Local Landscape

Hopi cardinal directions are defined by the sun. Northwest is where the sun sets on the summer solstice and southwest is where it sets on the winter solstice. Southeast is where it rises in winter, and northeast where it rises in summer.

Western concepts of north come from the lodestone, an iron oxide that’s the only naturally magnetized mineral. When suspended, magnetite always points north. Pliny the Elder called it live iron.

Lodestones were employed for the compasses used by Columbus, and all the maritime explorers before and after him. Sun dials were modified. The iron oxide was placed in a circle divided into quarters, and divided and redivided until it could be measured in minutes and seconds of the clock.

It’s impossible to know how San Juan perceived directions before Juan de Oñate arrived in 1588. It would be one of the easiest words to translate without either recognizing differences. One points in a direction, and asks what it’s called. The other answers with the nearest equivalent. The two words are linked, even though north for one is based on a stone, and pim for the other on the sun.

San Juan defined itself by four sacred peaks in 1969, Canjilon to the north, Tchicoma to the west, Sandía Crest to the south, and Truchas Peak to the east. In 1910, John Harrington was told the four were San Antonio near Taos, Tchicoma, Sandía, and Lake Peak. The last is next to Baldy and has a sacred lake.

Jicarilla centered their geography around a single mountain. When the Hactcin where preparing the world above, Badger was sent to explore. He returned with muddy paws, so Beaver was sent. When he didn’t return, Black Weasel went to investigate. Beaver told him he was drying the land by damming the waters.

"When the people had emerged on the shores of a large lake called Big-Water-Lying-on-Top. They knew nothing about the rest of the world. They knew only the region immediately around this place. Four rivers ran west from this lake. One is called Big Water. This is the Río Grande. And the rivers are thought of as two married couples." Of the sacred rivers, the western Río Grande and the northern Arkansas were male, the southern Canadian and eastern Pecos were female.

When Diego de Vargas defined the territory for Santa Cruz in 1695, he used human settlements as his bounds. The grant lay between "the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara" to the south and west, San Juan to the north. To the east it ran past "Hacienda de Moraga, and the farms of Captains Luis Martín and Juan Ruis" to a "tract of land called Chimayó."

That land he saw as empty between settlements once was defended by Santa Clara. Harrington was told, in the past, the pueblo ranged as far north as Ranchita where San Juan began, as far south as Mesilla above the Black Mesa, and as far east as Puebla.

In this history, I’m describing the communities between the northern and southern Black Mesas, between the badlands that parallel the Río Grande on the east and west. It encompasses most of the traditional worlds of San Juan and Santa Clara.

Notes: The pueblos and Apache give directions and move counterclockwise. Anglos work clockwise.

Harrington, John Peabody. The Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians, 1916. Ortiz, a member of San Juan, believed Harrington sometimes was given misleading information, perhaps to keep him from asking more questions.

Opler, Morris Edward. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians, 1938. His sources were Cevero Caramillo, John Chopari, Alasco Tisnado, and Juan Julian.

Ortiz, Alfonso. The Tewa World, 1969.

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus). Naturalis Historia, book 36.

Vargas, Diego de. Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz, 1695, in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914. He decreed:

"those which extend beyond the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, on the other side of the Río del Norte, and, on this side, those which lie in front of the mesa de San Ildefonso and extend to the road which leads to the said pueblo of San Juan de los Caballeros, and those which extend from the latter in the direction of the highway which leads to Picuriés, to the Cañada called the Hacienda de Moraga, and the farms of Captains Luis Martín and Juan Ruis, in front of and at the place and tract of land called Chimayó."

Photographs: Murals on city-owned Hunter Ford buildings across from Cook’s Hardware, Paseo de Oñate, were sponsored by Cultura Cura/Culture Cures Collaborative. The group was formed by Lily Yeh and the New Mexico Community Foundation’s Collaborative Leadership Program. Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area, Inc. matched the NMCF funding. All imagery was based on collage of photographs by Alejandro López. My pictures were taken 29 October 2014, while they were finishing one mural.

1. Northern Black Mesa from Route 285, photograph, 15 November 2011.

2. Western Chicoma, detail from "Mother Corn," design by Rose B. Simpson of Santa Clara, with collaborative support from Warren Montoya of Santa Ana Pueblo.

3. Southern Black Mesa, detail from #2.

4. Eastern Truchas Peaks, detail from "Primavera" by Alejandro López, Roger Montoya of Velarde, and Arlene Jackson from Trinidad.