S. a country of over 60 miles
long, and 30 to 50 wide from E. to W. However, after Fray Geronimo de
Zarate Salmeron had addressed to his superior at Mexico his remarkable
report in the year 1626,[161] a new life began. It is therefore after
1629 that the large church at Pecos was erected, but I am as yet unable
to give the exact dates. This church and the "convent" were both built
by Indians, whom the fathers had taught to square timbers, to ornament
them with simple friezes and scroll-work, and to make adobe in the
manner now practised, namely, mixing straw with the clay and moulding it
in boxes. They were also taught to grow wheat and oats, and their flocks
increased. In addition to being a horticultural people they became
herders, and the pueblo was prosperous. Its church was renowned as the
finest in New Mexico.[162] Whereas Santa Fe, in 1667, had but 250
inhabitants,[163] Pecos, as late as 1680, sheltered 2,000 Indians.[164]

Still, during this very time of comparative prosperity, a storm was
brewing in New Mexico, from whose effects its sedentary Indians never
recovered. This was the great rebellion of 1680. The Indians of Pecos
claim to have remained neutral during that bloody massacre, and I am
inclined to believe their statements. Nevertheless, it is a positive
fact that, on the 10th of August of the aforesaid year, their priest,
Fray Fernando de Velasco, was murdered and their church sacked.[165] By
whom, then, was it done? The reply is intimated by the place where the
great bell was found, and by the events intervening between 1680 and
1692, when Diego de Vargas recaptured Santa Fe. It will be remembered
that the bell was left on the slope of the high mesa towards the S.W.,
in the rocky and desolate gorge descending towards the pueblo San
Cristobal, the old home of the Tanos tribe.[166] Father Jose Amanda Niel
writes, about twenty-five or thirty years after the rebellion, that the
Tanos secured the greatest part of the booty, among which were bells
(_campanas_).[167] That this bell was not carried to the high _mesa_ by
the Pecos I believe I have proved; its proximity to the Tanos village,
and its actual position in the _canada_ leading towards the latter,
shows that it was either to be carried down to it or carried up from it.
If it is (as current report has it) the bell of Pecos, then it was a
trophy which the Tanos secured when they, on the 10th of August, 1680,
committed the atrocities at the pueblo of Peco