Jemez

Jemez (hā`mās), pueblo (1990 pop. 1,301), Sandoval co., N N.Mex., on the East Fork of the Jemez River. In the 16th cent. there were several Jemez pueblos; by 1622 there were only two. One of the remaining pueblos was abandoned prior to the Pueblo revolt of 1680. The other took a prominent part in the revolt; the inhabitants of Jemez attacked the Spanish repeatedly. In 1694 the pueblo was stormed and captured by the Spanish. Although the Jemez promised to remain at peace, they revolted in 1696, killed the missionaries there, and then fled into Navajo country, where they remained for several years. Some later returned to build (c.1700) the present village. By the early 1800s the population of the Pecos pueblo, 3,000 when found by the Spaniards, had been reduced by warfare and disease to about two dozen. In 1838 the few remaining inhabitants of the Pecos pueblo (now part of the Pecos National Historical Park) moved to Jemez and merged with its people. In 1915–29 an archaeological dig excavated the Pecos pueblo site. In 1999, under the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), the Peabody Museum at Harvard returned nearly 2,000 skeletons from that dig to the inhabitants of Jemez; the remains, which date from the 12th–19th cent., were reburied at the Pecos park. The inhabitants of Jemez are Pueblos of the Tanoan linguistic stock.