By Jessica Rath

​You probably know that Abiquiú used to be a Tewa settlement called Ávé-shú', meaning Chokecherry Path. So were Poshu-owingeh, the site 2.5 miles south of Abiquiú, and Tsi-p’in-owinge' near Cañones. In fact, traces of Tewa Pueblos can be found all throughout the Chama Valley. Some of these are access-restricted, like the Tsama Pueblo (Tsámaʔ ówîngeh, its Tewa name), an ancestral Tewa community along the Rio Chama.

​Landowners in the surrounding areas have donated parcels that were part of the Pueblo to the Archaeological Conservancy which owns and manages the site.  It is a non-profit organization which was created in 1980, with the mission to preserve, manage, and maintain archaeological sites which are part of our cultural heritage. Among the almost 600 archaeological preserves all across the United States which are maintained by the Conservancy are some preserves at Chaco Culture National Historical Park (the Conservancy has many Chacoan outlier sites in the Four Corners, but doesn’t manage the overall Historical Park),, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and – Tsama.
 
The current site stewards of the Tsama Pueblo are Greg Lewandowski and his wife Sharon, who moved here from Michigan  some twenty five years ago. They not only agreed to an interview, but also put me in touch with April Brown, the Conservancy’s Southwest Regional Director, and Mandy Woods, April’s assistant and Southwest Field Representative. They revealed some truly amazing facts about the site and its history. 

Greg and Sharon had a neighbor who moved away and who donated an 80-acres long parcel along with two other parcels (that each were around 20 or 30 acres)  to the Preserve. A few weeks back, April and Mandy came to visit the site, and they all went on an extensive tour.
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“They have magic eyes”, Greg told me. “I don't know what else to call it, but they can see things on the ground that to us look like things on the ground. And to them, they pick it up and all of a sudden it's this incredible piece with all this really amazing history to it. Sherds and glass and tools and areas where you can see the outline of buildings. These were adobe buildings, going back about 700 years. You can see the outline of the buildings, but we never noticed these things before. We would just walk around and pick up a few sherds, but our experience with April and Mandy was really amazing:  they could see these things and teach us what was going on there. So we'll continue to be the site stewards for the entire property.”

April continues: “There's a large village site there on that mesa, and there were between 1100 and 1400 rooms in the Pueblo”.

Incredible! When I heard this, I wondered whether Tsama wasn’t more than a village!
I was curious to know when these excavations had started.

Mandy told me that there were in fact three main excavations. The first one  happened between 1929 and 1934, undertaken by Robert Greenlee and HP Mera. Mera was the first person who actually mapped out the site, and  a lot of what is known geographically is attributed to this 1934 report. The next  major excavation at Tsama happened in 1970,  and the most recent one was in 2008, but it wasn’t so much a full excavation –  they were doing mapping methods: high resolution micro topographic instrument mapping.

Come again – they were doing WHAT?

“It's like a form of LiDAR (an acronym of “light direction and ranging”), it's used like LiDAR, where they would take variable layers of imaging to construct or deconstruct what the actual topography is”, Mandy explained.  “It can survey archaeological sites and facilitate exact mapping”.
 
 April added:  “This technology is one of the reasons that the conservancy preserves properties in the first place. We preserve these sites so that as technology advances, we can allow more research that's even less invasive. In the future, excavation won’t be happening as much in American archaeology, especially at Pueblo sites. Native Americans do not want us digging up their ancestors and their artifacts, but they don't mind us learning about them now. Some Pueblos are actively investigating their own ancestral sites right now; Ohkay Owingeh is one of those Pueblos. But a lot of Pueblos don't really want you digging around on their sites anymore. And we definitely have to consult them when we do these types of work”.

​So with this new technology, one can explore what is underneath the surface of the  earth without having to disturb it. And that's absolutely amazing.

“On top of it, we have all these collections which people have excavated from the 30s to the late 90s. And they probably haven’t been researched extensively. So to go back and look at the material culture – we can go back to these older collections, and students fill those in and learn more about them. We don't need to really dig up more artifacts to understand what was there”, April continued.
 
