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

QUARAI: HACIENDAS AND FARMING

Settlers reoccupied Quarai in the first years of the nineteenth century. Abó, with substantial ruins beside the main route through Abó Pass and with a dependable spring, was the first community to be established west of the Manzano Mountains since 1680. The Quarai settlement formed the second, predating the establishment of Manzano itself. [22]

Quarai in 1800

When the settlers arrived at Quarai, they found that the roofs of the old mission church and convento survived relatively intact after 125 years of abandonment. The buildings were, however, well along the path of decay followed by all abandoned buildings. Falling leaves, bird's nests, and other debris had blocked canales, causing rain and snow melt to puddle and soak through the plaster and adobe layers of the roofs. Under some damp areas latillas and vigas had begun to rot. In places, a viga had rotted sufficiently to break under the weight of a heavy rain or snow, and the roof had fallen in along that viga line. The collapse had twisted the viga ends in the wall, causing shifts and cracks in the stonework. Rain and snow melt rapidly washed the clay from the roof in the area of the break, exposing more wood to weathering. This, too, was rotting and beginning to sag. The lintels over windows and doors were slowly giving way, and the walls cracked and exposed by the collapsing roof beams were beginning to crumble. Had the process of decay continued naturally, the abandoned church and convento would have eventually been reduced to rubble indistinguishable from the ruins of the pueblo. The arrival of the settlers altered the process considerably.

Figure 30. The pueblo of Quarai about 1830. The large structure northeast of the church is the Lucero House, a fortified ranch house or plazuela. The North House, a second plazuela, stands north of the church, and Mound J House is west of the church. The church has not yet been burned and still has most of its roof, except for a section in the center of the transepts that has fallen in. The rooms built onto the old mission storeroom at the southeast corner of the convento can be seen. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Figure 31. Changes to the convento of Quarai after the reoccupation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 1. About 1820, the first rooms added at the southeast corner of the convento had been completed. 2. About 1830, the church was burned out. This plan probably represents the structures in use when Abert, Chatham, Hunter, and Carleton visited the ruins. 3. In 1880 the rooms at the southeast corner of the convento reached their greatest extent, and the convento rooms continued to collapse. 4. By 1910 no roofing survived, and about this time treasure hunters excavated the fill from the interior of the sacristy, room 4.

The Church

The well-designed and built church roof survived in fair condition over the nave and most of the transept. Much of the adobe sealing layer of the roof had washed away, so that light showed through the roofing in many places. One or two beams had probably cracked and fallen in the nave. The worst damage was in the transept, where the main support beam across the mouth of the apse had apparently rotted and broken before 1759. This caused the beams of the central area of the transept roof in front of the sanctuary to fall in, dumping rubble in the transept and apse. Such a collapse would have opened a hole seventeen feet wide and twenty-five feet long in the transept roof. [23]

The church showed many other signs of its age. Virtually all the exterior adobe had washed off. Most of the decorative wall plaster on the interior had flaked off, revealing patches of bare adobe plaster and stone. A layer of dirt over a foot thick covered the flagstone floor, washed down from the roof through cracks and gaps, blown in through the doors and windows, or washed from the walls. The side altars were still recognizable. In the apse, the rubble from the fallen transept roof had been dug out, and a large pit excavated through the main altar and altar platform. The dirt from the excavation, the rubble of the altar, and the debris from the collapsed roof combined to form a low, wide mound in the transept and apse. The retablos, decorative woodwork and paintings were gone, taken by the priests or for mementos or firewood by occasional travellers.

The Convento

As a result of decay, only the sacristy (rooms 4 and 7) and the residence hall block (hall 10 and rooms 11-20) were still covered with roofs. [24] The rest of the convento was a tangle of ragged walls and rubble-filled spaces. The roofs of the rooms most exposed to weather had rotted quickly and collapsed. These included the portería, ambulatorio, storeroom (room 8), and refectory (room 9) on the ground floor and most of the second story rooms.

After the loss of the roofs, the walls of the entire central area of the convento had begun to crumble into the rooms. Clay from the roof and stones from the wall tops, along with dirt and sand blown in by the wind, had covered the floors. When the settlers arrived, a fill of about three feet of rubble and wind-blown dirt had built up, and the walls had been reduced by about 1 1/2 feet. Since the walls in this area averaged about eleven feet high originally, only about six feet of wall stood above the rubble in 1800. [25]

The surviving rooms were in fair condition. Both the first and second story of room 6 survived. The sacristy rooms (4 and 7) retained their original square-beamed and corbelled roof in good condition, but the roofing of the mirador over the north half of the sacristy (room 7) had fallen. The residence hallway and most of the cells along its east side retained solid roofs, even though most of the plaster had fallen off the walls, forming a layer of fallen plaster and blow-in dirt six or eight inches thick on the floors.

In spite of the obvious structural problems, to the settlers looking for a place to homestead, the ruins of the convento of Quarai were houses waiting for them to move in. The fields of the well-watered valley could still be recognized, even though they were badly overrun by 130 years growth of weeds and brush. This looked like the perfect place for a new ranch and farm for the land-hungry wanderers from the crowded Rio Grande valley.

