In Northern Mexico, in what is now the state of Chihuahua, the trading town of Paquimé (also known as Casas Grandes) developed and blossomed between 1150 and 1450 CE. The people of Paquimé were more closely affiliated with the Mesoamerican civilizations to their south than to their North American Southwestern neighbors—Mogollon and Hohokam—to the north who occupied the present-day states of Arizona and New Mexico. The city functioned as a major trading center.
In his entry on Casas Grandes in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Paul Minnis describes the site this way:
“Casas Grandes, also known as Paquimé, was once one of the largest and most influential communities in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.”
Paul Minnis also writes:
“Hundreds of villages surrounding Paquimé probably were part of the Casas Grandes polity.”
In their Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica, Margaret Bunson and Stephen Bunson write:
“This was a frontier settlement, part of the trade system with North American Pueblo groups.”
In an article in American Archaeology, Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Paquimé was a wealthy city whose residents imported rare and valuable objects from hundreds of miles away—from the western coast of Mexico, from Mesoamerica to the south, and from the Ancestral Pueblo region to the north. The city’s architecture also incorporates elements from distant cultures.”
With regard to chronology, archaeologists generally describe two basic periods: the Viejo Period (700 to 1200) and the Medio Period (1200 to 1450). By 1300, Paquimé was a substantial city with some 2,000 rooms and multi-story buildings. Like some of the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) sites farther north, some of the rooms had T-shaped doorways.
The Spanish first encountered the abandoned city of Paquimé in 1565 and chronicler Baltasar Obregón described it has having many houses of great size as well as towers and walls. According to Baltasar Obregón, the houses had large patios and their walls had been whitewashed and painted in many different colors.
The architecture and art of Paquimé is a blend of Mesoamerican cultures from the south and Southwestern cultures from the north. In their book Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Michael Coe and Rex Koontz write:
“While the population lived in Southwestern-style apartment houses, the Mesoamerican component can be seen in the presence of platform temple mounds, I-shaped ball courts, and the cult of the Feathered Serpent.”
Origins and Immigrants
There have been several hypotheses regarding the origins of Paquimé. Charles Di Peso of the Amerind Foundation was the first archaeologist to work at Paquimé and he suggested that Paquimé had been founded by Mesoamerican traders seeking to establish trading routes with the American Southwest. On the other hand, there are some archaeologists who feel that Paquimé originally began with a Mogollon-like nucleus of people who capitalized on Hohokam precedents for its early community architecture and water control.
Some archaeologists have put forth the idea that Paquimé was founded by migrants from Aztec Pueblo in New Mexico. Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“The migrants also wanted to be nearer Mesoamerica in order to acquire ritualistic goods such as macaws. In addition to incorporating Ancestral Puebloan characteristics into Paquimé’s architecture, the migrants, emulating Mesoamerican cultures, also incorporated characteristics from that region.”
Still others see Paquimé as having a local origin: it is the result of local evolution.
In the early stages of its development, during the Viejo Period, Paquimé consisted of groups of shallow pithouses which were arranged around a larger community house. The pithouses were semi-subterranean structures with walls made from poles, brush, and adobe.
Like other Indian cultures at this time (1,500 years ago), they were raising corn, beans, and squash. They supplemented these agricultural foods by hunting wild game and collecting wild plants. They manufactured simple brown pottery.
In the next stage of its development, Paquimé seems to have been influenced by the Hohokam in Arizona. They began to build rectangular surface houses with walls of tightly spaced vertical posts which were plastered with clay. The roofs were constructed of timbers which were covered with brush and grass and then plastered with clay. With regard to the transition from the pithouses to surface houses, Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Subsequently, pithouses were replaced by above-ground adobe rooms; the exact reason for this transition is unclear, but archaeologists suggest it coincided with an increase in communal stability.”
According to some archaeologists, the town blossomed after an Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) infusion of immigrants. At this time (about 1,000 year ago) they began building single-story adobe-walled room blocks. The characteristics of these room blocks are T-shaped doorways (like those of the Anasazi in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico), raised fire hearths, and stairways.
Even with these northern origins and influences from the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi, Paquimé was more oriented toward Mesoamerica for trade and cultural customs. About 800 years ago, during the Medio Period, this influence from Mesoamerica brought about a flourishing of Paquimé. They built ceremonial mounds and ballcourts similar to the Mesoamerican cities to the south. Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Fifteen geometric or animal-shaped platform mounds, likely used for ritual ceremonies are scattered around the city. Five enormous earth ovens were probably used to prepare feasts held in conjunction with rituals.”
Architecture
At its height, Paquimé covered 88 acres. Its horseshoe-shaped apartment complex overlooked public areas to the west, south, and north. The apartment complex included a public plaza as well as private courtyards. In addition to living quarters and domestic storage, the complex also had a subterranean well, a sweat bath, nesting boxes for turkeys and macaws, artisan work areas, and ceremonial rooms.
