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 III Period
During the Pueblo III Period most people lived in communities with large multi-storied dwellings. Some moved into community centers at pueblos canyon heads, such as Sand Canyon and Goodman Point pueblos in the Montezuma Valley; Others moved into cliff dwellings on canyon shelves such as Mesa Verde or Keet Seel in the Navajo National Monument. Typical villages had included kivas, towers, and dwellings made with triple coursed (three rows of stones) stone masonry walls. T-shaped windows and doors emerged for both surface and cliff dwellings.Three major regional centers with cliff dwellings and community centers were Chaco Canyon National Historical Park in New Mexico, Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado and Betatakin and Keet Seel area (Navajo National Monument) in Arizona.As a means to improve agricultural yield, the Pueblo III period saw advancements in water conservation. Stones were placed in and around farm land to divert flow for irrigation, water conservation and to reduce run-off. This was accomplished through the use of bordered gardens, reservoirs, check dams and terraced gardening plots – building upon the techniques of the Pueblo II Period. Corn, beans and squash were cultivated using dryland farming techniques. Their diet was supplemented with wild plants, such as beeweed. As nutrients were depleted from over-farming, new land was found and cleared for cultivation.