Thursday, February 1, 2018

Me and the Indians



To start, the use of the term 'native American' is ambiguous and confusing. Having been born here in North America I am Native American, as are most of my readers. My father-in-law was Native British. The Indian ethnic peoples came to this continent some time ago over a land bridge from Siberia and are probably genetically very like the Mongolians. The Spanish arrived early in the 16th century, the Conquistadors, bringing with them a lot of priests, the Roman Catholic religion, and horses. Anglos, who arrived in the 17th century, really began to spread and conquer the West in the 19th century.  Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico experienced the influence of occupation and rule by France, Mexico, and Spain in addition to being Indian and American. To get a feel for this early period in and around Santa Fe read Willa Cather’s very famous novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

I've had extensive contact with only one or two Mexicans. Jose Quezada, who worked for me for over 20 years, was a dear friend and was proud of his Indian heritage. He was a Mestizo, mixed Spanish and Indian. Where I was born, Southern Colorado, we were acutely aware of the differences between Anglos, Spanish, and Indians due to our close proximity to New Mexico where the Pueblo Indian culture dating back over a 1000 years had co-existed with the Spanish since the time of the Conquistadors of the 16th century. The 19th century brought in the Anglo culture with the Santa Fe railroad and Billy the Kid. (Who was part of the Irish diaspora in about 1849) The cultural tension between these 3 ethnic groups continues to this day.

 The Navajos, who are definitely not Pueblo Indians, should not be neglected. The Navajo nation, primarily in Arizona, extends east into western New Mexico and should really be included as a fourth cultural entity. There is no question that there occurred a lot of mixture early on between the Spanish and the Pueblo Indians. In a real sense the Pueblo Indians were pretty much enslaved by the Spanish and the result has been that Spanish is widely spoken among the Pueblo population and many surnames are Spanish. However, today we also find that many Pueblo Indians have readopted their original Indian names, as have the Navajos.

Languages: English is the primary tongue and is spoken by all, but there are four languages still in regular use: Tewa and Keres for the Northern and southern Pueblos, Spanish, for many of all groups, and Navajo, made famous by the code talkers of WWII. Navajo is interesting in that it is unique to the Navajo Nation and to some tribes in northwestern Washington State. It is structurally different from all other languages. I need to say that I am not an expert on this subject and only know what various Indians have told me.

An interesting note: Barbara and I traveled extensively throughout the southwest during our lives. In restaurants and stores we could always tell the difference between the Indian and the Mestizo, even though they might look much the same. The Indian's English sounded Middle American and the Mestizo or Spanish American always had the Spanish accent. There is an interesting reason for this. Until relatively recently the U. S. Government ran the schools on the reservations, discouraged the use of native tongues, and strictly enforced the teaching of standard English. Fortunately there has recently been a resurgence of interest in the original native languages.

One experience I have told more than once: many years ago we visited the Acoma Pueblo in western New Mexico. I stopped to talk with a very pleasant woman selling souvenirs. During the conversation I asked her if she and her people preferred to be called Native Americans or Indians. She laughed and said, "Indians, of course." Later in the conversation she told me her son was a lieutenant in the Army at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. 

That brings up the story of Kit Carson, an Anglo army scout, who eventually became a general in the U. S. Army. After the campaigns he married a Jicarilla Indian, his third wife, and settled in Taos, New Mexico. They had eight children together. The photos below taken from Wikipedia are typical of what Carson’s father-in-law and wife might have looked like but we have no record of their actual appearance. The Jicarilla Reservation is relatively small and lies north and west of Taos abutting the Colorado state line.

 


When I was a child I attended the Ski Hi Stampede every year in Monte Vista, a town about 18 miles west of my hometown of Alamosa. The parade often featured as marshal, Kit Carson III on horseback leading the way. He spoke only Spanish. 

I grew up with many Spanish speaking friends who were not Mestizos. They looked just like any other white European. In southern Colorado, at least, the Spanish did not mix with the Indians. Also over the centuries the Pueblo Indians had little or no contact or interaction with the Aztecs to the south. There are a myriad of small towns in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado having heavy populations of Spanish. The oldest town in Colorado, San Luis, is populated primarily by ethnic Spanish. Ken Salazar, Barrack Obama's Secretary of the Interior, is from an old Spanish family of Alamosa.

I can’t sign off on this topic without telling about my first Indian. I was about eight years old. My dad was the manager of the Penney store in Alamosa. One day after school I was sitting in the Elks club just around the corner waiting for him to get off work when a man that I later learned was a Navajo Indian came in the door. He spoke to me and asked if I knew how to play pool. I said “no” and he offered to teach me. He taught me how to hold the cue and we hit a few balls until my dad showed up. It was a very unusual situation since there are no Indians in that part of Colorado. I have no idea what his name was or where he came from but I will surely never forget him or the experience.




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