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Oblique Views

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By Adriel Heisey and Maxine McBrinn

On a warm July afternoon in 1929, a small group of archaeologists gathered around a campfire deep in the heart of Arizona’s remote Canyon del Muerto. Light from the flames threw shadows across the nearby thousand-year-old ruins that they had spent the day excavating.

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Adriel Heisey is an aerial photographer known for his sumptuous views of the Southwest and for beautiful and informative photographs of archaeological sites.

Maxine McBrinn is a former curator of archaeology at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. She curated Stepping Out: 10,000 Years of Walking the West, and has written or contributed to many books and articles about the archaeology of the Southwest.

Great Space of Land Unknown

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By Patricia Hewitt
 A Sampler of the Chávez Library Map Collection
BY PATRICIA HEWITT

 Maps can be educational, symbolic, navigational, political, or recreational, and the map collection at the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library (the Chávez Library) has examples of all of them.

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Patricia Hewitt is a former senior cataloger at the New Mexico History Museum Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.

This Is How It Began

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By Valerie Martinez
BY VALERIE MARTÍNEZ
The cyclone leaves blood on the land— hoof prints, imprints of heeled boots, sounds twisting the tongue: caballo, tierra, oro, alma, villa de santa fé. [wonderplugin_slider id=”104″]   (more…)

Valerie Martinez (opens in a new tab) is poet, writer, and educator. She was the poet laureate for the City of Santa Fe from 2008 to 2010. She has published six books of poetry and translation, and her work has appeared widely in literary journals and magazines. Her book-length poem, Each and Her (winner of the 2011 Arizona Book Award), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

That Sink of Vice and Extravagance

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By Matthew Barbour

Santa Fe’s Fort Marcy Military Reservation

BY MATTHEW J. BARBOUR

On August 15, 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny stood on top of a roof in Las Vegas, New Mexico. While an army from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, marched down the road in front of him toward the provincial capital of Santa Fe, he explained the intentions of the United States government to a crowd of local residents: “From the Mexican Government you never received protection. The Apaches and Navajos come down from the mountains and carry off your sheep, and even your women, whenever they please. My government will correct all of this. It will keep off the Indians.”

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Matthew Barbour is the deputy director of New Mexico Historic Sites, a division of New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. He has worked for the department since 2002 holds a BA and MA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. Throughout his decades-long career, he has published more than 200 nonfiction articles and monographs. In 2012 and 2014, he was awared the City of Santa Fe Heritage Preservation Award for Excellence in Archaeology.

223 Years of Colonial Mail in New Mexico

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By Henrietta Martinez Christmas
BY HENRIETTA MARTINEZ CHRISTMAS

If not for the colonial postal system, communications with Mexico and Spain would not have been sustained in the vast frontier we know as New Mexico. The governmental system of transporting mail, loyalty to the Spanish Crown, and the yearning for news beyond what was happening at a local level helped to sustain the colonial towns and villages of New Mexico. What could have been a complicated system worked quite well and improved with time as mail moved over the camino real.

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Henrietta Martinez Christmas is a family historian, lecturer, and researcher. She served as president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society from 2015 to 2016, and is a member of Los Compadres, a support group of the New Mexico History Museum’s Palace of the Governors–her favorite museum.

A House for Fray Alonso

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By Michael Bletzer
The Search for Pilabó Pueblo and the First Piro Mission, Nuestra Señora del Socorro
BY MICHAEL BLETZER

One spring day in 1626, Fray Alonso de Benavides, head of all Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico, stood in the plaza of a pueblo at the foot of a small mountain range just west of the Rio Grande.

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Michael Bletzer is an archaeologist with Four Corners Research and a research associate with Jornada Research Institute. He has worked on archaeological projects in Europe, Central America, and the Southwestern United States. Since 2000 his research has focused on the Piro area of south-central New Mexico.

Those Long Lonesome Roads

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By Tom Ireland
BY TOM IRELAND

When I was nineteen I’d heard rumors of a vast continent west of New York City, but the farthest west I’d ever been was Fort Lee, New Jersey. My college buddies and I planned a motorcycle trip to the West Coast, and when they flaked out on me, I decided to go alone. (more…)

Tom Ireland (opens in a new tab) served as the editor of El Palacio from 2015 to 2016. He is an author known for his books Mostly Mules, a travel journal with photos by Molly Mehaffy; Birds of Sorrow: Notes from a River Junction in Northern New Mexico; Our Love Is Like A Cake, true-life romance in post-Soviet Poland; The Man Who Gave His Wife Away, an essay collection about relationships; and The Household Muse, a collaboration with Anne Valley-Fox. He was awarded a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jeffrey E. Smith award in nonfiction from The Missouri Review. Two of his essays were chosen to appear in Best American Travel Writing.

Searching For Mary Colter

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By Kate Nelson and Meredith Davidson
BY MEREDITH DAVIDSON AND KATE NELSON

While we developed Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, the New Mexico History Museum’s addition to its main exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, Colter’s influence seeped into our souls.

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Kate Nelson (opens in a new tab) is a longtime New Mexico journalist who retired as managing editor of New Mexico Magazine where she earned numerous awards from the International Regional Magazine Association.

Meredith Davidson is a former curator of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Southwest Collections at the New Mexico History Museum. She also edited the book Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest (Museum of New Mexico Press) by author Jack Loeffler.

Exotica Sells!

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By Dennis Reinhartz

New Mexican Popular Promotional Cartography since Statehood

BY DENNIS REINHARTZ

The topographic and related cultural symbols on the popular promotional cartography of a state in the form of actual maps, as well as those on postcards and other souvenirs, reflect the state’s self-image—how it hopes to be seen by and to be attractive to outsiders.

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Dennis Reinhartz is a emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, and has taught at Rutgers, New Jersey Institute of Technology, James Madison University, Bridgewater College, University of London, and Oxford University. He is the author and editor of nine books, including The Art of the Map: An Illustrated History of Map Elements and Embellishments (Sterling, 2012), and numerous book chapters and scholarly articles relating to transatlantic history and cartography. Reinhartz curated the exhibition Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood for the Governor’s Gallery at the New Mexico State Capitol.

El Camino De Agua

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By Michael Miller

Traditional Agriculture Along El Camino Real

BY MICHAEL MILLER

Native people of the  Southwest and Mexico have used the corridor known as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road of the Inner Province) since prehistoric times. Before the arrival of the Spanish and other European settlers, this important trail system served as a communication and trade network, which was a link to the Aztec Empire and other indigenous civilizations in Mesoamerica.

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Michael Miller was raised in Northern New Mexico. He was the founding director of the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico and director of history and literary arts at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. A writer and poet, he is the author of the award-winning book, Monuments of Adobe, and a contributor to Taos: A Topical History, the recipient of the Lansing Bloom Award. He lives with his wife, Antoinette, on their family farm in La Puebla, New Mexico.