prophetic: he was observing the beginning of the process that put the Province of New Mexico "out of existence." The twin stresses of famine and Indian insurrection eventually caused the abandonment of the Salinas Jurisdiction in the late 1670s and contributed to the loss of the entire Province of New Mexico in 1680. The famine was not quite as catastrophic as he stated--Indians were not dying of hunger in wholesale fashion beside the roads of the entire province--but there were severe food shortages in the province and perhaps four hundred and fifty deaths from starvation and thirst at Las Humanas. In addition, some of the Indian uprisings were not just Apache attacks, but Pueblo Indian revolts on a small scale. [2]

The Decline and Abandonment of the Salinas Missions

As the situation in New Mexico deteriorated, civil and religious authorities in the province began to consider the possibility of pulling back from some of the more exposed or less self-supporting pueblos. The areas of greatest concern were those at some distance from the northern Rio Grande Valley. These were the jurisdictions of the Hopi, the Zuñi, Las Salinas, Galisteo and the Piro at the south end of the province. The closing of a mission at a pueblo during the famine years was the direct equivalent of abandoning the pueblo. When the missionary moved, he attempted to move the Christianized Indians with him to prevent their returning to their old pagan ways or being harmed by anti-Christian factions. The removal of Franciscan support and some number of Indians from a pueblo caused severe damage to the subsistence system of the pueblo, perhaps leading to abandonment by anti-Spanish factions, too. From the viewpoint of the Spanish government, however, the situation was even worse. Since the closing out of a mission under the circumstances of the late 1660s and early 1670s meant the probable abandonment of the place, or at least the end of effective Spanish control over the pueblo, the provincial government lost the tribute of that pueblo. This, in turn, theoretically meant the loss of the services of the encomendero who received that tribute. The closing of a pueblo could translate directly into a reduction of the military strength of the province. Closing a pueblo had serious implications and far-reaching consequences, and would not have been carried out without painful reassessments of strategy and the military situation by both the civil government and the Franciscans. The loss had to be outweighed by the gain in terms of the survival of the province. If the province had not gained by the closing of the Salinas pueblos, one by one, the combined capabilities of the civil and religious administrations would have found a way to keep them occupied.

Poor harvests caused the missions to institute food distribution in the Salinas pueblos and other areas of New Mexico in the winter of 1667-68. In 1668, Bernal stated, more than 450 Indians died of starvation at Las Humanas. At the same time, Apache raids increased. In 1670 the mission at Las Humanas was seriously damaged in an attack on September 30. The Apaches probably destroyed the church of San Isidro and several rooms of the old convento. [3] This was effectively the end for Las Humanas. The Franciscans probably closed the mission in 1671, and Fray Joseph de Paredes and the surviving population of five hundred families retreated to Abó and then on to the Piro-speaking missions of the Rio Grande valley to the west probably Isleta, where Paredes became guardian in August, 1672. [4] To facilitate the defense and the provisioning of the province of New Mexico, the final consolidation of the Salinas frontier had begun.

In November, 1671, if not earlier, Fray Francisco Gómez de la Cadena, the guardian of Tajique and its visita, Chililí, began feeding those two pueblos out of mission stores. [5] At the same time a detachment of soldiers was stationed at Chililí, from which they patrolled the area. They, too, were supplied out of the mission storehouses. [6]

The situation continued to deteriorate. A second, larger military detachment was assigned to Abó in May, 1672, again supplied out of mission stores. [7] Fray Alonso Gil de Avila, the resident minister, was also feeding the pueblo of Abó by this time. A similar military detachment was probably stationed at Quarai, where Fray Diego de Parraga would see to their supplies. [8]

The Crisis

These difficult years demonstrated that the claims made by the Franciscans about storing up for the bad days were true. Throughout the seventeenth century the civil government criticized the missions for their huge flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and their storehouses full of corn and wheat. The missionaries invariably replied that in times of famine "rations were distributed to their parishoners, whenever requested, on Sundays for the entire week . . . ." The mission storerooms and herds had supplied the pueblos of Tajique and Quarai during the famine of 1659-60, and did so again in 1667-72. [9]

The accountings from Abó and Tajique clearly document the Franciscan effort in 1671 and 1672. From November 1671 to July 1672, Fray Francisco Gómez de la Cadena of Tajique gave 11,063 pounds of corn, 202 pounds of beans, 12 cows, 14 sheep, and 554 feet of cloth for clothing to needy families in the pueblo. He also gave 3,451 pounds of corn to the pueblo of Chililí and 609 pounds of corn and 16 sheep to the military detachment. [10]

