Taos -- The Red-Willow People

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Red-Willow People

The original Taos is not the plaza, but rather Taos Pueblo (www.taospueblo.com), some two miles north of town.  Home to the Red-Willow People, the Pueblo occupies some 90,000 acres of northern New Mexico, and has been their land for at least a thousand years.  The North House and the South House in the Pueblo proper date back a full millennium, which makes them coeval with Westminster Abbey.

Hey, maybe Taos Pueblo and the City of Westminster could make a twin cities agreement.

A beautiful little stream flows between the North House and South House, bordered with willows and benches, and visitors are asked not to wade in it or drink from it since it is the source of water.  Someone had tossed an ordinary new kitchen mop into it, though, and one wonders what domestic squabble that was about.

One ‘net encyclopedia advises that the Red-Willow People are “secretive” and “conservative.”  This is errant nonsense; they are in fact hospitable and open to the point of garrulousness.  Remember that Taos Pueblo is an autonomous state, though they do not yet require passports.  When visiting any autonomous state, say, Canada, one does not judge Canadians to be secretive if the ministry of defense does not provide the visitor with detailed information about the airport radar codes.  Similarly, Canada could hardly be considered conservative for not cluttering Ottawa’s Parliament Hill with chain coffee shops, hamburger joints, and neon signs advertising “Genuine Canadian Dancers in Costume.”

It’s their home; they want it to look nice.

Several hundred folks still live in the North House and South House, and by mutual agreement without electricity or piped water.  San Jeronimo / Saint Jerome Church is illuminated with gas for night liturgies, and otherwise people do very well with doors, windows, skylights, and probably early bed-times. 

Most everyone else lives in houses close to the crops, presumably with electricity and water.

The government offices near the front entrance – or, rather, border crossing – are connected to utilities, and the rulers’ pickups are parked out back next to the visitors’ restrooms.  Does the leader of any other nation drive a pickup truck with muddy boots and workman’s tools in the back?  I think he’d help you fix that broken gate you’ve been meaning to get to.

One of the most prominent features just inside the entrance is the tower of a ruined church.  This is the site of the first St. Jerome, from 1619.  That church was destroyed in a revolt against the Spanish in 1680, and was rebuilt a few years later.  In 1847 the United States acquired (nice euphemism) New Mexico, and there was a great deal of confused fighting in and around Taos.  In one of the rowdier misunderstandings, the new American Governor of New Mexico was scalped.  In front of his wife and children.  And then he was murdered.  Again in front of his wife and children.  Now that’s a bad day at work.  Whether or not the Red-Willow People were involved, the U.S. Army thought they were, and attacked the Pueblo.  The result was a massacre of several hundred people who had sought refuge in their parish church.

This isn’t Disneyland, okay?

The new Saint Jerome’s, about a hundred yards away, dates from 1850; the remains of the previous one are a memorial and a cemetery.  Just as we wouldn’t want furriners bopping around our maw-maw and paw-paws’ graves with cameras and fizzy drinks, visitors are not allowed to enter that bit of truly sacred ground.

We visited early in the morning to avoid the mid-day heat.  Early hours are also the best time for pictures because you can do the Ansel Adams thing so much more easily with the area mostly empty of people.  You’ve seen pictures of the buildings all your life, but for some reason few people photograph them framed by the shifting blues and greens of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The sunlit and almost golden facades of the buildings are at first silent and seemingly deserted, but then the shopkeepers begin opening their doors and putting out their signs, and suddenly there’s a lot going on.  The shopping is fun, and the artisans enjoy talking about their work, and Mom’s work, and how Grandpa worked, both at the craftsman’s bench and on the land. 

We met Mrs. Chili Flower in her nice shop, which features jewelry made by her family.  Her son, Richard, also sells by the side of the road west of town close to the Rio Grande Gorge.  Just look for the sign that says “No Vending on Highway Right-of-Way.”  Hey, New Mexico is calm like that.

The Red-Willow People speak Tiwa, Spanish, and English, and the last, at least, quite idiomatically, not that anyone from Texas can with reason critique any accent at all.  A bit of culture shock at first, but then you’ll feel quite at home.

They’re really nice folks; you ought to go visit them.

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Pinon

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pinon

The incense of the mountains drifts along

The arroyos, and into the narrow streets
Of Taos at dawn, the breath, perhaps, of God.

