Chapter 2: New Mexico in Depth
When I was a child in New Mexico, we’d sing a song while driving the dusty roads en route to such ruins as Chaco Canyon or Puye Cliff Dwellings. Sung to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree,” it went like this:
New Mexico, New Mexico
Don’t know why we love you so.
It never rains
It never snows
The winds and sand
They always blow.
And how we live
God only knows
New Mexico, we love you so.
Although this song exaggerates the conditions here, the truth remains that in many ways New Mexico has an inhospitable environment. So why are so many people drawn here, and why do so many of us stay?
Ironically, the very extremes that this song presents are the reason. In this 121,666-square-mile state, you are met with wildly varied terrain, temperature, and temperament. On a single day you might experience temperatures from 25° to 75°F (–4° to 24°C). From the vast heat and dryness of White Sands in the summer to the 13,161-foot subzero, snow-encrusted Wheeler Peak in the winter, New Mexico’s beauty is carved by extremes.
Culturally, this is also the case. Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache tribes occupy much of the state’s lands, many of them still speaking their native languages and living within the traditions of their people. Some even live without running water and electricity. Meanwhile, Hispanic culture remains deeply linked to its Spanish roots, practicing a devout Catholicism, and speaking a centuries-old Spanish dialect, some still living by subsistence farming in mountain villages.
New Mexico has its own sense of time and unique social mores. The pace is slower here, the objectives of life less defined. People rarely arrive on time for appointments, and businesses don’t always hold to their posted hours. In most cases, people wear whatever they want here. You’ll see men dressed for formal occasions wearing a buttoned collar with a bolo tie and women in cowboy boots and broomstick skirts.
All this leads to a certain lost-and-not-caring-to-be-found spell that’s akin to some kind of voodoo magic. We find ourselves standing amid the dust or sparkling light, within the extreme heat or cold, not sure whether to speak Spanish or English. That’s when we let go completely of society’s common goals, its pace, and expectations. We slip into a kayak and let the river take us, or hike a peak and look at the world from a new perspective. Or we climb into a car and drive past ancient ruins being excavated at that instant, past ghost mining towns, and under hot-air balloons, by chile fields and around hand-smoothed santuarios, all on the road to nowhere, New Mexico’s best destination. At some point in your travels, you’ll likely find yourself on this road, and you’ll realize that there’s no destination so fine.
New Mexico Today: From Flamenco to Craps
Growing Pains
Dateline
3000 b.c. First evidence of stable farming settlements in region.
a.d. 700 Earliest evidence of ancestral Puebloan presence.
1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado marches to Cíbola in search of a Native American “city of gold.”
1542 Coronado returns to New Spain, declaring his mission a failure.
1610 Immigration to New Mexico increases; Don Pedro de Peralta establishes Santa Fe as capital.
1680 Pueblo tribes revolt against Spanish.
1692 Spanish recapture Santa Fe.
1706 Albuquerque established.
1739 First French traders enter Santa Fe.
1779 Tabivo Naritgant, leader of rebellious Comanche tribes, falls to Spanish forces.
1786 Comanches and Utes sign treaty with Spanish.
1821 Mexico gains independence from Spain.
1828 Kit Carson, the legendary frontiersman, arrives in Taos.
1846 Mexican War breaks out; Gen. Stephen Kearny takes possession of New Mexico for United States.
1847 Revolt in Taos against U.S. control; newly appointed governor Charles Bent killed.
1848 Under provisions of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico officially cedes New Mexico to United States.
1861 Victorious Confederate general proclaims all of New Mexico south of the 34th parallel the Confederate territory of Arizona.
1862 Confederates routed from New Mexico.
1864 Navajos relocated to Bosque Redondo Reservation.
1868 Navajos return to their native homeland.
1878–81 Lincoln County War erupts; epitomize the lawlessness and violence of the Wild West.
1879 Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad routes main line through Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Deming, where connection is made with California’s South Pacific Line.
1881 Legendary outlaw Billy the Kid killed by Pat Garrett.
1886 Apache chief Geronimo captured; signals end of New Mexico’s Indian wars.
1898 Painters Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips settle in Taos.
1912 New Mexico becomes the 47th state.
1914 Blumenschein and Phillips form Taos Society of Artists; Taos becomes a major center of influence in midcentury American art and letters.
1916 Construction of Elephant Butte Dam brings irrigation to southern New Mexican farms.
1924 Native Americans granted full U.S. citizenship.
1943 Los Alamos National Laboratory built; “Manhattan Project” scientists spend 2 years in complete seclusion developing nuclear weapons.
1945 First atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site.
1947 Reports of a flying saucer crash near Roswell make national headlines, despite U.S. Air Force’s denials that it has occurred.
1972 Pioneer balloonist Sid Cutter establishes Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
1981 The Very Large Array, the world’s most powerful radio telescope, begins observations of distant galaxies from the desert west of Socorro.
1982 U.S. space shuttle Columbia lands at Holloman Air Force Base, near White Sands National Monument.
1984 New Mexico’s last remaining section of famed Route 66, near San Jon, is abandoned.
1990 New Mexico’s last uranium mine, near Grants, closes.
1994 Under pressure from Congress, U.S. Air Force reopens investigation of the 1947 flying saucer crash reports, concluding that the debris found was likely from tests of a secret Cold War spy balloon; UFO believers allege a cover-up.
1998 The Waste Isolation Pilot Project, the nation’s first deep-geologic repository for permanent disposal of radioactive waste, receives go-ahead to begin storage operations.
2002 80th anniversary of the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial is held at Gallup.
2006 Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, initiated in the desert 45 miles north of Las Cruces, with plans to one day launch commercial flights into outer space.
2010 Santa Fe celebrates 400-year anniversary.
New Mexico is experiencing a reconquest of sorts, as the Anglo population soars and outside money and values again make their way in. The process continues to transform New Mexico’s three distinct cultures and their unique ways of life, albeit in a less violent manner than during the Spanish conquest.
Certainly, the Anglos—many of them from large cities—add a cosmopolitan flavor to life here. The variety of restaurants has greatly improved, as have entertainment options. For their small size, towns such as Taos and Santa Fe offer a broad variety of restaurants and cultural events. Santa Fe has developed a strong dance and drama scene, with treats such as flamenco and opera that you’d expect to find in New York or Los Angeles. And Albuquerque has an exciting nightlife scene downtown; you can walk from club to club and hear a wealth of jazz, rock, country, and alternative music.
Transformation of the local way of life and landscape is also apparent in the stores continually springing up in the area. For some, these are a welcome relief from Western clothing stores and provincial dress shops. The downside is that city plazas, which once contained pharmacies and grocery stores frequented by residents, are now crowded with T-shirt shops and galleries appealing to tourists. Many locals now rarely visit their plazas except during special events.
