geography

NEW MEXICO Historical/Cultural Geography #1

INTRODUCTION and INDIAN ERA

Geography 325V

Dr. Wright

Learning Objectives

 The learning objectives for the next five lectures

are many.  We will cover a great sweep of time and immense cultural/land

tenure changes in New Mexico.

 I will provide a detailed Study Guide for the exam on this section so

don’t stress when you see the mass of information to come

 Be sure to focus both on factual knowledge and our big

question:

 “Why is New Mexico so poor and what should we do

about it?”

 Does the historical/cultural geography of the state

play a role in NM’s persistent high poverty rate?

New Mexico: Why so many difficult challenges in such a wonderful place?

 2 million people

 GDP $74 billion

 45th in Household

Incomes

 1st- 3rd Highest Poverty

Rate

 Agriculture

 Just $2.2 billion in

products

 35th in Ag Production

 25% of jobs are Gov’t

 Need for more businesses

and jobs

 Need to diversify away

from oil and gas

 43rd “Smartest State”

 50th in 8th Grade test

scores

 48th in Health Index

 6th Highest Crime Rate

Is Land Tenure a Factor?

 Whose land is it?

 Whose land was it?

 What should the land be used for: who decides?

 How can the State of New Mexico prosper and reduce its social problems without resolving these questions?

 New Mexico’s historical and cultural geography is marked by extraordinary and complex conflicts over land tenure  And these conflicts continue today

New Mexico History of Land Tenure A story of “Cumulative Occupants” in 8 Eras

 Unoccupied by humans

 Until 15,000 years ago

 Early arrivals

 Clovis hunters

 Anasazi and Mogollon

 2500 BCE -1300 CE

 Farmers

 Chaco Canyon

 Pueblo Nations

 1300 onward

 Taos, Jemez, and 18 other Pueblo nations

 Athabaskan Nations

 About 1300 onward

 Navajo

 Jicarilla Apache

 Mescalero Apache

 Spanish Era

 1539-1821

 Mexican Era

 1821-1848

 American Era

 1848 to the present

New Mexico is Unusually Diverse

 Can you think of another U.S. state who’s

historical/cultural geography is this

complex?

 How does NM’s cultural diversity influence

the state’s efforts to reduce poverty?

 What does this phrase mean?

 E pluribus unum

Genes and Human Migration

Paleo-Indian

Population

Densities

12,000 BP

 High

 Medium

 Low

 #6

Blackwater

Draw, NM

Clovis Era Hunters

“Clovis” Point Weapons

Portales, New Mexico Blackwater Draw Archeological Site

• Bones of mammoth, camel, ancestral horse,

bison, saber tooth tiger, dire wolf

Hunting and gathering for thousands of years

“Ancient

Ones”

farming

civilizations

form

Chaco Canyon

The Center of the Anasazi World

 Hunter gatherers in NM 12,000+ years ago

 500 CE – Pithouse settlements in Chaco Canyon

 900-1150 CE – peak of Chacoan Culture

 Major stone building complexes

 Pueblo Bonito

 Ketro Chetl

 Casa Rinconada

 Kin Kletso

 Kivas – round ceremonial underground chambers

 Sun Dagger on Fajada Butte (solar/lunar cycles)

Pueblo Bonito

Pueblo Bonito

 “The Center of the Center” of the Chacoan world

 Built in sections over 250 years

 Religious, ceremonial purposes

 Grain storage and trade?

 Roads radiate outward connecting to other pueblos

 Hundreds of rooms, dozens of kivas

 50,000 wooden beams needed

 Hauled from Chuska Mountains 50 miles away

 Tree-ring chronologies used to date the buildings

Near-Perfect

alignment

North/South

East/West

Great

knowledge

of sun and

stars

Great Kiva” - Pueblo Bonito

Chetro Ketl

Casa Rinconada

Kin Kletso

Chaco artifacts

Chaco Artifacts: copper bells,

seashells, Scarlet Macaws

 Trade with Mexico existed

 Skulls with sharpened teeth (Aztec influence)

 Corn as a crop

 Teosinte grass origin

of corn in Mexico

Did Toltecs from Mexico attack

Chaco, kill and eat Anasazi?

 Or faced with drought

and soil depletion, did

the Anasazi engage

in cannibalism?

Or were the “butchered

bones” something else?