 This makes a lot of sense because what one would find now is  similar to what has already been found. There is no need to dig places  up and disturb sites that are sacred.

​I was curious: How is the site being protected?  The Conservancy would like to close off the property to prevent ATVs and other vehicles from damaging the area, I learned.

“The neighbors are our best defense sometimes when we have sites like this”, Mandy explains, “because they're not only protective of their own land, but they also know the importance of the site. It benefits us when sites are in a residential area, even as remote as this one. You have neighbors who help out, who pay attention and look out for the site and they stay in contact.”

 Can you see how people lived at the time and what they did, I wanted to know.
April explained that yes, one can, because pottery is definitely diagnostic.  “It gives us a lot of information about when the pottery was made  and what kind of material it was made with.  We can pin down a timeframe based on the type of pottery. That's why it's so important that people don’t collect pottery shards. It may seem like, ‘Oh, this is just on the ground, nobody will miss it’. But it still has a lot of information, and, once you've removed it from a place, it loses its context. Every sherd that's picked up by somebody is one less shard that's going to tell us something about the site”.

Mandy added that they know from the work that was done in the seventies that people in Tsama were holding turkeys. They found  fragments and turkey bones. “They had an indoor turkey pen where they were holding the birds. We also know that they had craft groups. There was one group that was very specific with the manufacture and painting of arrows. Another one was dedicated to making pendants and necklaces and jewelry. We can imagine how these people lived here. They thrived here, they had ceremonies. Taking any of those artifacts removes not just the context, it removes any potential for learning. It removes the story. Every single piece on that property has a piece of history with its own story. And when it's removed you don't know anymore what that story is”.
 
This can’t be stressed enough. Picking up a sherd has repercussions that people don't think about. It seems so innocuous – one finds all these broken pieces, there can’t be any harm in bending down and taking one home. But this is a myopic view. Every piece of pottery is there for a reason, and if I remove it, I poke a hole in the intricate fabric that once was a settlement where people lived for many generations. It’s like picking words out of a book – eventually, it loses its meaning and becomes unreadable. April and Mandy made this very clear.
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I asked about the Pueblo people’s food: what did they eat? What grains and vegetables? Is anything known about this?
“They were definitely growing corn, squash, and beans  –  the “three sisters”, April explained.  “And we’re  assuming that they were hunting, besides raising their domestic turkeys”.

 Greg shared an interesting observation: “When we were walking there they were finding pieces that were from other Pueblos, that were not native to this area. It indicated that they traded with other Pueblos in the area”.

“Absolutely,” April agreed.  “They were trading all the way down to the Galisteo Basin. We were finding glazes from the Galisteo Pueblos which means they were traveling up and down and trading with one another. We find biscuit ware and pottery from other sites too. So we know that they were trading in different areas”.

“All the Pueblos were trading amongst each other. You'll find, for example, that  they were getting their obsidian from the Jemez Mountains.  So, the Pueblos here were probably gathering the obsidian and trading it. And then you had the Galisteo Basin down there where they were mining turquoise, and they were known for their turquoise production. They were definitely trading turquoise, and you'll find Cerrillos Hills turquoise all up and down the Rio Grande”.

“They were also mining  volcanic rock such as basalt for certain things”, Mandy added. “And then there is the Pedernal chert (flint stone), an extremely hard mineral that they would use to make lithics. They would use it for expedient tools and the hammerstones”. 

I had one more question: how did this end? Why did they move away and abandon the Pueblo?  Was there a famine, or did the Spaniards drive them away?
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“They left before the Spaniards came”, April told me.  “I don't think anyone really truly knows what happened.  There is some speculation that there might have been some fighting going on amongst the Pueblo people or between some of the nomadic tribes like the Apache, Comanche, or Navajos. Maybe they were fighting with each other so they all left. They lived in all these small Pueblos up and down the Rio Chama, and I think they all abandoned those smaller Pueblos and moved into a larger Pueblo, probably somewhere near Ohkay Owingeh”.

