taostradicionesnewssept.15,2022
Michael Garcia and Jeanette Lucero show off the love chips they found during their hike along NM 503 to visit El Santuario de Chimayó, restarting a Holy Week tradition that — prior to the pandemic — drew thousands to the sacred Northern New Mexico site.
JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN
LEYENDAS
TAOS IS DEFINITELY A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLACE — unique in its colorful history and characters — that live on in local legend. Some of these legends are known only to the people of Northern New Mexico, and bind us together in a kind of shared mythology.TaosNews loves to bring you these quixotic stories each year in Tradiciones: Leyendas (Legends). Look for our upcom ing roots and arts special sections, as well as a salute to our Unsung Heroes. In this year’s issue, what began as a mystery — a crucifix that would super naturally travel back to Chimayó when ever it was removed — developed into an annual pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayó for the devoted. The legend is that the church soil holds special healing powers, a belief backed up by the Catholic Church. Read Tamra Testerman’s story on page 4. Cindy Brown writes about the legendary Taoseño, John Dunn, whose larger-thanlife escapades included an escape from a Texas prison before arriving in Taos, where he went on to own four saloons, a gambling hall, a hotel, two bridges and control of the transportation in and out of town. His story begins on page 8. And whether called Big Foot, Yeti, Sasquatch or something else, the giant red-haired beast of the forest has appar ently been travelling through El Norté, according to the testimony of more than a few locals. Read it for yourself on page 12. We hope you enjoy this year’s issue of Tradiciones: Leyendas. These are among the unique stories and legends that continue to haunt Taos.
El Santuario de Chimayó Mystery and medicine BY TAMRA TESTERMAN John Dunn
The legend of Sasquatch BY CINDY BROWN
Michael Tashji, Magazine Editor
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The man and his legacy BY CINDY BROWN 12
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tradiciones: leyendas taos news / sept. 15, 20223 Together We Make A Powerful Difference Taos Community Foundation is proud to serve the unique needs of our community by linking the charitable goals of donors to the causes that mean the most to them. Together we make a powerful difference. Taos Community Foundation has awarded over $2.5 million in grants and scholarships this year. We are honored with the trust bestowed upon us from so many who partner with us to make a difference. To learn more visit Taos Community Foundation. Courtesy Geraint Smith Photography 115 LA POSTA RD STE A 575-737-9300 TAOSCF.ORG Some things we all have in common. There’s nobody like me to protect the things we all value. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® Wanda Lucero 575.737.5433 | wanda@wandalucero.com Love. Success.Hope.Family. Security.
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El Santuario de Chimayó
MYSTERY AND MEDICINE BY
NESTLED IN THE IDYLLIC SANTA CRUZ VALLEY of Northern New Mexico is the village of El Potrero, home to El Santuario de Chimayó, a weathered adobe church that receives thousands of visitors a year with details of supernatural phenomena to share, and invocations of gratitude and healing. Lining the smooth adobe surfaces of an adjoining room are abandoned crutches and walk ing canes — crocheted baby booties, handwritten notes and photographs — physical testimony deemed evidence of the revelations of El Santuario and the holy dirt many believe carries therapeutic energies. Even before it was erected in 1813 by Don Bernado Abeyta — an influential and affluent New Mexican landowner — the grounds of El Santuario de Chimayó were a place of devotion and a pilgrimage sanc tuary for Hispanics, Native Americans and others seeking the healing and curative properties of the soil. Abeyta was a veteran member of the Penitentes, a pious frater nity of flagellants in Spanish-American southwestern communities in the United States who engage in various forms of penitential (self) torture predominantly during Holy Week. He constructed a small chapel in the mid-1800s and thereafter implored Father Sebastian Alvarez and the Diocese of Durango for the privilege of raising another church suited for large services and a meeting place for an esca lating number of spiritual pilgrims. According to folklore, on Good Friday night of Holy Week in 1810, Abeyta observed a bright light appearing from a hilltop near the Santa Cruz river in Chimayó. He walked to the light and discovered it was rising from the ground. And he began burrowing in the dirt with his hands until he unearthed a crucifix named Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas (Our Lord of Esquipulas.) He left the treasure and advised a local priest, Fray Sebastián Alvarez, about his find. TAMRA TESTERMAN
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OUR LORD OF ESQUIPULAS is in reverence to the Lord or Christ of Esquipulas, which unfolded in Santiago de Esquipulas, Guatemala. It circulated throughout Central America and Mexico and Central America and entered New Mexico in the advent of the 19th century. Deference to the Christ of Esquipulas is the interpretation and perception of pain, suffering and death — through the lens of an ideology contrary to resignation and passivity.The priest traveled to Chimayó and fetched the crucifix for his church in Santa Cruz, placing it on the altar. The next day, the crucifix vanished, and was found where it had been discovered — in Chimayó. The crucifix traveled back and forth, always ending up in Chimayó — this was interpreted to be a clear mani festation that “Our Lord of Esquipulas preferred to locate in Chimayó.” Another folklore claims that during a fall harvest, Abeyta was cultivating his fields and a vision instructed him to investigate the earth under his plow, which possessed magical healing potentialities. In the construction of El Santuario, Abeyta commissioned the local santeros to create the art for the church. The interior aesthetics mirror Indigenous and Span ish influences and the nave is embellished with original 19-century Hispanic sacred folk art santos and frescoes. The heirs of Bernardo Abeyta controlled ownership of El Santuario until 1929, when the Spanish Colonial Arts Group in Santa Fe bought it from the family and bequeathed it to the archdiocese of Santa Fe. Today, El Santuario is a quintessen tial representation of Spanish Colonial style on the architectural landscape of New Mexico, preserved through the ages, with hand-carved pine wooden doors, an adobe-walled rose garden, twin facade towers with belfries and a gently curved gate. In 1970, El Santu ario de Chimayó was named a National Historic Landmark and is now known as the “Lourdes of America.”
