Las Humanas

Las Humanas, also known as Gran Quivira, was a Tompiro-speaking pueblo in central New Mexico that developed from pithouses around A.D. 800 into a masonry settlement by about A.D. 1300. For centuries it stood within a broad Salinas and Jumano trade network and became an important center of the salt trade before Spanish colonization. By 1598 it had about 3,000 inhabitants, and in the 17th century Spanish mission activity produced the churches of San Isidro and San Buenaventura. Severe drought, Spanish expropriation, starvation, and an Apache raid in 1670 drove a sharp decline, and the settlement was abandoned by the early 1670s. Its ruins are now preserved within Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.

New Mexico · United States