By Tom Sharpe
The New Mexican
May 13, 2006
Prehistoric pit house, indian burials discovered during work on federal courthouse
More evidence that some of downtown Santa Fe overlies remnants of an ancient American Indian village has turned up near the federal courthouse just north of City Hall.
Spanish conquistadors who founded Santa Fe in the first decade of the 17th century reported no native settlement here. But local lore, sometimes disputed as overly imaginative romanticism, held that a pueblo predates Santa Fe.
Now that legend seems to be gaining support.
In 2004, a prehistoric pit house was uncovered when a more secure entrance, an elevator and other security features were added to the west side of the stately, stone-facade federal courthouse, built between the early 1850s and the late 1880s.
At first, the pit house was thought to date to A.D. 1100, a century earlier than ruins found south of Federal Place where work on a new civic center and underground garage is under way.
But the discovery on the federal site turned out to be connected culturally to the other ruins.
Last September, trenching for channeling drainage off the courthouse addition encountered American Indian burials.
The on-site archaeological contractor, Southwest Archaeological Consultants, notified the U.S. General Services Administration, which maintains the federal courthouse, and the state Historic Preservation Division, as per the U.S. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
GSA contacted Tesuque Pueblo, a pre-Columbian Tewa village about five miles north of Santa Fe, whose 600 members are believed to be related to the ancient villagers.
Stephen Lentz, supervisor of the archaeological dig around City Hall, has written that the settlement on the north bank of the Santa Fe River was called Ogapoge or “down at the Olivella shell bead water.”
Three different trenches were dug in an effort to avoid the burials, but each time, human remains were encountered.
“After careful consideration of its options, GSA, in consultation with the Pueblo of Tesuque, concluded that the storm water drain could be combined with a similar drain line at the adjacent Montoya Building, reducing the amount of ground disturbance required for the entire project and lowering the risk for encountering additional unmarked human burials,” says an award nomination by the Historic Preservation Division.
Southwest Archaeological Consultants and Tesuque Pueblo agreed to continue monitoring for human remains as the drain line was channeled under a concrete driveway and sidewalk and across the front lawn of the Montoya Building, which houses the Main Post Office. The project is nearly completed.
On Friday, the state Cultural Properties Review Committee will honor the cooperation between GSA and Tesuque Pueblo with its Heritage Preservation Award “for exceptional sensitivity to cultural heritage issues and the sanctity of ancestral human remains.”