The Valley of the Pinons

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

The Valley of the Pinons

Taos, New Mexico is so cool that it doesn’t need a Starbuck’s.  More than that, Taos coffee is blessed with pinon, making it the best in the world.

Although Taos is an international vacation destination, especially in ski season, it remains a small town (only some 5,000 residents), with farms inside the city limits.  One can dine in the elegant La Fonda (lafondataos.com), Doc Martin’s in the equally historic Taos Inn (taosinn.com/restaurant), or the more recent but equally famous and excellent Michael’s Kitchen (michaelskitchen.com), and ponder that the provider of one’s morning glass of milk might be contentedly munching grass in a small pasture only a few blocks away.

Taos is centered on its plaza, as it has been for hundreds of years, and the very walkable area features numerous shops, galleries, museums, coffee shops, and restaurants.  People still park on the plaza, and although you might have to circle a time or two you’ll probably find a place to rest your Texas plates.  You needn’t go early, though, for any shopkeeper in Taos who opens before ten is considered something of an eccentric.

The plaza itself offers benches, statues, a bandstand, trees, and bits of green for picnicking, and on weekends and holidays musical groups queue up for performances: a mariachi band might be followed by a nasal hillbilly claven, and that by a dance troupe or gospel singers.  Taos is truly multi-cultural, and in a charmingly unselfconscious way.

The multi-cultural thing hasn’t always worked, though, and First Nations, Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans took turns slaughtering each other through the centuries.  Things are pretty quiet now, but last week the Taos County Commissioners fired the county manager.  He should consider himself fortunate; many Taos governments in the past were modified through murders, executions, revolutions, and conquest.

In 1861 many of the Anglo residents of Taos were pro-Confederate, and the First Nations and the folks of Spanish heritage, roughly treated by the Americans, were open to suggestion.  Kit Carson and several other patriots, in a come-and-take-it act worthy of Gonzales, Texas, nailed the American flag to the pole in the plaza in Taos, and guarded it day and night.  As the war progressed, the Taosenos, as part of the New Mexico Volunteers, were essential in the victory at Glorieta Pass.  Because of the loyalty of Taos, their Plaza is one of only seven sites where by law the flag is displayed for 24 hours.

Hippies migrated to Taos a generation ago, and in their senescence they mumble around in their clattering Volkswagens and bad wigs.  Their influence continues in old-fashioned head shops, dime-store mysticism, and dusty store-front healing centers.  The crystals have been replaced by magic rocks, and Moby Dickens (mobydickens.com), the best-known local book shop, features Tarot card readings on Saturdays.  Little-old-lady superstition does not logically gee-haw with literacy, but Taos is tolerantly loopy about that sort of thing.

English and American artists found Taos a century ago, liked the light and the pinon, and made it home.  The Euro-Taos style of painting tends toward impressionism on the cusp of expressionism, with much use of orange, yellow, blue, and green.  The merciless brushes of the less-talented can deteriorate these colors into cliché’, but there is a great deal of good work accomplished in Taos.  The earthernware is of course influenced by the various First Nations groups, who still dominate this art, and also the jewelry.  There is also the usual pretentious clutter; someone will carve a misshapen face onto a stick, glue a feather or some weeds to it, and sell it in the streets as, oh, nature-rain-dancing-woman-spiritual something-or-other.

Down the road a few miles is the community of Ranchos de Taos and its much Ansel Adams-ed and Georgia O’Keefe’d church, St. Francis of Assisi / San Francisco de Assiz.  Photographs and paintings portray the church as standing in isolation, but in fact it has always stood within its own plaza and is now fronted with utility wires, road signs, and advertising.  On a Wednesday morning a nice lady set up her easel and her paints, surely by accident, on the spot where an American lieutenant was shot dead during the 1848 revolt.  And yet, though artists and revolutions and centuries pass, Mass is still offered daily at the parish church.

Nothing about Taos is Disneyfied; the area is layered in history and cultures and repeated changes of national flags, and yet it continues as a rural community which mostly defines itself without lapsing into preciousness and insularity.  Whatever happens in Taos, there will still be breakfast at Michael’s Kitchen, and the sweet scent of pinon will still drift over the plaza.

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Ranchos de Taos -- Plaza

Ranchos de Taos -- Plaza

Ranchos de Taos -- Plaza

Ranchos de Taos -- San Francisco de Aziz