New Mexico history:

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Something more about the Jemez, Cochiti, San Ildefonso, and the reconquest.

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I saw the ruin of the Cochiti ancestral pueblo revealed in the aftermath of the fire.

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Black Mesa, the mesa you see to the north from Otowi peak and just north of present day San Ildefonso, is the mesa of which they speak.? I have been up it with Enky, the head kashari at that time, and he told me his version of the battle there.? He said that the Spanish canon could not reach the mesa top, and showed me where the canon balls had hit the sides of the mesa. He showed me the cave that is mentioned, and he showed me how braves were able to climb down the back side of the mesa, and run down river to solicit help from the Cochiti.? They then caught the Spanish between them and chased them back to santa fe.? Enky said they caught and killed the Spanish attackers, but since the attackers included vargus himself, they must have caught only some of the Spaniards.

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Enky showed me shrines on top of black mesa, in Tewa called, Tunyo, and he showed me river rocks.? The geologist in me was puzzled by river rocks on top of the basaltic mesa, but now I see the Indians carried them up to use as weapons to, throw onto the Spaniards below!

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More about Enky…? Encarnasio Pena, Indian name, spoken Soquawa but he always wrote it Soqween, he was born in the early 19teens.? He was educated at IAIA as a painter.? He was a teen when he was part of a team from Harvard that excavated the Pecos Ruin in Rowe.? He told me stories about his time there.? He also was involved excavating Bandelier which is ancestral to the San Ildefonso.

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typical of his paintings:

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Enky said the dancers always wore sprigs of the spruce tree.? He said it was a symbol of purity.? The origin of this tradition comes from Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde and the full story can be found told by White Bear Fredericks in Book of the Hopi… ?I walked up canyon from Spruce tree house as described by White Bear and found the story in the petroglyph just as White Bear drew in an illustration in the book.

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fred