Coronado's Legacy
Post-Script: New Mexico has a lengthy, convoluted history of rule by the Spanish, Mexican and US governments, mixed with strong native and Roman Catholic beliefs, and so it comes as little surprise that the local perspective on the history of European interaction with indigenous peoples would seem at times complex, even contradictory.
I was reminded of this while visiting the Salinas National Monument, south of Albuquerque in central New Mexico, whereby a display placard informs the visitor that the local pueblo people "assisted" their Spanish "visitors" in the mining of salt from (relatively) nearby (if one were on horseback) dry salt lake-beds, ignoring the harsher implications of the term "conquest."
Today, the descendants of those conquerors have themselves inhabited this rough landscape for so many centuries that their culture has become the de facto historical tradition. And so it goes, in an ancient land ruled over by so many for so long.
Typecast via Olivetti Underwood 21, photos via Fujifilm X10.
Bonus Images:
posted by Joe V at 5:14 PM
1 Comments:
Beautiful photos and a great post.
I could add to what you posted. I will not. It'll take too long.
Very beautiful country. I enjoyed some of the Native people to New Mexico on some of my visits there years ago. I learned of the fabricated tourist things.
In many ways it is upsetting how the government removed the native people and crammed them together on some of the worst land in the country.
I did not feel so until I read 3 books on Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears that I bought about 15 years ago at a public libray's book sale.
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