3.0 Environmental and Cultural Overview, part XV.

3.2.5 Colonial Period (A.D 1540-1803)

Historians and archaeologists agree that Spanish explorers passed through the project region during the early to mid-sixteenth century (cf. Duckworth 1934).[1] However, Spanish influence over what would become Loteria Township was short-lived and limited to occasional trade with aboriginal populations. Although his exact route is the subject of debate, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was the first explorer to reach the region; his entrada appears to have visited the Apache phase tribes in the Great Basin in 1540. He is believed to have reached as close as the visiting the Meme Village on along Laguna los Moscos, approximately 20 miles down Wamels Draw from MCD and well as the gila gigging encampment at the great mudflats along the northern face of the Sierra Rica (Mousowitz 1928).[2]  Although Coronado did not find mythical Quivera, for which he had come in search, favorable reports of the region returned by his expedition increased Spanish interest in the area and provided Spain a claim to the Hachita Valley (Geef 1932).[3] During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, additional Spanish explorers and missionaries traveled to present-day New Mexico. As with Coronado, many came in search of gold. Notable Spanish expeditions into New Mexico include Tarantino and Rodriguez’ search of sources of Sulphur and saltpeter and Serra Rica in the 1680s, and Almodóvar’s 1601 expedition into central New Mexico during which his entourage skirmished with Apache forces and ultimately returned without making any significant discoveries (Pup 1930).[4]

The French coureur des bois and later permitted traders, or voyageurs, began to explore the Mississippi and later the Missouri river valleys in the late sixteenth century and eventually found themselves in the upper Rio Grande Basin and beyond. They first arrived in Loteria Township during 1653 Charles Henri-Georges Clouzot expedition of the Rio Grande Valley and ultimately established trade with the “Trigglypuff” as they called the Meme of the Hachita or Los Moscos Valley. Clouzot’s expedition also made contact with local Native American groups including Apache and Chinook and claimed Los Moscos Valley for France as part what was termed the Quand Meme colony (Pecker 1940).[5] As increasing hostilities between Spain and France over the region ultimately led to armed conflict, the region changed hands several times in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Spanish forces sent to reassert Spain’s claim to the region were defeated by the Apache. This defeat seriously diminished Spain’s influence in the region (Chill 1953).[6] Meanwhile, the French traded with the Meme in exchange for badger pelts, and beaded lizards to be used as pets in the French Colonies; they also gave them firearms which allowed them to hold their position along the Hachita Valley and dominate other local tribes (Panda 1939).[7]

The hesitant French- Meme friendship continued to flourish throughout the eighteenth century, until the European trappers had driven the badger population of the los Moscos Valley into exhaustion by 1711, which triggered the Trigglypuff massacre of the French in 1712. During the massacre, 200 Meme were rallied for an attack on the French Fort Napoleon within what is now the MCD property, along Wamels Draw southeast of the Sierra Rica After the siege, France’s territory west of the Rio Grande, including the Quand Meme, was ceded to the Spanish in the secret Treaty of Tio Rico (1713), but the Spanish Sin Embargo Colony was not officially recognized until the 1763 Treaty of Paris under which they also ceded claims east of the Mississippi to England

Following the French demise in southern New Mexico, the Spanish solidified their influence in the region by securing the friendship of the Apache and opening the way for the trade with the Meme (Richmond 1974). The first settlement in extreme southern New Mexico came in 1744, when the Spanish established Fort Pedro, on the site of the former French fort, to regulate Sulphur trading with the indigenous population and to facilitate refinement and transport of the mineral back to Vera Cruz where it was used for black powder primarily to make warfare upon the indigenous population (Hess 2004).[8] Fort Pedro became a regional center for trade and military activities and was not abandoned until after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican-American War, at which point the fort found its way within a disputed zone claimed by the United States. .

