The following documents are taken from various Internet accessed documents.

The ancestral home of my family line, the De Ribera's, is Pecos, New Mexico. A small friendly village in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, it's perched at the edge of a vast wilderness area between Santa Fe and San Jose along Highway 63 near the Santa Fe National Forest. Located in San Miguel County, it can be reached by traveling to the southeast between Santa Fe and Las Vegas.

Twenty-five miles southeast of Santa Fe, surrounded by mountain peaks and mesas, lay the ruins of an Indian pueblo remaining from the golden age of once-powerful Native American people. Pecos was one of New Mexico’s largest and most powerful Indian communities in the ancient Southwest. Because the site commanded the mountain gateway between the Plains tribes to the east and the Pueblo villages of the Rio Grande Valley to the west, Pecos became a major trading center and a cultural melting pot dominating the Pueblo world.

Situated at the site of a mountain pass, it has been used by travelers for centuries. The pass was used by ancient nomadic Indian tribes, by travelers on the Santa Fe Trail and was the site of a Civil War battle that changed the course of the war and of our United States of America.

From about 1450 to 1600, Pecos had a population of about 2,000 with a fighting force of 500 warriors. Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches and other tribes came regularly for bartering sessions lasting for days. They brought slaves, buffalo hides, flint and shells and exchanged them for the pottery, crops, textiles and turquoise of the river settlements.

As the years went by, Pecos’ fortunes lessened and it never grew to become a large trading center, instead it became a small Spanish pueblo. The weathered walls of a Spanish church rise above the pueblo ruins, which extend along a narrow ridge rising from the floor of a shallow valley cut by the Pecos River. The July 1, 1998 population was estimate at 1,161, an increase of 149 since 1990.

The Spaniard, Don Juan de Onate, brought the first settlers to New Mexico in 1598. Their goals were to convert the Indians to Christianity, build colonies of settlements, and establish farms and ranchos. Fray Francisco de San Miguel of the Catholic Order of Friars Minor (Franciscan) erected a crude chapel at Pecos in 1598. But it wasn't until 1620 that the padres launched their major effort to convert the pueblo. Then Fray Pedro de Ortega, using Indian labor, began construction of a huge church, which he called Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles de Porcnuncula or Our Lady of the Angels of Porcnuncula.

Nuestra Senora was an impressive achievement. The nave, or central worship hall, was 150 feet long and 40 feet wide. Its massive adobe walls were 22 feet thick in places, with rows of buttresses and six bell towers. To the south of the church, a sprawing "convento," which provided living quarters for priests and church staff, covered hundreds of square feet. However, this stunning church did not survive. After a half-century of bringing Christian teachings and new ways of life to Pecos, Nuestra Senora was destroyed in the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

In 1716, Fray Jose de Arranegui completed a new church at Pecos. Far less ambitious than the original mission, it was built over the ruins of the church destroyed in 1680. The smaller structure was designed to serve a diminishing population, for the once-powerful pueblo was on the decline. By the late 1700s, it counted less than 300 souls. One historian noted: "The threat of warring Comanches led to abandonment of farm land. This, coupled with drought, brought famine. Hundreds died from epidemics and many moved away. By 1800, new Hispanic settlements in the area had taken over the trade that had once made Pecos prosperous."

Pecos was now a ghost town, and in 1838, the last 17 residents walked away to move in with their cousins at Jemez. For years after its abandonment, Pecos weathered away under the battering of rain, snow and wind. The great multi-storied community houses with their hundreds of rooms melted down, and much of the church, stripped of its roof and wooden beams by area settlers, partially collapsed into the reddish soil from which it had come.

For many years, Pecos was protected as a New Mexico State Monument, but in 1965, the ruins became a national monument when they were transferred to the National Park Service.

Today, a walk along through the ruins reveals rough, poorly-fitting stones in uneven rows marking the lower tiers of the two terraced community houses that once towered four stories high. Residents were apparently short on building skills. Alfred V. Kidder, archaeologist from Phillips Academy of Andover, Massachusetts, pioneered excavations at Pecos from 1915 to 1924. He reported: "These people weren't builders, they were stackers. As one dwelling fell into ruins, a new one was simply constructed on top of the old one." In one area, excavations have uncovered six levels of dwellings.

Remains of more than 20 kivas, underground ceremonial chambers that play a role in Pueblo religion, dot the ruins. On the southern edge of the mesa, the trail leads through the ruins of the church built in 1716. Sunlight streams in through a roofless nave outlined by reddish walls still many feet thick. Adjoining the sanctuary is the remains of the convento.