Is there anything in history that would indicate when the first white man “met” the Anasazi?
We know from historic documents that the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and 3 others, who had been shipwrecked off Texas in 1528, probably encountered some Anasazi people as they wandered from Texas into New Mexico and then back down into Mexico. In 1539, Fray Marcos de Niza definitely visited Anasazi villages, such as the ancestral Zuni site of Hawikuh. The Spanish called the Anasazi the “Pueblo” (Spanish for “village”) because they were living in large aggregated villages, and that’s the name that is often used for the living descendents of the Anasazi.
