Salinas Pueblo MissionsNational MonumentAbó Ruins On an
expedition to investigate the Salinas district in 1853, Maj. J. H.
Carleton came upon Abó at dusk. "The tall ruins," he wrote, "standing
there in solitude, had an aspect of sadness and gloom..The cold
wind..appeared to roar and howl through the roofless pile like an angry
demon." Carleton recognized the remains as a Christian church, but didn't
know that the "long heaps of stone, with here and there portions of walls
projecting above the surrounding rubbish," marked the remains of a large
pueblo.
Located on a pass opening onto the Rio Grande Valley, Abó had carried on a lively trade with people of the Acoma-Zuñi area, the Galisteo Basin near Santa Fe, and the plains. Salt, hides, and piñon nuts passed through this trading center. Springs provided water for households, crops, and flocks of turkeys. Abó was a thriving community when the Spaniards first visited the Salinas Valley in 1581. Franciscans began converting Abó residents in 1622, and by the late 1620s the first church was finished. Later, a second church was built with a sophisticated buttressing technique unusual in 17th-century New Mexico. It had an organ and a trained choir. But the good times did not last. Battered by the same disasters that struck the other Salinas pueblos, the people of Abó departed, sometime between 1672 and 1678, to take refuge in towns along the Rio Grande. |