SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

ARCHEOLOGY AT LAS HUMANAS

Creation of the National Monument

Most of the pueblo of Las Humanas, including the two churches, was on federally-owned National Forest land. The interest in making these ruins into a National Monument grew throughout the 1890s, until the passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906. Among other things, the act authorized the President to establish National Monuments on lands belonging to the Federal Government. In 1908 the President was petitioned to make Gran Quivira a National Monument. [64] The proposal was accepted, and in 1909 the Federal government created Gran Quivira National Monument. In 1919, the boundaries of the park were enlarged to include the remainder of the pueblo ruins and management of the Monument entrusted to the National Park Service, created three years before. [65]

Excavations

In order to excavate and stabilize the ruins, the National Park Service made an agreement with the University of New Mexico, the School of American Research, and the Museum of New Mexico. Edgar L. Hewett was given supervision of the project. He put together a team of workmen and students, and set up camp at Gran Quivira in June, 1923. On Monday, June 25, the team began a detailed examination and mapping of the National Monument. Anna Shepard and Ida Squires completed the map of the pueblo and churches by July 6. Sam Hudelson and Frank "Boss" Pinkley (then superintendent of Casa Grande National Monument) began excavation in the church and convento of San Buenaventura in the third week of July. They worked on removing rubble from the sacristy, the baptistry and the front doorway, along the front of the church, and from around the mission walls in general. They also began the repair of some walls which were in particularly bad condition. By July 22, Hewett remarked that the church contained "considerably more debris than expected." The first season of work was completed by July 25. Pinkley, in a letter dated a few days later, indicated that they had not completed clearing rubble from within the church, and had not even begun on the convento rooms. [66] The excavations within the church used "as many men and teams as could work without interference," and no screening of fill or collecting of artifacts was conducted.

Figure 56. San Buenaventura about 1920, taken from almost the same spot as Bandelier's photograph in 1883. The tremendous loss of wall fabric through the theft or, in a few cases, the decay of lintels, is obvious. Courtesy National Park Service.

During 1924, Sam Hudelson and Dr. Wesley Bradfield spent most of the season working in the pueblo. Only the removal of debris along the east wall of the convento was carried out this year.

In 1925, work concentrated on the mission. Sam Hudelson and Frank "Boss" Pinkley worked on the convento from May 27 to June 10. During this time they cleared the rubble from rooms 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14. A portion of the second courtyard was also emptied. On September 7, Hudelson returned with Hewett to continue working on the mission buildings. They cleared away rubble from the west and north exterior walls of the complex. Within the convento, they cleared out the patio, the south corridor, the "dining room," room 11, and part of room 2. They finished clearing the second courtyard. Work stopped on September 16.

1926 saw little work on the mission buildings. The clearing of room 2 was completed during September, and plans were made to convert room 1 to a museum.

The "excavation" of Gran Quivira was effectively completed in 1927 with the clearing of rubble from room 1 and the adjacent hall to the front entrance of the convento. No other archeologist investigated the convento or church until Charles Voll's work in the late 1960s.

Joseph Toulouse, the archeologist who excavated and stabilized San Gregorio de Abó, was appointed the third custodian of Gran Quivira on January 8, 1940, only a few months after completing his work at Abó in October 1939. [67] Toulouse took a dislike to the lack of proper names for the two mission structures on the hilltop and embarked on a program to get rid of the practice of referring to the buildings as "the Old Mission" and "the New Mission." Toulouse continued using these names through 1940 and most of 1941, but in a report prepared in September of 1941 he referred to the "Old Mission" as "San Ysidro." The "New Mission" was called simply "the Mission" in this report. Not until January of 1942 was "San Buenaventura" used in the records to indicate the "New Mission." It would appear that Toulouse found the references to the names of the missions in the writings of Charles Hackett and France Scholes sometime in 1940 or 1941, and decided to give the names to the two missions about September. [68]

Figure 57. Excavation of the convento of San Buenaventura. This is room 16, probably in the summer of 1927. Courtesy National Park Service.