Cowboys & Indians / January 2010 / Celebrating 400 years of Santa Fe history

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Celebrating 400 years of Santa Fe history

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Santa Fe is a small city with a big rep, and a really longstanding one. By most accounts the oldest continuously occupied state capital — and at 7,000 feet above sea level, the highest state capital in the United States — it began as a smattering of Pueblo Indian villages around A.D. 1000.

We know it now as an art colony with fabulous restaurants and inspired museums, but that wasn’t what Spanish explorers found in 1598 when they rode in on horses with Juan de O"ate, the first provincial governor of New Mexico, who came with a mandate to colonize New Mexico. It was the third governor of New Mexico, Pedro de Peralta, who officially established the settlement in 1610.

He gave the fledgling settlement a big name, blue blood, and a patron saint all in one, christening the town La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, or The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Just in time to celebrate the city’s 400th anniversary, the $44 million New Mexico History Museum opened its doors in 2009 to tell such tales of Santa Fe’s past.

The City Different will be celebrating just about everything from 1610 to 2010 — with all the requisite memorabilia.

On the truly memorable side, there are Santa Fe 400th Spanish Colonial gold- and silver-coin jewelry from Doug Magnus and commemorative crosses from Jennifer Jesse Smith.

There are Santa Fe 400th license plates, and, of course, Santa Fe 400th T-shirts, hoodies, baseball caps, tote bags, and coffee mugs — souvenirs no doubt emblazoned with 400th commemorative logo and some nod to the famous denizens — Indians, conquistadors, cowboys, and artists — that give Santa Fe its multicultural flavor.

But beyond the consumerism, of course, there’s a rich history that makes this adobe town one of the country’s treasures.

When Santa Fe author Hampton Sides wrote Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, he probably wasn’t thinking about the Santa Fe 400th, but he was intent on finding out everything about the summer of 1846, when the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the western territories claimed by Mexico.

Then came the Spanish explorers Cabeza de Vaca and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in the mid-1500s, followed by O"ate’s colonizing expedition in 1598 and Peralta’s founding of the Villa de Santa Fe and building of the Palace of the Governors in 1610. “The cowboys came with the Spanish. The whole tradition of working cattle is something the Spanish brought to New Mexico in 1598. The vaquero tradition — that is the whole basis of cowboy culture and herding animals and taking care of cows and sheep and horses and goats — is something the Spanish introduced,” says Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum.

The 1600s were a formative period. “The horse really changed forever New Mexico history,” Levine says. “By the early 17th century, Pueblo people and Spanish people were cowboys. A cowboy wasn’t an ethnic identity: It was an occupation and a necessity. Nobody was strutting around in leathers and conchos to make a fashion statement. They were cowboys because they worked cattle and they used the cows and horses as a way of life.”

The Pueblo Indians resented Spanish rule, and in 1680 the Indians rose up in the Pueblo Revolt, driving the Spaniards out of Santa Fe and south to what is now El Paso, Texas. Twelve years later, in 1692, the Spanish reestablished Santa Fe as a Spanish colony under Spanish rule, reoccupying the Palace of the Governors — an event celebrated to this day by the annual Fiestas each September. In 1821, New Mexico became part of the newly independent Mexico, but in 1848 it was annexed as a territory of the United States, becoming a U.S. state in 1912. Through it all, the Santa Fe area was a literal and cultural crossroads. “All the nomadic [Indian] tribes came through as trade partners near Santa Fe,” says Levine. In those days, the Palace of Governors was “like the United Nations, drawing all these different people — Navajo leaders, Comanche leaders, Apache, Ute, Pueblo leaders.” The cultural mix was sometimes volatile. In 1844 at the Palace of Governors, “Ute leaders came down to see the governor and the governor didn’t greet them in quite the right way,” Levine says. “They rode their horses right into his office! There was a scene where the governor was nearly killed.”

