The Soul of the Southwest in Non-Fiction

Read and discuss the secret literature of Taos but in non-fiction. The facts are more magical than the fiction. In UNM’s English 397, Instructor: William (Bill) Whaley (Email: bwhaley@newmex.com) and students will compare and contrast the rumor and the record with the aid of authors Lawrence, Waters, Nichols, Stuart, Hillerman, Forrest, Gordon-McCutcheon, Burke, Rodriguez, Evans, Anaya, Sides, Romero, Suazo, WarmDay, Trujillo. Et al time permitting.

Class will meet M-F from 8—10:15 am at 246-B, Ledoux St, July 5-30.

Taos Pueblo

 

More than 10,000 years ago, the ancestors of Taos Pueblo Indians began interfering with the habitats of the indigenous Southwestern natives, i.e. insects, rodents, birds, and animals. Before, during, and after the Chaco Culture, the Southwestern Indians were fooling with the gene pool of corn and developing special varieties for climate changes involving altitude, drought, and differing soils. Chaco was the largest structure in the country prior to the late 19th Century tenements in New York, according to Dave Stuart’s Anasazi America (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2000).

Kit Carson

 

In Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Doubleday, New York, 2006), we see how the authentic action figure Kit Carson, with help from his Ute and Pueblo Indian buddies, chased the Navajos down and out of the beauty way. The bastard cut down the Dineh peach trees and they never forgot or forgave him.

In Frank Waters’ work To Possess the Land: A Biography of Arthur Manby (Swallow

Manby Hot Springs

 

Press, Athens Ohio, 1973), we learn how Anglo storekeepers and con agents connived with local politicos and judges to do in the Natives on both sides of the cattle guard—trading food, debt, or bad paper for property and land grants. Manby, with Teracita Ferguson’s help, stands in as symbol and exemplar of the way swindlers and corrupt courts continue to deprive the righteous of their birthrights.

Mabel Dodge

 

The do-gooders like Mabel Dodge Luhan, John Collier, and their like among the Roosevelt democrats helped create a bailout and subsequent rise of the welfare-state and political machine, documented in Suzanne Forrest’s The Preservation of the Village: New Mexico’s Hispanics and the New Deal (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1989).

One of the great local stories of revenge and redemption, thanks to the help of artists, liberals, and luck, is told in R.C. Gordon-McCutchan’s The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake (Red Crane Books, Santa Fe, 1995). Why, Richard Nixon himself, who had been treated kindly by his Native American college football coach, signed off on the deal in December 1970—thanks, in part, to the profound testimony of Sen. Barry Goldwater, who made common cause with the Kennedys. The last three chapters read like a page-turner. As Saki Karavas used to say, “Don’t get mad, get even.” And they did.

Other favorites for filling in the culture gaps include Sylvia Rodriguez’s version of the water wars, Acequia: Water

Padre Martinez

 

Sharing, Sanctity, and Place (School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, 2006), and Flannery Burke’s From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s (University Press of Kansas, 2008)

Depending on student interests and time, we shall also discuss excerpts from other writers mentioned above. Come and join us: whether native, native newcomer, or newcomer and student, you’ll have fun and we’ll all learn from our esteemed authors and each other.

Tags: Bill Whaley