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

THE HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT

Every Historic Structure Report is unique. Each must meet both the requirements of the Cultural Resources Management Guideline (NPS-28) and the specific needs of the Park for which the document is written. At the same time, it should answer the questions of "How was this built, what did it look like, how did it come to be here, and what happened to it?" asked by visitors, interpreters, and resource managers alike.

The Federal government established general guidelines for Historic Structure Reports. The guidelines covered all possible situations involving actions that might affect the qualities that make a structure significant. Salinas National Monument planned actions largely concerned with preservation.

Because the Monument intended to stabilize and maintain most of the standing structures at the three sites at their present appearance, Salinas needed a Historic Structure Report that documented how the structures arrived at that appearance. In order to be effective as both a management and an interpretation document, the Historic Structure Report would have to emphasize two areas: the construction history, use, and decay of the buildings during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and the additions and alterations to the structures resulting from reconstruction and stabilization since 1900. To achieve this required a flexible methodology that synthesized the results of archeological, architectural, and historical research into a single narrative, rather than the more traditional division of the report into three separate narratives dealing with each of those fields. The more detailed structural appraisals needed for stabilization and maintenance planning would be prepared as needed by conservation professionals in separate documents.

Methodology

Information about the Salinas pueblos fell into three broad categories. These were historic records, including Spanish colonial records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, traveller's journals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and graphic records, including sketches, measured drawings and photographs; archeological records and artifacts, scattered among several university, state, and federal collections; and architectural information recorded by the structures themselves.

Historic Records

Spanish colonial records concerning the Salinas pueblos are few compared to other areas of the Spanish Empire, but important for their details about the construction and use of the buildings. Most collections of documents dealing with the seventeenth century in New Mexico were destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Fortunately for the historian, Salinas was deeply involved in a major controversy during the seventeenth century and descriptions of people, places, and activities in the area were deposited in Mexico City as a result. Here they survived the catastrophe of the Revolt and can be consulted today. Many other details of life in seventeenth century New Mexico were recorded in documents kept safe in collections in Spain. A great deal of this material has been published and much of the rest is available on microfilm or as photostats at the University of New Mexico. Undoubtedly there are many other records of life in seventeenth century New Mexico still to be discovered in the archival collections of Mexico and Spain. Unfortunately, few documents give any details about the appearance or arrangement of the missions. It would be impossible to reconstruct mission plans or much of the life within them from the documents alone, without the information from the few examples surviving as ruins or found by archeology.

The Salinas missions regularly attracted the attention of travellers after their abandonment. Numerous journals and diaries mention the ruins and frequently contain measurements and detailed descriptions. Some visitors made maps, sketches, or watercolors of the sites. Later, Salinas was among the earliest sites photographed when cameras became available. The attractiveness of the ruins resulted in the recording of a great amount of information about them that could not be deduced from the surviving ruins today. Much of this material has been stored in archival collections in the Southwest, where it was examined as part of the research for this report. More photographs, drawings, and descriptions are discovered every year. Each new item adds information about the history of the Salinas buildings.

Archeological Information

Most of the archeological information came from old reports, field notes, maps, sketches, and artifacts. Many of the archeologists who worked at the Salinas missions never published more than a brief account of their work. Whenever possible the original notes, descriptions, and artifacts were examined for more information. Several important collections of field notes and photographs have been lost (Joseph Toulouse's excavation notes, plans, section drawings, and photographs for his excavation of Abó, for example) and much of the artifact material is missing or no longer well-identified. Only when no other recourse was possible did further minimum excavation of a site become necessary. All known archeological information about the Salinas sites was collected; when possible, the archeologists who performed the work were interviewed.

The lack of well-recorded archeological investigations has been a serious handicap to the analysis. Certainly, a number of missions have been excavated, or at least cleared of debris, but little other than the plan of the buildings was recovered from these excavations. Even the best of these excavations, that of Awatovi in northeastern Arizona, supplied little information about the culture of the Franciscan missionary and its change through the seventeenth century. Even less is known about the non-Franciscan Spanish culture of seventeenth century New Mexico. So far as the author can determine, no report on the excavation of a secular Spanish site from this century has ever been published. The definition of seventeenth century Spanish culture, and the clearly-defined Franciscan culture within it, should be the top priority for any future mission excavation, with Franciscan-Indian interaction a lower priority. Too many missions have been poorly excavated with details of Franciscan life lost, or never recorded, to risk losing any more.

Architectural Information

Intensive examination of the evidence recorded by the surviving ruins added more details about how each building looked when new and how its occupants changed it while it was in use. The buildings were subjected to an almost stone-by-stone examination of every surface, wall-top, and opening. This examination recovered a great deal of information about Spanish colonial construction methods. Further, comparison of the Salinas evidence with that from other seventeenth century New Mexico missions confirmed that Franciscan building methods were generally the same throughout the province and from the earliest sites to the last built before the Revolt.

At the same time, the comparison showed that there were some trends or long-term changes in Franciscan building design in New Mexico through the century. For example, the basic plan of a mission convento seemed to have changed about 1630. [18] In the same way, the Franciscans revised their ideas about how a full-sized church should be arranged several times during the seventeenth century. [19]

Synthesis

All of the above evidence allowed a surprisingly detailed reconstruction of the physical appearance of the missions in the 1600s. Further, the documentation clearly showed the slow process of decay through the 1700s, the reoccupation of ca. 1800, the fires that destroyed two of the four churches, and the more rapid decay process at these churches after the fires. One interesting result of the research was the formulation of general rules that a building seemed to follow as it decayed and collapsed. Eventually the ruins became the mounds of rubble and fragments of standing wall acquired by State and Federal protection agencies who began the process of clearing the rubble, preventing further decay, and interpreting the Salinas story.

When stabilization and repair of the ruins began soon after 1900, each episode of repair work added changes to the surviving structural remains. Photographs and stabilization notes recorded these changes and provided the details needed to bring the history of the structures up to the present (the summer of 1987).