Environmental threats are another regional reality. Nuclear-waste issues form part of an ongoing conflict affecting the entire Southwest, and a section of southern New Mexico has been designated a nuclear-waste site. Because much of the waste must pass through Santa Fe, the U.S. government, along with the New Mexico state government, constructed a bypass that directs some transit traffic around the west side of the city.
New ways of thinking have also brought positive changes to life here, and many locals have benefited from New Mexico’s influx of wealthy newcomers and popularity as a tourist destination. Businesses and industries large and small have come to the area. In Albuquerque, Intel Corporation now employs more than 3,000 workers, and in Santa Fe, the national magazine Outside publishes monthly. Local artists and artisans also benefit from growth. Many craftspeople have expanded their businesses. The influx of people has broadened the sensibility of a fairly provincial state. The area has become a refuge for many gay and lesbian people, as well as for political exiles, such as Tibetans. With them has developed a level of creativity and tolerance you would generally find in very large cities but not in smaller communities such as the ones found in New Mexico.
Cultural Questions
Faced with new challenges to their ways of life, both Native Americans and Hispanics are marshaling forces to protect their cultural identities. A prime concern is language. Through the years, many Pueblo people have begun to speak more and more English, with their children getting little exposure to their native tongue. In a number of the pueblos, elders are working with schoolchildren in language classes. Some of the pueblos have even developed written dictionaries, the first time their languages have been systematized in this form.
Many pueblos have introduced programs to conserve the environment, preserve ancient seed strains, and protect religious rites. Because their religion is tied closely to nature, a loss of natural resources would threaten the entire culture. Certain activities have been closed to outsiders, the most notable being some of the rituals of Shalako at Zuni, a popular and elaborate series of year-end ceremonies.
Hispanics, through art and observance of cultural traditions, are also embracing their roots. In northern New Mexico, murals depicting important historic events, such as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, adorn many walls. The Spanish Market in Santa Fe has expanded into a grand celebration of traditional arts—from tin working to santo carving. Public schools in the area have bilingual education programs, enabling students to embrace their Spanish-speaking roots.
Hispanics are also making their voices heard, insisting on more conscientious development of their neighborhoods and rising to positions of power in government. Congressman Bill Richardson, Hispanic despite his Anglo surname, was appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before becoming energy secretary in President Clinton’s cabinet and later running for U.S. president. Currently, he is the governor of New Mexico.
Gambling Wins & Losses
Gambling, a fact of life and source of much-needed revenue for Native American populations across the country, has been a center of controversy in northern New Mexico for a number of years. In 1994, Gov. Gary Johnson signed a compact with tribes in New Mexico, ratified by the U.S. Department of the Interior, to allow full-scale gambling. Tesuque Pueblo was one of the first to begin a massive expansion, and many other pueblos followed suit.
Many New Mexicans are concerned about the tone gambling sets in the state. The casinos are for the most part large and unsightly buildings that stand out sorely on some of New Mexico’s most picturesque land. Though most residents appreciate the boost that gambling can ultimately bring to the Native American economies, many critics wonder where gambling profits actually go—and if the casinos can possibly be a good thing for the pueblos and tribes. Some detractors suspect that profits go directly into the pockets of outside backers.
A Look at the Past
In the Beginning
Archaeologists say that humans first migrated to the Southwest, moving southward from the Bering Land Bridge, around 12,000 b.c. Sites such as Sandia Cave and Folsom—where weapon points were discovered that, for the first time, clearly established that our prehistoric ancestors hunted now-extinct mammals such as woolly mammoths—are internationally known. When these large animals died off during the late Ice Age (about 8000 b.c.), people turned to hunting smaller game and gathering wild food.
Stable farming settlements, as evidenced by the remains of domestically grown maize, date from around 3000 b.c. As the nomadic peoples became more sedentary, they built permanent residences and pit houses and made pottery. Cultural differences began to emerge in their choice of architecture and decoration: The Mogollon people, in the southwestern part of modern New Mexico, created brown and red pottery and built large community lodges; the ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, in the north, made gray pottery and smaller lodges for extended families.
The Mogollon, whose pottery dates from around 100 b.c., were the first of the sophisticated village cultures. They lived primarily in modern-day Catron and Grant counties. The most important Mogollon ruins are in the Gila River Valley, including Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, north of Silver City.
By about a.d. 700, and perhaps a couple centuries earlier, the ancestral Puebloans of the northwest had absorbed village life and expanded through what is now known as the Four Corners region (where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado come together). Around a.d. 1000, their culture eclipsed that of the Mogollon. Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Aztec Ruins National Monument, and Salmon Ruins all exhibit architectural excellence and skill, as well as a scientific sensitivity to nature, that mark this as one of America’s classic pre-Columbian civilizations.
Condominium-style communities of stone and mud adobe bricks, three and four stories high, were focused around central plazas. The villages incorporated circular spiritual chambers called kivas. The ancestral Puebloans also developed means to irrigate their fields of corn, beans, and squash by controlling the flow of water from the San Juan River and its tributaries. From Chaco Canyon, they built a complex system of well-engineered roads leading in four directions to other towns or ceremonial centers. Artifacts found during excavation, such as seashells and macaw feathers, indicate that they had a far-reaching trade network. The incorporation of solar alignments into some of their architecture has caused some to speculate on the importance of the equinoxes to their religion.
The diminishing of the Anasazi culture, and the emergence of the Pueblo culture in its place, is something of a mystery today. Historians disagree as to why the ancestral Puebloans left their villages around the 13th century. Some suggest drought or soil exhaustion; others posit invasion, epidemic, or social unrest. But by the time the first Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the ancestral Puebloans were long gone and the Pueblo culture was well established throughout northern and western New Mexico, from Taos to Zuni, near Gallup. Most of the people lived on the east side of the Continental Divide, in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Pueblos absorbed certain elements of the ancestral Puebloan civilization, including the apartment-like adobe architecture, the creation of rather elaborate pottery, and the use of irrigation or flood farming in their fields. Agriculture, especially corn, was the economic mainstay.
Each village fiercely guarded its independence. When the Spanish arrived, no alliances existed between them. No more than a few hundred people lived in any one, an indication that the natives had learned to keep their population (which totaled 40,000–50,000) down in order to preserve their soil and other natural resources. But not all was peaceful: They alternately fought and traded with each other, as well as with nomadic Apaches. Even before the Spanish arrived, a pattern had been established.
The Arrival of the Spanish
The Spanish controlled New Mexico for 300 years, from the mid-16th to the mid-19th century—twice as long as the United States has. The Hispanic legacy in language and culture is stronger today in New Mexico than anywhere else in the Southwest, no doubt a result of the prominence of the Rio Grande Valley as the oldest and most populous fringe province of the viceroyalty of New Spain.