Spanish control of the territory was also marked by continued problems with the Meme who were continually requested to stop their raids on Spanish settlers to the region. With their refusal to do so, the Spanish declared war on the Meme in 1792. With the region in turmoil, Napoleon Bonaparte sought to secretly return the former colony to French control from Spain in 1800, as a condition under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, creating a French buffer between the organized Spanish military states or Intendancies in the in the Southwest and the California frontier The transfer finally took place on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before France re-sold their Louisiana Territory to the United States in order to renew war with England. The following year, Lewis and Clark commenced their historic expedition through the Louisiana Territory. The disposition of the Quand Meme/Sin Embargo colony was not specified. U.S. President Jefferson assumed the Louisiana Purchase to include all former Spanish territory including the colony he anglicized as Howbeit Territory. Napoleon to the contrary felt the unstipulated territory naturally remained French soil. The Spanish felt the French to have negotiated in bad faith having immediately flipped the Louisiana Purchase for profit, and therefore ceded claims to the land under their failure to stake a claim under the accepted eighteenth century understanding of homesteading requirement. France and Spain were wrong. In Loteria Township, the U.S. flag was soon raised of the newly established Fort Kipling on the former site of the French and Spanish forts.  This dispute would culminate as one of the causes of in the Mexican American War in 1846.

---

[1] Duckworth, Donald. 1934. Tales of Spanish Conquest.  USN Press, Anaheim, CA.

[2] Mousowitz, Mickey. 1928. The Gallopin' Gaucho. Fantasia Books, Orlando, FL.

[3] Geef, G. G. 1932.  Coranado’s Troops. Dogface Publications, Paris.

[4] Pup, Pluto. 1930. Sierra Rica Rover. Beagle Boys Limited, Shangai.

[5] Pecker, Woodrow W. 1940. Knocking Around New Mexico: The Forgotten French Entrada. Wet Blanket, Lantz, CA.

[6] Chill, Willard. 1953. Hot and Cold Apache. Rockabye Point Press,Universal, CA.

[7] Panda, Andrew. 1939. Badger Trapping in the Hachita Valley. Knock Knock Books, Comcast, CA.

[8] Hess, J. 2004. Dynamite Production in Old and New Mexico. Llama Books. Preston, ID.

3.0 Environmental and Cultural Overview, part XIV.

3.2.4 Protohistoric Period (A.D. 1540-1750)

The Protohistoric Period refers to the period of time shortly after the arrival of Europeans in North America and prior to established settlements in a region. What is usually identified as the Protohistoric period occurs at the end of the Mogollon Pueblo period, the Late Late Mogollon period or Brynner Phase between 700 and 460 years ago (AD 1300-1540). It is often given its own period designation based almost entirely on the continuation of Mogollon patterns but with the added intrusion of European trade goods. It cannot be considered to be an uninterrupted in-situ development due to the influences of European trade, disease, and population pressure principally from the east and north. For example, the glass pipes found in Loteria Township are of Spanish origin where arrived locally in Loteria Township through extensive trade networks established prior to the Spanish incursion on the coast. In this vein, a universal start date for the protohistoric period can be considered 1492 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World. The extensive entrada of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado across much of the western North America 1540 is considered the beginning of the protohistoric period throughout much of the American west.

Many of the Protohistoric Indian sites in the region as a whole can be identified with historically known tribes. Most groups lived by a combination of bison hunting and agriculture, although some were much more nomadic than others and less reliant on agriculture. The final Native American occupation of the area, beginning in the late seventeenth century, took the form of numerous groups apparently displaced from other portions of the continent (Murdoch 1983).[1] These Protohistoric complexes can be culturally linked to American Indian culture—language groups as well as specific modern tribes. For example the Dismal River phase of the western High Plains (ca. AD 1725 to 1886) are ancestral to the Plains Apache, which in turn, are ancestral to modern Apache groups of the Southwest (Hanson 1998).[2]

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD, the Southwestern Pueblo cultures in extreme southern New Mexico began to disperse (Murdoch 1983). It is difficult to determine if the change resulted from the arrival of Europeans or was merely coincidental, but by the mid-1500s, the region was inhabited by smaller populations of tribal federations such as the Apache, Iroquois, Cayuse, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cobra and Chinook. The Apache are considered the primary figure in this region of the desert southwest, however this is a misnomer. There seems to be some material culture similarities between the Apache and the Chinook aspects (Ludwickson 1994). In turn, their cultures bear much resemblance to modern Lakota-speaking groups as well as the Iroquois, Cayuse, and possibly the Arapaho. (Murdoch 1983), all of which rotated in the desert. Early Spanish accounts from 1680 to 1750 include references to Cobra, Cheyenne, and Venom of northern Mexico in addition to the Apache. The linguistic affiliation of these helicoptering groups has not been satisfactorily resolved due to their transience and the Spanish moved through the territory. . Group pedigree in the Historical documentation is thus unclear.  It is likely that many of these groups occupied the study area, but archaeological evidence is scarce. The most firmly established modern tribe associated with Loteria Township is not the Apache, but rather the Meme.