Mandy had additional information.  “In one of the earlier reports I read  that at one point, I think in the 1300s or 1400s, there were about 40 variable Pueblos up and down the valley. But by Oñate's 1602 census, there were only six Pueblos that remained. There was a lot less migratory emigration, and a lot more people were coming to these larger Pueblo communities versus settling in smaller ones”.

“There could have been a drought, and maybe they were pooling their resources together for survival purposes”, April speculated.  “It could have been a mixture of many different reasons, really. There's probably not one overarching reason why they all decided to abandon and I'm sure it didn't happen exactly all at the same time, either. It probably happened over 100 years or 200 years or something like that”.

Well, by now you may be dying to visit Tsama; I know I am, because this sounds so absolutely fascinating. However, as mentioned earlier, the Pueblo is not open to the public. If you are interested in seeing the site, please email April Brown (swdirector.tac@gmail.com) and/or  Mandy Woods (swfieldrep.tac@gmail.com)  and arrange to meet them. When they visited over the last few months, they have been developing a guided tour and kindly offer to show you around. With many thanks to Greg and Sharon for making this captivating conversation possible, and to April and Mandy, of course – I always find it inspiring to talk with individuals who are passionate about what they’re doing.  

By BD Bondy
 
Carol and I were driving through Espanola the other day and I saw a giant pickup truck with big wheels, very high clearance, and a snorkel. I was a bit enamored. Then I saw a sticker on the back window, Survivalist.

This conjured up some depressing thoughts for me, Walking Dead, climate change, end of days, nuclear bombs, and civil war.

Then I thought, well, I’m also a survivalist. Only, I want EVERYONE to survive. I got solar panels, drive a plug-in hybrid car with almost no emissions, preach peace, and hate guns. I’m rooting for all mankind to get along and help one another.

As far as I can tell, it’s not having much effect on the world, but it’s still a cause worth ‘fighting’ for, or at least discussing.

My mom asked me a couple years ago if I thought there would be a civil war in this country. I said I didn’t think so. That seemed more of a media, especially social media, false story, meant to promote the idea.

These days it can be difficult to know the facts, so I tend to stick with big name news outlets that actually pay journalists to do investigative reporting. There are plenty of sources out there that call themselves news agencies and have no actual journalists.

Sometimes it can be difficult to discern the difference, especially when the article agrees with your thinking or supports what you already believe. My mom may have had the best solution, and that was to not read or watch ANY news. When everyone is screaming at you, it gets hard to hear anything.

Ultimately, it’s best for me to try and think for myself, and double or triple check an article that seems suspect. And I’m suspicious of most articles. 

Get yer early bird specials on Kickstarter.
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By Zach Hively
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Writing a book is supposed to be a crowning achievement in a writer’s life. One must spend years, sometimes entire months, in deep contemplation, self-reflection, and total isolation in order to tease out the meaningful contributions to one’s life that brought one to the brink of a lifetime of royalty checks. Then, one must actually write the book.

But in my experience, the challenge of writing a book is mere marshmallow fluff compared to the heavy lifting of crafting the perfect book announcement.

The Book Announcement is where the skillful author introduces the Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes that Oprah will later discuss with him as part of her eventual presidential campaign tour. Within these few words, the author draws out the pending book’s key concepts by using an illustrative metaphor or some other spare literary device, so that future book groups can truncate their discussions and go straight to drinking wine.
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The trick for the author, of course, is to decide which illustrative metaphor he’s going to use, because he already put most of his good stories inside the book itself and, really, does the world need one more story about me evading encounters with bears?

Of course it does! But I don’t want to blow my bear-wad just yet. So instead, I’m writing the Book Announcement about a Life Decision that really fails to put those bear encounters in perspective.
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It begins, as many stories do, with the words “If my dad can ride his bike over those mountains, then it can’t be that hard.”

