Page 19 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Early Inhabitants:
Prehistory to 1845
selves with the salvation of the Indians’ souls. In addition, they did not go out of their way to deliberately provoke unnecessary confrontations. It was not long, however, before the American dreamers who remained behind envisioned and covetedanempirefromseatoshiningsea. Orat least as a start, the independent Republic of Texas.
The Ancient Ones
Since the beginning of time man has sought to leave his permanent mark so that others might understand who he was, a form of immortality. Ancient volcanic boulders of the Southwest bear mute testimony to these efforts by early Indian cultures. Little im- agination was required, after viewing some of the images and designs engraved in the rock, to “see” a small dark figure painstakingly pecking at the black- ened surface with a fragment of jasper, flint, or obsidianwrappedinapatchofdeerskin. Whydid these people choose to spend valuable time and energy on something that was apparently not imme- diately productive? More basic still, who were these people, how did they come to be here, and to where did they disappear?
Centuries before European nations emerged from the chaos there, peoples from Asia crossed the Bering Strait land bridge. They explored and settled the American continents from where the land first
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widened to Tierra del Fuego. By 10,000 B.C., the
Mimbres region was occupied by the descendants of those who had crossed the land bridge from Asia to the Americas. They were skillful hunters of giant bison, mammoths, and other large animals until man^ species of game became extinct around 5,000 B.C. These people then evolved into hunter- gatherers and subsisted on small game and whatever edible plants they could collect. In the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, they conquered the terrain and elements, first to survive and then slowly to ascend the cultural ladder. At this stage they were
The area at the southern base of Cooke’s Peak
has been periodically
Little if anything remains to show the occupation by the earliest people for their lifestyle did not promote the leaving of many identifiable artifacts. However, other ancient ones, the Mimbres, left adequate ex- amples of their homes, culture, and art as evidence that they occupied several sites close to the water sources existing there.
Following, or perhaps concurrent with, the evacua- tion or extermination of the Mimbres people as an identifiable entity, the Apaches moved into the area and established a loosely associated culture of small semi-permanent rancherias. It is likely that one or more such settlements were established near the unfailing water supply at Cooke’s Spring. Some argue that the Apaches did not arrive until a few hundred years later while others claim, with equal conviction and vehemence, that the Apaches inun- dated the area twice, as they followed the expansion and contraction of the great buffalo herds. Unfor- tunately, the Apaches’ lifestyle did not leave suffi- cient remains for a conclusive argument.
Whichever is true, the Apaches had achieved a certain amount of autonomy by the time the Spaniards appeared to alter forever the Indians’ lifestyle. Spanish soldiers and clergy, looking for new coffers of gold and souls to win for the crown, clashed with the Apaches in a barbarous struggle for domination that neither side ever won. With the fulfillment of Mexican Independence, little changed. The Apaches either did not recognize the difference because many of the people with whom they had contact did not change, or if there was recognition, it was deemed immaterial as far as they
were concerned.
The intrusion of American trappers and miners
took place approximately concurrently with the ebb of Spanish influence. These new intruders were not much different than the Spanish or Mexicans in their attitude toward the Indians except they did not (as of yet) come in such large numbers or concern them-
occupied for millennia.
Chapter 1
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