Jemez Mountain Trail
Jemez State Monument, NM

Jemez State Monument consists of the ruins of an ancient pueblo of the Jemez people known as Giusewa and the ruins of a 17th-century Spanish Mission known as San Jose de los Jemez. The mission had a unique octagonal-shaped bell tower. There is a museum and signed trail at the Monument, which is part of New Mexico State Monuments.

The pueblo was first built in the AD 1500s by ancestors of the modern residents of Jemez Pueblo. The Jemez people lived a typical Southwestern lifestyle for that time. They raised corn, beans and squash in Jemez Canyon along the Jemez River and also up on the nearby mesas. They hunted deer, rabbits, elk, and other game from the forests. They had plenty of water from the Jemez River and hot springs nearby. In the best of times, they may have had a somewhat idyllic life, but the climate could be fickle.

The Jemez people built a small pueblo at first, and then gradually enlarged it to a few hundred rooms. As many as a hundred families may have lived there at one time. Scattered about the canyons and mesas in this area were dozens of other Jemez villages, some of which had thousands of rooms and hundreds of families living there. A central feature at all the Jemez villages was the kiva. There were usually several of these features at the larger villages, and the very largest villages had a huge kiva known conventionally as a "great" kiva. Kivas were round subterranean structures, roofed over with logs and earth and entered by a ladder near the center of the roof. Kivas were sacred spaces where ceremonies and rituals were performed. Giusewa had several kivas and two are visible today.

In 1540 the first organized Spanish exploration, the Coronado Expedition, reached New Mexico. Neither Coronado nor his men reached the Jemez area. Other explorers also came and went, but in 1598 a Spanish colonizing party under Don Juan de Onate came to New Mexico to stay. By 1609, a priest had been assigned to the Jemez, and a few years later work began on a mission building at Giusewa. The building was complete by 1621 and was known as San Jose de los Jemez. A convento, or convent, was also built to house the priests and other religious figures.

The Jemez people living at Giusewa had a spiritual crisis when they were asked to convert to Catholicism. San Jose de los Jemez was burned and the pueblo was abandoned for some time. It was later re-occupied, but was abandoned for good by the Jemez by 1700. In 1680, all the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico united and drove the Spaniards completely out of New Mexico. In 1692, the Spaniards came back and easily reconquered the natives because of their lack of unity. In 1706 the Jemez people rebuilt an old village of theirs further down Jemez Canyon, which became the village known today as Jemez Pueblo, or "Walatowa" in the native language.

New Mexico remained a Spanish colony until 1825, and then a Mexican province following Mexican independence. In 1846, the United States took possession of New Mexico from Mexico during the Mexican War, and in 1848, New Mexico became a US Territory. New Mexico became a state in 1912.

Archaeologists excavated Giusewa and San Jose Mission beginning in earnest by 1921. The early work was under the direction of Lansing Bloom and others. The work was continued into the 1930s by the University of New Mexico and resulted in the complete excavation of the mission and convent and of many rooms in the pueblo, along with several kivas. A number of unique artifacts were recovered during the excavations.

--Micheal Elliot--