The Settlers of Quarai

Miguel Lucero and his family were probably the founders of the new Quarai settlement. Two of the dominant men in the effort to resettle the Manzano area were Miguel and Juan Lucero. Miguel arrived on the east side of the Manzanos before 1823 with Domingo Lucero, perhaps his son. Juan came soon after 1823 with Santiago, who may have been his son. Both branches of the family were probably living at Quarai before 1830. [26]

Miguel set up housekeeping in the intact rooms of the convento of Concepción de Quarai. He chose the residence hallway and the rooms on its east side for the family house during the first few years. He repaired the roofs, cleaned out the debris of more than a century, built a fireplace in room 15, and moved in. The sacristy rooms and the adjoining two-story section became additional housing, perhaps for Santiago's family.

The Luceros converted the standing walls of the ruined portions of the convento to sheep and goat pens to protect the livestock, the potential wealth of the family. In room 7 they repaired the roof and added wall plaster and a new floor on top of three feet of debris. In the northeast corner of room 6 they built a fireplace. [27]

In the first few years the family prospered and the herds grew. Soon more space was needed for pens, corrals, stables, and houses for client workers attracted to the rapidly growing ranch. New buildings went up around the old granary, extending south from the second courtyard into the corral and garden area of the convento. Some of the new buildings were stables and pens, while others were small houses for the new workers. The Luceros added most of the rooms on the west side of the old granary building, against its wall. Miguel built two other houses from the ruins of the stable and barn buildings against the east wall of the second courtyard.

The Luceros built an irrigation system and terraces along the valley using the rubble of the fallen pueblo buildings. The terraces consisted of retaining walls of uncoursed rubble along the north, west, and south sides of the valley. [28] They built stock pens and fences, sheds, coops, stables, gardens, and small houses for the people who came to work for them on the rich land of the Quarai valley. They cleared out the church, perhaps even roughly patching the roof, and used it as a place to bury their dead and for occasional religious services when an itinerant priest visited the area.

The irrigation system was simple. The dam was about six feet thick, made of two rows of upright posts with rock and clay fill between. It formed a pond on Zapato Creek along the south side of the pueblo. The pond formed by the dam overflowed at the south end of the dam against a series of huge boulders and sandstone ledges forming the hillside here. From the north edge of the pond the Luceros excavated a ditch across the old mission garden and along the top of the north and south terraces, carrying water to the fields behind the terraces, plowed for the first time in more than a century. The north ditch continued down the valley. Eventually it crossed the future site of Punta de Agua a mile away and emptied into the vast basin of ancient Lake Estancia, now almost dry.

Mound J House began as a small two-room house. The Luceros built it on the top of the east end of mound J, southwest of the church. It measured twenty-five feet square, with walls three feet thick and about ten feet high. It had a flat roof, a doorway opening onto a porch-like terrace on the east side, and a window on the south wall. [29]

As the fields began to produce and the sheep increased in number, the Luceros prospered. Client farmers, or peons, began to move into the valley. The Luceros gave each peon permission to live on and use small tracts of land in return for a portion of the produce of his herds and fields each year. [30] The Luceros, as patron, would protect the peons from the Indians in return for a certain amount of labor in the Lucero fields and herds. About 1820, Miguel decided the time had come to build a plazuela, a fortified home and ranch headquarters building, for their holdings.

Miguel selected a knoll just above the north terrace of the new fields and five hundred feet northeast of the church as the site for his new rancho. Construction proceeded quickly with all the peons lending a hand. Soon the fortified complex, now called the "Lucero House," was completed. It had a central block of rooms feet wide and seventy-five feet long, with stone walls two feet thick and fifteen feet high and a flat roof. Three rooms along the north side and several on the south all opened into a central patio area. The westernmost room on the north enclosed a large gateway opening into the central patio. A second gateway opened through the center of the south wall, with a small window on either side. A wall seven feet high and two feet thick formed a compound on the north side of the main block. The compound measured eighty-five feet north to south and seventy-feet east to west, with a square torreon on the northwest corner. Around the entire complex Miguel built a protective wall enclosing an area two hundred feet on a side. [31]

After the completion of the plazuela, the Luceros moved out of the convento rooms where they had been living. Lucero's mayordomo, or foreman, and his family probably moved into the convento.

A second major branch of the family, perhaps headed by Juan Lucero, arrived about 1825. This group immediately constructed a second plazuela, called the "North House" in this report, on the hillside about three hundred feet north of the old church, looking down the valley. The plazuela was much like Miguel's. Several rooms built of stone walls about two feet thick and fifteen feet high formed a central block fifty feet square. Around this Juan constructed a wall making a rectangular enclosure 115 feet east to west by seventy feet north to south. A square bastion stood in the southeast corner, and two other rooms projected from the northeast corner. Few windows or doors opened through the main enclosing wall. Around the main enclosure Juan built a secondary wall about 1 1/2 feet thick, two hundred feet east to west and probably two hundred feet north to south. [32]