According to some sources the valley has been populated since 10,000 BC. At times, settlements were transitory and populations were small while periodically the area was also deserted. Prior to the Spanish settlers several Indian Peoples (Anasazi, Tewa, Navajo, Ute, Commanches, Apaches, and Genizaros mainly from the pueblos of Hopi, Zuni, Isleta and Santa Clara) resided in the area both before and after the Spanish conquests.

The Anasazi (Chama Valley presence from 10,000 / 6000 BC till 1300 AD) were hunter-gatherers, and their residence in the valley is associated with numerous garden areas, shrines and rock art sites. At least 2,000 boulder rectangles are located on the lava-topped mesa east of Abiquiu. These cobble formations, several of which you can also see on the Dar al Islam site, are at times referred to as shrines and, more apparently, as remnants of ancient maize terraces. More recent information now suggests that the formations are traces of 2 ft high walls which served as passive solar heat sinks and entrapments for condensation and moisture.

By 1300 AD, the ancestral Tewa Pueblo Indians were well established in the Chama Valley which continued into the early 1600's when they abandoned the area for the Rio Grande Valley and its eastern tributaries. The Tewa Pueblos were typical pastoral settlements (adobe clusters around a plaza / kiva). The Tewa raised squash, pumpkins, beans, corn, dogs, and turkeys (for ceremonial purposes), and they hunted fowl and game. There is some evidence that they herded sheep and cattle after 1600.

The Navajos were living in the Chama Valley between 1600 and 1700 AD. They raised corn, beans, squash, chile, all sort of seeds and grains, probably some cotton in selected areas, and sheep. During the same time Navajo Apaches were living in the country around the pueblos which they raided regularly and to whom they sometimes traded buffalo hides.

Between 1700 and about 1750 Utes and Commanches were allied in raiding all over Northern New Mexico for food and captives. By 1730 the Utes made annual trips to the Chama Valley and began to trade at Abiquiu (according to local people the name is a Tewa word meaning 'timber end town') where eventually an annual trade fair was established. By about 1746 the Utes had permanent camps on the Rio Chama near Abiquiu and, after the alliance broke in 1750, they kept the Commanches out of the valley.

A band of Jicarilla Apaches settled in and around Abiquiu between 1852 and 1878, after which they were moved to the present Jicarilla Reservation at Dulce, N.M.

The first Spaniards to settle in New Mexico arrived in the summer of 1598. With them came Mexican Indians and Mestizos (mixed Spanish / Indian blood). About 20 Spanish families had settled near Abiquiu by 1735 and the Genizaro settlement of Abiquiu was established in 1754. Prior to the Pueblo revolt (1680) Pueblo lands remained in the possession of the Indians because the early Spaniards were not tillers of the soil. Under the 'Encomienda system' and the missionary program, the Indians provided for the support and economic gain of the Spanish invaders from the proceeds of their own lands. After the reconquest (1692) the system was abolished and the hispanicized population itself began to farm. The Spanish settlers lived a hard and dangerous life. They had to be economically self-sufficient, growing their own corn, beans, squash, onions, wheat, and other grains and vegetables. They planted fruit trees and tended them in irrigated orchards. The settlers had to make their own clothes from homespun wool and buckskin. The valley offered ample pasture for sheep (meat, wool, tallow) and goats (milk, meat, cheese). By Spanish royal decree, settler families were given an agricultural and residential allotment as well as common rights to the land along the river and the surrounding grazing lands. The earliest dwellings in the Chama Valley were small and scattered. After a crushing 1747 Ute-Commanche raid the whole valley became abandoned until 1750. Upon resettlement multi-family closed plazas began to appear, the first of which was the Genizaro settlement in Abiquiu.

The Genizaro pueblos became a frontier buffer population of hispanicized Indians who were granted lands in exchange for taking the brunt of enemy Indian attacks (militia service). The unstable Chama Valley settlements persisted from then on and Abiquiu was the northwestern edge of Spanish settlement for the remainder of the eighteenth century. In the mid nineteen hundreds, the Abiquiu residents made successful settlements (Canones, Youngsville, Coyote) in the valley above what is now the Abiquiu Dam.

Undoubtedly, this isolated and harsh conditions contributed to the setting for the popular 'Los Hermanos de la Luz' (Penitente brotherhood) to spread among the Spanish settlements.