New Mexico history is US history

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Anyone on a long road trip sees a huge variety of license plates.

Those from New Mexico have a unique feature, the letters ‘U S A’ next to the state name.

It seems a descent percentage of Americans wouldn’t know what country they are in otherwise.

Today I explore the history of this state.





East of Grants, the highway passes through a series of buttes.

Parts of it are steep, and some have pretty views.

It passes two Indian run casinos, and three old truss bridges from the heyday of route 66.

All of them sit in empty desert.





Crest a hill and all of that suddenly changes.

Albuquerque spreads out at the foot of the Sandia Mountains.

I felt an odd sense of relief seeing a large city, even though I’ve been in empty wilderness only a week (and had far longer stretches elsewhere in the trip).

The mountains have something that rarely appears at this time of year, snow.

The snow line is very low, indicating how cold it got when the rain from yesterday passed through.

I’m suddenly glad I saw the San Juans when I did (see Mountain Majesty) because the roads must be a nasty mess by now.

Pueblo Cultural Center

New Mexico has as many histories as groups of people who have lived here.

Two of those stand out: Spanish and American settlers, and Pueblo Indians.

Remarkably, the city has a museum dedicated to each.

I saw the Pueblo Cultural Center first.

This museum is rare in the United States in that it is run and curated by the Pueblos themselves.





The museum is designed like a pueblo.

It has a round shape around a central plaza, with outside walls of imitation adobe.

The main floor holds temporary shows with the permanent history exhibit in the basement.

Like most pueblos, the museum prohibits photographs.





The permanent exhibit starts with a brief discussion of origin myths.

Most pueblos have a similar myth, resembling the one I read about at Zuni yesterday.

People emerged into this world when they were led to a hole in the sky by a deity, which became a hole in the ground in this new world.

The exact location varies.

People then had to move around for various reasons.

One version states that people were seeking a spiritual center within the world.

Another version states that deities forced people to move as punishment when they forgot holy teachings.

The display mentions that many pueblo groups consider these myths to be part of sacred rituals that they wish to keep private.





The next room gives the archeologists’ version of that history.

The ancestors of modern pueblo Indians started out as hunters and gatherers in the southwest.

Farming is incredibly difficult in this dry area, but they learned how, especially corn originally from Mexico.

Dry farming requires organization, so tribes created the first group settlements.

Small stone structures evolved into large ones, the first pueblos.

These became the ruins now found throughout the Southwest, including Mesa Verde.

Drought and resource depletion forced people to seek more bountiful areas, until they arrived at their current sites.

It’s worth noting that the process continued until fairly recently; early Spanish records refer to pueblos that no longer exist.





The next section, on the Spanish conquest starting in 1598, is the most bitter in the entire museum.

From the pueblo viewpoint, the Spanish overpowered a thriving culture and nearly destroyed it.

Pueblo members were forced to convert to Catholicism and give up their traditional ways.

Many were enslaved in all but name.

Those that refused were frequently killed.

The foot removal punishment meted out at Acoma in 1599 (see Pueblo Life) was unusual only for its harshness.





In 1680, the pueblos revolted against this regime.

Members succeeded in driving the Spanish from New Mexico.

Somewhat understandably, they specifically targeted priests and killed hundreds.

They also burned dozens of churches to the ground.

The secret to overcoming the superior Spanish was excellent coordination.

A medicine man named Pope devised the strategy and distributed knotted strings to each pueblo.

The strings described specific targets and the time to attack.

Pueblo Indians now revere Pope the way most Americans revere George Washington and describe the revolt as “The first American Revolution”.





Success did not last.

Twelve years later Spanish governor Diego de Vargas marched north from Mexico with an overwhelming force of soldiers.

One by one, they reconquered the pueblos.

Some negotiated surrender terms, while the rest were just overrun.

Many pueblo leaders fled, and some groups ultimately joined the Hopi in Arizona.

The Spanish basically destroyed the existing pueblos during this war, so the oldest structures date to just afterwards.





The second-most bitter section of the museum covers the period just after the Mexican American war in 1848.

Initially, pueblo groups were optimistic, because nobody could be as bad as the Spanish.

They quickly discovered the American territorial government was even worse in many ways.

While they did not kill people for refusing to be Catholic, they very clearly sided with the interests of American settlers from elsewhere.

