P U Y E

MARK GOODMAN

PUYEPuye is one of the most extensive of the ancient “Cliff Cities” of the Southwest. It occupies an imposing situation on the Pajarito plateau,

ten miles west of the village of Espanola and thirty miles northwest of Santa Fe. Geologically, Puye is a rock of grayish-yellow tufa, 5750 feet

long, varying in width from 90 to 700 feet. It is a fragment of the great tufaceous blanket that once covered the entire Pajarito Plateau to

a thickness of from 50 to 1500 feet. This covering of tufa has been completely dissected by ages of water and wind erosion. In the northern

part not over ten per cent of it remains. These fragments appear as a multitude of geological islands, some almost circular, but mostly

long strips (in Spanish, potreros), extending east and west from the base of the Jemez Mountains towards the Rio Grande. They present,

on the south side, vertical escarpments rising above the talus slopes that reach usually almost to the dry arroyos in the valley bottoms.

The north side is always less abrupt, presenting only small escarpments and long gentle slopes to the valley. There is scant soil on the tops

of these mesas, and vegetation is limited to grass, juniper and pinon. The valleys are lightly forested with pine of not very ancient growth.

The altitude is about 7000 feet above sea level.

The view from the top of the rock of Puye is almost beyond compare. A few miles to the west is the Jemez range, with its rounded contours

and heavily forested slopes. On the eastern horizon one sees a hundred and fifty miles of the Santa Fe range, embracing the highest

peaks in New Mexico. The northern extremity of the panorama lies in the state of Colorado, and at the south end, near Albuquerque, is

the rounded outline of the Sandia Mountain, Oku, the “sacred Turtle” of Tewa mythology. The great synclinal trough of the Rio Grande

extends from north to south between the two ranges.

Puye was the principle focus of a population that occupied a number of villages in the northern part of this plateau. There are many “small

house” ruins, containing anywhere from two to fifty rooms each, scattered all over the district. The villages are for the most part found on

the tops of the mesas, on almost every one of which, of any size, some house remains are found. The large settlements consisted of from

one to three quadrangular pueblos, one or more small houses near by, and a village of excavated rooms in the adjacent cliff wall. The

settlements above seem to have been rather closely related. The villages are all connected by well-worn trails, some of them of unusual

depth. It seems to have been made entirely by the attrition of human feet, being so situated that its depth could not be augmented by

water erosion. The network of trails to be seen over this entire plateau is one of the most interesting archaeological features. The trail is a

sharply cut path, usually about eight inches wide, from a few inches to a foot in depth, and in many places more. The path narrows but

little toward the bottom and is remarkably clean cut. A large part of the surface of the plateau is rock devoid of soil, and these paths

afford an imperishable record of ages of coming and going. The well-worn stairways are worthy of particular notice.

The Puye is a fine example of the ancient Pajaritan community. At this place is found everything that is characteristic of the Pajaritan culture;

every form of house ruins, typical in construction and placement; sanctuaries, pictographs, implements, utensils, symbolic decoration, all

following a well-defined order, and conforming in all essential particulars to a type of culture to which I have for present convience given

the name Pajaritan.

The Puye settlement was made up of two aggregations of dwellings: 1. The great quadrangle on the mesa top, an arrangement of four

huge terraced community houses and a court, forming at once an effective fortification and a capacious dwelling; a compact residential

fortress that might not inappropriately be called a citadel. 2. The cliff villages, consisting of a succession of dwellings built against and

within the wall of the cliff, usually at a level where the talus slope meets the vertical escarpment. We note here three classes of dwellings.

1. Excavated, cave-like rooms, serving as domiciles, without any construction in front. 2. Excavated rooms with open rooms or porches

built on in front. 3. Houses of stone, one to three stories high, with corresponding number of terraces, built upon the talus against the cliff. In

these groups the excavated chambers now seen in the cliff wall were simply back rooms of the terraced buildings. The row of holes in the

cliff wall shows where the ceiling-beams of the second story rested. The walls of first-floor rooms are to be found under the debris where

the talus meets the vertical cliff. The ruins of a number of excavated back rooms are to be seen in the wall. The great community house

stands near the edge of the cliff, the southwest corner approaching to within twenty feet of the brink. The huge quadrangular pile of tufa

blocks gives at first the impression of great regularity of construction, but on close examination the usual irregularities of pueblo buildings

are found. It would require a rectangle approximately 300 x 275 feet to enclose the pile. No two exterior walls are exactly parallel, but the

orientation of the building is approximately with the cardinal points. The wall forming the east side of the court is on a due north and south

line. The interior court is not a perfect rectangle, the north side measuring 150 feet; south, 140; east, 158; and west, 143.