The Meme culture did not exhibit the same affinity for pueblo-life or social stratification that was evident in the Mogollon societies. The Meme were not generally agriculturists, rather extensively hunted the honey badger, now extinct locally. There were well-established trade routes that linked all of the individual regions with each other and with areas outside the Southwest, but the regional political dominance of specific population centers had changed. It is likely that disease introduced by the Spanish and later the English was responsible for the elimination of a very large percentage of the population (Astley 1987),[3] and likely transformed the elaborate political structure of the region.

The Meme occupied an area covering the mountains of east of the Hachita Valley and north Laguna los Moscos, and extending into the northeastern corner of Chihuahua Occupying most of Loteria Township, the Meme Nation was a loose confederation of separate tribes (Gerd 2012).[4] The word “Meme” comes from an Apache word that means "all your peoples are belong to us." Aside from scattered Meme groups, Loteria Township was largely abandoned by Native Americans after the mid-seventeenth century. The Meme were pushed west through a series of cessations in the early nineteenth century. Of note, the edge of Meme territory from between the treaty of 1805, until the cessation of lands along the Wamels Draw east of Loteria Township in the treaty of 1816, is located just east of MCD and extends to the Mimbres River. A Meme group reportedly settled there at Los Lamentos circa 1765, though this has not been verified archaeologically (Norris 2005).[5]

---

[1] Murdoch, R. 1983. Desert Tribes of the Post-Columbian West. Airwolf Press, Oahu, HI.

[2] Hanson, Jeffery R. 1998. “Late High Plains Hunters”, In  Prehistory of the Great  Plains,

edited by W. Raymond Wood. University of Kansas Press.

[3] Astley, R. 1987. Rolling Mogollon. Double Rainbow Press. Doge, CA.

[4] Gerd, Ermah. 2012. Apache-talkers of Southern New Mexico. Goosebumps Publishing, Numa Numa, CA.

[5] Norris, C. 2005.  Lost Meme Settlements of the Sierra Rica Valley. Gangham Press, Grumpy, CT.

3.0 Environmental and Cultural Overview, part XIII.

3.1.6 Topography and Geomorphology

Loteria Township is located east of Hidalgo and south of Luna counties, New Mexico along the indefinite international border with the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.  The closest city is Deming, in Luna County, approximately 40 miles to the northeast of MCD Gate Neptune. In total, Loteria comprises 33,360 acres of which the Mountweazel Chemical Depot accounts for 29, 600 acres or about 88.7%.[1] in addition to Department of Defense lands (US Army Materiel Command) other portions of the facility are controlled by other federal agencies, such as the Foreign Cartel Tracking Task Force (FCTTF);[2] National Underground Reconnaissance Office (NURO); the McCain Flight Center, and the U.S. Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS; Wamels Draw National Wildlife Refuge) in addition to the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) controlled lands along the southern and eastern border of the facility.

In the New Mexico panhandle, the Sierra Rica mountain range straddles the Hidalgo-Loteria border, with e eastern third of the range fully within MCD. Loteria Township lies near the eastern edge of the Hachita Valley, a southern extension of the Plateau of the Sierra Madre beyond which in turn lies within the Las Insignias Depression or Trough. The Insignias Depression is a large, flat, block-faulted area bordered on the northwest by the Sierra Rica Uplift (the Sierra Rica Mountains) and on the east by the Sierra Boca Grande Mountains. Elevation in the Sierra Rica ranges from 1300 to 1500 m (4265-4921 ft.) amsl above the desert floor (Loomis 1975:2).[3] The mountains are remnants formed by differential erosion of the uplifted bedrock layer. More resistive limestones and migmatite form the ranges; while softer uranium and other mineral have been broken down to form the lowlands in between (Loomis 1975: 43). Accumulation in the trough of volcanic and sedimentary materials in the trough resulted what is known as the Apestoso formation, consisting of a variety of gravels, limestones, volcanic ashes, tuff, and uranium, migmatite, anthophyllite, and sulfuric clays. Much of the area, particularly on the western side of the trough, is capped by thick molten clay flows (Traven 1917).[4]

