Views of Gran Quivira at Salinas Pueblos Mission National Monument, New Mexico, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials: the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Las Humanas, largest of the Salinas pueblos, was an important trade center for many years before and after the Spanish entrada. The people resisted the newcomers at first, but they reconciled themselves to the Spanish presence, and borrowed freely from them, as they had from other cultures.