1992 Narrative

273 Pages·2015·4.88 MB·English

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PETITION FOR FEDERAL RECOGNITION
OF THE
PIRO/MANSO/TIWA INDIAN TRIBE, PUEBLO OF SAN JUAN DE GUADALUPE
LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO
by
Barbara E. Kauffman
Allogan Slagle
Stephen Conn
Performed under ANA Grant No. 90NA0810/01
SUBMITTED TO THE PIRO/MANSO/TIWA INDIAN TRIBE,
PUEBLO OF SAN JUAN DE GUADALUPE, LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO.
JANUARY 1, 1992
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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I . INTRODUCTION
II. ORIGINS 8
III. MIGRATION TO THE MESILLA VALLEY, 1843 - 1914 34
IV. THE CORPORATION: A FAILED PARTNERSHIP, 1914 - 1947 81
V. DISSENSION AND REORGANIZATION 1948 - 1990 l4S
ASPECTS OF PMT CULTURAL IDENTITY
MODERN PMT SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, & POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
GENEAOLOGIES AND MARRIAGE PATTERNS
Yl. EVALUATION IN TERMS OF THE FEDERAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CRITERIA 2J'
REFERENCES 24<q
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Research Procedures and Researchers' Resumes
Appendix B: Geneaologies Compiled by Anthropologist and Staff
Appendix C: Supporting Documents
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LIST OF TABLES
("T1> Be APPl!'NDCOJ
I. Piro/ Manso/ Tiwa Tribe and its El Paso Piro Origins
II. San Juan de Guadalupe Tiwa's Ysleta Tigua [TIWA] Origins
III. Known El Paso Piro Immigration to the Mesilla Valley
IV. Known Ysleta Tigua Immigration to the Mesilla Valley
V. Las Cruces Pueblo Intermarriage
VI. Las Cruces Children Attending Indian School
VII. Piro or Tigua Related Corporation Members
VIII. Assignment of House Lots by Blocks, Indian Town of Guadalupe
IX. Ancestry of 1971 San Juan de Guadalupe Tiwa Tribal Members
X. Ancestry of Additional Tribal Members
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CHAPTER I:
I. INTRODUCTION
1. History of the effort to obtain acknowledgement
2. Summary of procedures
3. Organization of the report
4. Summary of evidence
1. The Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe, Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe
(hereafter referred to as PMT) has sought Federal acknowledgement for many
long and frustrating years. Their effort was underway in the 1960s and
continues to the present day, involving at various times the efforts of
several law firms, Native American assistance groups, anthropologists,
ethnologists, and Tribal volunteers.
The Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe has sought acknowledgment through both
the legislative process and through the legal process set forth in 25 CFR 83
and administered by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In the late 1960s, the PMT began lobbying their Congressional
Representative, Mr. Manuel Lujan, Jr., to introduce a bill into Congress that
would grant the Tribe Federal Recognition. This action followed on the heels
of the successful effort of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in El Paso, Texas to
gain a form of Federal recognition through the legislative process. On
January 18, 1971, the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe requested Federal acknowledgment
for the Tribe. Then-Cacigue Vicente Roybal submitted a (pre-25 C. F. R. 54/
83) petition letter with some exhibits to the U. S. Department of Interior
BIA Area Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico [(Petition, January 18, 1971, San
Juan de Guadalupe (Tortugas) Tewa Indian Pueblo, New Mexico, the
Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe to U. S. Department of the Interior/ Bureau of Indian
Affairs, Albuquerque Area Office, with Chronology of the Tewa (Tigua) Indian
Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe (Tortugas), New Mexico]. The Tribe also
submitted a request for support to Congressman Manuel Lujan of New Mexico.
However, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, after looking over the proposed bill
and supporting documents which the PMT had submitted to Representative Lujan
in 1971, recommended that the bill should not be introduced because of its
broad scope (Letter, March 11, 1971, Commissioner Louis R. Bruce to U. S.
Representative Manuel Lujan), adding however that if the Tribe could not
qualify for assistance under the Economic Opportunity Act, the BIA would have
no objection to legislation similar to the Ysleta del Sur Act (82 Stat. 93),
April 12, 1968, which had given limited recognition to Yselta del Sur Pueblo
in order to make them eligible for programs under the Economic Opportunity
Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 508), and for state programs. Congressional delegation
chose to accept this advice, and the bill died. (See facsimile of Bill).