When a Missouri adventurer rode into Santa Fe with a string of pack mules loaded with trade goods on November 16, 1821, the Santa Fe Trail was opened and Santa Fe’s identity as a trade center solidified. “On that date,” recounts historian Marc Simmons in Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City, “the capital, population 5,000, was an unlovely huddle of one-story adobe buildings grouped around a plaza, a weathered governor’s palace, and several chocolate-brown churches whose numerous bells daily created a din, according to one traveler, that could wake the dead.” But with the trail came more evidence of civilization: Regular mail service arrived in the 1850s; then in 1879 the railroad came down from Colorado into Las Vegas, New Mexico, reaching Santa Fe in 1880.

And with the railroad came artists and the beginning of a reputation that would stay with Santa Fe. “The coming of the railroad got Santa Fe going as an art town,” Levine says. “It became a kind of colony of artists and writers and thinkers. There was a convergence, a synergy of anthropologists and photographers and painters. They came here because of the architecture, the light, the Native people. They were looking for a more authentic American experience.” The city delivered authenticity and then some. When Charles Fletcher Lummis, then a young journalist, visited in 1884, he described it as “probably one of the most interesting places on the continent, and certainly the most unique.”

Professional artists from the East had been making painting pilgrimages to Santa Fe since the 1880s, drawn by the area’s natural beauty, Pueblo cultures, and old Spanish villages. But the first artists who settled permanently in Santa Fe did so for its dry, clean air, which helped cure respiratory ailments.

The early 1900s saw the arrival in Santa Fe of painters Carlos Vierra, Sheldon Parsons, Victor Higgins, Gerald Cassidy, and William Penhallow Henderson. Vierra was one of the first to call Santa Fe home, arriving in 1904 to be treated at St. Vincent Sanitarium. The first artist to reside permanently in the Canyon Road neighborhood was Gerald Cassidy, who was known for Southwestern and Native themes. In 1898 he had entered a sanitarium in Albuquerque with severe pneumonia and six months to live. In 1912, fully recovered and newly married, Cassidy relocated to Santa Fe and devoted himself to painting full time. In 1914, he bought a house on Canyon Road, where he had a studio. He died of carbon-monoxide poisoning in 1934 while working on a mural art project for the St. Francis Auditorium in Santa Fe. 

It was more than the curative air, of course, that made Canyon Road a perfect place for art to thrive. “Santa Fe and Taos both emerged because of that unique combination of architecture and light and acceptance. The people who came found a certain refuge,” Levine says. In 1917 the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico (now known as the New Mexico Museum of Art) was formed. By the 1920s, Santa Fe was a famed art colony, having attracted Robert Henri, John Sloan, Andrew Dasburg, and Fremont Ellis. It was Ellis who co-founded Los Cinco Pintores, an avant-garde group of five modern painters, all under the age of 30 at the time. Joining Ellis were Willard Nash, Jozef Bakos, Will Shuster, and Walter Mruk.

When the Great Depression brought ruin to so many Americans, the Santa Fe artists hunkered down. “Santa Fe photographer Ernest Knee once said that in Santa Fe the twenties lasted into the thirties,” writes Edna Robertson and Sarah Nestor in Artists of the Canyons and Caminos: Santa Fe, The Early Years. “It seems evident that the worldwide Depression did not hit as hard in Santa Fe as in other parts of the country because the area was largely rural. Life had always been rugged on the little ranchos, but there was an adobe house, room to graze a few animals, wood to burn, and food could be grown.” Funds allocated from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) project in the 1930s helped employ Santa Fe artists like Gustave Baumann. Artists kept arriving, notably Alfred Morang, Bill Lumpkins, Georgia O’Keeffe, Chiricahua Apache sculptor Allan Houser, and nature photographer Eliot Porter. So did writers — among them, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, and Willa Cather — and architects, including John Gaw Meem, who popularized the Pueblo Revival style that traced back to the Indians.

