New Mexico

“ THE marvelous blue night of New Mexico had soothed the fevered land to grateful coolness and softened every savage outline until the ragged mountains were as purple velvet, and the great alkali flat below lay glimmering like the ghost of a departed lake enshrouded by long mists of shadow. ”

“ The country north of Santa Fe is the heart of Indian and Spanish New Mexico. Here, if he looks beyond the narrow boundaries of the highway right-of-way, the traveler can see Indian and Spanish villages which have not changed significantly in two and a half centuries. Along the lush green of the Rio Grande Valley or of its tributaries dashing out of the Sangre de Cristo range to the east, these sleepy concentrations of people reveal cultural and language patterns which smack of the conquistadores of the sixteenth century or of the ancient cliff dwellers. ”

“ But heroes can only lead an age, never surpass it. History, then, is people and their catalyst, ideas.
The history of New Mexico, like twentieth century science, is multi-dimensional. Its complex cultural patterns fit with the intricate variety of its geologic wonders and its flora and fauna. In reality, New Mexico is a part of a broader concept, the Southwest. This vast region, which includes western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, part of southern Colorado, and southern Utah, has given rise to some of man’s greatest achievements. ”

“ He will wonder, after traversing the border counties at the western edge of the Great Plains, at the infrequency of plowlands, and will promptly conclude that New Mexico is one vast, bare desert—an impression that will be corrected rapidly when he visits the dark National Forests where the slim, crowded spruces and firs tower skyward. ”

“ Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, are vast, remote, and varied fields with which danger and hardship, wonder and mystery are ever associated. The country itself embraces great contrarieties of scenery and topography—the rich farm, the expansive cattle ranch, the broad lonely prairie watered by majestic rivers, the barren desert, the lofty plateau, the secluded mining settlement, and vast mountain ranges furrowed by torrents into black cañons where sands of gold lie heaped in inaccessible, useless riches.
The forms of human society are almost equally diverse. ”

“ The cultural heritage of New Mexico is a rich and colorful one, blending as it does the three separate traditions of Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-American. Of these, the lifeways of the Indian, ancient and modern, are of particular interest to both the visitor and resident. These were the first inhabitants of the New World, whose roots extend back in time many thousands of years before the first European set foot here. People who had adapted themselves to the varied and often harsh environments of desert, plain, valley, canyon, and mountain ”

“ New Mexico, it must be remembered, is more Indian and Mexican than American by a proportion of three to one, and includes a sprinkling of negro and Chinese. The Indian lends a touch of the primitive; the Mexican brings Spain into the picture. In doorways painted sky blue or lavender, swarthy women gossip, in mantilla and fringed black shawl. Against a shady wall, in sash and sombrero, all but too lazy to light the inevitable cigarette, slouches a Mexican who should be working. ”

“ Well, you are going to a perilous place, over a most perilous trail, in a most perilous time of national affairs, to meet such treacherously villainous men as New Mexico offers in her market-places right now? ”

“ Indian, Spanish, American—vital forces that are today working toward a genuinely unique culture in New Mexico. The modern world may well give to the Southwest the idea or catalyst that will blend these elements into a single force. Science, techniques, ideas are things of the present and are for the present to assess and synthesize. The Indian gods of air, earth, and sky and the white man’s gods of morality and science do not differ a great deal in their aspirations for their chosen people, and perhaps they will decree a splendid and unique synthesis from the cultural mosaic. ”

“ In the history of New Mexico it may not be improper to record the name of James Pursley, the first American who ever penetrated the immense wilds of Louisiana, and showed the Spaniards of New Mexico that neither the savages who surround the deserts which divide them from the habitable world, nor the jealous tyranny of their rulers, was sufficient to prevent the enterprising spirit of the Americans from penetrating the arcanum of their rich establishment in the new world. ”

“ The world began to go ahead of the people of New Mexico. Only in the house of the rico was there any sign of the wealth and grandeur of Spain; everywhere else was poverty. Farming was left in the hands of the Indian, while the Spaniard chose to be a man on horseback, a cattleman, an aristocrat. In the final analysis, Spanish New Mexico would not develop as democratic and agricultural, but aristocratic and feudal. ”

“ And the sun, smiling down so placidly on the river and the little towns lying near its banks, seems never to heed the death-cry of the helpless peon or the lonely wayfarer laid low in the dust by the prowling savage, but goes on lighting up the cloudless sky-dome, and bringing into strong relief the different features of scenery, life, and customs, that make a journey through New Mexico resemble a sojourn in the Holy Land. ”

“ New Mexico.In this lake there are large and beautiful islands inhabited by the Iroquois, who are a great people; the farther [29] we penetrate into the country, the more we find it inhabited: so much so that (if we can believe the Spaniards) in the country called New Mexico, a long distance to the Southwest of these Iroquois, there are regularly built cities and houses of three and four stories, and even domesticated cattle, whence they have named a certain river, Rio de las Vaccas, or Cow river, because they saw a large number of them grazing on its banks. ”

“ The Spanish, too, succumbed to a stronger people and have been denied the privilege commonly accorded to conquered peoples, that of mixing their blood with that of the conquerors. One finds today in New Mexico three distinct people—Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-American—as sharply contrasted as the strands in a Navajo blanket. There is pure red alongside white, and only rarely do the colors blend into pinks or grays. This is why we must say that New Mexico is a mosaic, not a synthesis, of many elements, clearly defined. ”

“ In contemplating the growth of cities and towns, the insatiable suburbs, congested streets and highways, the acres of dump yards for discarded automobiles, legions of billboards upstaging mountain ranges and seashores, and the melancholy predictions of demographers who say that within thirty years there will be twice as many of us, consider this: for New Mexico in particular, the outlook is not utterly bleak. ”