At the southeast corner is the main entrance to the square, 17 feet wide at the eastern end but enlarging to double that width before

it opens into the court. A narrow passage 13 feet wide was cleared at the southwest corner of the court, thus segregating the “South

House” of the quadrangle from the other four sides. It is probable, however, that this latter was a covered passage. A low oblong mound,

its longest diameter about 150 feet in length, lies just outside the main entrance. This has the appearance of neither a general refuse heap

nor a cemetery, though it occupies the usual position of the latter. It is composed mainly of the refuse produced by the dressing of the

stone for the building. A long narrow mound of similar character almost touches the southeast corner of the pueblo.

One subterranean sanctuary, or Kiva, is found just against the outer wall of the East House, and another somewhat larger lies 165 feet

slightly north of east of this one. The largest kiva on the mesa top, one apparently about 36 feet in diameter, lies 60 feet west of the

southwest corner of the quadrangle. These kivas were all excavated in the rock, there being almost no covering of soil at this place.

Others are found on the ledge of the cliff below, and still others in the talus.

The ruins of an ancient reservoir lie 120 feet west of the pueblo. It is oblong in form, its short diameter being about 75 feet, and the long

diameter 130 feet. The embankment is made of stone and earth, the opening being on the west. It could not have been fed from any

living source, and could have been useful only for impounding such surface water as would be conducted to it through the small draw to

the west. The supply of potable water for the pueblo must have been derived from what is now the dry arroyo south of the mesa. At one

point a meager supply can still be obtained by the opening of a spring in the sand, but here, as on all parts of this plateau, a much more

plentiful water supply than that now existing would be absolutely essential to the maintenance of such large settlements as once existed

at Puye. An evidence of such supply is to be seen in the irrigation canal, which may be traced for nearly two miles along the south side

of Puye arroyo. This ditch heads above the mesa towards the mountain, and must have been used to conduct surface water from the

mountain gulches to the level fields south and east of the settlements. It is possible that it was constructed during a late occupation of

Puye by the Santa Clara Indians, after their knowledge of irrigation has been augmented by contact with the Spaniards in the Rio Grande

Valley. — Edgar L. Hewett, 1908

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

1) Cliff Dwellings Puye. NMex. Anonymous. Azo RPPC, circa 1920 2) Cliff Dwellings. Puye. N.Mex. 586. Anonymous. Pigment print from

Velox Photograph, circa 1920s- 1940s 3 - 5) Edgar L. Hewett, “Archaeology of Rio Grande Valley,” Out West,

Volume 28, pp. 1 - 29, 1908 [Abridged] 6) Pigment print from negative taken by Mark Goodman with a

Brooks Veriwide 100 camera at Puye one afternoon in March 1990 7) On the Road to Puye. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher, Photo

Lithograph, circa 1926 - 1933 8) Ruins on the Mesa at Puye. Edward Curtis, Photographer. Vellum

print from the North American Indian, Volume 17, 1926 9) Cliff Dwelling, Prehistoric Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New

Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 – 1936. Once, in the long ago, Puye was the center of a dense population on the Pajarito plateau. Most of these “ancients” lived in huge communal dwellings and caves in the cliffs.

10) On the Road to Puye Cliff Ruins, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933 The route to the prehistoric cliff ruins at Puye, visited on the second day of the” Indian-detour” is exceptionally beautiful. It runs north from Santa Fe up the Rio Grande Valley, finally crossing the river at Espanola. The road then turns west up Santa Clara canyon towards the Jemez Mountains.

11) Ruins Communal House 2000 Rooms Puya Cliffs N.M. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920

12) Council Chamber Puya Cliffs N.M. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920

13) Puye Cliffs and Ruins of Prehistoric Cliff Dwellings, near Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Southwest Arts & Crafts postcard, circa 1940s The Cliffs of Puye are situated about 11 miles west of the Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico. They are part of the Santa Clara Indian Reservation. The prehistoric cliff dwellers are claimed by the Santa Clara Indians as their ancestors. In their language “Puye” (Pronounced “Pooyay”) means “meeting place of cotton-

tail rabbits.” In prehistoric times the dwellings in this cliff constituted a city numbering thousands of inhabitants. On top of the cliff is the ruin of a large prehistoric Pueblo.

