f New Mexico.[174] But it would be
incorrect to attribute this weakening of the pueblos during that time to
the warfare with the Spaniards, or to the latter's retaliatory measures
after final triumph. Vargas was energetic in action, but not cruel. A
few of those who had committed peculiar atrocities were executed, but
the remnants of the pueblos were reestablished in their franchises and
privileges as autonomous communities. It is the intertribal warfare,
which commenced again as soon as the aborigines were left to themselves,
and drouth accompanying the bitter and bloody feuds, which destroyed the
pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley.[175] The Pecos, isolated and therefore
less exposed, suffered proportionately less; still, their time was come
also, though in a different way.[176]

I have already stated that, in the beginning of the eighteenth century,
the Utes introduced near the pueblo of Taos another branch of the great
Shoshone stock,--the _Comanches_. This tribe soon expelled the
Apaches,[177] who had not been exceedingly troublesome to the pueblos,
and, a vigorous northern stock, became that fearful scourge of all the
surrounding settlements, which they have continued to be for 150 years.
Their efforts were mainly directed against the pueblo of Pecos, as the
most south-easterly village exposed to their attacks. On one occasion
the Comanches slaughtered all the "young men" of Pecos but one,--a blow
from which the tribe never recovered. Thus, when the Indians of the Rio
Grande rose in arms against the Mexicans in 1837, as has been so ably
described by Mr. D. J. Miller,[178] the Pecos did not take any part, for
there were only eighteen adults left, huddled together in the northern
wing of the huge building _A_, and watching the sacred embers in the
face of slow, inevitable destruction.

Then, in the following year, 1838, an event took place which, simple and
natural as it is, still illustrates forcibly the powerful link which the
bond of language creates between distant Indian communities. The pueblos
of Pecos and Jemez had been almost without intercourse for centuries;
but in the year 1838, says Mariano Ruiz, the principal men of Jemez
appeared in person on the site of Pecos and held a talk with its
occupants. They had heard of the weakness of their brethren, of their
forlorn condition, and now came to offer them a new home within the
walls of their own pueblo. The Pecos took the proposal under
consideration, but were