Laissez Fair Gardening, Or Not

Knowing little about growing plants in the arid, high desert southwest – and having an almost blank caliche canvas in the backyard of our newly purchased Santa Fe home – and (most importantly) being totally awed by the breathtaking, unselfconscious landscaping that Mother Nature (aka Madre Naturaleza) does totally on her own out here (such as this Monet’s Giverny Garden-like vista along one of the trenches into our main arroyo) – therefore we decided to embark upon an experiment in what Jim likes to call laissez-faire gardening, a “policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering” as defined in our iMac’s dictionary.

Well, maybe a little interference. Early on Jim noticed some isolated blades of grass popping up in what we had now come to call our “outback,” perhaps to add a wild, untamed vibe to our landscaping “plan.” Definitely not enough ground cover to require anything mechanized to maintain it. But even one shaft of fescue brought flashbacks of hours spent pushing our Toro – and besmirched our dream of scenery free of eastern greenery. So Jim plucked the little suckers from our rock-hard growing medium, and sprayed those that still remained with our toxic-but-organic weed-killing mixture of vinegar and other secret ingredients. Activities he has continued throughout the growing season.

We also added, with the help of Jose the landscaper, a Spanish Broom and an Apache Plume – and, by ourselves, a Datura (below). Three favorites on the northern NM list of xeriscape plants.

Then we spoke to one of the docents at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden who boasted of how he created his own all-natural garden by gathering seeds on hikes through the countryside, and randomly scattering them around his own private property – much like Mother Nature’s helpers such as the wind, birds and squirrels do. So last autumn, as our local wildflowers were turning to seed, we (in our role as nature’s acolytes) began carrying plastic sandwich bags and pruning shears on our own walks, and likewise scattered the bounty of our high desert journeys in our own outback.

And to our delight as the spring and summer evolved our backyard began filling with various unique unidentified examples of southwestern plants. A few were definitely weedy. But most were actually nice looking – including lots of what the New Mexicans call “mules ears.” In the spirit of our project, all were welcome.

Largely laissez-faire, and overall pleasant to look at – but not quite the work of horticultural art that adorns that arroyo access trench.

Meanwhile, we found a way to scratch that itch we have about missing eastern style gardening. (The yearning is much more on Jim’s side – but we are both taking part in alleviating it.)

El Rancho de las Golondrinas sits in a cienega (wetland) in northern New Mexico’s high desert. And, in keeping with its historical mission, the museum, grows traditional NM crops such as the “three sisters” (corn, squash, beans), pumpkins, peppers, and sorghum in the traditional NM manner (tilled, planted, weeded by hand and watered from an acequia.) The entry plaza however contains several other flowerbeds, which to an eastern observer would appear no different than what might be found at CT venues such as Hartford’s Butler-McCook House or Old Lyme’s Florence Griswold Museum.

On one of our early spring visits to El Rancho we were chatting with J, the “Curator of Agriculture & Bookkeeper” who mentioned that she could use some assistance maintaining these gateway gardens. It was the perfect situation for two former practitioners of east coast strong oversight horticulture who were not set to yet abandon their beliefs in favor of wild west laissez-faire landscaping. Long story short, we have been helping her out on Monday mornings over the past few months.

Back in CT our flowerbeds were a mix of planned plants, volunteers, gifts and rescues from abandoned gardens. To some perhaps a motley collection. But we insisted that they all look well-groomed, and that they respect one another’s space. And we spent most of our time in the garden enforcing those rules.

J’s goals for the Golondrinas gardens were basically the same. So we easily fell into our old CT regime of weeding, dead-heading, and cutting back – all to encourage future growth and allow fair competition among the plants. Plus Jim got to employ his Japanese Pruning Saw – a favorite landscaping weapon that he brought with him from CT and which had been sitting idle in our garage. As well as using the museum’s pole saw because cottonwoods and aspen seem to have an inordinate number of dead branches.

The plants are different – but the process is the same.  Plus there are some practices unique to this part of the country ­– such as cutting down the “clonal colony” of tiny aspen catkins that continually pop up throughout the plots – each one a part of the extensive root system of the initial seedling, and each one a potential full-sized tree intended to keep the community going when the older ones age and die. There also are a locust tree and several cottonwoods with similar rhizome methods of territorial population, which likewise must be controlled lest the area become a shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder aspen-locust-cottonwood forest.

Part of J’s pruning philosophy is to cut back the plants before they have an opportunity to spread their seeds around the garden. This has become one of Marsha’s specialties. As a result we haven’t acquired much in the line of transported volunteers for our outback from our Monday morning labors. (Marsha did however acquire a bagful of seeds from an unidentified small bush near the museum’s weaving area. No, not lamb’s ear.)