14) Cliffs of Puye N. Mex. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920 15) Prehistoric Cliff Dwellings, Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New

Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933 Little is left today but memories.

16) Typical Ruins and Cavate Dwellings, Puye Ruins, New Mexico. Frasher’s Foto RPPC, circa 1950s

17) A Scene at Puye Ruins, New Mexico. Frasher’s Foto RPPC, circa 1950s

18) The Ruins of Puye. A Great Prehistoric Cliff Dwelling City in Pajarito Park, New Mexico. Southwest Arts & Crafts, circa 1940s Shaped like swallows’ nests, these mysterious dwellings marked the face of the canyon walls for hundreds of years in Northern New Mexico and in Arizona. The tradition is that the Pueblo Indians were being driven inch by inch from the north by a fierce foe. Upon reaching the plateau of New Mexico they built permanent fortress homes. With the coming of the Spaniards in 1540, these cliff dwellings were even then subjects of traditions centuries old.

19) Cliff Kiva, Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933 A view from the top of the rock of Puye is almost beyond compare. A few miles to the west is the Jemez Range with its rounding contours and heavily forested slopes. On the eastern horizon may be seen 150 miles of the Santa Fe Range embracing the highest peaks in New Mexico. The northern extremity of the panorama lies in the state of Colorado and at the south end near Albuquerque is the rounded outline of the Sandia Mountains.

20 - 29) Silver gelatin photographs printed by Mark Goodman from negatives taken by him with a Brooks Veriwide100 camera at Puye one afternoon in March 1990

30) Edgar L. Hewett, Antiquities of the Jemez Plateau, New Mexico, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 32, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1906

Silver Gelatin Prints Mark Goodman Bastrop, Texas

Portfolio Box Jace Graf

Cloverleaf Studio, Austin, Texas

Pigment Prints Peter Williams

AgavePrint, Austin, Texas

Matting Sarah Lantz

Davis Gallery, Austin, Texas A Unique Object

2008

P U Y E

MARK GOODMAN

PUYEPuye is one of the most extensive of the ancient “Cliff Cities” of the Southwest. It occupies an imposing situation on the Pajarito plateau,

ten miles west of the village of Espanola and thirty miles northwest of Santa Fe. Geologically, Puye is a rock of grayish-yellow tufa, 5750 feet

long, varying in width from 90 to 700 feet. It is a fragment of the great tufaceous blanket that once covered the entire Pajarito Plateau to

a thickness of from 50 to 1500 feet. This covering of tufa has been completely dissected by ages of water and wind erosion. In the northern

part not over ten per cent of it remains. These fragments appear as a multitude of geological islands, some almost circular, but mostly

long strips (in Spanish, potreros), extending east and west from the base of the Jemez Mountains towards the Rio Grande. They present,

on the south side, vertical escarpments rising above the talus slopes that reach usually almost to the dry arroyos in the valley bottoms.

The north side is always less abrupt, presenting only small escarpments and long gentle slopes to the valley. There is scant soil on the tops

of these mesas, and vegetation is limited to grass, juniper and pinon. The valleys are lightly forested with pine of not very ancient growth.

The altitude is about 7000 feet above sea level.

The view from the top of the rock of Puye is almost beyond compare. A few miles to the west is the Jemez range, with its rounded contours

and heavily forested slopes. On the eastern horizon one sees a hundred and fifty miles of the Santa Fe range, embracing the highest

peaks in New Mexico. The northern extremity of the panorama lies in the state of Colorado, and at the south end, near Albuquerque, is

the rounded outline of the Sandia Mountain, Oku, the “sacred Turtle” of Tewa mythology. The great synclinal trough of the Rio Grande

extends from north to south between the two ranges.

Puye was the principle focus of a population that occupied a number of villages in the northern part of this plateau. There are many “small

house” ruins, containing anywhere from two to fifty rooms each, scattered all over the district. The villages are for the most part found on

the tops of the mesas, on almost every one of which, of any size, some house remains are found. The large settlements consisted of from

one to three quadrangular pueblos, one or more small houses near by, and a village of excavated rooms in the adjacent cliff wall. The

settlements above seem to have been rather closely related. The villages are all connected by well-worn trails, some of them of unusual

depth. It seems to have been made entirely by the attrition of human feet, being so situated that its depth could not be augmented by

water erosion. The network of trails to be seen over this entire plateau is one of the most interesting archaeological features. The trail is a

sharply cut path, usually about eight inches wide, from a few inches to a foot in depth, and in many places more. The path narrows but

little toward the bottom and is remarkably clean cut. A large part of the surface of the plateau is rock devoid of soil, and these paths

afford an imperishable record of ages of coming and going. The well-worn stairways are worthy of particular notice.