Petroglyphs

Pictographs

1054 Supernova

Fajada Butte

Rocks positioned to use the sun

to mark the seasons

Summer Solstice “The Sun Dagger”

Winter Solstice

Fajada Butte Sun Dagger A Solar Calendar in Stone

Chacoan “Roads” Up to 30 feet wide

Stairway

Peñasco

Blanco

Photoshop

Recreation

Aztec Ruins National Monument

Aztec, New Mexico

Recreated Kiva

Aztec Ruins

Mesa Verde

Bandelier National Monument

Bandelier ruins

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Mogollon Culture

Paquime Ruins Mogollon Culture (Chihuahua, Mexico)

Casa Grande Ruins Hohokam Culture (Arizona)

Old Circular Hohokam Village

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Hohokam Extensive irrigation ditch system

Phoenix Hohokam Irrigation Ditches

Anasazi world began to crash

about 1150 CE

 “The Great Drought” – lasted 300 years

 Tree-ring evidence

 Soils, timber, grass used up, springs going dry

 Four Corners settlements such as Chaco Canyon

were eventually abandoned

 Pueblo Nations sprung from these roots  About year 1300 (much debated question)

 New settlements were created or expanded where there

was water, timber, and grazing

 Pueblos along Rio Grande and near the Jemez and

Sangre de Cristo mountains

How tree rings reveal drought

Taos Pueblo

San Ildefonso Pueblo

San Ildefonso Pueblo

Isleta Pueblo, 1912

Isleta Pueblo

Zuni Pueblo

Acoma Pueblo

Acoma

Athabaskans Arrive 1200-1400 Na-Diné Language Family

Canadian Dene People

Athabaskans 18th Century Distribution

 N – Navajo

 J – Jicarilla Apache

 M – Mescalero Apache

 Ch – Chiricahua Apache

Na-Diné Languages

Athabascans Na-Dené Language

Family

• Southern branch

– Navajo

– Apache

• Several nations

Athabaskan Nations

Reservations

• Navajo

• Jicarilla

Apache

• Mescalero

Apache

• Other

Apache

Nations

Navajos 1908

Navajo Ranch Hands

Jicarilla Apache Nation

• “Ndee” or “Dine’é”

– “The People”

• Arrived about 1400

• Reservation 1887

Jicarilla Apache Reservation

Mescalero Apache Nation

 Consider Chiricahua and Lipan Apaches

Sub-tribes

 Reservation in Sacramento Mountains

Cochise Chiricahua Apache; descendants live on

Mescalero Reservation

Dragoon Mountains, AZ Where Cochise’s band found refuge

St. Joseph Apache Mission

Mescalero Apaches

Sierra Blanca 12,003’

Pre-Columbian Populations

1492

 Americas  54 million is the current estimate

 Declined to 5.5 million by 1650 from diseases,

war, and starvation caused by European conquest

 North America (excluding Mexico)  2-6 million (estimates vary)

 Current Indian population is 6 million, but many people are mixed-race (with Spanish, English, other ancestry)

 Southwest

 200,000?

Indians in New Mexico Today

200,000 Indians: 10% of total population

 Anasazi/Mogollon

 20 Pueblo Nations

 Taos, Picuris, Ohkay Owingeh, Santa Clara, Nambe, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Tesuque, Cohiti, Santo Domingo, Jemez, Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Sandia, Isleta, Laguna, Acoma, Zuni, Tortugas

 Athabaskan

 Na-Diné Language

Family

 3 Nations

 Navajo

 Jicarillo Apache

 Mescalero Apache

Indians in

New

Mexico

Chaco Canyon

Indian Reservations 96% of the land was lost

Imagine that conquest, death, and losing

much of your land was your history

 Would it change your thinking about how the

world works?

 Would it change your economic possibilities?

 Your politics?

 Your sense of what “New Mexico” is a geographic

and cultural landscape?

 Would “land tenure” be more than a stuffy sounding

academic phrase to you?

Indians: the first “New Mexicans”

 Pueblo Nations and Athabaskan Nations

had claimed the landscape, adapted to it,

fought over it, migrated, traded, inter-

married, and exchanged culture

 New Mexico was not unoccupied nor a

pristine wilderness in the 16th Century – it

was a complex cultural landscape with a

long history of land tenure change

Events far away would soon change the

landscape forever

 An empire in Europe whose drive for

conquest and expansion was shaped by its

own long history of land tenure conflict was

about to arrive in what is now “New

Mexico”

 This arrival still resonates today

Spanish Empire “The Sword and the Cross”

Learning Objectives

 The learning objectives for the next five lectures

are many.  We will cover a great sweep of time and immense cultural/land

tenure changes in New Mexico.

 I will provide a detailed Study Guide for the exam on this section so

don’t stress when you see the mass of information to come

 Be sure to focus both on factual knowledge and our big

question:

 “Why is New Mexico so poor and what should we do

about it?”

 Does the historical/cultural geography of the state

play a role in NM’s persistent high poverty rates?