Our Back Pages April 2015

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Our Back Pages

A LOOK INSIDE THE ARCHIVES AT ONE OF OUR CLASSIC ISSUES FROM NINE DECADES OF NEW MEXICO MAGAZINE.

April 1960

By George Fitzpatrick If Elfego Baca—who once held 80 rampaging Texas cowboys at bay for 36 hours— had lived to see his life portrayed in the Walt Disney TV series [The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca], he would have enjoyed it immensely. He might not have authenticated all the incidents as being strictly historical, but he would have relished the drama and excitement. He was something of an actor himself and he loved to dramatize incidents of his own life in conversation with friends or interviewers. In the last two decades of his life, I visited with him and interviewed him frequently for feature stories. He often recalled “the old days,” and with gestures and grimaces and a quick draw of the .45 he kept in his desk drawer, he made spectacular productions out of incidents in his flamboyant past.

The wide-open spaces of New Mexico, so familiar to followers of the Western TV “horse operas,” are pictured in this cover photograph, made by Harvey Caplin west of the Río Grande near Bernalillo. TV producers have used New Mexico locales for the Elfego Baca series (near Santa Fe and Cerrillos) and for Rawhide (near Tucumcari).

When Charles F. Lummis, the first writer to bring the grandeur of the Southwest to the attention of America, last visited El Morro National Monument in 1926, he wrote in the visitors’ book: “… I believe there is no question that the two most interesting rocks in the world—counting their picturesque, intricate and fantastic erosion and their historic associations—are in this formation, Acoma, the Sky City. … and on the west, El Morro, La Mesa Escrita, Inscription Rock, ‘The Stone Autograph Album.’ So far as I can learn, no other cliff on earth records so much—or a tithe as much—of Romance, Adventure, Heroism. … Oñate here carved his entry with a dagger two years before an English-speaking person had built a hut anywhere in the new world, 15 years before Plymouth Rock.”

Lincoln National Forest Birthplace of Smokey

This is Smokey a few weeks after his rescue. His paws were still a bit sensitive, but he enjoyed a brief visit to the forest.

On the fourth day after the plume planting, a long line of 40 rain dancers entered the plaza. They wore bright blue masks over which their long hair and heavy bangs swayed as they danced. Turquoise and coral necklaces lifted and fell on their bare chests. Zigzag lines painted across their backs rippled and jerked like lighting shafts. Fox tails fastened at the back of embroidered hip blankets bobbed animatedly with the dancers’ fast movements. Turtle shells at their knees and the gourd rattles made crackling punctuation.

The inscription reads: “Here passed the Adelantado Juan de Oñate from the discovery of the Sea of the South on the 16 of April of 1605.” Oñate was the first Governor of New Mexico.

VOLUME 93, ISSUE 4 New Mexico Magazine (ISSN 0028-6249) is published monthly by the New Mexico Tourism Department at 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501-2750. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: $25.95 per year, $45.95 outside the United States. Periodicals postage paid at Santa Fe, NM, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Mexico Magazine, PO Box 433148, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9881. Copyright © 2015 by New Mexico Magazine. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork.

72  NEW MEXICO | APRIL 2015


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