2. In the mid-1970s the PMT engaged the legal firm of Nordhaus, Haltom and
Taylor to prepare a petition for Federal Acknowledgement on behalf of the
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tribe. While a draft petition was completed in 1979, the Tribal Council was
concerned about the quality and thoroughness of the document, and it was
never submitted. In 1981, a grant from the Native American Rights Fund (NARF)
enabled the PMT to resume the petition process. At this time, NARF engaged a
team of researchers to work on gathering the ethnological and genealogical
data necessary to complete the petition. A vast amount of historical,
ethnographic, and genealogical data were gathered and a draft petition with
supporting documentation was prepared by Dr. Terry Reynolds of NARF (Reynolds
1981). Mary Taylor supplied technical assistance based on twenty years'
research in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, the Archives of the
Archdiocese of Durango, the Archives of Janos, Carrizal Archives, the
Ecclesiastical Archives of the Diocese of Chihuahua, and private historical
archives in Chihuahua. Diana Vari provided general historical background
information regarding the American Southwest and U. S. Indian policy. Terry
Reynolds and Mary Taylor provided historical findings. The grant budget was,
however, too small to enable the researchers to finish their research, and
critical sections of the petition, concerning the modern sociopoli ti cal
organization of the Tribe, were left unfinished (Materials from the previous
work of these researchers have been incorporated, with additions and
revisions and newly-discovered material, into the present petition).
In 1988, the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe received a grant from the
Administration for Native Americans (ANA) to complete work on their petition.
Early in 1989, they engaged the services of Mr. Stephen Conn, a consulting
attorney, Mr. Allegan Slagle, a consulting attorney and field anthropologist,
and Batcho and Kauffman Associates, consulting anthropologists. This team has
worked with the Tribe to prepare the present petition for submittal.
Since several researchers had collected data and supporting
documentation prior to the present team's engagement by the PMT, considerable
groundwork had already been laid for the completion of the petition. These
earlier consultants carried out extensive archival research in both English
and Spanish language documents from the 18th through 20th centuries, prepared
family history questionnaires and data sheets, compiled genealogical data,
and carried out interviews with Tribal members and people in the Las Cruces
area.
In general, the Reynolds report ( 1981) provides an excel lent and
detailed history of the PMT up to the time of World War II. However, due to
funding constraints, it does not adequately address the modern sociocultural
and political organization of the Tribe. Moreover, the prior ethnographic
work in the region had focused on population groups tangential to the Pueblo
Indian population in the Las Cruces area, particularly on residents of
Tortugas, New Mexico, many of whom are not only not members of the Tribe, but
lack American Indian descent or cultural affiliations (Hurt 1952; Loomis and
Leonard 1938; Oppenheimer 1957). The publicly displayed cultural activities
of the religious corporation created as an auxiliary to the Tribe in 1914,
Los Indigenes de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, had been almost entirely
expropriated by non-Indians, primarily second generation Mexican descendants,
by the time of these studies (Beckett (1980, 1979, 1974). No extensive study
of social or political organization of the PMT or its modern organization and
composition existed. Some ethnographic research undertaken to establish the
social boundaries of the present group performed earlier has been lost or
otherwise become unavailable to the present project staff.
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the PMT. In addition, the present research team has focused on more fully
documenting the social and economic pressures of the wider social system into
which the PMT was and is linked. Examining the Tribe in the context of the
dominant Hispanic/ Anglo social, political, and economic system helps to
explain the individual and group decisions of the Tribe and its members as
they have sought to preserve their cultural and tribal identity. Interviewers
included Barbara Kauffman, Steven Conn, Allegan Slagle and Fred Almarez, who
have conducted interviews and observed community activities from 1989 to
1991. Nuclear families were represented in the interviews, and often were
questioned in a group setting. Most interviews are recorded on audio and 1/4"
video/vhs formats. There were interviewees from, or associated with,
Tortugas, Las Cruces, El Paso and California. Present and former ceremonial
and administrative officers participated extensively in the process, as
interviewees and as facilitators, particularly Mr. Lamberto Trujillo, the
Tribal Secretary, and Louis Roybal, the Vice-Chairman. Most were conducted in
English. The interview format covered: geneaological histories of
interviewees and their households; the history of the PMT Tribe in the Las
Cruces area; interactions of tribal members with each other and the Tribe as
well as with other communities and governments (including other tribes).
