Today, the weather was seriously unski-able. Strong winds forced the closure of the
mountain shortly after we turned around, noticing the non-moving lifts and
thinking about what that wind would feel like higher up. No skiing means – touring day! First stop, the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, called
the Most Beautiful Long-Span Steel Bridge in America, in 1966, by the American
Institute for Steel Construction (a self-serving award if ever there was
one). We also visit a lovely old church
in Rancho de Taos, San Francisco di Asis, which is adobe, and apparently
re-adobed (that is a word) every year at great expense to management. It has massive buttresses, but as Peter
noted, they do not fly. It also has some
kind of mystery painting that may have magical powers but we do not opt for the
$3 tour to the parish hall to see it.
Instead, we amuse ourselves by imagining the many options that a “Prefix
Meal” might offer at Old Martina’s Hall restaurant across the street. All starters, says Peter. En fuego, he is!
This part of America is home to great stories and great
characters, and great stories about great characters, but one local hero is the
guide/Indian Agent/explorer/mapper and trapper Kit Carson. They mostly love him in these parts, even
though I think he may have been on the side of the Feds (such as they were
then, really just the Americans) in the little-known-outside-of-here Taos
Revolt of 1847. You’ve probably heard of
the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 – an effort to get rid of the Spanish – but this one
targeted the (second) Americans almost 200 years later. When the territory surrendered to American
forces in 1846 (this is Mexican-American War time, remember?), the locals –
Pueblo and Mexican alike – were not happy.
They worried, rightly, that all the Amis really wanted were their
business interests and land, esp. along the Rio Grande River. So in an effort to get rid of the Yanks, they
set about killing a bunch of officials in January 1846, including the guv,
Charles Bent. Not surprisingly (why
you’ve never heard of this), it doesn’t end well for the insurrectionists, as hundreds
die in standoffs over the next few days in nearby towns and at the pueblo
itself. Then a vindic-a-tive court is
set up, and a bunch more are sentenced to hang in Taos Plaza.[1] After a few more battles, hostilities end
between the Spanish/Mexicans and the Americans, and it is American territory –
if not happily – going forward.
Carson wasn’t involved in this episode, but if I read the
fading plaques correctly, he and others probably helped the families of the
targeted men to escape the violence. And
you know what, it doesn’t take a lot of digging on the interwebs to learn that,
from the First Americans perspective, Carson and his crowd have a far more
complicated legacy. Although he’d lived
with and been married to Indians, and spoke several native languages, Carson
was also an army officer, and as such participated in some less-than-nice
actions against the native populations. For example, there was no love lost
between Carson and the not-so-far-away Navajo, for whom he helped orchestrate a
forced removal from Canyon du Chelly in the 1860s.[2]
But you know, Western mountain men are good for the turista
trade so a lot is made of ol’ Kit here.
You can visit his house, for example, or if you are us, you can drive
around and around and around trying to find the graveyard where he is
buried. Which, it turns out, is right
there in Kit Carson Park. Do not trust
the interwebs to guide you there, just listen to Uncle Jim, park and walk and
you’ll find it.
Still, it is worth remembering that the history here is
long, longer than we think about, and memories are long too. The First Americans are still here, engaging
with the Spanish and then the other Americans, sometimes by choice, often not,
and there are lessons to be learned from the complexities of these
stories. The signs urging Taoseños to come to an emergency meeting about
immigration on Friday night remind us that issues of culture and identity are as
fraught here as ever, and respect for all is a trait worth cherishing.
That’s the sermon for today.
