PAQUIME

On the 1560's, the Spaniard Francisco de Ibarra crossed the Sierra Madre. He was looking for  the mythic "Golden Cities" of Cibola and Quivira... Golden cities?

Yes, it is, but conqueror Ibarra found here only some Native American Indians: the Sumas.
They guided him to the only existing city at this latitude that  natives identified as PAQUIME. Really surprised, Ibarra wrote on his chronicle:

"This great city... has buildings that look like constructed by antique Romans. It is impressive to see them. There are many houses of grate size, strength and height... they have six and seven floors, with towers and walls like Fortress for protection and defence of the enemies.
...It has big and beautiful patios, covered of beautiful, lovely and big stones like jasper; and thin stones held the big and beautiful pillars of thick wood brought from far; the walls covered and painted in many colours, the shades and paintings of their building, made on a way-like one piece wall, but  weaved and stirred with stone stronger and more-lasting than wood.

...There were thick and wide river canals that they used to bring water to their homes at the towns. They have big and wide stoves on the lower part of the houses and buildings to protect from the cold-that there is a lot, because it snows there on a big part of the year, and extreme cold comes from the valleys and sierras, where snow is more ordinary. There were found pieces of metals that the naturals would benefit and stones for grinding. (...)We found stoned paths''.

These great town and congregation of houses is not all together, but divided by a space of eight leagues down the river (...) There were most of these houses fallen, wearing down by the waters and broken, because they showed a lot of years of being left and the owners were despoiled, although there were wild people, rustic and foreigners..."

When Ibarra did not found what he was looking for, he kept his way, calling this place since then:

PAQUIMÉ,

the place of the Big Houses or... Casas Grandes

After Paquime was abandoned, the natives Sumas used the place. An incipient culture of the desert was death...

But, fortunatelly the Paquimans leave thousands of utensils to know about them; specially, POTTERY. Just that pots or the ''spirits'' on the pots, leads Juan Quezada to rediscover the ancient techniques of the Paquime Indians pottery to create the world famous MATA ORTIZ pottery.

For more info, use this link:

www.stores.ebay.com/artespaquime