But the seasons change and the undomesticated flora along our community’s walking trails are offering their own propagating pips for our personal purposes. So once again pruning shears and plastic bags are a part of our hiking ensemble.

In general we are happy with version 1.0 of Madre Naturaleza’s backyard mural – although she seems a little heavy on the yellow and way light on the purple for our tastes. She also seems to rely too excessively on mule ears  which can spread out to about a foot wide. So, in preparation for the next spring’s wave of germinating seeds we have removed about three/quarters (twenty or so) of that overabundant yellow desert flower. Our plan is to cover the vacant spots with small stones and strategically scatter our foraged seedlings (mixed with mushroom compost) amongst the rocks. Plus we are explicitly seeking out purple aster seeds and pretty much anything else that is not yellow, to hopefully create more color variety.

One other aspect of our quasi laissez faire landscaping that seems to be working really well is the partially planned profusion of hollyhocks. The abundance is intentional, the placement is up to fate to decide. The house came with two established examples of the tall, showy member of the mallow family in our placita (plaza).  We let some of those seeds fall where they might. Then harvested others and combined them with still more from Monica’s & Bram’s own burgeoning, multi-colored hollyhock forest – and scattered them around our placita, in our outback, and even on the open space immediately behind our own abode.

A decade ago we tried cultivating M & B’s ‘hock seeds back in CT with mixed results. They grew. But more rain than they were used to resulted in rust infected, haggard looking plants. 2012 featured New England’s version of a drought. The hollyhocks evidently loved this meteorological mistreatment. Two of them shot up to ten feet in altitude. Other shorter, but still formidable, ones surrounded them. From then until our 2016 departure, the flowers appeared again and again in smaller numbers at lower heights in slightly different parts of the garden with no noticeable problems.

From that experience – and our spring and summer spent in the South Capital area of Santa Fe, where hollyhocks appear from sidewalk cracks, roadside curbs and resting against adobe walls – we learned that these plants seem to thrive on what would kill most of the flowers we were used to, i.e. unending sunshine, lack of water, miserable “soil” and inappropriate locations.

So we knew that somehow, some way they would succeed pretty much anywhere that we let their seeds drop. And they did – in the spaces between stone slabs on our placita, in one of the yard’s hand-placed natural rock French Drains, and in the gravel border of our adjacent common land. All proof to us that, given the opportunity Mother Nature’s landscape design is both creative and resilient.

But sadly impermanent. On a recent walk we discovered that Jose’s annual bushwhacking of parts of our community’s open spaces has resulted in the decimation of the arroyo access Giverny Garden vista that began this essay, in favor of unobstructed drainage for raging rainwaters – and reduced wildfire tinder.

In truth it wouldn’t have lasted anyway. The purple and yellow flowers would change into dried up seed pods, which would then drop or blow away leaving pale, lifeless skeletons. Others would shrivel up, each in their own way, and lie dead or dormant on the seasonally lifeless desert floor.
Until next year when, like Monet who painted myriad images of his beloved ornamental grounds, Madre Naturaleza returns once again to redecorate her own much grander canvas

As the Roman philosopher Plutarch put it, “this nature itself has no permanence, nor ‘being,’ but is becoming and perishing according to its relation to time.” And that is the joy of (even quasi) laissez faire gardening. If you want something that lasts – take, or paint, a picture of it.

New Mexico's First "White Man" & Saint Guinefort

So we continue to learn more and more about the not too distant past of our new home state – and about our grand-dog’s ancestors. Today’s lessons are (1) the first “white man” the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico ever saw saw was black, and (2) and our grand-dog’s forebears were not at all sweet-tempered couch-potatoes like she is. Interestingly, the two discoveries are part of the same story.

The subject of the “white black man” quip was a Moroccan slave named Esteban (aka "Esteban the Moor," "Estevan," "Stephen the Black," "Esteban de Dorantes" (after his owner), or "Estevanico" (in the condescending diminutive with which the Spanish referred to their human property.)  By whatever name, in 1539 he was the first non-Indian to enter what are now the states of Arizona and New Mexico – 46 years before the first English-speaking colonists crossed the Atlantic.
 

The African adventurer was a complete unknown to us until we met him in person as one of the “Spirits of New Mexico” reenacted at El Rancho de las Golondrinas’ Halloween event. Recently we learned more at a lecture at the New Mexico History Museum.