From May to September, 1672, Fray Alonso Gil de Avila of Abó gave 4,466 pounds of corn, 12 cows, and 37 sheep for food, 605 pounds of corn for planting the fields in May, and the fleeces of 250 sheep to be made into clothing for his pueblo. During the same period he supported the military detachment at Abó with 990 pounds of wheat, 84 pounds of beans, and 21 sheep. [11]

Quarai may not have suffered from the same famine as the other missions, since its water supply, a series of springs, was more dependable than that of the other pueblos. A military detachment at Quarai the same size as that at Abó would consume perhaps four sheep and 198 pounds of wheat (or 159 pounds of corn) per month. [12] The detachments were probably about ten men and thirty or more horses at Chililí, and thirteen men and forty or more horses at Abó. [13]

During the emergency of 1667 to 1672, the resources of the entire Franciscan establishment in New Mexico were used to meet the needs of the pueblos. Fray Alonso Gil de Avila, at the end of his list of expenditures for 1672, stated that "all of which [supplies] I have sought after and obtained, for the love of God, aided only by the Religious of the Conventos and especially our most revered Father Custodian." At least seven other pueblos on the frontiers of the province were also being supplied by the Franciscans. This amounted to a staggering expenditure of food, and a convincing argument that the Franciscans were serious about their planning for the lean years. [14]

The Last Days

Fray Alonso Gil de Avila was forced to abandon the pueblo and church of Abó in about 1673 after the Indians burned the convento. [15] Gil de Avila was transferred to Senecú, where he was killed in the convento by Indian arrows during an uprising in January, 1675. [16] Senecú survived only another year and a half and finally fell between March, 1676, and November, 1677. [17]

Between late 1676 and early 1677, Chililí and Quarai were given up, the Christian populations of both moving to Tajique. [18] The Indians of Quarai insisted on taking the body of one of their favorite missionaries (presumed in the 1750s to have been Fray Gerónimo de la Llana) with them on the move. The Franciscans reinterred the body at an unspecified location in the church of San Miguel de Tajique. [19]

The government of New Mexico made a desperate plea to the viceroy for aid in 1676. Reinforcements and weapons arrived in late November or early December 1677, but too late for Tajique. It was abandoned shortly before the arrival of the supply train. [20]

Fray Francisco de Ayeta, the procurador for the supply train from 1674 to 1680, made a heroic attempt to save the province. He made three round trips between Santa Fe and Mexico City in the period from late 1675 to mid-1680. During this time he carried mission supplies in the standard dispatch of 1675, arriving in Santa Fe in December, 1675. Upon arrival in New Mexico, he quickly realized that the situation was very precarious and he was determined to take action. He left Santa Fe in March, 1676, with the petitions for help from the government of New Mexico, and returned to Mexico City, arriving in late August or early September. He petitioned the viceroy to supply the province with soldiers, equipment, and food; the Franciscan order would cover the costs of food and transportation for fifty men and one thousand horses. The viceroy approved the plan. Ayeta helped gather the men and equipment and left Mexico City with the special supply and reinforcement train on February 27, 1677. Because of delays by bad weather, the train did not arrive in Santa Fe until late November. [21]

In December, Governor don Antonio de Otermín established a garrison of ten soldiers at Galisteo to aid in the reoccupation of the Salinas pueblos. Ayeta supplied the soldiers and Salinas refugees there with grain and meat. From this staging point Tajique was reoccupied in January or February 1678, but the attempt to recover Quarai was unsuccessful, probably because too few soldiers were available. [22] Tajique was resettled with more than two hundred families of Christian Indians and a small garrison. It was held until at least mid-1679, and perhaps until the Pueblo Revolt in August, 1680. [23]

Ayeta distributed men and supplies through the province until March, 1678. During this time he realized that the aid he had brought was not enough and that the situation was worse than anyone had thought. He left again on March 28, 1678, and arrived in Mexico City in September. On May 10, 1679, after receiving word from New Mexico that the Apache were again on the move, he petitioned for a second dispatch of fifty armed men and for the establishment of a presidio in Santa Fe. The petition was denied by the viceroy. This decision, which probably was directly responsible for the loss of New Mexico, was actually made by don Martín de Solís Miranda, Fiscal for the Viceroy. He recommended that the petition for reinforcements and military aide be refused on the grounds that "since such a short time has intervened [since the dispatch of military aid in 1677], it might be feared that [the King] would consider it to be a useless and unnecessary expense." Instead, don Solís Miranda recommended that the petition be forwarded to the king. The Viceroy accepted don Martín's decision not to make a decision, and the papers were sent on the next ship to Spain, where it arrived in January, 1680. On June 25, 1680, the King issued orders to do whatever was necessary to give aid to New Mexico. [24]

