parent group
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…
4 1880 By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Lansing Bloom's poor health (he had lost a lung due to tuberculosis) brought him to New Mexico. He began life in Auburn, New York, in April 1880. His father was the Richard Hutchinson Bloom. Little is known about his early life,…
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…
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…
