The Destruction of White Shell Pueblo

THE DESTRUCTION OF WHITE SHELL PUEBLO ¹

At Kubéro (Pojoaque) the Tewa were living (who afterwards went to Hopi). They came down against White Shell Pueblo (Hishi; old site of San Felipe) and overcame the people and destroyed the pueblo. The people went farther south and settled on the present site of San Felipe.

A man was living with his wife and sister at Tamitē (mesita south of Cochiti). They did not know of the attack on White Shell [paragraph continues]

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Pueblo, and they came there and found it abandoned. Outside the pueblo were heaps of the dead, but they heard the crying of a baby from the houses. ^1a The man from Tamitē went into the pueblo to search for the baby. He followed the sound, and covered over by the grinding stone he found the baby. Macaw (cawat) was feeding it with piñon nuts he cracked and chewed and put into the baby's mouth. The man took the baby to his wife and sister, and they cared for it. The women were afraid the enemy would come again and find their settlement and destroy them; they saw a man in the distance, and they thought it was a spy from the people of Kubéro, but it was only a man from White Shell Pueblo who was coming back to his own home. However, the women said, "We must leave this place and find a pueblo where we shall be safe." They wondered which way they should go; south to Sandia, or past Sandia Mountain to Cranquebila. They said, "Cranquebila is the farther, and we shall be safer there." They took the baby and went to Cranquebila and stayed there four years. The sister of the Tamitē man married a man of Cranquebila, and they found other White Shell Pueblo people had taken refuge there.

After a time there was no water for the crops at Cranquebila, and the people from Tamitē decided that they would return to their home if there were no enemies about. Therefore the Tamitē man and his sister's husband came down to the Cochiti country and remained four days watching for any danger. They saw no signs of enemies, and they went back to Cranquebila and got their wives and possessions. They planted fields again and built houses at the foot of the mesita of Tamitē. Men also who had married at Cranquebila came to them there and built houses and planted fields, and also those who had married at Sandia, and at Santa Ana. They built up a pueblo at the foot of Tamitē, and the men of Santo Domingo came there and took wives from that pueblo. The pueblo grew, and the people decided to go to Ka'taishtia (mesa above San Felipe). They flourished there and it became a large pueblo. The men of Cranquebila used to come there and take wives from that pueblo.

Footnotes

186:1 Informant 4.

187:1a Cp. p. 124, Notes, p. 224.