Meanwhile, Ayeta assembled his next regular mission dispatch and set out again for New Mexico in mid-1680. He arrived at the Rio Grande near present El Paso in early August, where he met the first refugees from the province. He immediately made the entire shipment of mission supplies available to the governor and did all he could to aid in the establishment of a refugee center in the area. [25]

So the province of New Mexico was lost, to famine, Apache raids, dissatisfaction, greed, and uncertainty. The demonstration that he had been right and the viceroy wrong was only bitter consolation to Fray Francisco de Ayeta.

Abandonment

Fray Diego de Parraga locked the doors of the church of Concepción de Quarai for the last time in mid-1677, and climbed on the wagon carrying the bell, the sacred vessels and vestments from the sacristy, and his personal belongings. [26] He joined the column of two hundred refugee families moving out of Quarai on the road to Tajique, eleven miles to the north. As the last stragglers disappeared around the hill, the days of Quarai as a living community came to an end. It was the last of the southern Salinas pueblos to be given up; it joined Abó, abandoned by Gil de Avila four years before, and Las Humanas, abandoned by Joseph de Paredes in 1671, in the slow process of decay that would eventually reduce it to mounds of scrub-covered rubble.

The churches and conventos, more substantially built, would resist the forces of time longer--except when those forces were aided by men. The convento of San Gregorio de Abó, burned by the Apache in 1673, was already well on its way to the ground, but the church would stand relatively unchanged for more than a century, until the Apache struck once again about 1830 and burned it, too. [27]

Concepción de Quarai was left whole, and time worked on it only very slowly. The roofs of some convento rooms rotted and fell in during the next century, but by 1800 most of the roofing remained on the church and much of the convento. The church of Concepción de Quarai, like San Gregorio de Abó, was burned out by Apache about 1830, after surviving earlier Apache raids and a century and a half of abandonment. [28]

At Las Humanas, San Isidro and the old convento rooms in mound 7, burned out in the Apache raid of September, 1670, probably collapsed. The new convento of San Buenaventura aged much more slowly, while the unfinished church changed little until beam robbers began pulling out its woodwork in the 1870s.

During the eighteenth century, Abó and Quarai were visited occasionally. Most of these visits were unrecorded, but others were official business. [29] During the period from 1751 to 1754, and probably from 1762 to 1767, Governor Thomas Vélez Cachupín stationed frontier patrols of cavalry from the Presidio of Santa Fe in the Salinas area. They formed an early warning network keeping watch on the southeastern approaches into the Rio Grande Valley and the main settlements of Pueblo and Spanish New Mexico. [30]

The patrol was of unstated size, but Governor Vélez implies that it was not small: "The troops which occupy this area are posted in the spot of Coara [Quarai], or Tafique [Tajique], and make the entry of the Apache impossible." [31] Unfortunately, his phrasing indicates that Governor Vélez was uncertain of the name of the old mission where the troops were stationed, and so gave both possible names. Because of this confusion, the actual location of the main post of the patrol is not known. [32]

Between Vélez's two terms as governor from 1754 to 1760, Don Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle served as governor. In 1759, Governor Marín decided, for reasons not entirely clear, to attempt the retrieval of the bodies of Fray Gerónimo de la Llana from the Salinas missions and Fray Acencio de Zarate from Pícuris. [33] By the time the expedition arrived at Quarai, on March 30, 1759, it consisted of the governor, two squadrons of soldiers, three officers, four Franciscans, fifty-five Indians, twenty citizens, and "all the equipment necessary for excavating."