“ When driving across New Mexico or when visiting some part of the state, one should be aware of the wealth of history that is always close at hand. Many people, when faced with what seems like endless miles of empty country, fail to realize that the very emptiness is one of the charms of the state. They also do not recognize that in the vast expanses of mountain and desert, people of the ancient past or a recent past have lived and worked and died. ”

“ The Antiquary—with this apt quotation from Cumming's "Land of Poco Tiempo"—began his first lecture before the club.
"'New Mexico,'" quoted he, "'is the anomaly of the Republic. It is a century older in European civilization than the rest, and several centuries older still in a happier semi-civilization of its own. It had its little walled cities of stone before Columbus had grandparents-to-be; and it has them yet.'
"There are," stated Mr. Morehouse, "three typical races in New Mexico. The American interpolation does not count as a type. ”

“ While Spain lost its empire and New Mexico and the Southwest sank into poverty and decay, yet another force was on the march, a force that welled up in an Anglo-American people clinging to the Atlantic Coast of North America. As these people developed a nation, they also discovered a sense of destiny which turned their faces to the west and their footsteps toward the sunset. With them moved their culture. At first, it was a trickle, a few traders bent on profit, crossing the plains on the Santa Fe Trail. ”

“ For now, as Colonel Frost has so ably and comprehensively noted, "New Mexico is strictly up to date in its government, in its hotels, its railroad accommodations, in the protection the law affords, in its universities, colleges, public schools, sanitariums, charitable institutions, its progress, and in its prosperity. Churches are found in every settlement, newspapers in every town, together with fine stores, banking institutions, and every safety, comfort, and luxury that the centres of civilization of the East afford." ”

“ The Natives of Old Mexico say they are not of that Race of People, but that their Ancestors came from divers Nations, who inhabited the Northern parts of the Continent, and particularly that call’d New Mexico ”

“ See Swedenborgianism.
New Mexico (154) , an extensive territory embracing the SW. end of North America and the larger part of the great isthmus which unites the two Americas; was in 1848 detached from Mexico (q. v.) , and constituted a part of the American Union; consists mainly of elevated plateau, sloping to the S., and traversed by ranges of the Rocky Mountains; the precious metals are widely distributed, especially silver; good deposits of coal and copper are also found. In the broad river valleys excellent crops are raised, and stock-raising is an important industry. ”

“ East-central New Mexico, like the northeast, is an area of plains and mountains. Here the buffalo roamed, and in their place, cattle now utilize the hardy and nutritious grasses of the High Plains. Mountains are the Manzano, southeast of Albuquerque, and Sierra Blanca, near Carrizozo, as well as numerous minor ranges. Also in this region is some harsh and desolate country, seared by the southwestern sun and lacking in rainfall, but supporting the exotic plants and wildlife typical of the Sonoran desert regions. ”

“ New Mexico is a frontier Province, and has never been of any considerable value to Mexico. From its locality it is naturally connected with our Western settlements. The territorial limits of the State of Texas, too, as defined by her laws before her admission into our Union, embrace all that portion of New Mexico lying east of the Rio Grande, while Mexico still claims to hold this territory as a part of her dominions. The adjustment of this question of boundary is important. ”

“ In this respect, man in the twentieth century shares an experience in common with Coronado, Oñate, and all the other conquistadores who visited New Mexico so many generations ago. They, too, found the ancient Indian cultures strangely magnetic and exciting. If we could but remove the asphalt highways, the billboards, the telephone poles, and fences that seem always to surround us, the Indian villages in many parts of the state would look very much as they looked to the early Spanish explorers who were the first Europeans to see them. ”

“ One of these is the country of New Mexico, containing many towns, and 100,000 inhabitants. These are of the Spanish and mixed Indian races. Another oasis is the country around the Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Here is also a settlement, established in 1846. Its people are Americans and Englishmen. They are the Mormons; and, although they dwell hundreds of miles from any sea, they seem likely to become a large and powerful nation of themselves. ”

“ New Mexico, on the other hand, insists conditionally-that is, only if its exceptions as to the location in 1850 are not sustained-that in determining the accretions in the Country Club area the master fixed the line of such accretions in an indefinite manner and not far enough to the east. We find that the contention of Texas is well taken and the conditional contention of New Mexico is therefore immaterial. ”

“ From the Illinois, and from lesser posts among the Osages, Missouris, and Kansas, traders worked among these tribes, the Iowas, Otos, Pawnees of the Platte, and other more northern bands of Indians.
Interest in New Mexico.—French voyageurs, chasseurs, and traders of Louisiana and Canada continued to look with covetous eyes toward New Mexico. To the adventurer it was a land promising gold and silver and a path to the South Sea; to the merchant it offered rich profits in trade. The natural avenues of approach to this Promised Land were the Red, Arkansas, and Missouri Rivers. ”

“ This river is fordable for horsemen in the droughts of summer; the streams which join it in New Mexico, are of no moment, the country being in general dry; near the northern part some rivers rise which have been conjectured to be the Red River, and Arkansas of Louisiana; but the geography of the countries to the west and east of New Mexico, remains in a very defective state.
The eastern towns of New Mexico, as well as its villages, are in general thickly peopled, on account of the proximity of the country to tribes of warlike Indians. ”

“ There is one short trip that would be fruitful for him who wants to know New Mexico, to feel the romance of Spanish culture, and to seek adventure off the beaten track. Just north of Española, State Highway 76 strikes east from U.S. 64. Nowhere in the state can be found so much of old world charm or spectacular scenic beauty. Heading east, the traveler passes through Chimayó, a village famed throughout the world for its weaving, though seldom visited, then on through Truchas and Las Trampas to Penasco, heart of the Penitente country. ”