ANCESTROS

Within our current era, we see evidence of life and migration all along the Rio Grande. For example, there is evidence of life starting about 7,000 years ago known as the Oshara tradition that remained around Colorado and New Mexico. This evidence shows life around canyon heads, crude stone tools, narrow shooting points - all the way to metates for processing grown maiz and other foods, knapped blades, an increased number of built sites within cliffs and storage pits for storing food supply, and pottery. 

The massive droughts that pushed Ancestral Puebloan cultures out of the Four Corners region at around 1100 CE, also pushed them towards the Rio Grande and the fertile lands that it feeds. These migrations led to merging of peoples and the creation of new cultures like the Tanoan culture that includes the Tiwa, Tewa, Kiowa, speaking peoples.

These are a few examples of the life and evolutions that the Rio Grande has not only witnessed, but helped create. The Great Spirit of this river is our ancient ancestor, a source of life and survival. It’s waters hold the memories of our people, our languages, our cultures.

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When the Big Bend was mostly woodlands and bodies of water, its people hunted the larger game that roamed the lands. As the climate got warmer and dryer, we adapted and came to rely on smaller game like antelope, rabbits, snakes and plants that have thrived in the drought prone desert like sotol and maguey. Our ancestors knew the desert and its seasons. They gathered in large groups along the Rio Grande, and lived in the high mountains.

By the prehistoric era, as a part of the greater Mogollon culture, specifically part of Aridoamerican area of the southern Mogollon region, our ancestors became masters of ceramics, agriculture, archery, and even began to explore sedentary lifestyles. There was a massive increase in large gatherings and interregional trading during this time. 

It is important to note that the cultures throughout the Americas were completely different than anything Europeans had encountered before they arrived here. So their depictions of us, the ways they categorized us, named us, wrote down our languages and tried to understand our religious and cultural beliefs - is vastly different from what the truth actually was. Hundreds of years later, we are left to piece together the remains of what’s been taken from us. We are constantly reminding ourselves to read between the lines of these Eurocentric narratives and descriptions. 

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We understand that ancestrally, native peoples from what is considered Aridoamerica or the present day northern deserts of Mexico and the American southwest, were primarily hunter gatherer peoples who moved throughout the fluctuating seasons of the desert climates. This region has been coined many things, including La Gran Chichimeca. There vast numbers of tribes, bands, and clans of Chichimec people throughout the deserts. Many of us share language, culture, art styles, spiritual beliefs but vary in lifeways and relation to one another. The Spanish recorded many peoples of Aridoamerica, specifically the Pecos River and Concho River regions of West Texas, as Conchos. At La Junta de los Rios, where the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos meet, many bands of indigenous peoples had created a network of farming villages that were of course nurtured by abundance of water and that were a part of trade routes seen all along the Rio Grande. The present-day towns of Presidio (Texas) and Ojinaga (Chihuahua) are at the center of this region. Paquime was a meeting site further west in what is now considered Chihuahua where many people met, shared ideas, rituals, traded goods, and built relations as well. It is probable that the River people of West Texas were also related to tribes throughout the Chihuahuan desert. Similar body painting and tattooing practices lead us to see and understand a larger “Rayado culture” that includes all nomadic peoples of Aridoamerica who partook in painting or tattooing the body with long stripes. 

Early documentation by the Spanish describe the over 100 bands of Indians living within Chihuahua in the region they referred to as the Greater Conchería, land of the Conchos. The Taquitatome or Cacuitaome bands of Chizo native americans were documented within what is known now as the Big Bend and were believed to have migrated to the area from deeper central Mexico. They lived in the lower region of the Big Bend / Trans Pecos and also had ties and relations throughout Chihuahua and Coahuila (Gran Concheria). Like most other people in Aridoamerica, the Chizos gathered maguey, yucca, and wild beans and were even believed to have cultivated maiz. They worshiped the sky and the rains. These same people were also recorded as the Batayogligla, Chichitame, Guazapayogligla, Osatayogligla, Satapayogligla, and Sunigogligla. Some Conchos would later join with the Tarahumara and others due to Spanish warfare inflicted onto them. These native groups would go on to form alliances and unleash rebellion against the Spanish for about a hundred years before agreeing to peace and ultimately, assimilation. Other groups that also lived along the river banks of the Big Bend region were the Tobosos, the Jumanos, the Suma, Coahuiltecans, and so many more diverse groups of peoples who deserve their own sections within this general elaboration. All that to say, the Chihuahuan desert was and is home to a vast amount of cultures who are influenced by where they reside within the landscape. Each different from the next, all fed by the same land.