By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint As the modern traveler approaches Zuni Pueblo from the west along State Highway 53, one sees a massive cream-colored mesa as a backdrop for the pueblo itself. This mesa is called Dowa Yalanne, meaning Corn (Dowa) Mountain (Yalanne). The mesa is indicated…
In the Four Corners region of the state, the traditional houses of the Diné (Navajo) dot the landscape. While styles vary across time periods and are influenced by available materials, a hogan almost always opens to the East to greet the sun, and is most commonly a one-room circular…
Although many people believe Vivian Vance to be a native of Albuquerque, Vivian Roberta Jones was actually born in Cherryvale, Kansas. The beloved character, Ethel Mertz, whom Vance played on the I Love Lucy television show, claimed Albuquerque as home and the association stuck. That and her (Vivian Vance’s)…
By Robert J. Torrez Spanish missions were churches established by Franciscan Friars in Indian villages called pueblos, the Spanish word for town. The purpose of these missions was to have a place in each pueblo where the Indians could be taught about Christianity. When New Mexico was settled by…
In 1840, the American explorer and trader Josiah Gregg encountered a startling scene in Tomé, New Mexico. In his journal, he related that: “…my attention was arrested by a man almost naked, bearing, in imitation of Simon, a huge cross upon his shoulder which, though constructed of the lightest…
The dominance of Spider Woman, the female creative principle, befits a culture that remains matrilineal. The Hopi creation story uses many familiar motifs: the creative female principle itself, associated with the Earth; the more mysterious divine spirit, the sun god Tawa; the division of the divine parents into new…
Born in 1858 among the Chiricahua Apache of northern Mexico, Martine was captured as a young boy and sold to a Mexican family as a servant. His knowledge of both Spanish and Apache and his familiarity with the southern desert lands eventually made him a valuable interpreter and scout….
By Chris Cozzone* There is no other sport like boxing that tells the story of New Mexico. Though oftentimes virtual underdogs in its cyclical battles with the law, public opinion and racial tension, the sport has paralleled the state’s struggles and glories through the “wild west,” statehood, the great…
1912 By Matthew Martínez My grandmother Esther Martínez often introduces herself by saying that she was born in 1912, the same year New Mexico became a state and the Titanic sank. The metaphor of the birth of a new period in history as well as the sinking of the…
By Marinella Lentis At the end of the nineteenth century, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan (1889-1893) and Superintendent of Indian schools Estelle Reel (1898-1910) introduced art instruction in the curriculum of federal boarding schools as an optimal means to reach the goals of assimilation. Morgan mandated the…
