Place-authenticity

In the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie” Lily Tomlin's character, Frankie derisively describes Santa Fe, NM – our home town – as a “woo-woo” city with an overabundance of “crystal shops and chakra alignments.”

While Google AI says it “is a hub for spiritual exploration, offering numerous centers, retreats …  workshops, and unique sites … for self-discovery, blending Native American, Spanish, and New Age traditions … everything from shamanic journeys, energy-healing, yoga, meditation, to retreats focused on mindfulness, creativity, and ancestral wisdom.” (Google AI)   

Not our kind of place.  Right?  But we’ve just self-discovered something that may explain the reason we are living in that “woo-woo” town.  As well as why other locales exert a similar magnetism for us.  And it’s real science – a psychological principal used in urban planning and design.  We both have a form of topophilia known as place-authenticity.  

The first indication should have been our eagerness to view the Smithsonian traveling exhibition “Jamestown, Québec, Santa Fe … first permanent English, French, and Spanish settlements in the New World” at the Albuquerque Museum in 2008.   

We’d vacationed in Santa Fe for 16 years and visited Quebec City the previous February for the destination wedding of the son of some our dearest friends.  The temperature where Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet is -40 degrees.  While exploring the Canadian town we saw that number on an outdoor thermometer.  Still we loved it there.  In addition to the wedding, et al., the architecture – rectangular stone houses, thick walls, small-paned windows, steep snow-shedding roofs  – and “European French atmosphere” made us feel warm and at home.  Not to mention the pea soup, pâtés and poutine.  A place we definitely could comfortably spend much more time in.

As to to Santa Fe, America's oldest state capital, we’ve lived there since 2017 and visited for 25 years prior to that – initially to see what inspired Georgia O’Keeffe’s abstract landscapes.  (Hint – they’re not abstract.)  

We’ve never been to Jamestown.  But for 50 years lived as a couple (Marsha one decade before that) in Wethersfield – Connecticut’s first permanent English settlement.  Olde enough for us.  (New Englanders can be quite narrow-minded.)   Yet we knew little of our hometown’s past prior to retiring in 2005 and joining the local historical society.

British colonization of America began on Roanoke Island, NC with 117 colonists in 1587.  Three years later they all had vanished, leaving only the word “CROATOAN” carved into a post and inspiring America’s initial conspiracy theory.  The earliest successful settlement was Jamestown, VA (1607) – then Plymouth, MA and Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629.

Plymouth was run by the Puritans.  And Puritan rules and regs were, well, Puritanical.  John “Mad Jack” Oldham was one of several who became exasperated by these strictures and was banished in 1624 for creating conflict and slandering leaders like Miles Standish.  He moved to Watertown in Massachusetts Bay Colony becoming a successful trader yet still still seeking more autonomy and opportunities. And finding it in the fertile lands of the future Wethersfield, which he briefly named Watertown.   Along with Oldham in 1634 came Nathaniel Foote, Abraham Finch, Sr., Robert Seeley. John Strictland, John Clarke, Andrew Ward, Robert Rose, Leonard Chester and William Swayne – Wethersfield’s “Ten Adventurers.”  

Two years later Oldham was killed by Indians at Block Island, RI.  The others built homes near the “Great Meadow” along the “Great Tidal [Connecticut] River” that attracted their late leader – learning to cultivate beans, squash, peas, and maize from local Natives.  Per the British colonization template they acquired land and established separate communities while discouraging intermarriage and cultural blending with uncivilized, inferior Indigenous.  And waged wars (e.g. Pequot and King Philip's,) which along with European diseases devastated Native populations. 

Other settlements were established in Windsor, and Hartford forming Connecticut Colony in 1637.   By decade’s end the Indians were crushed and pushed off ancestral lands into smaller, fragmented communities, while the Colony continued to grow.

In the 1700s Wethersfield became the hub for the booming trade of its eponymous red onions grown in the Great Meadow.  “Onion Maidens” were the primary cultivators and sellers shipping millions of onion ropes down the Connecticut River to the West Indies, Europe, and beyond – earning Wethersfield the sobriquet “Oniontown.”  

By the mid 1800s Wethersfield had changed from bustling maritime port to strong agricultural community – “the bread basket of Hartford” – and pioneering commercial seed producer, selling throughout the country.  The 1900s saw a transition from farming to a “bedroom suburb” of Hartford.  