The spark that sent the first European explorers into what is now New Mexico was a fabulous medieval myth that seven Spanish bishops had fled the Moorish invasion of the 8th century, sailed westward to the legendary isle of Antilia, and built themselves seven cities of gold. Hernán Cortés’s 1519 discovery and conquest of the Aztecs’ treasure-laden capital of Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, fueled belief in the myth. When a Franciscan friar 20 years later claimed to have sighted, from a distance, “a very beautiful city” in a region known as Cíbola while on a reconnaissance mission for the viceroyalty, the gates were opened.
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, the ambitious young governor of New Spain’s western province of Nueva Galicia, was commissioned to lead an expedition to the “seven cities.” Several hundred soldiers, accompanied by servants and missionaries, marched overland to Cíbola with him in 1540, along with a support fleet of three ships in the Gulf of California. What they discovered, after 6 hard months on the trail, was a bitter disappointment: Instead of a city of gold, they found a rock-and-mud pueblo at Hawikuh, the westernmost of the Zuni towns. The expedition wintered at Tiguex, on the Rio Grande near modern Santa Fe, before proceeding to the Great Plains, seeking more treasure at Quivira, in what is now Kansas. The grass houses of the Wichita Indians were all they found.
Coronado returned to New Spain in 1542, admitting failure. Historically, though, his expedition was a great success, contributing the first widespread knowledge of the Southwest and Great Plains, and encountering the Grand Canyon en route.
By the 1580s, after important silver discoveries in the mountains of Mexico, the Spanish began to wonder if the wealth of the Pueblo country might lie in its land rather than its cities. They were convinced that they had been divinely appointed to convert the natives of the New World to Christianity. And so a northward migration began, orchestrated and directed by the royal government. It was a mere trickle in the late 16th century. Juan de Oñate established a capital in 1598 at San Gabriel, near San Juan Pueblo, but a variety of factors led to its failure. In 1610, under Don Pedro de Peralta, the migration began in earnest.
It was not dissimilar to America’s schoolbook stereotype. Bands of armored conquistadors did troop through the desert with humble robed friars striding by their sides. But most of the pioneers came up the Rio Grande Valley, with oxcarts and mule trains rather than armor, intent on transplanting their Hispanic traditions of government, religion, and material culture to this new world.
Peralta built his new capital at Santa Fe and named it La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis, the Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi. His capitol building, the Palace of the Governors, has been continuously occupied as a public building ever since by Spanish, Mexicans, Americans, and, for 12 years (1680–92), the Pueblo Indians. Today, it’s a museum.
Religion & Revolt
The 17th century in New Mexico was essentially a missionary era, as Franciscan priests attempted to turn the Indians into model Hispanic peasants. Their churches became the focal point of every pueblo, with Catholic schools a mandatory adjunct. By 1625, the Rio Grande Valley was home to an estimated 50 churches.
But the Native Americans weren’t enthused about doing “God’s work”—building new adobe missions, tilling fields for the Spanish, and weaving garments for export to Mexico—so soldiers backed the padres in extracting labor, a system known as repartimiento. Simultaneously, the encomienda system provided that a yearly tribute in corn and blankets be levied upon each Indian. The Pueblos were amenable to taking part in Catholic religious ceremonies and proclaiming themselves converts. To them, spiritual forces were actively involved in the material world. If establishing harmony with the cosmos meant absorbing Jesus Christ and various saints into their hierarchy of katsinas and other spiritual beings, so much the better. But the Spanish friars demanded that they do away with their traditional singing, masked dancing, and other “pagan practices.” When the Pueblo religion was violently crushed and driven literally underground, resentment toward the Spanish grew and festered. Rebellions at Taos and Jemez in the 1630s left village priests dead, but the Pueblos were savagely repressed.
Impressions
“In New Mexico he always awoke a young man; not until he rose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older.”
—Archbishop Latour in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927
A power struggle between church and state in New Mexico weakened the hand of the Spanish colonists, and a long drought in the 1660s and 1670s gave the Apaches reason to scourge the Spanish and Pueblo settlements for food. The Pueblos blamed the friars, and their ban on traditional rain dances, for the drought. The hanging of four medicine men as “sorcerers” and the imprisonment of 43 others was the last straw for the Rio Grande natives. In 1680, the Pueblo Revolt erupted.
Popé (Poh-pay), a San Juan shaman, catalyzed the revolt. Assisted by other Pueblo leaders, he unified the far-flung Native Americans, who had never before confederated. They pillaged and burned the province’s outlying settlements, and then turned their attention on Santa Fe, besieging the citizens who had fled to the Palace of the Governors. After 9 days, having reconquered Spain’s northernmost American province, they let the refugees retreat south to Mexico.
Popé ordered that the Pueblos should return to the lifestyle they had before the arrival of the Spanish. All Hispanic items, from tools to fruit trees, were to be destroyed, and the blemish of baptism was to be washed away in the river. But the shaman misjudged the influence of the Spanish on the Pueblo people. They were not the people they had been a century earlier, and they liked much of the material culture they had absorbed from the Europeans. What’s more, they had no intention of remaining confederated; their independent streaks were too strong.
In 1692, led by newly appointed Gov. Don Diego de Vargas, the Spanish recaptured Santa Fe without bloodshed. Popé had died, and without a leader to reunify them, the Pueblos were no match for the Spanish. Vargas pledged not to punish them but to pardon and convert. Still, when he returned the following year with 70 families to recolonize the city, he did use force. And for the next several years, bloody battles persisted throughout the Pueblo country.
By the turn of the 18th century, Nuevo Mexico was firmly in Spanish hands. This time, however, the colonists seemed to have learned from some of their past errors. They were more tolerant in their religion and less ruthless in their demands and punishments.
The Arrival of the Anglos
By the 1700s, there were signals that new interlopers were about to arrive in New Mexico. The French had laid plans to begin colonizing the Mississippi River, and hostile Native American tribes were on the warpath. The Spanish viceroyalty fortified its position in Santa Fe as a defensive bastion and established a new villa at Albuquerque in 1706.
In 1739, the first French trade mission entered Santa Fe and was welcomed by the citizenry but not by the government. For 24 years, until 1763, a black-market trade thrived between Louisiana and New Mexico. It ended only when France lost its toehold on its North American claims during the French and Indian War.