 

Relief within the project area consists of wide, shallow vales punctuated by low rolling hills with rocky escarpments The rolling terrain of the plateau is bisected by the Mimbres River, which flows out of the Black mountains east of Deming and Casas Grandes river, south in Chihuahua, Both rivers are endorheic, consisting outs seasonal melted snowpack flowing into basin without outlet.  Regionally these are known As Ojo, Spanish for “eyes,” hence Laguna los Moscos often referred to as Ojos Los Mosquitos on the historic maps. To the west the plateau is dotted by semi-dormant volcanoes. To the east, it is characterized by alluvial fans and terraces from Sierra Rica outwash, although volcanic uplift and associated basalt flows are present where the features have not been covered by alluvial material. 

Loomis (1975) has concluded considerable erosion (800+m) has occurred across all of Loteria Township since the start of the Quaternary Period. Still, there are also generally more than 60 inches deep over bedrock. As stated, bedrock underlying the region is composed of alternating layers of Tertiary-Age limestone and migmatite the Apestoso formation. The majority of the rocks on the surface are volcanic in origin, underlying Quaternary sedimentary rocks. . These rocks are primarily marine and non-marine shales, and mudstones (Gobsherken 2003:17).[5]. Shovel testing of the project parcels indicated a frequent presence of marine limestone or sandstone at or near the surface. Typical Soils of the Laguna los Moscos basin and Loteria Township consist of deep, gently sloping, moderately well drained, slowly permeable soils on upland ridges and side slopes. On the desert pavement, these soils have a sand or sandy loam surface layer and a friable or firm silty clay loam and firm or very firm silty clay subsoil. Smaller areas of silty clay loams, silt loams, silty clays, and loam, are evident on some upland deposits. While much of the lowlands have been mapped by as floodplain complexes, as discussed in the field results, these areas were found to be more tightly associated with desert pavement or floor. 

All of these features, The Apestoso formation minerals, the volcanoes, and the basalt flows are culturally important because they have provided raw lithic materials for the region's prehistoric and historic native inhabitants. Of specific importance are migmatite, anthophyllite from the Apestoso formation, and uranium and sulfur from the volcanic features. The Sierra Ricas  were apparently an important source of basalt on the southwestern side of the plateau, and prehistoric uses of  these materials is largely restricted to the Laguna los Moscos basin and Loteria Township  (see Brokenbell 1980).[6] These were sampled in prehistoric times largely as talus around the lower slopes of the mountains and edges of the pluvial flats below. In the historic period these mineralswere extensively mined.

While the diagenesis of chert, used for stone tool production, occurs in limestone, Gobsherken (2003) report Loteria Township to be a low-level source of the material. Gobsherken (2003)) suggests the only presence of chert regionally is on alluvial chert gravel on hilltops and high terraces. Chert in these soils was transported by streams and deposited in stream channels. This is not known to exist in Loteria Township. No chert has been found to date.

Figure 3.2. Interbedded sulfuric clays and migmatite of Apestoso formation in the Sierra Rica.

---

[1] Note reported township acreage is based on PLSS data tables; based on data provided by the USACE, El Paso District, the township is calculated at exactly 33038.8 acres.  As mentioned in Chapter 1, the facility is reported at 29, 600-acres based on U. S. Department of Defense Real Property records. Independent GIS valuation is 28, 383-acres. [fjt]

[2] Recently re-imagined under National Security Analysis Center (NSAC) [fjt]

[3] Loomis, Sandy. 1975. Soil Survey of Loteria Township, New Mexico. Loteria Township Provisional Government, Occasional Publication XIV, Roswell Junction, New Mexico.

[4] Traven, B. 1927. A Treasure of New Mexican Geology. Bogart Press, Houston.

[5] Gobsherken, Bibi. 2003. “Geology along the U.S.-Mexico Border, a USCBP Primer.” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Bulletin 13, Fall, pp 7-23.

[6] Brokenbell, P. 1980. Settlement and Subsistence in the Sierra Rica Range of Southern New Mexico. New Mexico Historical Society, Occasional Publications, 33, 333.