In 1540 Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado, along with 500 soldiers and 2,000 Indian allies from New Spain, entered
the Rio Grande valley. Coronado was
searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.
He didn’t find any gold but he did find villages full of native farmers.
The people spoke the Tiwa language and
Kuaua (which means Evergreen) was the northernmost village. It’s thought the village was settled in 1325
and when Coronado arrived about 1,200 people lived there.
During excavations in the 1930’s a
square kiva was discovered in the plaza.
The kiva contained some beautiful murals which are known as some of the
finest examples of pre-columbian art ever found in the US. When the murals were excavated it was
discovered that there were some 17 or 18 layers of plaster and each layer of
plaster was decorated with paintings.
We took a tour of the kiva with the
docent, while we’ve seen and been in quite a few kivas they’ve always been
round kivas, never square. The
paintings inside (no photographs allowed) are similar to the originals. While he didn’t know, the docent thought
that as the scenes depicted in the paintings, showed things like corn, planting
and harvesting, they represented a year, spring, summer, autumn and winter. He also told us that the black painted
figure was a clown. Not a funny ha, ha sort
of clown, but an enforcer type clown who carried a bull whip and scared the
life out of you.
In a special display room by the visitor
centre we admired the original paintings, (no photographs allowed) they’re very
faded and some were marked by crow bars where they were yanked out of the
walls.
It was very windy and we followed a
short trail along the Rio Grande. The
views of the Sandia Mountains were excellent and looking north we could just
about see the snow-capped Sangre De Cristo Mountains.
We enjoyed our visit to this small
but very interesting historic park.
Once we got back we parked the truck
and walked the short way to the Kaktus Brewing Company, which is literally
right next door to the Bernalillo KOA.
As we walked in we thought for a
minute that all the tables were taken.
When we looked again, we realised that the chair backs were painted to
look like people. As ‘Breaking Bad’
hasn’t reached the UK yet we had no idea who this was meant to be until we were
told. We tried our first Frito Pie, I
didn’t know what to expect and while it was very nice, I’m not sure it’s
something I’d have again. Most
importantly though, the beer was pretty good!
Have fun, we are!
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