Santa Fe River valley’s forgotten history

Each spring as the mountain snowpack melted, huge floods deposited topsoil along the Santa Fe River creating an alluvial plain. This fertile area was perfectly suited for irrigated farming because of its topography of a slight gravity flow back toward the river.

Native Americans were attracted to this place dating back 7,000 B.C. (pit houses were discovered at the Pindi Pueblo excavations). In fact, almost as soon as peoples came across the land bridge from Asia (13,000 B.C.) they wound up in New Mexico (Clovis, Folsom and Sandia Man).

When we were “discovered” by the colonizer Juan de Oñate in 1598, the land existed on a sophisticated trade network. A El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro crossroads, where you could either head northeast toward the future Santa Fe Plaza or north across the Santa Fe River onto the Caja del Rio Grant, past San Ildefonso Pueblo until you reached Oñate’s capitol near San Juan Pueblo.

The trails that the Spanish followed were a network of Native American trails existing for thousands of years. They went from present-day Mexíco City to the hub of this present-day Santa Fe River valley (with branches to Chaco Canyon, Bandelier and Mesa Verde).

The solid gold idols of the Aztecs had eyes of turquoise, which testing proves came from the Cerrillos (the “Little Hills” near San Marcos Pueblo). Recent archaeological digs in Agua Fría have found that same turquoise and the small white seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, which validate the vitality of these trade networks.

Agua Fría has been a “recorded” place of settlement since 1640 (Alamo and the Three Rivers Ranch in the La Cienega Valley also date from near this time period). Yet,

hardly anyone who reads this will know of the community’s existence or its deep history.

So why the obscurity of the Santa Fe River valley settlements? Is it because we live in the shadows of La Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís? Coming up El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, people were more interested in reaching the famed Santa Fe Plaza rather than dilly-dawdling in these small villages and rest stops (parajes). The people who lived here were humble, poor farmers not worthy of much attention. With humility and piousness, these farmers rarely interacted with strangers from along the trail. Often the surrounding communities (Tesuque, Cañada de los Alamos and the now obliterated Cieneguitas on the east — and Agua Fría, Cieneguilla, Alamo, La Cienega, La Bajada, Peña Blanca and Sile — in travel order going southwest) were in similar situations. Many farmers in one community were married into these other villages.

As farmers, adobe builders, livestock breeders and woodcutters, the goods for trade and barter sustained the city of Santa Fe. In fact, Gov. Don Pedro de Peralta was constantly complaining in his missives to his superiors that the residents of the city were incapable of farming, building and doing the things that a new colony needed.