The Puye is a fine example of the ancient Pajaritan community. At this place is found everything that is characteristic of the Pajaritan culture;

every form of house ruins, typical in construction and placement; sanctuaries, pictographs, implements, utensils, symbolic decoration, all

following a well-defined order, and conforming in all essential particulars to a type of culture to which I have for present convience given

the name Pajaritan.

The Puye settlement was made up of two aggregations of dwellings: 1. The great quadrangle on the mesa top, an arrangement of four

huge terraced community houses and a court, forming at once an effective fortification and a capacious dwelling; a compact residential

fortress that might not inappropriately be called a citadel. 2. The cliff villages, consisting of a succession of dwellings built against and

within the wall of the cliff, usually at a level where the talus slope meets the vertical escarpment. We note here three classes of dwellings.

1. Excavated, cave-like rooms, serving as domiciles, without any construction in front. 2. Excavated rooms with open rooms or porches

built on in front. 3. Houses of stone, one to three stories high, with corresponding number of terraces, built upon the talus against the cliff. In

these groups the excavated chambers now seen in the cliff wall were simply back rooms of the terraced buildings. The row of holes in the

cliff wall shows where the ceiling-beams of the second story rested. The walls of first-floor rooms are to be found under the debris where

the talus meets the vertical cliff. The ruins of a number of excavated back rooms are to be seen in the wall. The great community house

stands near the edge of the cliff, the southwest corner approaching to within twenty feet of the brink. The huge quadrangular pile of tufa

blocks gives at first the impression of great regularity of construction, but on close examination the usual irregularities of pueblo buildings

are found. It would require a rectangle approximately 300 x 275 feet to enclose the pile. No two exterior walls are exactly parallel, but the

orientation of the building is approximately with the cardinal points. The wall forming the east side of the court is on a due north and south

line. The interior court is not a perfect rectangle, the north side measuring 150 feet; south, 140; east, 158; and west, 143.

At the southeast corner is the main entrance to the square, 17 feet wide at the eastern end but enlarging to double that width before

it opens into the court. A narrow passage 13 feet wide was cleared at the southwest corner of the court, thus segregating the “South

House” of the quadrangle from the other four sides. It is probable, however, that this latter was a covered passage. A low oblong mound,

its longest diameter about 150 feet in length, lies just outside the main entrance. This has the appearance of neither a general refuse heap

nor a cemetery, though it occupies the usual position of the latter. It is composed mainly of the refuse produced by the dressing of the

stone for the building. A long narrow mound of similar character almost touches the southeast corner of the pueblo.

One subterranean sanctuary, or Kiva, is found just against the outer wall of the East House, and another somewhat larger lies 165 feet

slightly north of east of this one. The largest kiva on the mesa top, one apparently about 36 feet in diameter, lies 60 feet west of the

southwest corner of the quadrangle. These kivas were all excavated in the rock, there being almost no covering of soil at this place.

Others are found on the ledge of the cliff below, and still others in the talus.

The ruins of an ancient reservoir lie 120 feet west of the pueblo. It is oblong in form, its short diameter being about 75 feet, and the long

diameter 130 feet. The embankment is made of stone and earth, the opening being on the west. It could not have been fed from any

living source, and could have been useful only for impounding such surface water as would be conducted to it through the small draw to

the west. The supply of potable water for the pueblo must have been derived from what is now the dry arroyo south of the mesa. At one

point a meager supply can still be obtained by the opening of a spring in the sand, but here, as on all parts of this plateau, a much more

plentiful water supply than that now existing would be absolutely essential to the maintenance of such large settlements as once existed

at Puye. An evidence of such supply is to be seen in the irrigation canal, which may be traced for nearly two miles along the south side

of Puye arroyo. This ditch heads above the mesa towards the mountain, and must have been used to conduct surface water from the

mountain gulches to the level fields south and east of the settlements. It is possible that it was constructed during a late occupation of