Not much of Esteban’s early life is known. He was sold into slavery in 1522 in the Portuguese-controlled town of Azemmour, Morocco – then resold five years later to Spanish nobleman, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza who brought him as his slave on Pánfilo de Narváez's 1527 expedition to colonize Florida and the Gulf Coast, and (as is usual with the Colonial Spanish) to hopefully find gold. Although almost certainly raised as Muslim – and even though the Spanish were very much in the business of converting such non-Christians to Catholicism – there seems to be no evidence of a change of faith (voluntary or not) on his part.

The crew for Narváez's Florida expedition initially numbered about 600 and included men from Spain as well as Portugal, Greece, and Italy. (Such a variety of national origins was not unusual.) The odyssey met with disaster before reaching its destination. While making stops at Hispaniola and Cuba the fleet was devastated by a hurricane and lost two ships. After landing near Sarasota Bay, Florida a party of 300 men, including Esteban and Dorantes, were sent overland in search of gold.  They underwent numerous attacks by indigenous peoples including the Apalachee Indians – and suffered from disease and starvation. There was none of the precious metal. In September 1528, what remained of the group tried to escape to Mexico on makeshift rafts, and were swept onto Galveston Island off the coast of Texas. Eighty men survived and were captured and enslaved by the Karankawa Indians. Four of them – Esteban, Dorantes, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado – lived through this and managed to escape five years later, in 1534.

Esteban is described as a physically intimidating man – muscular and over six feet tall in a world of 5’ 6” people – as well as being a natural polyglot who quickly learned enough of the native languages to act as chief negotiator, interpreter, go-between, and (drawing upon his knowledge of African and Spanish medicine) folk healer. Thus he became the de facto leader of the wandering pack, although not formally in charge due to his position as Dorantes’ slave. In 1536, the quartet of survivors, and a retinue of six hundred Indian escorts they had accumulated on their travels, happened upon a Spanish slaving expedition near Mexico City – finally ending their eight-year-long, 15,000-mile sojourn.

With the apparently miraculous arrival of four seasoned (although mostly unsuccessful) explorers the attention of the Spanish colonial administrators in Mexico City turned to the mysterious north, which (like Florida) had long been rumored to harbor treasure equal to that of the Aztecs.  Dorantes, de Vaca, and Castillo Maldonado however refused to lead or take part in such an expedition.  So, Don Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, engaged the services of Esteban, purchasing him from Dorantes. Since a slave could not be put in charge of such a safari, Mendoza persuaded a Franciscan friar, Marcos de Niza, to nominally head the venture – albeit from quite a distance to the rear as shown by his diaries. (By agreement, Esteban traveled several days ahead of Fray Marcos, leaving behind him a trail of crosses of varying size, corresponding with his findings.)

The group set out in 1539 with Esteban reprising his previous roles as negotiator, healer, interpreter, go-between – as well adapting a new persona, as the “Son of the Sun.” It apparently worked. Their passage was safe, and convinced of the slave’s powers, over 300 natives joined his entourage. All was going well on the trip northward until the lead party reached Hawikuh, a Zuni pueblo located just east of the present Arizona-New Mexico border – and then things suddenly went south for the previously unstoppable Moroccan slave.

Although historians do not totally concur on what went wrong – they do agree that the adventures of Esteban ended at Hawikuh. Remember that the official documentarian of this trip was at least several days behind and working off of at best second hand information.

In one version of the story Esteban sent a message to the Zuni tribal leaders, announcing that “he was coming to establish peace and heal them.” The Pueblo elders responded with a warning that he must not enter the village.  Esteban ignored it – possibly blasphemously crossing a line of corn pollen the Zuni priests had sprinkled around the pueblos during a sacred ceremony – and was killed.  Word of his death reached Fray Marcos, who took a quick look at Pueblo Hawikuh from afar, then headed back to Mexico City claiming to have discovered the fabled golden city of Cibola.

Another variation asserts that a gourd decorated with red ribbons and bells, which Esteban had sent with his message, gravely offended the Zuni leadership. Other tales say that the Zuni did not believe Esteban's story that he represented a party of whites – ­ or that they did believe it and knew that what was coming behind him would not be good for the Indians – or that he was killed for demanding turquoise – or that because he was black and wore feathers and rattles, he may have looked like a malevolent wizard to the Zuni.

Zuni oral history likewise is ambiguous – with some accounts even alleging that Esteban and his Indian friends faked his death so he could gain freedom from slavery.

Interestingly there are many images of Esteban the New Mexican explorer available today. According to some folklore the Zuni Kachina figure, Chakwaina, is based on Esteban.

