Note 486 — Chapter 5

This is Pecos, the largest pueblo of New Mexico in the sixteenth century and for a long time after. Its people belonged to the Tanoan family, although their language was understood only by the Jemez villagers, their nearest kindred. It was the scene of the missionary labors of Fray Luis Descalona, who remained behind when Coronado returned to Mexico in 1542, but he was probably killed before the close of that year. Pecos became the seat of an important Franciscan mission early in the seventeenth century, but it began to decline after the revolt of 1680-1692, and in 1838 the half-dozen survivors removed to Jemez, where one of them still (1906) lives. Cicuye is the Isleta, or Tigua, name for Pecos, while "Pecos" itself is the Keresan, or Queres, appellation, with the Spanish-English plural. The ruins of the town are plainly visible from the Santa Fé Railway. See Bandelier in Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America, Amer. ser., I. (1881); Hewett in American Anthropologist, n. s., VI. No. 4, 1904.