The people of Paquimé built adobe houses that were six and seven stories in height. These apartments offered residents an airy living space. Occupants were using heated sleeping platforms, raised platform cooking hearths, and domestic running water. By 1300, the town had a population of about 2,500 people.
In addition to raising crops in irrigated fields, the people of Paquimé bred and raised turkeys as well as macaws. The scarlet and soldier macaws were highly valued for ceremony, display, and trade. Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Brilliantly colored macaws also seem to have had ritual significance. The birds are native to central Mexico, where they frequently appear in pottery and sculpture and were used in religious rituals. The people of Paquimé both imported and bred the birds, and several plazas include pens where macaws were held.”
The public areas at Paquimé included an open market, effigy mounds, ceremonial mounds, and ballcourts. Unlike the Anasazi pueblos to the north, there were no kivas (underground ceremonial chambers).
The mounds within Paquimé include not only flat-topped temple mounds, but also effigy mounds. One of the effigy mounds was shaped like a snake and may have been a symbol of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl was identified with the planet Venus, wind, war, and human sacrifice. The symbol of Quetzalcoatl—a serpent with a feathered plume—was found frequently in the monuments, jewelry, ceramics, and rock art.
Images of another Mesoamerican deity, Tlaloc, were also found at Paquimé. Tlaloc was associated with storms and water, and priests at Paquimé may have sacrificed children to Tlaloc at springs and ponds.
Another effigy mound is shaped like a bird (perhaps a beheaded turkey). There is also a mound structure shaped like a cross which is aligned with the cardinal directions and helps mark the passage of the seasons. One of the truncated pyramidal mounds served as a signal platform and another was used for elite burials and ritual celebrations.
One of the city’s two ballcourts was T-shaped and was attached to one of the most elaborate sections of the apartment complex. This area served as the setting for some of Paquimé’s most important religious ceremonies. Within the area marked by the walls of this ballcourt, the priests re-enacted mythical games. Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Mesoamerican-style ballcourts also likely played an important role in religious activities.”
Trade
Itinerant traders connected the community with both the Mesoamerican civilizations to the south and to the North American Southwestern Pueblos to the north. Some archaeologists refer to the trading network as the “Aztlan Mercantile System.” The trading network linked the civilizations in the Valley of Mexico with northern Mexican and the Southwestern United States. The stock in trade for these itinerant traders included fabric, smoking pipes, tobacco, metal objects, turquoise, cacao, and ceramics. They also transported macaws from the rainforests of Central America, across the deserts of northern Mexico, to Paquimé. Somehow, they managed to keep the birds alive during the trip.
The town of Paquimé was a major trading center and through this center luxury goods such as shells, copper, macaws, and pottery made their way into Arizona and New Mexico from Mesoamerica. The people of Paquimé were known for making copper bells and ornaments. Artisans used shells imported from the Gulf of California to craft necklaces, pendants, bracelets, rings, and musical instruments. Using quartz crystal pestles, chipped stone gravers, and stone abraders, the artisans produced beads from Olividae and Conidae shells, as well as cut and incised pendants. These items were used in religious rituals and were exported to distant trading partners.
Paquimé potters produced both effigies and painted vessels which showed men, women, macaws, owls, snakes, badgers, fish, lizards, and mountain sheep. The images were detailed enough so that modern scientists can identify the actual animal species.
The trade from the Southwestern cultures seems to have been focused on turquoise. The excavations at Paquimé found warehouses filled with turquoise from the mines in New Mexico and Arizona. Regarding trade, Michael Coe and Rex Koontz write:
“While it is now clear that the regional elite consumed large quantities of these precious metals, a substantial amount must also have found its way south, where turquoise continued to grow in importance for the Tarascans and other Mesoamericans.”
Regarding the trade from Mesoamerica to the Southwest, Michael Coe and Rex Koontz write:
“The Pueblo Indians have a deep ritual need for feathers from tropical birds like parrots and macaws, since these symbolize fertility and the heat of the summer sun.”
The End
According to some sources, Paquimé was destroyed about 1450 by an enemy people who burned the city and killed several hundred men, women, and children. The bodies of the dead were left where they fell. In addition, the precious breeding macaws and turkeys were left in their pens to die of neglect.
On the other hand, more recent scholarship has a different interpretation. Elizabeth Lunday writes:
“Paquimé thrived until about 1400. The the population began to decline, and by 1450 the city was abandoned.”
Ancient America
Ancient America is a series about the time prior to the European invasions of the Americas. More from this series:
Ancient America: Effigy Mounds
Ancient America: The East Wenatchee Clovis Site (museum tour)
Ancient America: Mastodons
Ancient America: Northeast Arizona, 560 BCE to 825 CE
Ancient America: Some Plateau Indian petroglyphs (museum tour)
Ancient America: Astronomy
Ancient America: Solar Calendars
Ancient America: The prehistoric Southwest, 1375-1425 CE