REDFORD — Last week, the People of La Junta for Preservation — a Native-led nonprofit working to preserve important historic sites in the region — announced that they had received a historic land donation near the ancient El Polvo crossing in Redford. The archaeological site is already protected as a State Antiquities Landmark and has a place on the National Register of Historic Places, but the donation will allow the site to be preserved and shared with the public under Indigenous leadership.
The site has been a migration pathway for centuries, marking a low spot in the water that connected cultures from all over the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. Archaeological evidence suggests that — in addition to being the site of an early Indigenous settlement — it was also the site of a Spanish mission, about which few concrete details are known.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish priests established missions in the area around the confluence of the Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande in hopes of converting the Indigenous people in the region to Christianity.
Historian and Polvo native Enrique Madrid, who wrote the authoritative 2003 paper on the site, explained that piecing together the story of the Polvo mission required cross-referencing archaeological evidence with oral history passed down generation by generation. “I grew up hearing stories of Indian villages and Spanish missions, of ghostly apparitions of women in white and spotted cows, of rattling chains and balls of fire — all indications of fabulous Spanish treasures, and all phenomena associated with the old town of El Polvo.”
He noted that the process of actually piecing together the evidence was not quite as glamorous as these rumors of buried treasure. Instead, he relied on elders with faint memories of the ruins of the mission site and uncovered historical photographs of the same. The remains of the adobe structures had been leveled in the 1950s at the landowner’s request, which revealed even older evidence of Indigenous settlement.
Some mysteries still remain. “The lost mission of El Polvo is not lost in space, for we know what it looked like and its exact location, but rather it is lost in time as we do not know when it was built or even what its name was,” Madrid wrote.
The El Polvo site was donated by David Shane Duke, its owner for nearly two decades. “El Polvo is an incredibly special place to many,” he wrote in a press release. “The chapter of my brief ownership is closing, and I am excited to see what the future will bring.”
The People of La Junta for Preservation have experience restoring sites in the region according to an Indigenous-led vision — this year saw the completion and grand opening of the Cementerio del Barrio de los Lipanes, a centuries-old traditional burial ground for the Lipan Apache.
Executive Director Christina Hernandez was also looking forward to the future, with a focus on restoring native vegetation at the site and preserving an adobe structure but noted that encroachment by development would present its own challenges. “The site is not without complexities, and working to restore native habitats and creating safe access for the public is an exciting new project for us to tackle,” she wrote.