Follow-up interviews expanded on various topics or cross-checked information.
Researchers attended tribal meetings and gatherings at the East Side
Conununi ty Center near the heart of the core community in Las Cruces, at
Picacho, at A Mountain and other sites, accompanied by tribal members, and in
particular, officers of the tribal government. Videotape and audiotape
records were made to document many of these inquiries. The investigators
involved the Tribe and its members and all potential tribal (member)
interviewees in the development of the research instrument and protocol and
its administration, explaining in detail its purposes and procedures at
meetings in 1989 and 1990. All persons interviewed were required to sign an
informed consent form. The prior work of ethnographers in the area and
discussions of native traditions with Louis Roybal, Tribal Vice-President, as
well as other members of the Council, the ceremonial officers, and certain
elders, greatly facilitated the ethnographic and historical research.
4. The Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe, Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe, has
a long and interesting history. The Tribe is composed of members of three
distinct cultural and tribal entities that merged in the 17th and 18th
centuries in the Paso del Norte (modern day El Paso, Texas and adjacent
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) area under the leadership of a Cacigue, the
traditional spiritual leader of the Tribe. The heritage of two of these
earlier groups, the Piro and Manso, survives today only in the Pueblo of San
Juan de Guadalupe.
The petition will show that the Tribe has maintained its cohesion and
control over its members despite numerous upheavals outside their control,
such as their forced migration from their historic homeland in the central
Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the
Mexican Revolution of 1821, the rapid international border changes of the
1850s, and the social and economic impacts of World War II and the post-war
era. The PMT has been identified throughout history to the present day as an
American Indian group, even though it has never had a formal
government-to-government relationship with the United States. A majority of
its members can trace both firm American Indian ancestry and long association
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Mexican Revolution of 1821, the rapid international border changes of the
1850s, and the social and economic impacts of World War II and the post-war
era. The PMT has been identified throughout history to the present day as an
American Indian group, even though it has never had a formal
government-to-government relationship with the United States. A majority of
its members can trace both firm American Indian ancestry and long association
with the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe. Firm community ties are evident in the
extensive social contact of Tribal members outside of formal Tribal
activities, in the form of life-cycle events which bring the community
together, an enduring Core Neighborhood in the heart of Las Cruces, and
intermarriage. Further sections of the petition will describe the Tribe's
governing document and membership criteria, and present the current list of
Tribal members. There are no Tribal members who are members of any other
North American Indian Tribe. The Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe, Pueblo of San
Juan de Guadalupe, has never had a formal treaty relationship with the
Federal government, or obtained a Federal trust land base. They have never
been the subject of legislation expressly terminating or forbidding such a
relationship, including the in 1950s Ysleta del Sur legislation. The
restoration of the Ysleta del Sur tribe did not include or affect the
acknowledgement of the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe, and there is no record of any
claim that it could or that it did. Nor was there any effort on the part of
the PMT Tribe to associate itself with the Ysleta del Sur Tribe's efforts for
its own restoration.
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CHAPTER 2:
II. ORIGINS OF THE POPULATION OF THE PRESENT PIRO/MANSO/TIWA TRIBE, PUEBLO
OF SAN JUAN DE GUADALUPE: THE PROVENANCE DEBATE
1. The Piro/Tompiro and Tiwa Pueblos in New Mexico
a. Archaeology
Batcho and Kauffman/ others have conducted certain archaeological
investigations in the Las Cruces and Tortugas areas. Archaeologists have
estimated that Indians living in the Mesilla Valley around 1225 B. C. were
growing a hybrid corn, and:
Some researchers believe the corn, which had eight rows and was found in
rock shelters in the southern Organ Mountains, prove the valley's early
inhabitants were more dependent on agriculture than scientists had
originally thought (Las Cruces Bulletin, 13 Sept. 1989, C-2).
That particular population is believed to have abandoned the area by 1450.
