Fred Woods Pecos Mission, New Mexico 1621, 1680

Pecos Mission, New Mexico 1621, 1680

fred woods

Not even bright sierras ponderosa high stacked thunderheads or drafting eagles were enough for Fray Andres Juarez who had Cicuic women mold earth to bricks and layer on layer build higher up to please dear God out-glorying nature with a church not big but biggest and six towers directing eyes to moon stars heaven and away from heathen ways beneath bare earth humble useless save when shaped to bricks to build a church.

Until those congregants rose up tore it down dug a pit built a kiva and returned to earth.

When Spanish settlers and missionaries first came to Northern New Mexico in 1598 they found people living in more than 70 villages, “pueblos,” in and around the Rio Grande Valley. Pecos, or Cicuye, pueblo with more than 2000 inhabitants was one of the largest. Over the years Spanish occupiers grew increasingly oppressive, and 1680 the pueblos revolted, driving the Spanish out of their territory and destroying all the mission churches except one. Freed of the Spanish, the pueblo people again built underground kivas and resumed their traditional religious practices. Conflict among the pueblos paved the way for the Spanish reconquest in 1692.