They found the sanctuary partly filled with rubble and roofing debris. Apparently the double viga at the mouth of the apse, supporting the central vigas over the transept, had rotted and fallen. This would have brought down part of the main apse roof and nine transept beams in the central area of the transept roof. The beams, stonework, latillas, matting, and adobe covering layer would have fallen into the sanctuary, partly burying the main altar and altar steps beneath a tangle of whole and broken woodwork, stone rubble, and dirt. The upper apse roof apparently survived the collapse, so that only a rectangular area in the center of the transept was open to the weather. [34]

The governor used the testimony of Fray Nicolás de Freitas as a guide for the attempt to relocate the bodies. Freitas stated in 1706 that he had placed Fray Gerónimo's body in a coffin of pine "en la mesa del altar mayor (in the table or platform of the main altar)" of Concepción de Quarai. [35] The Franciscans and the governor had the rubble removed from the sanctuary until the main altar was cleared. They opened the altar table but found no body.

Thinking that Freitas may have meant the altar platform rather than the altar table itself, they demolished the altar and excavated a hole fourteen feet deep into the sanctuary platform beneath it. The excavation destroyed most of the sanctuary platform and the altar steps. Still no body was found.

At this point, several people in the expedition came forward with information that could explain why Fray Gerónimo's body was not in the altar. According to several Hispanics, the next mission north was actually Quarai, and this mission was Tajique. According to several Indians, the people of Quarai removed a friar's body, possibly that of de la Llana, when they abandoned Quarai and fled to Tajique. These people considered Tajique to be the next mission to the north. [36] The expedition moved north to examine the ruins of Tajique.

Again, quiet settled over the abandoned pueblo. The rubble of the main altar and the dirt from the pit beneath it slowly washed back into the hole over the years. Finally, in the first years of the nineteenth century, settlers began moving back into the Salinas area and the pueblo of Quarai.

THE RECONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO

New Mexico remained separated from the Spanish Empire for twelve years, until the campaign of Governor Diego de Vargas in 1692. Governor Antonio de Otermín made an unsuccessful attempt to recapture the lost province during the winter of 1681-82, and other expeditions made punitive strikes at the Pueblo Indians in 1688 and 1689, but during most of the twelve year period, the pueblos were left to themselves.

The Spanish presence was not forgotten, however. The Indians continued to use many of the tools, livestock, and farming methods that they had learned about from the Franciscans, and many people with some percentage of Spanish blood lived in the pueblos. Some pueblos were abandoned and reestablished in more defensible locations, probably in fear of the return of the Spanish as well as because of increased friction between pueblos and between the pueblos and nomadic Indians.

De Vargas began the reconquest in 1692, but not until 1696 did he have the province firmly in hand. He set up the machinery of government again, but many of the old ways were gone. De Vargas did not reestablish the encomienda system, and the broad powers of the Franciscans were severely cut back. The conflict between the governor, the encomenderos, and the church was over. Missions became doctrinas in fact, exercising little influence over the daily lives of their pueblos. In place of the encomienda, the Spanish Government maintained a permanent force of regular army troops in the province. The governor began the use of the land-grant to encourage the establishment of towns and settlements that would have some ability to defend themselves. Pueblos and towns would receive a formal title to a specific tract of land for their use. Individuals and groups had the same privileges. In spite of the danger and the efforts of the government, many small, undefended settlements grew up, only to be destroyed by nomadic Indian raids. [37]

Resettlement of the Rio Grande Valley

Through the eighteenth century, settlements slowly filled the northern Rio Grande valley and began to be established farther and farther south. In 1706, the governor founded the villa of Albuquerque in the middle of what had been the richest and most extensive farming area of the seventeenth century. [38] It served as the starting point for colonization farther south.

In 1739 Governor Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza created the town of Tomé, eleven miles south of Isleta Pueblo on the east side of the Rio Grande. The governor selected the ruins of the estancia of Tomé Domínguez de Mendoza for the site of the new town. Since the Domínguez de Mendoza family abandoned the ranch during the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 the site had been called the Cerro de Tomé, or "Tomé's hill." Tomé was effectively the southern limit of settlement on the east side of the Rio Grande in New Mexico for most of the eighteenth century. Across the river and five miles south, the town of Bethlén, now called Belén, was settled in 1740. Eleven miles south of Belén also on the west bank, was the fortified settlement of Sabinal, established in the mid-eighteenth century. Just across the river on the east bank the town of Las Nutrias had been established about the same time as Sabinal, but it was abandoned in 1772 because of Apache raids. [39]