Batcho and Kauffman's 1989-1990 salvage archaeology in the Tortugas area
during a road improvement project located evidence of @ 800-900 A.D.
occupation by an unidentified population now absent from the area. The
Franciscan Friar Augustin Rodrigues and Captain Francisco Chamuscado were the
first non-Indians to explore the Mesilla Valley, arriving in 1581 with eight
soldiers, two other friars and 19 servants. Under the authority of Spain, Don
Juan de Onate came with 200 soldier-colonists in 1598, naming the valley,
Mesilla / Little Table. Northwest of Las Cruces, a mountain named for Pedro
Robledo's death by drowning nearby. The Village of Dona Ana appears to have
been named for a Spanish immigrant who died there in 1798. Las Cruces takes
its name from the site of graves of Mexican traders attacked there by Apaches
in 1830, "La Placita de Las Cruces" (Las Cruces Bulletin, 13 Sept. 1989, C-
2) •
b. History through Spanish accounts
The members of the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe trace descent from at
least three cultural groups that were first encountered by the Spanish in the
1500s, when expeditions led by Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, Chamuscado, and
others set out from Mexico to explore the northern frontiers of New Spain.
These three groups are the Manso, who were living in the area of the Mesilla
Valley and present day El Paso, Texas; the Piro & Tompiro, whose pueblos were
located in the middle Rio Grande Valley near modern Socorro, New Mexico, and
eastward in the Salinas Valley east of the Manzano Mountains; and the Tiwa,
whose pueblos were north of the Piros on the Rio Grande and also to the east
in the foothills of the Manzano Mountains.
Both the Piro and Tiwa were settled agriculturalists who lived in
contiguous villages, practiced irrigation agriculture, grew cotton, corn, and
other indigenous crops, and domesticated turkeys and dogs. They lived in
multistory adobe pueblos, built around plazas, with underground ceremonial
chambers, or kivas, in the plazas. Each Piro pueblo had its own Cacique, the
number varying according to the pueblo's size (Schroeder 1979:237). The
Spanish recorded their dress, food, and kachina dances, and established
several missions in various Tiwa, Piro, and Tompiro pueblos in the early
1600s.
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When the Chamuscado expedition encountered the Piro pueblos in 1581,
they found them at war with their Tiwa neighbors. Early accounts suggest that
the Piro and Tiwa were related, and spoke languages that were either dialects
of the same language family, or at least mutually intelligible. Relations
between the Piro and Tiwa must have swung back and forth from ally to enemy,
because when the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 forced the Spanish retreat from New
Mexico, they noted that Tompiros were living in the Tiwa pueblo of Isleta.
They had reportedly taken refuge in the Tiwa and Piro pueblos along the Rio
Grande some ten years before, when the Salinas pueblos had been abandoned,
presumably due to Apache raids (Tainter and Levine; Schroeder 1979: 237-241).
Nevertheless, it must have been an uneasy alliance, as the Spanish were
diligent in settling the two tribes in separate communities once the refugees
arrived at El Paso del Rio del Norte.
Onate first mentioned the Manso in 1598, locating them near what became
Paso del Norte. No village or dwellings were noted, and it is generally
assumed that they were nomadic, but that the lower Mesilla Valley and the
Paso del Norte area were part of their normal range. The Franciscans
established the first mission at Paso del Norte for the Manso and Suma, whose
traditional range was to the east and south of the Manses, along the Rio
Grande. This mission, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de los Manses, was
dedicated in 1659 (Waltz 1951: 14; Forbes 1960: 126; Bandelier 1893:348-9;
Hughes 1914:305). Early baptismal, marriage, burial records and other
documents also note the presence of Piros, Sumas, Janos (from the area
southwest of the Manses), and some Apaches at the mission after 1668 (Hughes
1914:314; Forbes 1959).
Governor Lopez in the 1650s required large forces of Indians from the
villages in the Piro and Tompiro areas to work for him in gathering supplies
of salt, pinon nuts, and hides. The missionaries claimed that this resulted
in taking Indians away from their agricultural activities around the missions
and even from their own food production (Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: 158).
While the total population at the time of contact apparently was small,
about 500-1000 (Bandelier 1890: 165-166). In any case, the documentary
evidence points to an early historic relationship between the Manso and Piro
that continues throughout the history of settlement at Paso del Norte and up
to the present.
c. Traditional antagonism between Piro and Tiwa in New Mexican pueblos.