 

At the lecture we were shown an illustration portraying him clothed in animal pelts with his ankles and arms adorned with bells, feathers, and pieces of turquoise – a man who was clearly dressed to impress – and intimidate. And to increase this sense of menace he is shown accompanied by several intense looking greyhounds – one of the breeds of war dogs (along with wolfhounds, lurchers, pit bulls and gigantic mastiffs) that the Spanish brought with them from Europe.

(That image is not available online. The one attached to this email shows Esteban attired in a more traditional Conquistador outfit – something not in line with written descriptions. But he does have his greyhound dogs of war with him.)

As described in ancientorigins.org, these canines were “trained to fight and kill with the utmost ferocity,... having been used repeatedly in acts of genocide against the Indians of Hispaniola and Cuba...Unleashed in snarling, baying packs...they have great dragging jowls and fangs like daggers and blazing eyes of burning yellow that flash fire and shoot off sparks.” (There is more but we think you get the idea.)

The natives also had dogs. But they were not fighters – or even really pets as we might have today. They were small, hairless, creatures, much like the former “Spokes-dog” for the Taco Bell fast food franchise – who (not to be indelicate), had she been an Aztec pup likely would been found inside the Chalupa rather than peddling it.

Our grand-dog Taylor – a retired Alabama greyhound racer, nom de track “Shake It Off” ( a song by Taylor Swift, hence her less formal sobriquet) – is way more likely to be saying “Yo quiero [I want] my stomach rubbed,” than “bring it on!”

But an April 2010 New York Times article indicates that some of that Spanish warrior dog spirit may still exist in the rural, southern part of our new home state.

"'Greyhounds are calm, gentle dogs, but they're also pretty efficient killers,' [cattle rancher John] Hardzog said as he picked a clump of tawny coyote hair from one dog's teeth. 'This is exactly what they're born and bred to do. Yep, this is what they live for.

"'When you get the dogs running in a dead run after a coyote, now that's a sport,' Hardzog said before spitting snuff into a tiny gold spittoon." Being in non-rural, northern New Mexico we prefer golf.

Nonetheless these canines – be they “efficient killers” or total couch potatoes – at one time had a patron saint who is literally one of their own – Saint Guinefort, a 13th Century member of that breed.

 

The story goes that Guinefort the greyhound, the family pet, had been left at home to guard an otherwise unattended infant. When the baby’s father returned he found the room covered in blood – especially around the crib, next to which the dog was sitting.  In a fit of anger the father shot and killed the hound with an arrow – and then discovered the fresh, lifeless body of a snake beneath the cradle.  Overcome by guilt he buried the greyhound and planted a grove of trees around the grave in its honor. Local villagers soon began making pilgrimages to the gravesite, miraculous events happened, and "Saint Guinefort" became an object of worship among the townspeople.

But the Catholic Church never formally canonized the dog. And eventually Etienne de Bourbon, an Inquisitor, had the dog "disinterred and the sacred wood cut down and burnt, along with the remains of the dog." Guinefort was declared a heretic.

It didn't work. Up until the 1940's pilgrims continued to visit the site, praying for the protection of their children, and nourishing their own spirituality.

So we have sainthood by popular demand for a loyal hound. While the Moroccan slave who paved the way for the Spanish settlement of New Mexico is remembered as a black monster katsina dancer by the tribal group that ended his life – but nowhere else.

The more we study the past the more we realize that Jack Webb’s television creation Sgt. Joe Friday was wrong, It is not “just the facts ma’am.” But also what those that were there, and their successors, chose to make of them.

And no we are not changing Taylor’s inheritance. As author Tad Williams puts it, “Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.”

Nineteen Pueblos

Sorry Connecticut – this could be partially our fault.  We moved out here to Santa Fe in 2017 and the UConn Women were eliminated in the semi's of that season's NCAA Tournament.  And now they have lost their first non-tournament game since 2014.  If you see Coach Geno please let him know that we still love him and that we have a guest room should he want to stop by and re-connect with our game-winning mojo.  We might even be able to rustle up a green chile cheeseburger or two for him. 

Meanwhile the Lady Lobos of the University of New Mexico, with whom we we have a slightly unusual personal connection, are twelve and one – including a victory in ABQ over the University of Hartford (at whose "Alternative Public Radio" station we had volunteered.)   In 2004 we anticipated that we might need to also develop an allegiance to a local NM women's basketball team.  So we took advantage of an opportunity to renew our wedding vows on Valentine's Day during halftime of a Lady Lo's game along with twenty other couples and 15,000 cheering fans at "The Pit".  Attached is a picture of us with our wedding party – bridesmaid "Lobo Lucy" and best wolf "Lobo Louie" – after the ceremony.  (Rebecca was not able to attend.)