But before we move on, a word about the Plaza and
patriotism. While historically the
center of town, the action has moved away from the Plaza in the 21st
c., and now the businesses here are strictly shops for the tourist trade. It is pretty sleepy in the winter. What there is on the Plaza is the requisite memorial to local veterans. It includes midget-sized bronze soldiers and
sailors, gazing sternly into the distance.[3] A
United States flag flies over this memorial 24 hours a day, and that is
important because by Flag Code you are supposed to take it down every night.[4] What’s so special about Taos Plaza? During the Civil War, that great Unionist Kit
Carson was part of a group that set up a 24-hour guard around the Union colors
on the Plaza, to keep it from being torn down by Confederate sympathizers. That is big in my book, and the Federal
government thinks so too. In recognition
of this devotion, the flag is permitted by Federal custom to fly around the
clock here on Taos Plaza, just as it does at Betsy Ross’ house, Francis Scott
Key’s grave, and the Moon, among other sites.[5]
Oh, and there are some marvelous WPA-era murals in the old
Courthouse, all about the role of Justice in an ordered and godly society. To see them, you have to climb some stairs
that say EACH STEP UP ADDS A SECOND TO YOUR LIFE.
Lunch is at the Alley Cantina – a great bar in the oldest
building in Taos. The bathroom walls are
400 years old! How did they know back
then to put a niche right there for the toilet paper? Peter has a (wait for it) green chile
cheeseburger!
I’ve already stated my general lack of interest in
southwestern art (I know, sacrilege) but I am not unhappily dragged along to
the Millicent Rodgers Museum. As Bill
points out, all the museums here are small, so how painful can it be? And as usual, he is right, and it is
fascinating and we are all glad we went.
Taos is an artist’s haven.
Starting in the 20th c., artists have come here to work,
drawn by the light, the spectacular scenery, the climate, and then, the
artistic community. Millicent was not an
artist, but she was super-rich, and perhaps a bit eccentric. She was also a famed East Coast socialite who’d
been married three times before she
got there, but apparently moved to Taos to recover from a breakup with Clark
Gable (how glamorous is that?). Whatever
her reasons, when she got here she jumped into collecting with both
elegantly-shod feet. She started
dressing in fabulous tight velvet tops that she decorated with about a million
local silver buttons, and flow-y, Hispano-style skirts. Although she died only a few years after
moving out West, she had amassed a large enough collection of art and jewelry
that her friends decided a museum was needed to display it all. Now the collection has expanded to include
exhibits on that world-famous Pueblo potter and self-promoter Maria Martinez,
some Hispano furniture and religious items (gruesome Marys and creepy Jesus’,
that sort of thing), local artists, and Millicent’s own jewelry designs
fashioned by modern artists. We learn
quite a bit about different styles of Native pottery, and also that the term
Anasazi is now on the outs because it turned out that it was basically a Navajo
word that meant bad enemy or something like that. So now, the people-formerly-known-as-Anasazi
are known as Ancestral Puebloans.
Some of us are quite taken by a small temporary exhibit of
watercolors from the Santa Fe Indian School, done in the 1930s, of traditional
Indian dress and dances. They are
delicate and arresting at the same time, and make me re-think my heretofore-monolithic
disdain for southwestern art.
There is a wildly glamorous Horst photograph of Millicent,
in which she is wearing an elegant white satin blouse, and lots of gorgeous western
jewelry, and in which she basically looks like a drag queen. She has very strong features, and
fantastically artificially shaped eyebrows, and Bill and I have seen Trans Scripts so we are, uh, experts
on this.
Questions I have about Millicent and her fabulousness: how did she maintain those eyebrows? And who was responsible for polishing ALL
THAT SILVER?
Dinner tonight is at the prefix restaurant where Peter
breaks with tradition and has, my god, chicken!
Because there is no green chile cheeseburger on the menu.
[1] I don’t believe there is any mention of this rough
justice in the historical signage around the Plaza. Hmm.
[2] Tricky to be an army officer in the west in the 19th
c. for precisely the reasons stated here.
But to his credit, Carson organized New Mexicans to fight for the Union,
although by the time of the war he was too old to fight himself.
[3] What it really looks like is that they ran out of
money after the maquette.
[5] Peter notes that the Wikipedia entry
on the Flag Code states that the latter is partly from practical
necessity.
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