Bobcat Cave: A contribution to the ethnohistory of the Spanish borderlands

Abstract

When the empire of New Spain expanded its boundaries northward into what is now the Southwest of North America, the motive was threefold: first, to create a buffer against increasing French and English encroachments; second, to carry Christianity to the aboriginal inhabitants of the frontier; and third, to continue the quest for riches to enhance financially the treasury of the crown of Spain. The conquestadores of New Spain were successful in extending the frontier during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The record of their explorations and feats of survival are well known. However, the record of the aboriginal inhabitants of the frontier is vague and lacks full description. Especially lacking is the knowledge of the cultural development of the Indians of the Southwest before Spanish contact. Bobcat Cave was excavated so that additional information on the formative ethnohistory of the Spanish frontier could be examined in relation to the tribes found by the first Spaniards such as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado. As a result of the excavation of Bobcat Cave, several important facets to the early culture of the Indians of the Southwestern portion of North America were clarified. The ancestors of the present Zuni, Pima, and Papago were hunters and lived in caves. Their family organization was centered around the nuclear family and did not include other relatives. Each family occupied its cave until the game became depleted when they moved to other locations. Besides hunting, these people of the Archaic Period of the Southwest gathered wild plants and included wild grains as a supplement to their meat diet. As an additional cultural trait, excavation disclosed the fact that these people existed defensively due to continuing pressures of invasion by other marauding people. Examination of their tools and other stone artifacts indicated a specialized knowledge of stone and its use in the manufacture of a wide variety of implements. The strata or occupational layers of Bobcat Cave further indicated a definite progression from a pure hunting culture through a transition phase to hunting-gathering, and from this development to an early pottery-using culture. Beginning with the use of pottery the cave was abandoned and isolated communal or village concepts were adopted. Horticulture and gardening in combination with pottery utilization created the need for cooperative settlement and increased the time needed for the development of arts and crafts of sophistication. The villages and settlements encountered by the Spaniards represented the final development of a people from the cave dwellers of Bobcat Cave to a culture possessing refinements in social structure, government, religion, and traditional mores. Bobcat Cave furnished information which forms a continuum through time. It filled many gaps and answered many questions. Most important, it strengthened the ethnohistorical approach to an area which lacked this type of information and demonstrated that archaeology, when combined with historical documentation, can contribute to a deeper and more effective understanding of man.