At the health club the other day Jim was eavesdropping on a conversation between a Physical Therapy Trainer and his client.

PTT: “May family is coming to visit for Christmas and I don’t know what to do with them.”

C: “Why don’t you go to see the Indian dances at one of the Pueblos?  I think there are some at the Okay Whatever-It-Is.  Things were so much easier before they started using those Indian names.”             

There are in fact nineteen Pueblo Tribal Nations in New Mexico: Acoma, Cochiti, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque, Isleta, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, Sandia, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos, Tesuque, Zia, Zuni – and Ohkay Owingeh, which had been re-entitled San Juan Pueblo in 1598 by Juan de Onate during the formal Spanish settling of Nuevo Mexico, but now goes by its traditional pre-colonial name

Each Pueblo is its own community of related people with similar spiritual beliefs and is its own sovereign government.   Some use their “Indian” name (full, Anglicized or abbreviated) – others go by the identifier given them by the Spanish Catholics.  Sandia Pueblo sits at the foot of its eponymous mountains. Laguna (Spanish for lake) is located alongside a man-made body of water – a different type of “rez.”  The town of Taos ("place of red willows") is named after the Pueblo.  Others we have not been able to decipher. 

Populations sizes range from 11,000 at Santa Clara to just over 600 in Santa Ana – and the land sizes run from the Zuni’s 588,000 acres to Okhay Owingeh’s and Pojoaque’s 12,000.  Each Pueblo speaks one six of different languages – Jemez, Keres, Tewa, Tiwa Picurus, Zia, and Zuni.  (Full details at the bottom.)

During the Spanish Colonization in the 1500s there were at least ten distinct Native American language families in and around New Mexico – Hopi, Zuni, Keres (Western and Eastern), Kiowa, Towa, Tewa, Tiwa  (Southern and Northern), Apachean, and Piro.  This set had evolved from the four families and six languages that existed during the period prior to 1 A.D. 

Over time the communities’ vocabularies became less similar.  Which could have made the Native American’s collaborative eviction of the Spanish during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt virtually impossible – except for one thing.

The uprising was planned and coordinated by Tiwa-speaking Popay and his confederates at Taos Pueblo. 

As newmexicohistory.org describes it, “Runners were dispatched to all the Pueblos carrying knotted cords which signified the number of days remaining until the appointed day. Each morning the Pueblo leadership untied one knot from the cord; when the last knot was untied, it was the signal for them to rise in unison. 

“[At the prearranged time] each Pueblo was to raze its mission church, then kill the resident priest and neighboring Spanish settlers. Once the outlying Spanish settlements were destroyed, the Pueblo forces would converge on the isolated capital [of Santa Fe].

“The plan demanded the unprecedented cooperation and participation of all of New Mexico's Pueblos. It would be an extraordinary accomplishment considering the cultural and linguistic differences among the various Pueblos. Ironically, the very people they sought to overthrow may have provided the Pueblos with the instrument that helped them overcome this problem – by 1680 nearly all the Pueblos spoke Spanish.”

But the Spanish returned twelve years later to re-conquer New Mexico, followed in governance by the Mexicans and then the Americans – each in turn wresting the land from its prior owner.  And the Pueblo struggles with their overlords shifted to being less on the battlefields and more in the courts.

As the Santa Fe New Mexican put it in their 2015 review of the book Four Square Leagues: Pueblo Indian Land in New Mexico, “Over more than 400 years, New Mexico pueblos have fought, sued, purchased, negotiated, and bartered for their land under Spanish, Mexican, and American governments…the book chronicles the ways in which pueblos have lost and gained land over the centuries. …[and explains] the origins of the ‘pueblo league’ – a [17^th and 18^th century] way of measuring pueblo land for land-grant purposes. The pueblo league encompassed 4 leagues (roughly 5 square miles) emanating in each cardinal direction from a pueblo’s central church.”

U.S. Federal Law has for the most part honored the land agreements pueblos had with the preceding Spanish and Mexican governments – ironically unlike how it observed the treaties that other tribes signed directly with the American government.  “Though it has required constant vigilance by the pueblos, the pueblo league [method of measuring property] has also given the pueblos a history vastly different from that of other U.S. tribes or what the writers call a ‘sad tale of treaties broken, homelands lost, and forced migration to federally designated reservations.’”

