By Rick Hendricks In The El Paso Salt War of 1877, C.L. Sonnichsen, described what he called the Salt Ring as being made up of W.W. Mills, A.J. Fountain, Louis Cardis, and Father Antonio Borrajo, the parish priest of San Elizario, Texas. Sonnichsen went on to describe Father Borrajo…
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…
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…
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…
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…
By Robert Torrez When Holy Week approaches, the thoughts of many Roman Catholics in northern New Mexico turn to the traditional religious practices observed during the several days preceding Easter Sunday. To many nuevomexicanos, semana santa brings to mind the haunting sounds of the native flute, or pito, that…
10 1814 By William H. Wroth Jean Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888) was the first bishop and archbishop of the Diocese of Santa Fe. He was born in Lempdes in Auvergne, a region in southern France in October 1814, one of eleven children of Jean and Marie Dié Lamy. His parents…
by Estevan Arellano For the early settlers who braved the “Jornada del Muerto,” or Journey of the Dead from Mexico to northern New Mexico in 1598, it was not simply a matter of finding good soil and water to plant in order to survive, it also meant learning to…