Santa Fe is a place that always traces back to the Indians. Its original inhabitants are the essential character of the place, with overlays of the Spanish and cowboys and creatives who came later. The Indian culture continues to influence Santa Fe, with still-occupied pueblos surrounding the Rocky Mountain city and Indian artists —silversmiths, potters, painters, sculptors — infusing the city of 70,000 with an authentic aesthetic. This is the culture, after all, that existed long before the 400 years of European settlement being celebrated in 2010. And it is the culture that teaches most about the city. “What you learn from Native people is about a rootedness to a place, a commitment and patience,” says Levine. “It’s about taking the time to understand the place — the light, the rain, the drought.” The things you need to learn to live in Santa Fe, the things that have made it a jewel in the Land of Enchantment.

2010 Events

If you visit during Santa Fe 400th, you can immerse yourself in the cultural mix that makes Santa Fe unique. January: Traditional Indian dances at surrounding pueblos. www.indianpueblo.org.

May 22-23: Native Treasures. Art show with more 140 Native artists. www.nativetreasuressantafe.org.

June: Rodeo de Santa Fe. www.rodeodesantafe.org.

Summer: Santa Fe Cinema. Outdoor screenings. www.santafe400th.com.

July 10–11: Santa Fe International Folk Art Market. www.folkartmarket.com.

July 24: Dinner Impossible. Historical dinner re-creation inspired by diaries dated hundreds of years ago. Prepared by the Santa Fe School of Cooking, the event is held at El Rancho de Las Golondrinas living history museum. www.santafe400th.com, www.golondrinas.org.

July 24–25: Traditional Spanish Market. Spanish Colonial arts made by more than 200 Hispanic artists. www.spanishcolonial.org.

August 21-22: Santa Fe Indian Market. More than 1,000 Native American artists. www.swaia.org.

September 9: 86th Burning of Will Shuster’s Zozobra and Fiestas. www.zozobra.com.

December 4-5: Winter Spanish Market. www.spanishcolonial.org.

December 24: Canyon Road Farolito Walk.

December 31, 2010: New Year’s Eve Gala Closing Ball. www.santafe400th.com. For more information about Santa Fe 400th, visit www.santafe400th.com.

 

2010 Santa Fe International Folk Market

The largest international folk market of its kind, the seventh Santa Fe International Folk Art Market is slated for July 10-11, 2010. This annual market connects world cultures with the mission of ensuring a dignified and sustainable living for folk artists. Through sponsorships in 2009 the market was able to contribute $80,000 in financial assistance for 26 artists; 130 booths showed work by 132 artists from 46 countries. About 24,000 people attended, with sales of $1.93 million. Artists retain 90 percent of their sales; last year, the take for individuals artists averaged slightly less than $13,000. There were shawls of pashmina goat wool, jewelry, carved wooden boxes, textiles, metal sculpture, Peruvian wood carvings, ancient Chinese shields, Mexican beads and milagros, Georgian boots, woodcarvings from Bhutan, Bolivian woven grass bags, Kenyan beading, felt work from Kyrgyzstan, and Mexican lead-free ceramic pottery. The 2010 show promises to be even bigger. For more information, visit www.folkartmarket.org.

— W.S.

Where To Stay In Santa Fe

Inn on the Alameda

A perfect base of operations in the heart of the city, this cozy and intimate hotel knows what makes a home away from home and a lovely getaway all rolled into one. Located between the plaza and Canyon Road galleries, the inn is not overstating an iota when it describes itself as “centrally located but tucked behind thick adobe walls … an oasis of serenity enclosed within colorful xeriscaped gardens, stone courtyards, and quiet patios.” We love the suites, the kiva fireplaces, exquisite bedding, and tasteful Southwestern décor. Your stay includes breakfast and an afternoon wine-and-cheese reception — the breakfast is huge and a delicious spread, the reception relaxing and the perfect way station between an active day and an evening out. When we’re back “home” for the night here, we like curling up in the plush cotton robes and taking in the pinyon-scented air. Free wireless Internet, free on-site parking, cable TV and HBO in all rooms. 888.984.2121, www.innonthealameda.com.

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