The Pueblo Indians hold their religious beliefs and rituals very privately.  The “dances” are not performances or proselytizing events, but rather religious ceremonies that they allow the public to witness.   No explanations are provided and no photos are allowed.   This is perhaps an effort to prevent something like what many Puebloans feel happened to the Zia Sun symbol.   According to New Mexico magazine, the image, which appeared on a sacred pot that mysteriously disappeared from the tribe’s Fire Society, showed up thirty-three years later in 1920 – modified and misinterpreted – as the first-place entry in a competition to design the New Mexican state flag.

We are certain that the victorious pennant designers felt they were honoring, rather than disrespecting, the Zia culture.  But apparently they never asked the Pueblo People.  Nor did they seek any explanation for the meaning their chosen symbol.  Currently the Zia are pursuing legal methods to curtail and/or control other (mostly commercial uses) of the pattern. 

The contest winners did however get the name of the Pueblo right.

Tabular display of information about the New Mexican Pueblos:

Pueblo	Traditional Name	Language	Population	Acres
Jemez Pueblo	Walatowa	Jemez	1,815	89,619
Acoma Pueblo	Haak’u	Keres	3,011	378,262
Cochiti Pueblo	KO-TYIT	Keres	1,727	50,681
Laguna Pueblo	Ka'waika	Keres	4,043	495,442
San Felipe Pueblo	Katishtya	Keres	3,536	48,929
Santa Ana Pueblo	TAMAYA	Keres	621	—
Santo Domingo	Kewa	Keres
Nambe Pueblo	Nambe O-Ween-Ge	Tewa	1,611	19,093
Ohkay Owingeh	Ohkay Owingeh	Tewa	6,309	12,236
Pojoaque Pueblo	PO-SUWAE-GEH	Tewa	3,316	12,004
San Ildefonso	Po-woh-ge-oweenge	Tewa	1,752	28,179
Santa Clara Pueblo	Kha'p'oo Owinge	Tewa	11,021	53,437
Tesuque Pueblo	TET-SUGEH	Tewa	841	—
Picuris Pueblo	Pe’ewi	Tiwa	1,886	15,034
Pueblo of Isleta	Tue-I	Tiwa	3,400	301,102
Sandia Pueblo	NA-FIAT	Tiwa	4,965	22,890
Taos Pueblo	Tuah-Tah	Tiwa	4,384	96,106
Zia Pueblo	Tsi-ya	Zia	737	121,613
Zuni Pueblo	SHE-WE-NA	Zuni	7,891	588,093
Total			62,866	2,332,720

   

Development of Speech Communities 

New “speech communities” were formed when speakers of a single language become geographically separated and over time developed their own dialect and expanded their language as they experienced new locations and created new technologies – i.e. new things require new words.  When communities interacted with each other, new “words and things” were absorbed into each other’s knowledge base.  The attached diagram from the “Southwestern Culture History” course we took at the Office of Archaeological Studies shows one example.

Poverty Preserves

The town of Las Vegas, New Mexico is as different from its glitzy Nevada namesake as it is from its sixty-five mile down-the-road neighbor, Santa Fe.  In fact much of it is more similar in appearance and architecture to a pair of east coast cities in which we have spent some time – the late 19th century Victorian communities of Cape May, New Jersey and Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.

We made the one-hour drive to Vegas to take in the “Holiday Home Tour” put on by the Las Vegas Citizen’s Committee for Historic Preservation (LVCCHP) on a recent Saturday from five to nine p.m.  Since, as we have mentioned in other posts, there are basically no street lights anywhere in northern New Mexico – and since all the roads involved in this adventure were unfamiliar to us (including that portion of the seventy-five mph Route 25) – we opted to spend the night there at the Plaza Hotel, the exterior of which should be recognizable to fans of the Netflix Series “Longmire” as the front of the sheriff’s office.
 

Located along the edge of the eastern plains of New Mexico, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Las Vegas was established by a Mexican land grant in 1835.  It was originally named “Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Las Vegas Grandes” (“Our Lady of Sorrows of the Great Meadows) by the original settlers whose roots in the area went back to the early 1600’s.   Initially, the settlement was designed to be battened down for attacks by the Apache Indians with one-story adobe houses circling a large, central plaza where livestock could be driven to safety.   The soldiers later moved up the road twenty-six miles to Fort Union.
 
In 1846, during the Mexican War, General Stephen W. Kearney led his “Army of the West” to Las Vegas.  The 1,500 residents quickly surrendered.  By then the Santa Fe Trail had become a major trade route, and as the first town of any size east of Kansas the city eagerly began supplying whiskey and women to the traders, pioneers and prospectors who stopped by.  When the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad reached the settlement in 1879, Las Vegas became the largest city between San Francisco and Independence, Missouri rivaling Denver, Tucson and El Paso in size.