Other Native Americans were more fearsome foes. Apaches, Comanches, Utes, and Navajos launched raids against each other and the Rio Grande settlements for most of the 18th century, which led the Spanish and Pueblos to pull closer together for mutual protection. Pueblo and Hispanic militias fought side by side in campaigns against the invaders. But by the 1770s, the attacks had become so savage and destructive that the viceroy in Mexico City created a military jurisdiction in the province, and Gov. Juan Bautista de Anza led a force north to Colorado to defeat Tabivo Naritgant, the most feared of the Comanche chiefs, in 1779. Seven years later, the Comanches and Utes signed a lasting treaty with the Spanish and thereafter helped keep the Apaches in check.
France sold the Louisiana Territory to the young United States in 1803, and the Spanish suddenly had a new intruder to fear. The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 went unchallenged, much as the Spanish would have liked to challenge it; but in 1807, when Lt. Zebulon Pike built a stockade on a Rio Grande tributary in Colorado, he and his troops were taken prisoner by troops from Santa Fe. Pike was taken to the New Mexican capital, where he was interrogated extensively, and then to Chihuahua, Mexico. The report he wrote upon his return was the United States’ first inside look at Spain’s frontier province.
At first, pioneering American merchants—excited by Pike’s observations of New Mexico’s economy—were summarily expelled from Santa Fe or jailed, and their goods were confiscated. But after Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, traders were welcomed. The wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail soon extended from Missouri to New Mexico, and from there to Chihuahua. (Later, it became the primary southern highway to California.)
As merchants hastened to Santa Fe, Anglo-American and French-Canadian fur trappers headed into the wilderness. Their commercial hub became Taos, a tiny village near a large pueblo a few days’ ride north of Santa Fe. Many married into native or Hispanic families. Perhaps the best known was Kit Carson, a sometime federal agent, sometime scout, whose legend is inextricably interwoven with that of early Taos. He spent 40 years in Taos, until his death in 1868.
In 1846, the Mexican-American War broke out, and New Mexico became a territory of the United States. There were several causes of the war, including the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845, disagreement over the international boundary, and unpaid claims owed to American citizens by the Mexican government. But foremost was the prevailing U.S. sentiment of “manifest destiny,” the belief that the Union should extend “from sea to shining sea.” Gen. Stephen Kearny marched south from Colorado; on the Las Vegas plaza, he announced that he had come to take possession of New Mexico for the United States. His arrival in Santa Fe on August 18, 1846, went unopposed.
An 1847 revolt in Taos resulted in the slaying of the new governor of New Mexico, Charles Bent, but U.S. troops defeated the rebels and executed their leaders. That was the last threat to American sovereignty in the territory. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially transferred the title of New Mexico, along with Texas, Arizona, and California, to the United States.
Kearney promised New Mexicans that the United States would respect their religion and property rights and would safeguard their homes and possessions from hostile Indians. His troops behaved with a rigid decorum. The United States upheld Spanish policy toward the Pueblos, assuring the survival of their ancestral lands, their traditional culture, and their old religion—which even 3 centuries of Hispanic Catholicism could not do away with.
The Civil War
As conflict between the North and South flared east of the Mississippi, New Mexico found itself caught in the debate over slavery. Southerners wanted to expand slavery to the Western territories, but abolitionists bitterly opposed them. New Mexicans themselves voted against slavery twice, while their delegate to Congress engineered the adoption of a slavery code. In 1861, the Confederacy laid plans to make New Mexico theirs as a first step toward capturing the West.
In fact, southern New Mexicans, including those in Tucson (Arizona was then a part of the New Mexico Territory), were disenchanted with the attention paid them by Santa Fe and were already threatening to form their own state. So when Confederate Lt. Col. John Baylor captured Fort Fillmore, near Mesilla, and on August 1, 1861, proclaimed all of New Mexico south of the 34th parallel to be the new territory of Arizona, few complained.
The following year, Confederate Gen. Henry Sibley assembled three regiments of 2,600 Texans and moved up the Rio Grande. They defeated Union loyalists in a bloody battle at Valverde, near Socorro; easily took Albuquerque and Santa Fe; and proceeded toward the federal arsenal at Fort Union, 90 miles east of Santa Fe. Sibley planned to replenish his supplies there before continuing north to Colorado, and then west to California.
On March 27 and 28, 1862, the Confederates were met head-on in Glorieta Pass, about 16 miles outside Santa Fe, by regular troops from Fort Union, supported by a regiment of Colorado volunteers. By the second day, the rebels were in control, until a detachment of Coloradans circled behind the Confederate troops and destroyed their poorly defended supply train. Sibley was forced into a retreat down the Rio Grande. A few months later, Mesilla was reclaimed for the Union, ending the Confederate presence in New Mexico.
The Land Wars
The various tribes had not missed the fact that whites were fighting among themselves, and they took advantage of this weakness to step up their raids on border settlements. The U.S. government retaliated. In 1864, the government rounded up 10,000 Navajos and forced them to walk some 450 miles, on what is now called the Long Walk, to Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River at Fort Sumner, in east-central New Mexico. Col. Kit Carson led New Mexico troops in this venture, a position to which he acceded as a moderating influence between the Navajos and those who called for their unconditional surrender or extermination.
Moving the Navajos was an ill-advised decision: The land could not support 9,000 people, the government failed to supply adequate provisions, and the Navajos were unable to live peacefully with the Mescaleros. By late 1868, the tribes retraced their routes to their homelands, where the Navajos gave up their warlike past. The Mescaleros’ raids were squashed in the 1870s, and they were confined to a reservation in southern New Mexico.
Corralling the rogue Apaches of southwestern New Mexico presented the territory with its biggest challenge. Led by chiefs Victorio, Nana, and Geronimo, these bands wreaked havoc on the mining region around Silver City. Eventually, however, they succumbed, and the capture of Geronimo in 1886 was the final chapter in New Mexico’s long history of Indian wars.
As the Native American threat decreased, more and more livestock and sheep ranchers established themselves on the vast plains east of the Rio Grande, in the San Juan basin of the northwest, and in other equally inviting parts of the territory. Cattle drives up the Pecos Valley, on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, are the stuff of legend; so, too, was Roswell cattle baron John Chisum, whose 80,000 head of beef probably represented the largest herd in America in the late 1870s.
Mining grew as well. Albuquerque blossomed in the wake of a series of major gold strikes in the Madrid Valley, close to ancient turquoise mines; other gold and silver discoveries through the 1870s gave birth to boomtowns—now mostly ghost towns—such as Hillsboro, Mogollon, Pinos Altos, and White Oaks. The copper mines of Santa Rita del Cobre, near Silver City, are still thriving.
In 1879, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway sent its main line through Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Deming, where it joined with the Southern Pacific line coming from California. (The Santa Fe station was, and is, at Lamy, 17 miles southeast of the capital.) Now linked by railroad to the great markets of America, New Mexico’s economic boom period was assured.
