From Mesa Verde to Santa Fe: Pueblo Identity in the Southwest

FAIN: ES-250803-16

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Inc. (Cortez, CO 81321-9408)
Sharon K. Milholland (Project Director: February 2016 to May 2018)

A three-week institute for twenty-five schoolteachers on the history, migration, and present-day world of the southwestern Pueblo peoples.

World-altering challenges confronted the Pueblo Indians of U. S. Southwest starting in AD 1300. They departed their ancestral homelands, migrated into the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, redefined themselves in the context of other Pueblo communities, only to be confronted by Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, and colonists intent on acquiring wealth, saving souls, and generally replacing the indigenous populations of New Mexico. This little-known history is the subject of a three-week institute for 25 school teachers that evaluates why and how ancestral Pueblo people left their Mesa Verde homeland, what happened when they arrived and settled in the northern Rio Grande Valley, and how the arrival of Spaniards affected their options and shaped their adaptations. The institute integrates archaeological data, ethnohistorical documents, and traditional narratives to provide a richer interpretive context than available through any single line of evidence.