Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin 1250-1782

About this book

The Galisteo Basin is an ancient seabed site of volcanic upheaval. The fertile basin provided temporary hunting and farming grounds for wanderers and then became the home of Pueblo people who survived drought warfare disease and invasion for almost a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish. Down Country is the history of five centuries of the Southern Tewa Pueblo Indian culture that rose faltered reasserted itself and ultimately perished in the Galisteo. The basin twenty-two miles south of Santa Fe is widely regarded as one of the richest archaeological regions of the country. It is unknown where the Galisteo Basins very first permanent settlers came from nor the exact origins of the Tano or Southern Tewa. The Indians of the northern Rio Grande referred to the basin as the Down Country Place or Place Near the Sun. Into this place the Tano Indians entered about 1250 AD and for three centuries made the place a center for culture and trade before they were finally expelled by the Spanish in 1782. Their story is a powerful human history that is a microcosm of New Mexicos dramatic complex history of pre-European settlement and post-Spanish occupation.