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.