I had just moved to Durango, Colorado, to live off my leftover student loans. You would not recognize me then. You also would not recognize me now, unless we have met before. But I was a different person before saddling up for the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic eleven years ago. I had long been a dedicated indoorsman. As activities go, a weekly Uno night was more my cup of tea. Hell, cups of tea were my cup of tea.

The annual Iron Horse ride covers the fifty-mile stretch of highway between the mining and railroad towns of Durango and Silverton, while scaling a pair of ten-thousand-foot mountain passes and informally racing a steam locomotive. I had mounted a bicycle exactly twice since I was eight years old, and put the bike in actual motion only one of those times. But my dear father had participated in the Iron Horse ride for years, despite being, biologically speaking, old. And if Pops could do it, then so could I. I called him up and shared my resolution. He said, “You’re still young, dude. I think if you really put your mind to it, you can manage it. Definitely. Absolutely. No, really.”
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He tried to warn me about the little things, though. Things like sitting in the saddle for hours (puh-leeze! I was a veteran sitter) and leaving the house—on my bike!—for actual training rides. And, though it pains me now to admit it, I proved that you can forget how to ride a bicycle.
But I had an entry fee and paternal pride on the line. I had to accomplish this feat to disprove all the people who say millennials are lazy, worthless bums destroying America, even though I’m not sure what a millennial is, exactly, or if I am one. Besides, the experience of training for the ride might provide fodder for a future Book Announcement. So by gum, I rode my bike. I rode it even though I was not a genetically-endowed cyclist with sponsored clothing. I rode it even though my blood was not made of energy gel. I rode it even though it meant consuming protein bars with experimental seasonal flavors like “gingerbread” and “adventure.”

I still don’t know why so much riding was a key element of an efficient training regimen, exactly, other than it showed Pops that I was serious about this. He couldn’t understand why I had been an English major, but riding a bike, he got. And as we all know, future-President Oprah’s readers are suckers for a good father-son bonding story.

As I kept riding, I earned a fresh perspective on my new home from the seat of my thickening bum calluses. Bicycling isn’t really about the chain grease or the space-age food. It’s about communing with our wider environment. It’s about making sure I beat Pops across the finish line. And it’s about finalizing my growth as a human being by the time I was twenty-seven years old.

On the day of the Iron Horse, when I careened down the last mountain into Silverton, I emerged from the cocoon of early life and young adulthood into this blazing mega- butterfly you read today. No more youthful insecurities. No more “living and learning” or “emotional development.” If I could conquer mountains, then I was basically an expert on life.

I wrote my first installment for what became my Fool’s Gold column in order to commemorate my triumph. I soon branched out from bicycling to tackle the defining topics of our day, topics that required a specialized brand of maturity, insight, and a really poor sense of smell: gender and masculinity in the modern era, family holidays, other people’s dogs, finding friendship as a hermit who dislikes people, and so on and so forth.
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Then someone had the bright idea to rework those adventures into a book. That someone was me. You can call me Zach Hively, because that is my name. And I’d like to introduce you to my forthcoming book, now up for grabs on Kickstarter: Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name.

For all these years, both of you, my darling readers, have had to wait weeks for my next column. Now there is no more waiting. In one extended bathroom visit, you can join me as I open my home to friends, apply to be a festival queen, and travel to St. Louis so you don’t have to. Each of these adventures improved me—enhanced me, even—like a radioactive spider bite. But even conquering mountains on a bicycle that weighs less than a hedonist’s guilt—even delivering a column (on deadline, mind you) for several years—did not quite prepare me for writing this Book Announcement.

No, that took actually sitting down (thanks, bicycle training!) and writing it. I’m happy that I could reward your time and, ideally, the full price you are about to pay with a guiding light by which to understand this book’s Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes. If you figure out what that light is, please let me know, so I can include it in future revised editions.