“Overnight, a new town was born on the east banks of the Gallinas River, a mile east of the Plaza. At first, a settlement of tents, sheds and makeshift shelters were built, but within just a few short years, many permanent buildings had been established, as well as a competing commercial district…The six trains that stopped there daily opened up yet another era of prosperity, bringing with it both legitimate businesses, but also introducing even more new elements into the town’s already distrustful environment. Before long, outlaws, bunko artists, murderers and thieves were becoming so common that the eastern part of the settlement had become utterly lawless,” according to LegendsofAmerica.com

“It was during these notorious days of Las Vegas’ history that the town was called home or visited by the likes of Doc Holliday [who had a dentist’ office in town], Big-Nose Kate, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bob Ford, [and] Wyatt Earp… In 1881, after Billy the Kid was killed at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, his index finger was sent in a jar to the Las Vegas newspaper.”

 (Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings aka Big-Nose Kate)

To maintain control of development, the railroad established a station and other buildings one mile east of the Plaza, creating a separate, rival “New Town,” just as it did elsewhere in the Old West in places such as Albuquerque. The train station itself was built in 1899 as a two-story brick station building designed in the Spanish Mission style and featuring a red tile roof, ornate metal brackets and a curving parapet.

The railway also brought entrepreneurs such as Fred Harvey whose “Harvey House” chain of restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality industry businesses situated alongside the tracks in the western United States catered to the growing number of traveling train tourists.   In Las Vegas Harvey built the Hotel Castañeda where Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders held their first reunion in 1899.

“Railroad Barons” and other successful businessman constructed many large Victorian style homes along various streets on the city’s east side.  Andrew Carnegie endowed one of his public libraries to the town – this one designed in a Neoclassical, Palladian style similar to Jefferson’s Monticello.  Fin de siècle Las Vegas featured all the modern amenities, including an electric street railway, the "Duncan Opera House,” and the New Mexico Normal School (now New Mexico Highlands University) – all on the east side of town.

The separation point between the east and west, along the banks of Galinas River, was known as the Tortilla Curtain.  The two sides finally unified into one town in 1950 but each one retains its own distinct characteristics and separate, rival school districts.

The Plaza Hotel where we spent Saturday night was built in 1882 on the West Side of town by a group of Hispano businessmen led by Don Benigno Romero at a cost of $25,000. It is a three-story brick building with an Italianate façade, grandly decorated, with high-ceilinged guest rooms. The lobby is connected to the second floor by towering twin staircases.  It was advertised as the finest hotel in the Nuevo Mexican territory, and frequently referred to as the "Belle of the Southwest.”
 
Like many other 1800s railroad boomtowns however, Las Vegas did not fare as well in the twentieth century.   In 1905 a new rail line was built in New Mexico between the towns of Clovis and Belen, cutting off Las Vegas in the north.  The Great Depression hit the community hard, and the postwar rise of automobile and truck travel and the accompanying decline of the railroad industry pretty much sealed its economic fate.

But as M, the former Assistant Director of our Historical Society in Wethersfield, Connecticut, used to say, “poverty preserves.”

The New York Times agrees.  “Las Vegas’s ill fortune in the 20th century is its good fortune in the 21st. Because the economy collapsed in the early part of the 1900s, no one was tearing down old buildings to make way for new ones. Now many buildings have been restored, but Las Vegas hasn’t been covered in stucco in an attempt to adobify it.”

Today, Las Vegas is home to over 900 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the highest per capita in the nation.   “So many of these historic buildings are still standing here because no one had the money to tear them down” after Las Vegas’ boom town days ended, according to the LVCCHP – the sponsor of the House tour that brought us here.

There were six stops on the excursion – four residences (two eastside and two west) and two hotels, likewise east and west.  One of the stops was the Plaza, our home base for the weekend.

The West Vegas homes were located in a neighborhood replete with 130 year old adobe houses.  The first one however was originally a single-wide mobile home expanded into an eight room bungalow in which every surface of every room was filled with Christmas decorations.  Each area was organized by theme – Nutcrackers, angels, a Christmas Village, a working carnival – with trees of the same motif.  Something the owners of the house have been doing for the past ten years – five as a part of the house tour.


The next west-sider was in fact an old adobe that had been more than doubled in size to accomodate two offices, a greenhouse, and more.  The decoration here was of the less-is-more style but the house was the show.  Another one of the New Mexico houses whose size cannot be understood from the outside.