Puye by the Santa Clara Indians, after their knowledge of irrigation has been augmented by contact with the Spaniards in the Rio Grande

Valley. — Edgar L. Hewett, 1908

1) Cliff Dwellings Puye. NMex. Anonymous. Azo RPPC, circa 1920 2) Cliff Dwellings. Puye. N.Mex. 586. Anonymous. Pigment print

from Velox Photograph, circa 1920s- 1940s 3 - 5) Edgar L. Hewett, “Archaeology of Rio Grande Valley,” Out

West, Volume 28, pp. 1 - 29, 1908 [Abridged] 6-7) Pigment prints from negatives taken by Mark Goodman with a

Brooks Veriwide 100 camera at Puye one afternoon in March 1990

8) On the Road to Puye. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher, Photo Lithograph, circa 1926 - 1933

9) Ruins on the Mesa at Puye. Edward Curtis, Photographer. Vellum print from the North American Indian, Volume 17, 1926

10) Cliff Dwelling, Prehistoric Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 – 1936

Once, in the long ago, Puye was the center of a dense population on the Pajarito plateau. Most of these “ancients” lived in huge communal dwellings and caves in the cliffs.

11) On the Road to Puye Cliff Ruins, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933

The route to the prehistoric cliff ruins at Puye, visited on the second day of the” Indian-detour” is exceptionally beautiful. It runs north from Santa Fe up the Rio Grande Valley, finally crossing the river at Espanola. The road then turns west up Santa Clara canyon towards the Jemez Mountains.

12) Ruins Communal House 2000 Rooms Puya Cliffs N.M. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920

13) Council Chamber Puya Cliffs N.M. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920

14) Puye Cliffs and Ruins of Prehistoric Cliff Dwellings, near Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Southwest Arts & Crafts postcard, circa 1940s

The Cliffs of Puye are situated about 11 miles west of the Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico. They are part of the Santa Clara Indian Reservation. The prehistoric cliff dwellers are claimed by the Santa Clara Indians as their ancestors. In their language “Puye” (Pronounced “Pooyay”) means “meeting place of cotton-tail rabbits.” In prehistoric times the dwellings in

this cliff constituted a city numbering thousands of inhabitants. On top of the cliff is the ruin of a large prehistoric Pueblo.

15) Cliffs of Puye N. Mex. Anonymous, Azo RPPC, circa 1920 16) Prehistoric Cliff Dwellings, Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New

Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933

Little is left today but memories. 17) Typical Ruins and Cavate Dwellings, Puye Ruins, New Mexico.

Frasher’s Foto RPPC, circa 1950s 18) A Scene at Puye Ruins, New Mexico. Frasher’s Foto RPPC, circa

1950s 19) The Ruins of Puye. A Great Prehistoric Cliff Dwelling City in

Pajarito Park, New Mexico. Southwest Arts & Crafts, circa 1940s Shaped like swallows’ nests, these mysterious dwellings marked the face

of the canyon walls for hundreds of years in Northern New Mexico and in Arizona. The tradition is that the Pueblo Indians were being driven inch by inch from the north by a fierce foe. Upon reaching the plateau of New Mexico they built permanent fortress homes. With the coming of the Spaniards in 1540, these cliff dwellings were even then subjects of traditions centuries old.

20) Cliff Kiva, Pueblo of Puye, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fred Harvey Company, Publisher. “Phostint” postcard, circa 1926 - 1933

A view from the top of the rock of Puye is almost beyond compare. A few miles to the west is the Jemez Range with its rounding contours and heavily forested slopes. On the eastern horizon may be seen 150 miles of the Santa Fe Range embracing the highest peaks in New Mexico. The northern extremity of the panorama lies in the state of Colorado and at the south end near Albuquerque is the rounded outline of the Sandia Mountains.

21 - 30) Silver gelatin photographs printed by Mark Goodman from negatives taken by him with a Brooks Veriwide100 camera at Puye one afternoon in March 1990

31 - 33) Thumbnails, Index, and Colophon 34) Edgar L. Hewett, Antiquities of the Jemez Plateau, New Mexico,

Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 32, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1906

Silver Gelatin Prints Mark Goodman Bastrop, Texas

Portfolio Box Jace Graf

Cloverleaf Studio, Austin, Texas

Pigment Prints Peter Williams

AgavePrint, Austin, Texas

Matting Sarah Lantz

Davis Gallery, Austin, Texas

A Unique Object

2008