Tomé had been colonized with genizaros, hispanicized Indians, who were to form the first line of defense against Plains Indian raids up the Rio Grande valley from the south. When the town was founded, the settlers were "under obligation to go out and explore the country in pursuit of the [Plains Indians], which they are doing with great bravery and zeal." [40] Tomé bore the brunt of many Plains Indian raids throughout the eighteenth century. For example, in 1777 twenty-one settlers of the Tomé area were killed by Comanches, and in 1778 another thirty persons died during a raid by unnamed Indians. The friction between the Spanish and the Plains Indians kept the area south of Tomé untenable for the next twenty years. [41]

The government of the Province of New Mexico began a new effort to colonize the southern Rio Grande in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Plans were made to reoccupy the pueblos of Sevilleta, Alamillo and Socorro, all within forty-five miles south of Belen. The new settlers had begun construction on the defenses of Alamillo and Sevilleta by 1800. The reconstruction of Socorro was delayed until about 1815. Colonists had built a new town in the ruins by 1817. [42]

As the interest in expansion down the Rio Grande strengthened in the period from 1800 to 1815, settlers began to trickle through the Bocas de Abó, the mouth of Abó canyon, toward the abandoned pueblos and estancias east of the Manzano Mountains. [43] Artifacts in the trash dumps of the towns established here indicate that the first reoccupation of Abó and Quarai occurred soon after 1800. In 1815, at the same time that it was encouraging the reoccupation of Socorro, the government began actively recruiting colonists to resettle "the ancient pueblo of Manzano", probably referring to the ruins of the Zalazar estancia and its surviving apple groves four miles northwest of Quarai. [44]

The Expansion of Settlement Into the Salinas Basin

The land in the Rio Grande valley was filling up, and ranchers and farmers began to look outside the valley for new territory. The Salinas basin, abandoned since the 1670s, held a large expanse of land unclaimed by Indian pueblos or private owners. Everyone knew of the good land on the east slope of the Manzano Mountains, and everyone had heard the stories of pueblos and missions that had once been there. The basin was more exposed to Apache and Navajo raiding than the Rio Grande valley, making settlement of the area a risky business, but there were always people willing to take risks for good land.

In 1800, small groups of settlers started moving through Abó Pass to the eastern slopes of the Manzanos, then called the Abó Mountains. Because of their strategic location near dependable springs on the main route east, small settlements immediately formed at the ruins of Abó and Quarai. From Quarai, the explorers and settlers moved north, establishing themselves at other water sources along the eastern slope of the Manzanos. By 1815, settlers were reclaiming the ruins of the Zalazar estancia where the village of Manzano is now located. By 1819, Joseph Nieto's estancia, where the town of Torreon now stands, was reoccupied. The more extensive remains of the pueblos of Tajique and Chililí were resettled before 1840. By 1850, Torreon, Tajique, and Chililí had become the dominant towns of the western Salinas basin.

In the sudden flurry of land speculation and colonization, Abó and Quarai had promising beginnings, but a combination of local political maneuvering and Navajo raiding prevented their development from equalling that of the towns farther north. Las Humanas, in an area that was more exposed to raids and with a less dependable water supply, never aroused much interest among the colonists. The success and failure of the settlements directly influenced the rate of disturbance and deterioration at the three missions. In fact, the survival of the churches and conventos of Abó, Quarai, and Las Humanas in relatively good condition can be attributed to the lack of long-term occupation at these three locations.

No documents directly recorded the reoccupation of Abó and Quarai. Events at the two pueblos can be reconstructed only in the most sketchy manner, from remarks in the records of the successful colonies, traveller's journals, and an examination of the structural changes. Rough dates for the stages of the rise and fall of the new settlements are indicated by the trash thrown onto the refuse heaps around the reoccupied buildings.

LAND GRANTS IN THE SALINAS BASIN

Petitions for land and for the right to establish churches, kept in the Spanish Archives of New Mexico and the Archdiocese Archives of Santa Fe, record most of the sparse historical information concerning the settlements east of the Manzano Mountains. An examination of these records indicates that already established landowners in the Rio Grande valley frequently sponsored the resettlement efforts and became the official owners of the reclaimed land. Among these sponsors, or patrons, as they were called, were Bartolome Baca of Tomé and the Lucero family with lands in the same area. [45]

