By Norma Libman Sponsored by the Paul C. S. Carpenter History Project and funded by the King/Carpenter Charitable Trust Simon Ortiz grew up on the pueblo in the town of McCartys (“Deetseyamah”), and worked in the uranium mines, served in the military, attended college, and then took up what…
La Vara By Michael Miller On December 27, 1888 the Surveyor General for the Territory of New Mexico, George Julian, publicly proclaimed that, “ninety per cent of the land entries in the territory were fraudulent.” A land title study conducted by the New Mexico State Planning Office in 1971 uncovered evidence…
By Jessica R. Metcalfe While flipping through Native Peoples magazine one day in 2003, I came across a photo spread of contemporary Native high fashion. It intrigued me how the designers incorporated elements from their cultures’ traditional art forms into high fashion. Who were these designers, how did they…
First Lady Susan Wallace, storyteller and writer, tells of a winters' day when she took a walk and discovered hundreds of years of New Mexico's history–neglected in a shed. Here, in her own words, she tells of her discovery: North of El Palacio, is a waste spot of earth,…
First grown in Mexico about 5,000 years ago, corn soon became the most important food crop in Central and North America. Throughout the region, Native Americans, Maya, Aztecs, and others worshiped corn deities and developed a variety of stories about the origin, planting, growing and harvesting of corn (also…
“Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” –Major Howard Conner, 4th Marine Division Association Reunion, Chicago 1969 By Suzanne Stamatov When armies and marines engage in combat, they need a communications system to remain in contact with their fellow troops and their…
By Rick Hendricks Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle became governor of the province of New Mexico in 1754 and remained in office until 1760. Before departing México City to take up the governorship, Marín del Valle executed a series of documents, one of which was an obligation to repay…
1 By Robert Torrez New Mexico's history is full of marvelous stories about ordinary people who happen to end up in the historical record when they get caught up in extraordinary circumstances. As we leaf through the stories of such individuals, one often wonders how much of what has…
By Michael Ann Sullivan On October 27, 1937, the Santa Fe Maternal Health Center (SFMHC) opened under the auspices of Margaret Sanger and the New York Clinical Research Bureau. Florence Davenport, Faith Meem, and several other prominent Santa Fe women had invited Sanger to tea the previous summer to…
Bazz Owen Smaulding, a teacher, athlete, and coach, was the son of a pioneer African-American family in New Mexico. Although born in Fort Griffin, Texas, by 1905 his family was living on a homestead ranch near Clayton, New Mexico. Smaulding graduated from Albuquerque Grammar School in 1915 and attended…