But ranching invites cattle rustling and range wars, mining beckons feuds and land fraud, and the construction of railroads often brings political corruption and swindles. New Mexico had all of them, especially during the latter part of the 19th century. Best known of a great many conflicts was the Lincoln County War (1878–81), which began as a feud between rival factions of ranchers and merchants. It led to such utter lawlessness that President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a federal investigation of the territorial government and the installation of Gen. Lew Wallace as governor (whose novel Ben-Hur was published in 1880).
One of the central figures of the Lincoln County War was William “Billy the Kid” Bonney (1858–81), a headstrong youth who became probably the best-known outlaw of the American West. Legend says he blazed a trail of bloodshed from Silver City to Mesilla, Santa Fe to Lincoln, and Artesia to Fort Sumner, where he was finally killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in July 1881. Really, though, in his short life, he killed four people.
Reflections
“I wasn’t the leader of any gang. I was for Billy all the time.”
—Billy the Kid
To a Las Vegas, New Mexico reporter, after his capture at Stinking Springs
By the turn of the 20th century, most of the violence had been checked. The mineral lodes were drying up, and ranching was taking on increased importance. Economic and social stability were coming to New Mexico.
Statehood, Art & Atoms
Early in the 20th century, its Hispanic citizens having proved their loyalty to the U.S. by serving gallantly with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, New Mexico’s long-awaited dream of becoming an integral part of the Union was finally recognized. On January 6, 1912, President William Howard Taft signed a bill making New Mexico the 47th state.
Within a few years, Taos began gaining fame as an artists’ community. Two painters from the East Coast, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips, settled in Taos in 1898, lured others to join them, and in 1914 formed the Taos Society of Artists, one of the most influential schools of art in America. Writers and other intellectuals soon followed, including patron Mabel Dodge Luhan, novelists D. H. Lawrence and Willa Cather, and poet-activist John Collier. Other artists settled in Santa Fe and elsewhere in New Mexico; the best known was Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived miles from anywhere in tiny Abiquiu. Today, Santa Fe and Taos are world renowned for their contributions to art and culture.
The construction in 1916 of the Elephant Butte Dam near Hot Springs (now Truth or Consequences) brought irrigated farming back to a drought-ravaged southern New Mexico. Potash mining boomed in the southeast in the 1930s. Native Americans gained full citizenship in 1924, 2 years after the All Pueblo Council was formed to fight passage in Congress of a bill that would have given white squatters rights to Indian lands. And in 1934, tribes were accorded partial self-government. Hispanics, meanwhile, became the most powerful force in state politics and remain so today.
The most dramatic development in 20th-century New Mexico was induced by World War II. In 1943, the U.S. government sealed off a tract of land on the Pajarito Plateau, west of Santa Fe, that previously had been an exclusive boys’ school. On this site, it built the Los Alamos National Laboratory, otherwise known as Project Y of the Manhattan Engineer District—the “Manhattan Project.” Its goal: to split the atom and develop the first nuclear weapons.
Under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, later succeeded by Norris E. Bradbury, a team of 30 to 100 scientists and hundreds of support staff lived and worked in almost complete seclusion for 2 years. Their work resulted in the atomic bomb, tested for the first time at the Trinity Site, north of White Sands, on July 16, 1945. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 3 weeks later, signaled to the world that the nuclear age had arrived.
Reflections
“I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting from ancient Hindu texts
Even before that time, New Mexico was gaining stature in America’s scientific community. Robert H. Goddard, considered the founder of modern rocketry, conducted many of his experiments near Roswell in the 1930s, during which time he became the first person to shoot a liquid-fuel rocket faster than the speed of sound. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, helped establish the department of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. And former Sen. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt, an exogeologist and the first civilian to walk on the moon in 1972, is a native of the Silver City area.
Today, the White Sands Missile Range is one of America’s most important astrophysics sites, and the International Space Hall of Fame in nearby Alamogordo honors men and women from around the world who have devoted their lives to space exploration. Aerospace research and defense contracts are economic mainstays in Albuquerque, and Kirtland Air Force Base is the home of the Air Force Special Weapons Center. Los Alamos, of course, continues to be a national leader in nuclear technology. Now under construction, Spaceport America near Las Cruces may launch privately funded space flights as early as 2012.
Despite the arrival of the 21st century in many parts of the state, other areas are still struggling to be a part of the 20th. Many Native Americans, be they Pueblo, Navajo, or Apache, and Hispanic farmers, who till small plots in isolated rural regions, hearken to a time when life was slower paced.
Art & Architecture
A Land of Art
It’s all in the light—or at least that’s what many artists claim drew them to New Mexico. In truth, the light is only part of the attraction: Nature in this part of the country, with its awe-inspiring thunderheads, endless expanse of blue skies, and rugged desert, is itself a canvas. To record the wonders of earth and sky, the early natives of the area, the ancestral Puebloans, imprinted images (in the form of petroglyphs and pictographs) on the sides of caves and on stones, as well as on the sides of pots they shaped from clay dug in the hills.
Today’s Native American tribes carry on that legacy, as do the other cultures that have settled here. Life in New Mexico is shaped by the arts. Everywhere you turn, you see pottery, paintings, jewelry, and weavings.
The area is full of little villages that maintain their own artistic specialties. Each Indian pueblo has a trademark design, such as Santa Clara’s and San Ildefonso’s black pottery and Zuni’s needlepoint silverwork. Bear in mind that the images used often have symbolic meaning. When purchasing art or an artifact, you may want to talk to its maker about what the symbols mean.
Hispanic villages are also distinguished by their artistic identities. Chimayo has become a center for Hispanic weaving, and the village of Cordova is known for its santo (icon) carving. Santos, retablos (paintings), and bultos (sculptures), as well as works in tin, are traditional devotional arts tied to the Roman Catholic faith. Often, these works are sold out of artists’ homes in villages, allowing you to glimpse the lives of the artists and the surroundings that inspire them.
Hispanic and Native American villagers take their goods to the cities, where for centuries people have bought and traded. Under the portals along the plazas of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque, you’ll find a variety of works in silver, stone, and pottery for sale. In the cities, you’ll find streets lined with galleries. At major markets, such as the Spanish Market and Indian Market in Santa Fe, some of the top artists from the area sell their works. Smaller shows at the pueblos also attract artists and artisans. The Northern Pueblo Artists and Craftsman Show, revolving each July to a different pueblo, continues to grow.
Drawn by the beauty of the local landscape and respect for indigenous art, artists from all over have flocked here, particularly during the 20th century. They have established locally important art societies; one of the most notable is the Taos Society of Artists. In 1898, artists Bert Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein were traveling through the area from Colorado on a mission to sketch the Southwest when their wagon broke down north of Taos. The scenery so overwhelmed them that they abandoned their journey and stayed. Joseph Sharp joined them, and still later came Oscar Berninghaus, Walter Ufner, Herbert Dunton, and others. You can see a brilliant collection of some of their romantically lit portraits and landscapes at the Taos Art Museum.