The “New Town” homes were both two-story, 3,200 sq. ft. plus, Victorian style buildings with large porches and cellars built in the late 1800s  – one by a “Railroad Baron.”   Either residence would have fit perfectly into the Cape May Historic District, the Victorian streets of Bellefonte – or Hartford, Connecticut’s Nook Farm area.

The other east side stop on the tour was the El Fidel Hotel.  Built in 1923 as a community project initiated by the Commercial Club of Las Vegas and originally called “The Meadows,” the Spanish Colonial revival style structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Two years after it opened, the inn made headlines as the site of a shooting involving Las Vegas Judge David Leahy and Carl Magee, founder of the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune.  Prohibition was in full swing when the hotel opened, but that didn’t stop their bar there from selling liquor. Individuals wanting adult beverages would enter through the alley “as a nod to respectability,” the hotel website noted.  The business was purchased in the 1940s by the Syrian immigrant Fidel brothers who re-named and renovated it.   It was sold again in 2016 and is in renovation – although open for business.

Several of the older buildings in town are being, or recently have been, restored including the Hotel Castañeda, which has been closed since 1948, but is, as we speak, being renovated by developer Allan Affeldt and partners who have already bought, refurbished, and re-opened the historic Harvey House hotel La Posada in Winslow, Arizona.         

The owner of the “Railroad Baron” Victorian house mentioned that a friendly apparition, whom she believes to be the former live-in cook, haunts her abode.  In that same spirit, the town of Las Vegas is trying to rehabilitate itself by resurrecting more of its ghosts from the past – and sharing them once again with the touring public.

We will miss what could have become a regular visit to Cape May and the early morning walks on the beach.  As well as our annual trip to Penn State University for Coach Denise’s Golf Camp – and a day in nearby Bellefonte.

But now we know, should we start to get an attack of adobe-phobia requiring a quick dose of Victoriana, that relief is just an hour away.

It Was All About the Feathers

The combination of an email from a dear Wethersfield friend, and the recent holiday has prompted me to write a short essay on the prominent role played by the turkey in New Mexico history.

It probably should have occurred to him before.  To our surprise, most of the talks and lectures on our new home state’s past have included something about the large North American members of the Phasianidae family and their importance to the evolution of the Land of Enchantment.  Oddly the only one that did not was a “Foodways” talk at the Office of Archaeological Studies about “The First Thanksgiving” where the only mention of the wattled avian was that it was not part of the menu.  (In social science “Foodways” are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. Wikipedia.com)

The email contained part of an article from “Science’ magazine the point of which was that (to quote the magazine) “Mayans raised and managed wild turkeys – the same species as the Butterball on your table – more than 2300 years ago, making them the first vertebrates to be domesticated on the North American continent.”

Likewise for the Pueblo Indians who were here long before the 1500s when the Spanish began their exploration of what was to become Nuevo Mexico.

But the Puebloans – and in general the Mayans also – did not raise the birds as a source of food.  Analysis of human hair found at various New Mexican sites show a diet where approximately 80% of the protein and calories were from maize.  Other foods included amaranth, rice grass, pine nuts, squash and some red meat such as mountain sheep and deer. 

More evidence comes from the turkey bones themselves that have been found during archeological digs in New Mexico.  The condition of these ancient hard issues indicates that virtually all of these feathered animals died intact – with no signs of having been roasted or having their drumsticks gnawed on.  Some actually look to have been deliberaely buried.  One or two indicated that the turkey might have broken a leg, which the Natives seem to have attempted to set or splint in order to keep it alive.

So, if not nutriment then what?  It seems it was all about the feathers.

Pueblo Indians made prayer sticks, masks and headdresses out of the feathers, which were “live-plucked” from the short layer of the bird’s tail.  Bristles from the “beard” (the coarse black hairs that grow on the breast of adult males) were also added to the thin pieces of carved wood.

But principally the turkey feathers were used to make clothes, pouches, ornaments, necklaces – and turkey blankets.

“The making of turkey feather fabrics consisted of stripping the large wing and tail feathers from live turkeys, wrapping the feathers around feather cords, and weaving the cords into robes and blanket…Humans because of their particular needs continued to favor live turkeys as a source of ritual feathers for sacrifice, and in the production of textiles.” according to “More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality” by Karen Davis.

At the ruins of Kuaua Pueblo at present day Coronado Historic Site in Bernallilo, N.M. we were able to see structures that formerly were used as enclosures for the domesticated turkeys.  And, after hearing so much about these birds, with not too much imagination we were able to picture a phantom profusion of partially plucked Phasianidae parading pathetically in the Pueblo.

Or maybe it was just the altitude.


 
This photo illustrates why woven, woolen Navajo blankets were a bigger hit with the tourists.