Captain Bartolome Baca requested a grant of land in the Salinas Basin in 1819. This land, known as the Torreon Grant (not to be confused with the Torreon Community Grant made in 1841), was the first official permanent Spanish presence east of the Manzanos since the abandonment of the Jurisdiction in 1673. Baca established a ranch on the land and pastured sheep, cattle, and horses there. [46] While Baca himself lived in Tomé, the ranch was run and protected by resident herders. Ranch headquarters was at Torreon Springs, where Joseph Nieto's estancia stood from 1650 to 1680 and near the present town of Torreon. The name "Torreon," meaning "fortified building" or "tower," was already associated with the area when Baca petitioned for title to the tract, and may indicate that recognizable traces of Nieto's buildings still stood. [47]

Baca's ranch served to encourage and support other efforts at colonization nearby. Baca was governor of the Province of New Mexico from 1823 to 1825 and an influential landowner for most of the first three decades of the nineteenth century. The development of the nearby settlement of Manzano depended on Baca's support both directly and indirectly. He actively encouraged the other colonization efforts around his Torreon Grant. At the same time, he employed a number of the people who were settling in the area of the ruins of the Zalazar estancia, soon to become the town of Manzano.

Manzano, because of its greater population and strong defenses, survived the Indian raids that came with increasing severity from 1822 to 1833 and caused the abandonment of virtually all other new settlements east of the Manzano Mountains. [48] Much of the reoccupation and construction at Quarai was directly influenced by developments in Manzano, and the raids of ca. 1830 apparently caused many of the people of Quarai to move to the better-defended town. The settlers at Abó, abandoned at the same time, apparently returned to Tomé and the other towns of the Rio Grande valley. [49]

The Manzano Grant

Governor Alberto Maynez had begun the effort to establish the town of Manzano in 1815. Several landowners in the Tomé area were interested in developing the eastern slope of the Manzanos. Among these was the Lucero family, led by Miguel and Juan Lucero. Their efforts met with success; Manzano was an established settlement by 1823, when the petition for the creation of the Casa Colorado grant, supported by the Luceros and other Manzano settlers, specifically mentioned the town. [50]

By 1829, the Manzano settlers were obviously prospering in spite of the increasing Apache raids. Because the colonists depended on sheep ranching and subsistence farming, they did not settle in a simple nuclear town pattern, with the village in the center and fields and pastures surrounding it. Instead, the central fortified compounds of Manzano (called plazas), with their dependable spring-fed irrigation systems, attracted a number of families who depended largely on farming for subsistence, while the families whose principal interest was sheepherding formed loose settlements centered around other fortified compounds in outlying areas. The ruins of Abó and Quarai each attracted a group of these families. Both sites had enough water that the families could practice limited subsistence farming, but most activities centered around sheep. For the sheep-dependant families, Manzano was one of the market towns to which they carried their wool, woven goods, and mutton for sale or trade. All the settlers, however, thought of themselves as part of the Manzano colonization effort, whether they lived in town or at Quarai or Abó.

The town of Manzano was as spread out as the surrounding settlements. It consisted of at least two parts. One was called the Plaza de Apodaca, and was apparently the present main plaza of the town. [51] This part of town clustered around the springs, reservoir, and headwaters of the irrigation system that watered the fields. Associated with the Plaza de Apodaca were two apple orchard enclosures owned by the Catholic Church.

The orchards were apparently present when the first settlers arrived to establish the town of Manzano. The available evidence implies that they were planted by the occupants of the Zalazar ranch, the ruins of which were incorporated into the new town. Local tradition, however, had forgotten the Zalazars and considered the ruins and the orchards to be the work of Franciscan missionaries, somehow associated with Quarai. Because of this tradition, the Catholic Church claimed the orchards. [52]

The second part of the town was the Plaza de Ojitos, where, remarks the petition, most of the citizens of the town reside. Ojitos was approximately one mile southeast down the Arroyo de Manzano, and according to local tradition was on the site of an Indian pueblo. Adolph Bandelier visited Ojitos in 1882-83, looking for the supposed pueblo. He could find no traces of any large occupation. Wesley Hurt apparently saw the surviving traces of the Plaza de Ojitos "at the spring about a mile east of the present village of Manzano" in 1938-40, and was told that it was a very early settlement of the people of Manzano. [53]

On September 22, 1829, the residents of the Manzano area petitioned the Territorial Deputation of Tomé for a community grant. The settlers requested a tract of land that included all the areas of their scattered settlement, from the mission of Abó on the southwest to the general area of present Torreon on the north, and from Jumanos Mesa on the east to the Manzano Mountains on the west, an area about twenty miles on a side. This was only a little larger than the community grant established for Tomé and indicated that the people of Manzano were ambitious and thought their settlement to be, potentially at least, the equivalent of Tomé. The Deputation considered the requested area to be too large, and instead granted a four square league tract out of the land originally requested on November 28, 1829. Jacinto Sanchez, in compliance with the order of the Deputation, surveyed and officially granted the four-league tract to the citizens of Manzano on December 24, 1829. [54]