A major player in the development of Taos as an artists’ community was the arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan. A writer who financed the work of many an artist, in the 1920s Luhan held court for many notables, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Willa Cather, and D. H. Lawrence. This illustrious history goes a long way to explaining how it is that Taos—a town of about 5,000 inhabitants—has more than 100 arts-and-crafts galleries and many resident painters.
Santa Fe has its own art society, begun in the 1920s by a nucleus of five painters who became known as Los Cinco Pintores. Jozef Bakos, Fremont Ellis, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash, and Will Shuster lived in the area of Canyon Road (now the arts center of Santa Fe). Despite its small size, Santa Fe is considered one of the top three art markets in the U.S.
Perhaps the most celebrated artist associated with New Mexico was Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), a painter who worked and lived most of her later years in the region. O’Keeffe’s first sojourn to New Mexico in 1917 inspired her sensuous paintings of the area’s desert landscape and bleached animal skulls. The house where she lived in Abiquiu (42 miles northwest of Santa Fe on US 84) is now open for limited public tours (see chapter 7 for details). The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is the only museum in the United States entirely dedicated to an internationally known woman artist.
Impressions
[Sun-bleached bones] were most wonderful against the blue/that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.
—Georgia O’Keeffe, on the desert skies of New Mexico
Santa Fe is also home to the Institute of American Indian Arts, where many of today’s leading Native American artists have studied, including the Apache sculptor Allan Houser (whose works you can see near the state capitol building and in other public areas in Santa Fe). The best-known Native American painter is the late R. C. Gorman, an Arizona Navajo who made his home in Taos for more than 3 decades. Gorman is internationally acclaimed for his bright, somewhat surrealistic depictions of Navajo women. Another artist who has achieved national fame is Dan Namingha, a Hopi painter and sculptor who weaves native symbology together with contemporary concerns.
If you look closely, you’ll find notable works from a number of local artists. Tammy Garcia is a young Taos potter who year after year continues to sweep the awards at Indian Market with her intricately shaped and carved pots. Cippy Crazyhorse, a Cochiti, has acquired a steady following of patrons for his silver jewelry. All around the area you’ll see the frescoes of Frederico Vigil, a noted muralist and Santa Fe native.
For the visitor interested in art, however, some caution should be exercised; a lot of schlock out there targets the tourist trade. But if you persist, you’re likely to find some very inspiring work as well.
A Rich Architectural Melting Pot
Nowhere else in the United States are you likely to see such extremes of architectural style as in New Mexico. The state’s distinctive architecture reflects the diversity of cultures that have left their imprint on the region. The first people in the area were the ancestral Puebloans, the Anasazi, who built stone and mud homes at the bottom of canyons and inside caves. Pueblo-style adobe architecture evolved and became the basis for traditional New Mexican homes: sun-dried clay bricks mixed with grass for strength, mud-mortared, and covered with additional protective layers of mud. Roofs are supported by a network of vigas—long beams whose ends protrude through the outer facades—and latillas, smaller stripped branches layered between the vigas. Other adapted Pueblo architectural elements include plastered adobe-brick kiva fireplaces, bancos (adobe benches that protrude from walls), and nichos (small indentations within a wall in which religious icons are placed). These adobe homes are characterized by flat roofs and soft, rounded contours.
Spaniards wedded many elements to Pueblo style, such as portals (porches held up with posts, often running the length of a home) and enclosed patios, as well as the simple, dramatic sculptural shapes of Spanish mission arches and bell towers. They also brought elements from the Moorish architecture found in southern Spain: heavy wooden doors and elaborate corbels—carved wooden supports for the vertical posts.
With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and later the 1860s gold boom, both of which brought more Anglo settlers, came the next wave of building. New arrivals contributed architectural elements such as neo-Grecian and Victorian influences popular in the middle part of the U.S. at the time. Distinguishing features of what came to be known as Territorial-style architecture can be seen today; they include brick facades and cornices as well as porches, often placed on the second story. You’ll also note millwork on doors and wood trim around windows and doorways, double-hung windows, and Victorian bric-a-brac.
Santa Fe Plaza is an excellent example of the convergence of these early architectural styles. On the west side is a Territorial-style balcony, while the Palace of Governors is marked by Pueblo-style vigas and oversized Spanish/Moorish doors. Nearby, you’ll see the Romanesque architecture of the St. Francis Cathedral and Loretto chapel, initiated by Archbishop Lamy from France, as well as the railroad station built in the Spanish Mission style—popular in the early part of the 20th century.
Most notable architecturally in Taos is Taos Pueblo, the site of two structures emulated in homes and business buildings throughout the Southwest. Built to resemble Taos Mountain, which stands behind it, the two structures are pyramidal in form, with the different levels reached by ladders. Also quite prevalent is architecture echoing colonial hacienda style. What’s nice about Taos is that you can see historic homes inside and out. You can wander through artist Ernest Blumenschein’s home. Built in 1797 and restored by Blumenschein in 1919, it represents another New Mexico architectural phenomenon: homes that were added onto year after year. Doorways are typically low, and floors rise and fall at the whim of the earth beneath them. The Martinez Hacienda is an example of a hacienda stronghold. Built without windows facing outward, it originally had 20 small rooms, many with doors opening out to the courtyard. It is one of the few refurbished examples of colonial New Mexico architecture.
As you head into villages in the north, you’ll see steep pitched roofs on most homes. This is because the common flat-roof style doesn’t shed snow; the water builds up and causes roof problems. In just about any town in northern New Mexico, you may detect the strong smell of tar, a sure sign that another resident is laying out thousands to fix his enchanting but frustratingly flat roof.
Today, very few new homes are built of adobe. Instead, most are constructed with wood frames and plasterboard, and then stuccoed over. Several local architects are currently employing innovative architecture to create a Pueblo-style feel. They incorporate straw bales, pumice-crete, rammed earth, old tires, even aluminum cans in the construction of homes. Most of these elements are used in the same way bricks are used, stacked and layered, and then covered over with plaster and made to look like adobe. Often it’s difficult to distinguish homes built with these materials from those built with wood-frame construction. West of Taos, a number of “earth ships” have been built. Many of these homes are constructed with alternative materials, most bermed into the sides of hills, utilizing the earth as insulation and the sun as an energy source.
