The Taos Pueblo

By Marion L. Head

The drive to the Taos Pueblo is anything but inspiring. There is a dirt road off the main highway into Taos, a bunch of high desert scrub and then there is the trailer park. The trailer park is where the Pueblo Indians who don’t want to conform to the no electricity or running water rule of the Pueblo proper reside. It is a trailer park in the most stereotypical sense—lots of rust, junk cars and satellite dishes.

The Taos Pueblo is the oldest continuously occupied site in the United States. The Pueblo Indians have occupied these buildings since between 1000 and 1450 AD—well before the Spanish arrived in 1540 and “discovered” the Pueblo. Sitting at 7,200 feet the Pueblo consists of traditional adobe buildings made of mud and straw bricks. The two largest structures are also the oldest; Hlauuma (north house) and Hlaukwima (south house).

After parking in a dirt lot and paying your ten dollar fee, and an additional five dollar camera fee, you are given a map of the Pueblo. Pay attention to the map because people actually live here year round and you don’t want to walk into someone’s house on an archeological search. There are also parts of the Pueblo that are off limits to non tribe members, religious sites in particular, and they are clearly marked on the map.

When we were there a young woman from the tribe was conducting a tour so we joined in. She was extremely well spoken and I asked her what her plans were. She said she attended the local community college and wanted to be a writer. Her intent is to chronicle the traditional stories of the Taos Indians but said someone tried to do it previously and got in big trouble with the tribe as the tribe keeps its language and some of its culture secret from the public. She explained that to complete her project she would have to get permission from the tribe and didn’t know if they would grant it.

The tour took us to some of the houses within the Pueblo and it was explained that while there are 1,900 Taos Indians in the area only 150 lived in the Pueblo fulltime. Many return to homes they have in the Pueblo for festivals or visits. The houses are adobe structures connected by interior walls and most have doors and windows. Originally the homes did not have doors or windows and were accessed by holes in the roof. It is a constant project to re-plaster the exterior of the houses to repair cracks and keep them waterproof.

Conquistador Hernando de Alvarado, an artillery captain for Coronado, arrived in the Taos valley by following the Rio Grande River northward. He traveled through out Pueblos in the area and met with no hostility from the native people. Unfortunately, we know how that turned out for the Indians and in 1680 they joined together and managed to drive out the Spanish for awhile. In the process they burned the church, St. Jerome, that was built in 1619 and ruins of the church still remain next to the Pueblo’s cemetery. It is a small cemetery and stacked next to the ruins are crumbling wooden grave markers. The Indians do not believe in permanent graves and place wooden markers for the graves. When the marker rots, the grave is free to be reused.

The newest version of the Pueblo’s church, St. Jerome’s, was completed in 1850. The Spanish succeeded in converting the Taos Indians to Catholicism and today 90% practice the faith. Keep in mind when visiting the church that exterior photographs are allowed but none inside.

The inhabited part of the Pueblo is just a small part of the holdings of the tribe. There are now 99,000 acres, in part because in 1970 the tribe succeeded in getting 48, 000 acres returned to them that had been taken as part of the surrounding national forest. Richard Nixon was responsible for returning the land and the tribe holds him in very high regard. Our guide explained this to us almost apologetically, knowing popular opinion of Nixon.

Some of the homes have signs on the door indicating they are shops. The rooms are small, with low ceilings and made of rough adobe with a dirt floor and a wood burning fire pit. One or two native women will be inside selling jewelry and pottery that is made in the Pueblo and has the artist’s name attached.

Wandering through out the Pueblo are dogs of all sizes and shapes and you are warned not to feed or touch them. Many look underfed and some less than healthy and a woman on our tour, away from the guide, ranted about how ‘these people’ didn’t take care of their animals and the local humane society should be involved. I attempted to explain to her that in many cultures dogs are not pets, like we view them, but that did nothing to dissuade her from her soapbox. I thought it was interesting that she could be so critical of a culture yet choose to come there for a visit—and she was more than happy to buy up the jewelry at bargain prices. Ugly Americans can even be ugly in America, I guess.

I found the visit to the Pueblo to be enlightening in learning the history and how the Pueblo is run but like visits to any tribal land in this country it made me sad. Like most tribes, the Taos Indians are an impoverished culture that has lost so much of itself to modern society. It is good to know the Taos Indians are trying to retain their language and the Pueblo they have occupied for so long and I wish them the best in maintaining the traditions of their people. To support that effort is good enough reason to visit.

Photos by Marion L. Head