DNA confirmed a Pueblo tribe’s ties to Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon was once the heart of a lost civilization. People began building grand structures there around A.D. 850, in what is now northwest New Mexico. Within 300 years or so, however, the site was abandoned. Today, many Native Americans hold the canyon grounds sacred. And more than two dozen Pueblo tribes consider the Chaco people their ancestors. Now, DNA has helped confirm ancestral ties to one Pueblo group.

An analysis genetically linked ancient people at Chaco Canyon to the modern Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation. Picuris Pueblo today live some 275 kilometers (170 miles) east of the canyon. People in the tribe have long told stories about descending from ancient North Americans. Those oral histories described ties to Chaco Canyon.

The new findings back up what Picuris people — though not archaeologists — knew all along. The results also flesh out lost pieces of the tribe’s past. Picuris Pueblo tribe members and scientists teamed up for the new research. They shared their results in the June 5 Nature.

“Our elders knew we had always been here. But it was very moving and powerful to see it validated,” said Craig Quanchello. He is Picuris Pueblo’s lieutenant governor. He is also a member of the research team. He spoke at a press briefing on April 29.

Filling in the family tree

Picuris people were driven to do the new study in part because of threats to Chaco Canyon. In recent years, oil and gas companies have pushed to drill there. The Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation has objected to that use of its ancestral land. But those protests were ignored. So Picuris officials sought to strengthen their case. They looked for science to confirm their tribe’s link to this land.

Tribal officials asked Eske Willerslev for help. A genetics expert, he works at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He had used DNA before to probe the histories of other Native American tribes.

With the tribe’s permission, Willerslev’s team looked at DNA from 16 people. All had been buried between about 1300 and 1500 at Picuris Pueblo. The scientists compared that DNA to blood samples from 13 current tribe members. Other DNA came from ancient and modern people in Siberia and the Americas. The remains included people from Chaco Canyon.

Ancient and modern Picuris people showed close genetic ties. And both at least partly descended from Chaco Canyon residents, DNA data now show.

Clearing up Picuris history

In the past, some researchers had argued that after the Chaco Canyon society collapsed, its people all fled the region. If true, the ancestors of Picuris and other Pueblo tribes would have arrived at the site later. The new study suggests that’s not what happened.

The data instead fit a scenario where Pueblo groups such as Picuris left Chaco Canyon by around 1200. They might have done this to escape strict social classes there.

“Picuris downsized and moved to where they could make their own, smaller social networks,” says David Hurst Thomas. He’s an archaeologist who did not take part in the new study. He works at the American Museum of Natural History. That’s in New York City.

The genes of ancient Picuris people suggest their population stayed at roughly 3,000 after leaving Chaco Canyon. If so, then enough of them likely stayed in the region to maintain a line of descent to the present-day tribe. But the DNA also suggest Picuris numbers dropped by about 85 percent after the Spanish invaded in the 1500s. Today, only 306 Picuris Pueblo people remain.

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Helping, not hurting Indigenous people

Other Pueblo tribes’ links to Chaco Canyon have not yet been tested with DNA. But there have been more and more partnerships between scientists and Indigenous communities. Such teams have found other signs of ancient North American ancestry among today’s Native American tribes.

Many of those projects were prompted by Indigenous groups pushing to rebury the remains of their ancestors. Archaeologists had found or acquired many of those remains without first asking permission from any tribe to keep and study those bones.

Scientists at first resisted returning such remains. But a 1990 U.S. law now requires that Native American artifacts and remains be given back to tribal descendants. That has raised pressure on scientists to link ancient remains to the correct modern tribes.

Advances in DNA tech have aided these projects.

Many Indigenous communities are still angry at archaeologists. Scientists have demanded DNA samples from them for study. Some have intruded on sacred burials. Scientists have often dismissed tribes’ accounts of their own histories, too. The new study shows how wrong some archaeologists had been about Native American cultures.

Such research has a troubled history. But the Picuris study “is a landmark,” Thomas says. Many past studies have excluded the Native people they sought to understand. Here, though, Picuris people recruited scientists and kept full control of the project.