A visitor could spend an entire trip to New Mexico focusing on the architecture. As well as relishing the wealth of architectural styles, you’ll find more subtle elements everywhere. You may encounter an ox-blood floor, for example. An old Spanish tradition, ox blood is spread in layers and left to dry, hardening into a glossy finish that’s known to last centuries. You’re also likely to see coyote fences—narrow cedar posts lined up side by side—a system early settlers devised to ensure safety of their animals. Winding around homes and buildings you’ll see acequias, ancient irrigation canals still maintained by locals for watering crops and trees.
The Lay of the Land
It would be easy, and accurate, to call New Mexico “high and dry” and leave it at that. The lowest point in the state, in the southeastern corner, is still over 2,800 feet in elevation, higher than the highest point in at least a dozen other states. The southern Rocky Mountains extend well into New Mexico, rising above 13,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range and sending a final afterthought above 10,000 feet, just east of Alamogordo. Volcanic activity created the mountain range—and its aftereffects can be seen throughout the state, from Shiprock (the remaining core of a long-eroded volcano) to Capulin Volcano National Monument. Two fault lines, which created the Rio Grande Rift Valley, home to the Rio Grande, run through the center of the state, and seismic activity continues to change the face of New Mexico even today.
Impressions
“New Mexico is old, stupendously old and dry and brown, and wind-worn by the ages. I went to New Mexico . . . to be overcome again by oldness.”
—Charles Kuralt, Charles Kuralt’s America, 1995
Although archaeologists have discovered fossils indicating that most of New Mexico was once covered by ancient seas, the surface area of the state is now quite dry. The greater portion of New Mexico receives fewer than 20 inches of precipitation annually, the bulk of that coming either as summer afternoon thunderstorms or winter snowfall. In an area of 121,666 square miles—the fifth-largest U.S. state—there are only 221 square miles of water. Rivers and lakes occupy less than 0.2% of the landscape. The most important source of water is the Rio Grande. It nourishes hundreds of small farms from the Pueblo country of the north to the bone-dry Chihuahuan Desert of the far south.
However, there’s more water than meets the eye in New Mexico. Systems circulating beneath the earth’s surface have created all sorts of beautiful and fascinating geologic formations, including the natural wonder known as Carlsbad Caverns, one of the greatest cave systems in the world. Other caves have formed throughout the state, many of which have collapsed over the centuries, creating large sinkholes. These sinkholes have since filled with water and formed beautiful lakes. Bottomless Lakes State Park, near the town of Roswell, is a good example of this type of geological activity.
Other natural wonders you’ll encounter during a visit to New Mexico include red-, yellow-, and orange-hued high, flat mesas, and the 275-square-mile White Sands National Monument that contains more than 8 billion tons of pure white gypsum and is the largest field of sand dunes of this kind in the entire world. Here, mountains meet desert, and the sky is arguably bigger, bluer, and more fascinating than any other place in the country. Words can’t do justice to the spectacular colors of the landscape, and the blues, browns, greens, reds, oranges, and yellows in every imaginable variation make this land a living canvas. This is truly big sky country, where it seems you can see forever.
Books, Films & Music
Books
Many well-known writers made their homes in New Mexico in the 20th century. In the 1920s, the most celebrated were D. H. Lawrence and Willa Cather, both short-term Taos residents. Lawrence, the romantic and controversial English novelist, spent time here between 1922 and 1925; he reflected on his sojourn in Mornings in Mexico and Etruscan Places. Lawrence’s Taos period is described in Lorenzo in Taos, which his patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan, wrote. Cather, a Pulitzer-prize winner famous for her depictions of the pioneer spirit, penned Death Comes for the Archbishop, among other works. This fictionalized account of the 19th-century Santa Fe bishop, Jean-Baptiste Lamy, grew out of her stay in the region. Frank Waters gives a strong sense of Native American tradition in the region in his classics People of the Valley and The Man Who Killed the Deer.
Many contemporary authors also live in and write about New Mexico. John Nichols, of Taos, whose Milagro Beanfield War was made into a Robert Redford movie in 1987, writes insightfully about the problems of poor Hispanic farming communities. Albuquerque’s Tony Hillerman has for decades woven mysteries around Navajo tribal police in books such as Listening Woman and A Thief of Time. In more recent years, Sarah Lovett has joined Hillerman’s ranks with a series of gripping mysteries, most notably Dangerous Attachments. The Hispanic novelist Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, and Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony capture the lifestyles of their respective peoples. A coming-of-age story, Richard Bradford’s Red Sky at Morning juxtaposes the various cultures of New Mexico. Edward Abbey wrote of the desert environment and politics; his Fire on the Mountain, set in New Mexico, was one of his most powerful works.
Excellent works about Native Americans of New Mexico include The Pueblo Indians of North America (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970) by Edward P. Dozier and Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian (University of Oklahoma Press, 1987) by Ray A. Williamson. Also look for American Indian Literature 1979–1994 (Ballantine, 1996), an anthology edited by Paula Gunn Allen.
King of the Road
If you like road trip stories to small New Mexico towns, check out my book King of the Road (New Mexico Magazine Press, 2007). It’s a compilation of articles from my monthly column in New Mexico Magazine, in which locals tell the stories of their hometowns. It’s illustrated with my photos too. You can order the book online at www.nmmagazine.com and www.amazon.com.
For general histories of the state, try Myra Ellen Jenkins and Albert H. Schroeder’s A Brief History of New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 1974) and Marc Simmons’s New Mexico: An Interpretive History (University of New Mexico Press, 1988). In addition, Claire Morrill’s A Taos Mosaic: Portrait of a New Mexico Village (University of New Mexico Press, 1973) does an excellent job of portraying the history of that small New Mexican town. I have also enjoyed Tony Hillerman’s (editor) The Spell of New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 1976) and John Nichols and William Davis’s If Mountains Die: A New Mexico Memoir (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979). Talking Ground (University of New Mexico Press, 1996), by Santa Fe author Douglas Preston, tells of a contemporary horseback trip through Navajoland, exploring the native mythology. One of my favorite texts is Enchantment and Exploitation (University of New Mexico Press, 1985) by William deBuys. An extensive book that attempts to capture the multiplicity of the region is Legends of the American Southwest (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) by Alex Shoumatoff.
Enduring Visions: 1,000 Years of Southwestern Indian Art by the Aspen Center for the Visual Arts (Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, 1969) and Roland F. Dickey’s New Mexico Village Arts (University of New Mexico Press, 1990) are both excellent resources for those interested in Native American art. If you become intrigued with Spanish art during your visit to New Mexico, you’ll find E. Boyd’s Popular Arts of Spanish New Mexico (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1974) to be quite informative.
If you like to combine walking with literary history, pick up Barbara Harrelson’s Walks in Literary Santa Fe: A Guide to Landmarks, Legends, and Lore (Gibbs-Smith, 2008).