The new government forced all pueblos to sign a series of one sided treaties that took away all land with any agricultural or mining value, leaving tiny reservations behind.





With all productive land gone, pueblo members turned to crafts and tourism to survive.

Railroads reached New Mexico in the late 1800s, and these brought tourists.

The railroads themselves soon turned the pueblos into tourist attractions through their ads.

This was a very hard time for most members.





The situation finally improved starting in the 1920s.

The US government reformed the Indian Agency to give tribes much more control over their internal affairs.

Pueblos formed formal governments for the first time, based on traditional patterns.

Native Americans also gained full citizenship (ironically, the last group within the US to do so).

Some have since made money from mineral rights.





The exhibit ends with a series of short displays, one per pueblo.

Each has a short history of the pueblo and displays of crafts.

Much of the crafts were pottery.

Each pueblo has specific traditional designs, although they are hard to recognize by the general public.

Some displays also had jewelry, which pueblo Indians only learned to make after the railroad arrived.





Large clay statues appear in parts of the museum.

All of them are pueblo members in regalia, or artists holding pots and other crafts.

The statues are done in traditional style except for the size and detail.

Some of them are life size!

They are by Kathleen Wall from Jemez Pueblo, an absolutely amazing potter.

The sculptures are a highlight of a museum visit.





The center had two temporary exhibits.

The first one was on weaving, Gathering of the Clouds.

All southwestern tribes weave textiles.

Many have specific religious meanings.

When a Hopi woman marries, for example, the male members of her new husband’s family weave the wedding dress.

The garments are mostly cotton, since sheep were unknown until introduced by the Spanish.

The exhibit has a number of examples of cloth from different tribes.

It also has a modern version of an ancient pueblo loom for people to try it out.

Weaving by hand is tough and painstaking.

Saints of the Pueblos

The other exhibit was the most important in the museum, Saints of the Pueblos.

It’s nominally on ‘Santos’, a type of religious icon popular in Mexico in the late 1600s.

The exhibit is really on how the pueblos integrated Catholicism into their existing religious traditions.





As noted above, the Spanish imposed the Catholic religion by force.

Every pueblo was assigned a saint, and renamed for it.

Some have kept these names while others have since reverted to their names pre-conquest.

Each one had to build a church.

The santos became a way of honoring a particular pueblo’s patron saint.

The originals are long lost at this point.

Recently, artist Charles Carrillo has revived this folk art.

He recreated the santos for each pueblo known in the Spanish period, four of which no longer exist, in 2003.

The exhibit has a brief biography of each saint plus an explanation of how that biography shows up in the symbolism of the santo.





The most important part of the exhibit, which appears almost as a side effect, is a discussion on how pueblos integrated Catholicism into their exiting beliefs.

As noted earlier (and at Acoma) the Spanish viewed existing pueblo religion as heathen.

Some Spanish friars viewed pueblo residents as less than human.

These people were headed straight to hell, and their souls had to be saved.

With those sorts of stakes, anything, including threats of death, was acceptable.





Like the church at Acoma, pueblo residents ultimately placed a Catholic veneer over existing practices.

The two sets of religious beliefs had a number of commonalities.

Both believed in praying to a higher power for miracles, both believed in salvation through piety, and much else.

Pueblo residents did these things using Catholic ritual, and basically ignored the rest.

It satisfied the Spanish enough that they left people alone.

Apache and Zuni Dances

During the summer, the center sponsors social dances by various pueblos in the courtyard on weekends.

Social dances are designed for outsiders, as opposed to sacred religious dances closed to non-Native Americans.

This week, Albuquerque is hosting a huge event, so the center had dances every day.





For the first, four men wearing white and black body paint entered the circle.

They had headdresses made of wood, also painted black and white.

All four held rattles or bells in their hands.

Another tribe member played a drum and sang as they danced.

After the first dance, he explained that they are Mescalero Apache from eastern Arizona.

The dancers represent the four winds.

Each wind can grant a different type of wish.

The west wind represents a trickster spirit, who tried to get audience members to join the dance.





The other group was from Zuni.

They are well known cultural ambassadors who have performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and other venues.

The drummer joked about lots of pueblo stereotypes: “One question I get asked at every event is how we get around. Personally, I’d like a Lamborghini”.





The dancers did four dances.

In the first and last, they wore costumes depicting different desert animals.

