Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who led a large expedition from what is now Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542. Vázquez de Coronado had hoped to reach the Cities of Cíbola, often referred to now as the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. His expedition marked the first European sightings of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, among other landmarks. His name is often Anglicized as Vasquez de Coronado or just Coronado.
Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River.
Yucca House National Monument is a United States National Monument located in Montezuma County, Colorado between the towns of Towaoc and Cortez, Colorado. Yucca House is a large, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site.
The Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is a complex of three Spanish missions located in the U.S. state of New Mexico, near Mountainair. The main park visitor center is in Mountainair. Construction of the missions began in 1622 and was completed in 1635.
Pecos National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in San Miguel County, New Mexico. The park, operated by the National Park Service, encompasses thousands of acres of landscape infused with historical elements from prehistoric archaeological ruins to 19th-century ranches, to a battlefield of the American Civil War. Its largest single feature is Pecos Pueblo also known as Cicuye Pueblo, a Native American community abandoned in historic times. First a state monument in 1935, it was made Pecos National Monument in 1965, and greatly enlarged and renamed in 1990. Two sites within the park, the pueblo and the Glorieta Pass Battlefield, are National Historic Landmarks.
Alfred Vincent Kidder was an American archaeologist considered the foremost of the southwestern United States and Mesoamerica during the first half of the 20th century. He saw a disciplined system of archaeological techniques as a means to extend the principles of anthropology into the prehistoric past and so was the originator of the first comprehensive, systematic approach to North American archaeology.
The Tiguex War was the first named war between Europeans and Native Americans in what is now part of the United States. The war took place in New Spain, during the colonization of Nuevo México. It was fought in the winter of 1540-41 by the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen Pueblos of what would become the Tiguex Province of Nuevo México. These villages were along both sides of the Rio Grande, north and south of present-day Bernalillo, New Mexico.
Sandia Pueblo is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people inhabiting a 101-square-kilometre (40 sq mi) reservation of the same name in the eastern Rio Grande Rift of central New Mexico. It is one of 19 of New Mexico's Native American pueblos, considered one of the state's Eastern Pueblos. The population was 427 as of the 2010 census. The people are traditionally Tiwa speakers, a language of the Tanoan group, although retention of the traditional language has waned with later generations. They have a tribal government that operates Sandia Casino, Bien Mur Indian Market Center, and Sandia Lakes Recreation Area, as well as representing the will of the Pueblo in business and political matters.
Hawikuh, was one of the largest of the Zuni pueblos at the time of the Spanish entrada. It was founded around 1400 AD. It was the first pueblo to be visited and conquered by Spanish explorers. The Spanish chroniclers referred to it as Cevola, Tzibola, or Cibola.
Casa Malpaís is an archaeological site of the Ancestral Puebloans located near the town of Springerville, Arizona. The site is a nationally recognized archaeological site and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Chimney Rock National Monument is a 4,726-acre (1,913 ha) U.S. National Monument in San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado which includes an archaeological site. This area is located in Archuleta County, Colorado, between Durango and Pagosa Springs, and is managed for archaeological protection, public interpretation, and education. The Chimney Rock Archaeological Site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. U.S. President Barack Obama created Chimney Rock National Monument by proclamation on September 21, 2012, under authority of the Antiquities Act.
Edgar Lee Hewett was an American archaeologist and anthropologist whose focus was the Native American communities of New Mexico and the southwestern United States. He is best known for his role in gaining passage of the Antiquities Act, a pioneering piece of legislation for the conservation movement; as the founder and first director of the Museum of New Mexico; and as the first president of the New Mexico Normal School, now New Mexico Highlands University.
Salmon Ruins is an ancient Chacoan and Pueblo site located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, USA. Salmon was constructed by migrants from Chaco Canyon around 1090 CE, with 275 to 300 original rooms spread across three stories, an elevated tower kiva in its central portion, and a great kiva in its plaza. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan people resulted in extensive modifications to the original building, with the reuse of hundreds of rooms, division of many of the original large, Chacoan rooms into smaller rooms, and emplacement of more than 20 small kivas into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by ancient Ancestral Puebloans until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned. The pueblo is situated on the north bank of the San Juan River, just to the west of the modern town of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The site was built on the first alluvial terrace above the San Juan River floodplain.
The Awatovi Ruins, spelled Awat'ovi in recent literature, are an archaeological site on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. The site contains the ruins of a pueblo estimated to be 500 years old, as well as those of a 17th-century Spanish mission. It was visited in the 16th century by members of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's exploratory expedition. In the 1930s, Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was commissioned by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University to reproduce the prehistoric murals found during the excavation of the Awatovi Ruins. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
The Jemez Historic Site is a state-operated historic site on New Mexico State Road 4 in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. The site preserves the archaeological remains of the 16th-century Native American Gíusewa Pueblo and the 17th-century Spanish colonial mission called San José de los Jémez. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and in 2012 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. It is considered an ancestral site of the Jemez Pueblo people who live nearby.
The Zuni-Cibola Complex is a collection of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites on the Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico. It comprises Hawikuh, Yellow House, Kechipbowa, and Great Kivas, all sites of long residence and important in the early Spanish colonial contact period. It was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1974. These properties were considered as major elements of a national park, but the proposal was ultimately rejected by the Zuni people.
Bertha Pauline Dutton was an American anthropologist and ethnologist specializing in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. She was one of the first female archeologists to work with the National Park Service.
James Fulton Zimmerman was an American historian and professor of political science. He was the seventh president of University of New Mexico and played a central role in its development and expansion. He is known in the academic historical world for his research into the subject of American seamen "impressed" into the Royal Navy by the British before and during the War of 1812. He also played an important role in the founding of the New Mexico Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission, of which he served as its first president.
Richard Gordon Vivian was an American archaeologist and anthropologist who worked primarily with ruins and archaeological sites in the American Southwest. Vivian was a longtime employee of the United States National Parks Service, working to stabilize and investigate a variety of sites, including Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.
