Antonio de Espejo
In February 1583, Espejo arrived at the territory of the Piros, the most southerly of the Pueblo villagers. From there the Spanish continued up the Rio Grande. Espejo described the Pueblo villages as "clean and tidy". The houses were multi-storied and made of adode bricks. "They make very fine tortillas," Espejo commented, and the Pueblos also served the Spanish turkeys, beans, corns, and pumpkins. The people "did not seem to be bellicose". The southernmost Pueblos had only clubs for weapons plus a few "poor Turkish bows and poorer arrows". Further north, the Indians were better armed and more aggressive. Some of the Pueblo towns were large, Espejo described Zia as having 1,000 houses and 4,000 men and boys. In their farming, the Pueblos used irrigation "with canals and dams, built as if by Spaniards". The only Spanish influence that Espejo noted among the Pueblos was their desire for iron. They would steal any iron article they could find.
Pueblo I Period
The most advanced communities in the Chaco Canyon region had "great houses", roads and elaborate kivas.By the Pueblo I period, the Ancient Pueblo people were reliant upon agriculture and they faced periods of lower rates of precipitation, like the major drought from 850-900 in the Petrified Forest National Park. It is likely that people also settled on the mesas and ridges to benefit from heavier winter snowfall and summer precipitation. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs and silt-retaining dams also emerged during this period to efficiently utilize their water supply. Large earthenware vessels, sealed with stone lids, were used to store harvested corn and protect it from rodents and rotting.