The dance honors the spirits of those animals to bring good hunts.

One of the middle dances was the most famous Zuni dance, the pot dance.

Zuni women historically had to haul water to the pueblo in large clay pots.

They walked with the pots on their heads, and created the dance to make it more bearable.

These days, few members perform it because it requires incredible balance and coordination.

Two women walked out with Zuni clay pots on their heads and did the dance.

At the end, they removed the pots to show the dance had been done without supports, at which point the audience cheered.

Albuquerque Art and History Museum

The Albuquerque Art and History Museum covers the European side of New Mexico history.

Like the Oakland Museum of California (see The Golden State), it documents the history and art of the region.

In front sits a large sculpture, a tribute to pioneer groups in New Mexico.





Given time constraints, I focused on the art.

The section opens with art from the Spanish period, a large Hispanic folk art collection.

Most of this artwork is sculpture created from humble materials like wood and tin, since only the wealthy could afford paintings.

Virtually all the art is related to the Catholic faith; some was used in ceremonies.

The most notable is an incredibly detailed carving of Christ on the cross with blood flowing from His wounds.

It’s probably a little too detailed by modern standards.





The next section holds artwork from when the Americans arrived.

These paintings are the same sort of romantic landscapes I saw in California.

Artists also painted pictures of pueblo Indians, the southwestern equivalent of the plains Indians paintings I saw back at the Buffalo Bill Center (see The Real, and Fake, Wild West).

Some of these paintings were commissioned by railroads to promote tourism to the area; they tend to be the most romanticized of all.





Next is a set of paintings from the 1920s, a period when New Mexico artists had distinct styles.

An art colony formed in Taos, in northeast New Mexico.

The artists were drawn to what they called ‘desert light’, incredibly bright light due to the high elevation and clear air.

Members such as Ernest Blumenschein and Joseph Henry Sharp painted landscapes in a style that combined realism and impressionism, showcasing color to full effect.

The other group from this period were the Transcendentalists.

Abstract paintings by members like Raymond Jonson attempted to express religious and mystical feelings.

This group was clearly influenced by the landmark abstract art ideas of Expressionist Vassily Kadinsky (see Arch Madness).





Once the Depression hit, artists returned to national styles.

Paintings from this period follow dominant ashcan and American Scene styles.

The only thing that marks them as New Mexico artists is their southwestern and Native American subject matter.





After the war, New Mexico art became incredibly eclectic, like the rest of the United States.

Artists in this region separated themselves (and still do so) by drawing inspiration from past Hispanic and Native American traditions.

A number of highly abstract landscape paintings appear in this section.

One artist created a pop-art version of a traditional Mexican tree of life sculpture, only this one uses country singers instead of traditional iconography.

Another carved a sculpture of steer from a single tree.

Strangely, this section has no paintings by Georgia O’Keefe, even though she is the most famous artist to work in New Mexico during this period.

Old Town

The museum sits within walking distance to an area called Old Town Albuquerque.

It really is the oldest part of the settlement, although much of it is restored rather than authentic architecture.

The area is now also aimed squarely at tourists with shops everywhere.

For this reason, it feels a little fake.

The area centers on a plaza with an old fashioned band shell in the middle.

A big Victorian hotel sits next to it.

The rest of the buildings are adobe, and a number have mosaics imbedded in the walls.





After wandering Old Town, I headed for my hotel.

I had to book it many months ago, because this week Albuquerque hosts its largest yearly event, Balloon Fiesta.

The event is large enough that every visitor either comes here specifically for this event or stays far away.

The festival negotiates hotel rates every year around nine months in advance, and I booked soon after the list came out.





When reserving these dates, I had a painful tradeoff to make.

Hotels near the festival grounds raise their rates this week, but are incredibly convenient.

Hotels further away charge must less of a premium, but getting to the festival is rather painful.

For the first festival event I’m attending, the convenience is worth the weight in gold, so I paid the price.

I booked a room at the Comfort Suites on the north side of town, which has very good reviews from past festival goers.

For the remaining day, I decided to say further away to get a lower rate.

The two combined kept the weekend within my budget.





The scope of the crowds drawn by the festival sunk in while getting dinner.

Every restaurant in the area had a wait of over two hours to eat.

I don’t have that amount of time, so I ended up getting fast food takeout instead.

I then got to bed really early.

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