Films
If you like to start traveling before you climb onto the plane or into the car, you can do so easily by watching any number of movies filmed in the state. Over the years so many have been filmed that I won’t list them all. Instead, I’ll give the ones that provide a glimpse into the true nature of New Mexico. Silverado (1985), a lighthearted Western, and the heartfelt miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), based on a Larry McMurtry novel, start my list. Billy Bob Thorton’s film adaptation (2000) of the novel All the Pretty Horses, Ron Howard’s film version of The Missing (2003), and Billy Crystal in City Slickers, are also some of my favorite Westerns.
Favorite classics include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), filmed in Taos and Chama; The Cowboys (1972), with John Wayne; Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose (1978); and Dennis Hopper in the 1960s classic Easy Rider (1969).
More contemporary themes are explored in Contact (1997), which features the National Radio Astronomy Very Large Array in western New Mexico, as did Independence Day (1996). Also exploring alien themes, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), with David Bowie, was filmed in southern New Mexico.
In recent years, thanks to state tax credits given to film companies, many films have been shot in New Mexico. Among these recent additions is the 2009 double-Oscar winner Crazy Heart.
Music
Such musical legends as Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and the Fireballs basked in New Mexico’s light for parts of their careers. More recent musicians whose music really reflects the state include Mansanares, two brothers who grew up in Abiquiu, known for their Spanish guitar and soulful vocals. Look for their album Nuevo Latino. Master flute player Robert Mirabal’s music is informed by the ceremonial music he grew up with at Taos Pueblo. Check out his 2006 Grammy Award–winning album Sacred Ground. Using New Mexico as his creative retreat since the 1980s, Michael Martin Murphey often plays live here, where fans always cheer for his most notable song, “Wildfire.” The Best of Michael Martin Murphey gives a good taste of his music. Country music superstar Randy Travis calls Santa Fe home. His newest release, Around the Bend, is a treasure, as are his classics. My favorite musician who resides in Santa Fe is Ottmar Liebert and his band, the Luna Negra. All of their flamenco-inspired music is rich with New Mexico tones. Check out their CD Leaning into the Night.
Eating & Drinking in New Mexico
You know you’re in a food-conscious place when the local newspaper uses chiles (and onions) to rate movies, as does Santa Fe’s New Mexican. A large part of that city’s cachet as a chic destination derives from its famous cuisine, while Taos and Albuquerque, are developing notable reputations themselves. The competition among restaurants is fierce, which means that visitors have plenty of options from which to choose. Aside from establishments serving New Mexican cuisine that the region is famed for, you can also find French, Italian, Asian, Indian, and interesting hybrids of those. Luckily, not all the top restaurants are high-end; several hidden gems satisfy your taste buds without emptying your wallet.
Reservations are always recommended at the higher-end restaurants and are essential during peak seasons. Only a few restaurants serve late, so be sure to plan dinner before 8pm. Most restaurants are casual, so almost any attire is fine, though for the more expensive ones, dressing up is a good idea.
At the beginning of each city’s dining section I give more details about the dining scene there.
Food here isn’t the same as Mexican cuisine or even those American variations of Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex. New Mexican cooking is a product of Southwestern history: Native Americans taught the Spanish conquerors about corn—how to roast it and how to make corn pudding, stewed corn, cornbread, cornmeal, and posole (hominy)—and they also taught the Spanish how to use chile peppers, a crop indigenous to the New World, having been first harvested in the Andean highlands as early as 4000 b.c. The Spaniards brought the practice of eating beef to the area.
You Say chili, We Say chile
You’ll never see “chili” on a menu in New Mexico. New Mexicans are adamant that chile, the Spanish spelling of the word, is the only way to spell it—no matter what your dictionary may say.
Virtually anything you order in a restaurant is likely to be topped with a chile sauce. If you’re not accustomed to spicy foods, certain varieties will make your eyes water, your sinuses drain, and your palate feel as if it’s on fire. Warning: No amount of water or beer will alleviate the sting. (Drink milk. A sopaipilla drizzled with honey is also helpful.)
But don’t let these words of caution scare you away from genuine New Mexico chiles. The pleasure of eating them far outweighs the pain. Start slowly, with salsas and chile sauces first, perhaps rellenos (stuffed peppers) next. Before long, you’ll be buying chile ristras (chiles strung on rope).
Newcomers have introduced other elements to the food here. From Mexico came the interest in seafood. Regional New American cuisine combines elements from various parts of Mexico, such as sauces from the Yucatán Peninsula, and fried bananas served with bean dishes, typical of Central American locales. You’ll also find Asian elements mixed in.
The basic ingredients of New Mexico cooking are three indispensable, locally grown foods: chile, beans, and corn. Of these, perhaps the most crucial is the chile, whether brilliant red or green and with various levels of spicy bite. Chile forms the base for the red and green sauces that top most New Mexico dishes such as enchiladas and burritos. One is not necessarily hotter than the other; spiciness depends on the type, and where and during what kind of season (dry or wet) the chiles were grown.
Spotted or painted pinto beans with a nutty taste are simmered with garlic, onion, cumin, and red chile powder and served as a side dish. When mashed and refried in oil, they become frijoles refritos. Corn supplies the vital dough for tortillas and tamales called masa. New Mexican corn comes in six colors, of which yellow, white, and blue are the most common.
Even if you’re familiar with Mexican cooking, the dishes you know and love are likely to be prepared differently here. The following is a rundown of some regional dishes, a number of which aren’t widely known outside the Southwest:
Biscochito A cookie made with anise.
Carne adovada Tender pork marinated in red chile sauce, herbs, and spices, and then baked.
Chile rellenos Peppers stuffed with cheese, deep-fried, and then covered with green chile sauce.
Chorizo burrito Mexican sausage, scrambled eggs, potatoes, and scallions wrapped in a flour tortilla with red or green chile sauce and melted Jack cheese. Also called a “breakfast burrito.”
Empanada A fried pie with nuts and currants.
Enchiladas Tortillas either rolled or layered with chicken, beef, or cheese, topped with chile sauce.
FRY BREAD A crispy Native American bread fried in oil, served with honey or smothered with meat and chile.
Green chile stew Locally grown chiles cooked in a stew with chunks of meat, beans, and potatoes.
Huevos rancheros Fried eggs on corn tortillas, topped with cheese and red or green chile, served with pinto beans.
Posole A corn soup or stew (called hominy in other parts of the south), sometimes prepared with pork and chile.
Sopaipilla A lightly fried puff pastry served with honey as a dessert or stuffed with meat and vegetables as a main dish. Sopaipillas with honey have a cooling effect on your palate after you’ve eaten a spicy dish.
Tacos Spiced chicken or beef served either in soft tortillas or crispy shells.
Tamales A dish made from cornmeal mush, wrapped in husks and steamed.