Through all of this growth and change Wethersfield preserved its architectural heritage and today boasts over 100 17th, 18th, and 19th century houses – at least 50 built before 1776.  The late 17th century town-owned “Cove Warehouse” is maintained by Wethersfield Historical Society, which pays its annual rent in traditional red onions. 

We also knew little about Santa Fe until we began docenting at El Rancho de las Golondrinas living history museum.  (Interestingly another volunteer is a descendant of Wethersfield founder Nathaniel Foote – though she’s never lived there.)

New Spain began in 1521 with the fall of the Aztec Empire to Hernán Cortés – and was formally established as the Viceroyalty of Nueva España in 1535.  Exploration of New Mexico began 1540 with Francisco Vázquez de Coronado searching for the legendary gold mines of Gran Quivira but finding Pueblo Indian villages instead.  (They’d found gold around Mexico City and assumed there had to be more, hence “New” Mexico.)  The first permanent settlement was established by Don Juan de Oñate in 1598 across the Rio Grande from Okay-Owingeh Pueblo near present-day Española – 25-30 miles north of Santa Fe. 

Ten years later Oñate had not discovered gold and his colony was divided between “militarists” who believed more pressure on the Natives would reveal its whereabouts and others like Juan Martinez de Montoya who lobbied the Viceroy of New Spain for Oñate’s removal.  The Viceroy wrote King Philip III, “this conquest is becoming a fairy tale.”   

Some settlers and Franciscan priests planned to establish another “villa” (“town”) in what is now Santa Fe.  The King replaced Oñate with Pedro de Peralta and ordered him “to settle or found the villa in question,” as the seat of government.  In 1610 Peralta formally established “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís.” 

Unlike English settlers the Spanish were interested in “God, gold and glory”  – Catholicising Natives and acquiring gold – thus glory.  Indians were souls to be saved and bodies to be exploited – forcing them to work in mines and on large estates (haciendas) under harsh conditions while suppressing Native religious practices and forcibly assimilating them into Christianity.  This led to multiple clashes, most notably the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for 12 years.

 

A rigid social hierarchy developed with as many as 40 “castas” – Spanish-born at the top, Natives at the bottom.  Intermarriage was not discouraged but the hierarchy remained strict even as the multi-generational racial percentages became more complex.

New Mexico in the 1700s was a “closed empire” with trade restricted to the mother country.   The 1,500 mile El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro from Mexico brought Spanish and Mexican pottery and other goods, while trade with outsiders was prohibited.  Meanwhile settlers, soldiers, and missionaries co-existed with, and sometimes oppressed, the local Pueblo Natives.

Commerce was opened up in 1821 with the inclusion of New Mexico in the newly independent country of Mexico and its opening of the Santa Fe trail bringing American traders plus other diverse people, and commerce.   (Mexican ethnicity itself is a complex blend of Indigenous Meso-American and Spanish ancestry, with African and various other immigrant groups.)  New Mexican Spanish and Pueblo Native cultures continued intermixing – now adding Mexican and Anglo to the blend.  The 1848 change in governance from Mexico to U.S. plus the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s and the beginning of art colonies further complicated the societal situation.

New Mexico became the 47th state in 1912.   Santa Fe, its capital,  established itself it as a major art center and sought to be an important tourist destination.  This led to a codification of “Santa Fe Style” and Spanish-Pueblo Revival architectural renovations that defined the city's look.

Business Insider magazine describes Santa Fe today as “like wandering through an open-air museum … low-slung adobe buildings, soft curves, and natural colors are rooted in the traditions of Pueblo and Spanish Colonial architecture [reflecting] centuries of Native American, Mexican, and Spanish history in its language, art, food, and even street names.”  To which we topophiliac Santefesinos say, “amen!”

So what is place-authenticity?  It refers to the unique essence, history, and character that makes a location feel genuine, meaningful, and deeply connected to its roots – which in turn fosters a feeling of belonging and personal connection for individuals.  We discovered it here in Santa Fe.  But it’s also what made Québec and Wethersfield so special to us.

So that’s the “what.”  But why were we interested in these places in the first place?  On the face of it Quebec was due to friendship.  Wethersfield – family.  And Santa Fe – O’Keeffe.  

But the way we reacted –  it was more than just coincidences.   Karma?  Predestination?  Old souls revisiting past lives?  Some other psychic agency?   Would we even be considering these things if we weren’t living where we are now?  Best to end this digression before it gets too “woo-woo.”