Uncovering America’s First War: Contact, Conflict, and Coronado’s Expedition to the Rio Grande

By the 1530s, Indigenous Pueblo populations in the American Southwest reached tens of thousands of people with a rich culture expressed through stunning architecture, ceramic technology, and ceremonial life. Then, into that world came outsiders--an army from Spain’s new colony in Mexico led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. First contacts at the western Pueblos of Zuni, Hopi, and Acoma led to open warfare.

By the winter of 1540, increasing tensions and resistance spilled over into violence in America’s earliest named war, the Tiguex War, which occurred in an area settled by ancestors of today’s Rio Grande Pueblos. The largest and most intact battle site of that fierce conflict is known as Piedras Marcadas Pueblo, situated within present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fighting back against Coronado’s crossbows and muskets with stone-tipped arrows and slingstones, the Puebloans mounted a courageous defense of their largest village, piling rocks on rooftops and hurling them down at attackers. Hundreds of artifacts found at Piedras Marcadas reveal the life-and-death contest for survival that occurred within those ancient walls and plazas.