Relations between the various groups settled in the Paso del Norte area
were not always cordial. When the Manses staged a series of uprisings in the
1680s to 1690s, joining with the Suma and other indigenous groups further
south in Chihuahua, they tried to enlist the aid of the Piro and Tiwa, but
members of these tribes reportedly informed the Spanish authorities instead.
In 1684, Chiquita's band led the other Manos a revolt against the Spanish in
the Paso del Norte and Janos areas (Walz 1951: 150-151).
After Spanish settlement and missionization activities created or
increased inter-Pueblo antagonisms, and following abortive rebellion and
years of unrest, considerable internal rivalry and dissension was inevitable
among originally distinct groups, even as external pressures forced them
together; thus:
In the 1670s warfare with the Apaches increased to the point where three
southern Tiwa mountain villages had to be abandoned. The remnants of the
villagers came in 1674 to live with the Tiwa in Isleta. Likewise, the
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Tompiro and Piro villages to the south were harassed constantly and
became dangerous places to live (Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: 161).
Mutiny attempts bore no fruit, and:
The Piro and Tompiro pueblos did not long survive those abortive efforts
at liberation. With their leadership destroyed and their numbers
decimated, they could not withstand the famine and epidemics and the
devastating surge of Apache hostility that best them from 1668 to 1671.
Encomenderos did what they could, repeatedly taking the field with
Pueblo warriors to punish the enemies, but even that remedy posed
hazards. Piro and Tompiro men were then so few that departure of any
useful number left their people and property exposed to raids .
(John, Storms Brewed: 93). Through 1680, Father Decorme claimed about
850 Manses accepted baptism at the Guadalupe Mission [Decorme n.d.:4,
citing no source for this information except that feeding and bribery
induced baptisms (Walz 1951: 148-194)]. There are suggestions in some of
the historic documents that the Piros were brought to the mission by the
Spanish to translate for the Mansos [hunter-gatherers living in brush
homes (Gerald 1974a: 118-119)], and that they may have been related in
some way, but these accounts are discordant. Manses organized under
bands of related families under the leadership of a headman. One of
these bands and its headman, Captain Chiquito, were renowned for their
resistance to Spanish invaders (Walz 1951:14,21, 267; Rivera 1945: 69;
Forbes 1960). Captain Chi qui to' s band, unlike most of the Mansos,
continued to live in Mesilla Valley, where they had close ties with the
Gila Apaches (Walz 1951:22; Forbes 1959:118).
2. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and its Aftermath
The disruption of the indigenous population prior to 1680, whether as
the result of war or other causes, was greater among Pueblos than among the
rancheria peoples of the South. The common Spanish frontier phenomenon of a
declining Indian population was much more marked north of the present border
than in the south. By the time of the 1680 rebellion the Pueblo population
had declined by about half what it was when the Spaniards came in. It
declined by a half again during the 1700s .... Whole areas were completely
depopulated -- the Piros on the south and their neighbors, the Tompiros
(Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: 161).
When the New Mexico pueblos revolted against the Spanish in 1680, the
Piro and Tiwa did not take part. Several hundred inhabitants of the Tiwa
pueblo of Isleta and the Piro pueblos of Senecu, Sevilleta, Alamillo, and
Socorro in New Mexico were relocated south to the area of Paso del Norte with
the fleeing Spanish. When Otermin made his unsuccessful attempt to reconquer
New Mexico in 1681, he put several Rio Grande pueblos to the torch, and took
some 385 more Isletans back to Paso del Norte with him (Hackett
1942(2):220-230).
Over the next few years, the Spanish established settlements for the
refugees at approximately two league intervals south of the Mission of
Guadalupe along the west bank of the Rio Grande. Spanish and Pueblo refugees
were settled in separate camps, and different Pueblo tribes were assigned to
individual settlements. In order of increasing distance from the Mission of
Guadalupe were the Real de San Lorenzo for Spanish, the pueblo of Senecu for
Piros, Ysleta for the Tiwas, and Socorro for Piros, Tanos, and some Jemez.
All of these settlements still exist in much the same location today. San
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