Text from U.S National Park Service Salinas Pueblos Monument Guide - GPO: 1992-312-248/40146 Reprint 1992
Las Humanas, the largest of the Salinas pueblos (includes Abó and
Quarai), 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. The pueblo's black-on-white pottery took on new forms reflecting European
styles. Other artifacts from the site recall the Spanish presence: Chinese porcelain, metal tools, and evidence of cattle, goats, sheep,
horses and pigs. Documents of the 1600s tell of strife between missionaries and encomenderos, who complained that the friars
kept the Indians so busy studying Christianity and building churches that the encomenderos could neither use Indian labor nor
collect their tributes. Burned and filled kivas attest to the friars' determination to exterminate the old religion. Hurriedly altered above-ground
rooms converted to kivas attest to the Pueblo priests' response. A second church was begun around 1659, but was never completed, partly
because Apache raids had begun. In 1672, further weakened by drought and famine, the inhabitants (only 500 bu that time) abandoned
the pueblo.