The tract formed a square centered on the town of Manzano, with sides 5.2 miles long. The ruins of Quarai fell just inside the boundary. A great deal of territory that the Manzano settlers were used to thinking of as theirs was left out, including the small settlement at Abó. This reduction of Manzano territory undoubtedly had an effect on the settlement of outlying areas such as Abó and Quarai, and may have induced some of the settlers to move closer to Manzano. The pressure of Indian raids encouraged such centralization of the settlement, with the result that during the 1830s Abó was abandoned and Quarai was greatly reduced in population.

On August 25, 1829, a month before they petitioned for their community grant, residents of the extended Manzano area filed a petition for the right to build a chapel with the advocation of Maria Santísima de los Dolores. Curate Don Francisco Ygnacio de Madariaga, the parish priest in Tomé, approved the petition on August 29, and on September 4 Bachiller Don Juan Rafael Rascon, the Ecclesiastical Governor of the territory of New Mexico, granted official permission for a church to be built in Manzano. [55]

In the petition for the town grant, the citizens of the Manzano area indicated that they would construct their chapel in the main plaza of the settlement. At some time soon after September 22, 1829, a majority of the citizens changed their minds, electing instead to build the new chapel in a plaza of the pueblo of Quarai a short distance southwest of the old mission church.

The mission church still had its choir loft and most of its roof in the late 1820s, and was used for the burial of those among the local settlers who died or were killed by occasional Apache attack. By this time the building was probably so dilapidated that it was dangerous to use for any purpose, for fear of the roof collapsing onto visitors. In late 1829 or early 1830, an Apache raid struck at the settlement of Quarai, killing at least one person and burning out the surviving roofing, choir loft, and lintels of the church. Several other buildings were probably destroyed in the attack. [56]

The decision to build the new chapel of Manzano at Quarai was probably intended to replace the old mission church. Whether this move was prompted by the deterioration of the building, or by its destruction, cannot be determined. The decision, however, caused a conflict between the residents of the town of Manzano and the other settlers on the Manzano grant. [57] The Lucero family, influential members of the Manzano Grant citizenry, apparently lived at Quarai. The Luceros were undoubtedly responsible, at least in part, for the decision to build the new chapel at Quarai, rather than in Manzano proper. [58]

In spite of the disagreement among the settlers, construction began on the chapel at its new site in the pueblo of Quarai. Opposition, however, continued to grow until on July 6, 1830, the citizens of Manzano petitioned the parish priest Don Francisco Madariaga for the privilege of moving the site of the chapel from Quarai to the town of Manzano. It was only just begun, they stated, and they were suffering "difficulties and inconveniences . . . because of having to build [it] in the Pueblo of Quarai . . . ." They insisted that it would be better to build the church in the Plaza de Apodaca at Manzano. The controversy was resolved when the alcalde of Tomé, José Manuel Apodaca, officially ordered on July 10 that the chapel be built "at the Casa de Apodaca" in Manzano. Bachillor Don Francisco Madariaga followed suit by giving his approval for the change on July 11. The parish priest assigned the income from one of the apple orchards near Apodaca Plaza to defray the expenses of services in the new chapel. [59]

The settlement at Abó remained small. The failure of the attempt to include Abó and its adjacent settlement in the Manzano Land Grant, and the increase in Indian raids through the decade of the 1820s, appears to have led finally to the abandonment of the settlement about 1830. By the time the Cisneros family settled at Abó about 1865, the first settlers were forgotten. Little was left but the ruins of a few houses on top of the earlier Pueblo ruins, and scattered trash in the kitchen middens. [60]

No one resettled at Las Humanas until the twentieth century. It was too distant from the occupied areas of New Mexico, had too little water, and was too exposed to the Plains Indians. Some families in Manzano and later settlers at Abó herded sheep in the area of the ruins, sometimes camping in the convento or building a small shack near the pueblo buildings. [61] By 1872, José Ramon Espinosa had established a ranch about six miles north of Gran Quivira, and in the early years of the twentieth century the little town of Gran Quivira grew up at the foot of the hill northwest of the mission ruins. [62]