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.
Chok people
The Chok were a "purely agricultural people, cultivating millet and eleusine grain grown in the cold air of the summit and possibly a little tobacco." The "millet [was] grown on the fertile and well watered flats at the base of the Elgeyo escarpment, and [was] watered by means of irrigation, while eleusine grain (was) grown high upon the hill sides and was dependent on rain". The irrigation system as Beech noted, "is most ingenious, and it's original construction must have required a vast amount of toil and patience".