Here are the highlights of the Kickstart campaign that goes live today:

• Early bird special: Only through Sunday, you can pledge for an advance reader copy that will ship in May in addition to a signed paperback that will ship in September.
• Get your name in the book: All pledges of $5 and up get your name printed, for better or (more likely) for worse, in the book itself.
• Exclusive hardcover editions: The dust-jacketed hardcover edition of Call Me Zach Hively comes in a variant color, so you can really stand out as a sucker. For hardcover books, I mean. A sucker for hardcovers. Mmm, hardcovers. Once the Kickstarter campaign closes, that's it for this edition. Never again. Unless you find it on eBay. Save thousands and order it now.
• Ebooks and paperbacks and all sorts of bookish goodies. You can even inflict gift a book to a school or library.
• Plus, non-bookish goodies, including writing workshops, commencement speeches, and joining forces for a future Fool’s Gold column.

Thank you all for your support in reading my ongoing work and making this and other books possible. Love! Zach
Back Zach on Kickstarter
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Long live the Free Press!
​Zach Hively

You don’t need me to tell you that printed newspapers are, if not a dying industry, at least a much-reduced one. I mean, if cassette tapes are making a comeback, there’s some hope for newsprint yet. And of course there’s digital news. But actual newspapers—the kind that smudge your fingers black, the kind you can rest your cereal bowl on, the kind you start your fires with—they’re an endangered species.

Which really, really sucks.

That said, some of the best of what remains are what we loosely call “alternative newspapers.” The ones who look at what social media did to the news cycle (hint: waiting for tomorrow morning is too long) and said, “Oh, yeah? What if we make you wait AN ENTIRE WEEK?”

These papers (even if they’re online) are my bread and butter. Maybe because they understand the value of taking time to think about what you write before you publish it? Maybe because they’re desperate for content? Nobody knows. But my Fool’s Gold column (and so many other, more brilliant, columns) exists because of venues like the Abiquiú News and the Durango Telegraph.

And, until earlier this year, the Four Corners Free Press, who said: “I’ll see your once a week and raise you to ONCE A MONTH.”

The Free Press and its editor, Gail Binkly, took a chance on me back oh roundabout 2014, give or take, when yours truly was but a fledgling columnist with a part-time job processing business licenses and parking tickets. (Oh, the things people will write on their checks for parking fines; this might be a story for another day.)

Ten years in, and I rewarded their kindness by pushing my monthly deadline later and later and later. Is this what ultimately killed the Free Press? The world may never know, because Gail is too polite to say so.

But in celebration of all the Free Press stood for—actual long-form journalism, diverse opinions, and a ridiculous wealth of columnists, but most especially two entire spreads of tastefully annotated crime notes recounting just how many people had been banned from Walmart that month—some friends of the newspaper put together a party for Gail and crew. They assembled a booklet of farewells from those of us fortunate enough to see our names on the paper’s contributors list.

This was my contribution, which they mistakenly included in the final cut.

Ode to a NewspaperWhen you really stop to think about it, “expression” is such a strange word. We use it to mean “share our thoughts through writing, or interpretive dance, or inchoate screaming,” but really it means “to take what is inside of us and put it outside of us.” This can mean articulating our emotions. It can also mean relieving the pressure on our dogs’ anal glands.

Using the full spectrum of the term, I cannot truly express—at least not in words—what it means to have been published by Gail Binkly and the Four Corners Free Press a dozen, sometimes even ten, times a year, every year, for the past decade.

For starters, the fact that it took me so long to drive the Free Press into the ground is a testament to the resilience and delusion of the editorial staff. My Fool’s Gold column has buried at least two other independent news organizations, both within single-digit years, and neither of them even had print costs.

But more than that, Gail and the Free Press stood for integrity. Which is why it’s so incredible they kept nominating my column for legitimate journalism awards, as evidenced by my actually winning some of them. This has yet to turn into wealth or glamorous invites. But for this, I forgive everyone involved.

Here’s something heartfelt I can express, though, without the use of paper towels or latex gloves: The crime notes always made me feel better about myself.

Fill the void that your favorite newspapers have left in your heart: Subscribe to Zach Hively and Other Mishaps!

Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand.