Giusewa and the Mission of San Jose: Ruin and Memory
New Mexico
The ruins here are two stories in one. The older story belongs to Giusewa, a pueblo village occupied by ancestors of the Jemez people well before any European arrived in this canyon. The name Giusewa is a Jemez word that refers to the hot springs that made this valley hospitable for centuries.
The second story arrived in fifteen eighty-one with the Spanish, who documented the community and eventually sent Franciscan missionaries to convert it. Around sixteen twenty-two, those friars oversaw the construction of the massive stone mission church of San Jose de los Jemez, its walls several feet thick and designed to last forever.
It did not. The friars gave up the mission within about two decades, and the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen eighty ended Spanish rule here, when the village was abandoned. The Jemez State Monument today preserves both ruins together, the pueblo and the church, as evidence of a collision of worlds.