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Odelia Hernandez, 87, weeps quietly as she recites the rosary while visiting El Santuario de Chimayó alongside a steady stream of fellow pilgrims, restarting a Holy Week tradition that — prior to the pandemic — drew thousands to the Northern New Mexico site.
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JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN NATHAN BURTON/TAOS NEWS NATHAN BURTON/TAOS NEWS JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN
The cures El Santuario is renowned for began with the revelation of the “magic dirt” under the shrine. Devotees reveal the earth at Chimayó is blended with water to generate mud and administered to the skin or ingested in tea. Visitors collect dirt as a memento of their pilgrimage to Chimayó. El Santuario is hailed as the premiere Catholic pilgrimage center in the country. During Holy Week, thousands of pilgrims walk as far as 100 miles. Some crawl on their hands and knees, others are carried by family and friends. They walk the long mountain road to Chimayó in faith, for a loved one who has passed, for the healing powers of the magic dirt and to commune with others on a spiritual path. For details about special events, visit holychimayo.us. El Santuario is open 7 days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is a Daily Mass at 11 a.m. and Sunday Mass is 10:30 a.m. and noon. Masks are strongly recommended inside the chapels and buildings.
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John Dunn THE MAN AND HIS LEGACY CINDY BROWN
BY
KIT CARSON COOPERATIVEELECTRICCOMPLETES
in the Civil War, and died suddenly of his wounds. The family was too poor to pay for a funeral and Dunn dug the grave himself, thinking, “I tried to numb my mind to what I was doing but as I dug deeper into the ground a feeling of grim determination settled over me. I was dead set in some way I would elevate myself out of the poverty that forced me to dig my own father’s grave…” Trying to help the family make ends meet, he went to work for his uncle for 12-and-a-half dollars a month. Then he worked for a neighbor who promised to treat him right, but he found himself working the fields, milking cows, chop ping firewood and sleeping in a barn. After keeping him working day and night, the man paid him four dollars for the month. After a good deal of brooding, Dunn stole the man’s stallion and headed west. His travels led him to a ranch near the Rio Grande in Texas. He earned $25 a month, which he sent home to his mother. He then joined a trail drive north to the N-Bar-N ranch in Montana with two thou sand steers. As biographer Evans said, “The trail drive tested every good and bad quality in a man. During the trails of hundreds of miles across open spaces, the best or the worst was certain to come out.” He added that Dunn became an expert with both rope and gun. “By many hard ships and narrow escapes, he developed a profound lack of fear. All of these were to combine in later years to great advantage,” wroteThisEvans.traildrive stopped in Dodge City, Kan. where he saw his first train, which he tried to lasso. “His decision had been made after several hours in a Dodge City saloon. He roped it all right, right around the smokestack. It jerked him and his horse down, nearly killing them both,” said Evans. Having to quarantine the steers for a month, Dunn had time to watch the gamblers and learn to gamble himself. Dunn worked his way back to Texas, where he discovered that his sister had married a drunkard that was abusing her. When Dunn met the man in the street and tried to question him, the man hit Dunn in the mouth. Dunn got a good punch in to the jaw and the other man went down, hitting his head on a hitching rail. He died, and Dunn was sentenced to life imprison ment at the state penitentiary. When he was transferred to a prison farm, Dunn got hold of a smuggled file, cut himself free of his leg irons and made his escape by jumping into the surging river nearby. He made his way across the Rio Grande to Matamoros, Mexico, where he made his living smuggling and gambling. Finding himself back in Texas, Dunn competed in a rodeo. He took second money in bull riding and first in calf-roping, but it turned out, one of the horses he had sold to pay his entrance fee was stolen. While a judge was preparing to sentence him, he took two strides and leaped through a window. Stealing a horse, he was again free and on the run from the law. Dunn rode into a wagon campground and met a man who turned out to be Tom Holder, who agreed to smuggle him into New Mexico under the hay in his wagon. Although a group of Texas Rangers hunt ing for Dunn stopped Holder, they didn’t find Dunn and that’s how he came to arrive in Elizabethtown, N.M. Dunn ran poker games during the goldboom that first started in Elizabethtown in 1866. For a time, he owned the whole town of Red River. In 1889, he rode through a town called Therma, now know as Eagle Nest and into the Taos Valley. “John checked up and found that the ancient community was without any means of public transportation, except a branchline railroad which ended about thirty miles west of town. Somehow, he knew that this was it,” wrote Evans. He was tall in the saddle — at over six feet — and rode into town ‘sitting straight as a lightning rod’ to start the long process that would lead him to buy two bridges over the Rio Grande at Taos Junction and Arroyo Hondo, and establish stagecoach and mail service and a hotel in Arroyo Hondo, among other ventures According to Raye, “Through all this traveling, he developed a passion for transportation and decided that what the West needed was transportation. For close to 30 years, he provided the only trans portation in and out of Taos. He brought the members of the Taos Society of Artists to town. Even though he was a gambler and got into some fights, everyone liked him.” In her discussions with Evans, she learned, “Dunn was highly respected in the region. In his later years, he held ‘court’ four to five days a week near or on the plaza. Everyone came up to ‘the King’ to talk and pay their respects. He showed a lot of dignity.” In 1942, Dunn was pardoned by the Texas governor on what Dunn described as the happiest day of his life. He died on May 21, 1953, and tributes to him covered most of the front page of The Crepusculo, the forerunner of the Taos News.
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‘There
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FIRST PHASE OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE TRANSITION KITCARSON.COMPLAN is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.’
LIFE AND TIMES
— MARGARET WHEATLEY
According to Polly Raye, who has owned the former John Dunn house that now houses shops for 40 years and has collected much history about Dunn, “What defined him as a person was that he was a scrambler. He started out very poor in Texas. He got thrown in jail for accidently killing his sister’s abusive husband (who threw the first punch). He was being noble defending his sister. Many times, he was close to starvation, but he was resilient and started over after accidents, robberies and narrow escapes from the law.” Evans, who was a friend of Dunn’s, wrote in his biography that Dunn was born in 1857 in Victoria, Texas. Dunn is quoted as saying “We were trying to make a living on a little rolling dry-land, slow-starva tion farm.” Dunn’s father was wounded
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The life of Long John Dunn is a study in contrasts and a portrait of resilience. Dunn was imprisoned in Texas, yet escaped and became known as the King of Taos. He admitted to his own sleight of hand in gambling, but also was a respected member of the Taos community. He arrived in Taos with nothing, but through sheer determination and a bit of luck, went on to own four saloons, a gambling hall, a hotel, two bridges, a livery stable and control of most of the transportation in and out of Taos for close to 30 years. In Max Evan’s 1959 biography of Dunn, “Long John Dunn of Taos: from Texas Outlaw to New Mexico hero,” Evans says, “He lived in his ninety or more years one of the most incredible lives of any of the old-time west erners.”Dunn almost starved and escaped being killed many times, yet he survived to be 94 years old. What accounts for the nearmiraculous life and luck of John Dunn, or as he was known in Taos — Juan Largo?
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John Dunn’s legacy
COURTESY PHOTO CINDY BROWN
HAUNTINGS
Some of the shop owners report strange happenings, including a restaurant owner that says things are frequently and mysteriously moved around. Esther Raskin, who has worked both in the coffee shop and the bookstore that occupy the original John Dunn house, reports that she often heard strange noises when she was there at night. “Definitely at least one night, I was down in the basement of the coffee shop, and I heard stomping around upstairs like someone was moving tables and chairs. I went up and nothing was moved. I would frequently hear someone walking around and no one was there,” sheSometimessaid. things would fly off the shelves at the coffee shop and books would come off the shelves at the book store when no one was nearby. Raskin points out that the house is near many sites downtown that had a violent history and there may be restless supernatural activity as a result. The restlessness of the spirits is not surprising given the deep and sometimestroubled history of the town. Everything that has happened here and its natural beauty creates the complex and myste rious fabric that is Taos. As biographer Max Evans says “…if you spend the four seasons of nature in Taos, it won’t matter whether you reside there permanently or not, its powerful earth-forms and ethereal mountain mists will follow and enwrap you forever. Long John Dunn is an immutable part of the magic matrix.”
Op.cit bookstore in the John Dunn Shops today. This was also the entrance to John Dunn’s home.
JOHN DUNN BRIDGE
Long John Dunn | continues from 9
The orchard is now the municipal park ing lot, and the stable housed a restau rant that burned down soon after Raye purchased the property. She rebuilt on the footprint of the original stable and the building now houses shops.
Soon after Dunn bought the bridges at Taos Junction and Arroyo Hondo, a flood washed both of them out. Undeterred, he rebuilt the bridge in Arroyo Hondo, along with the hotel there. He charged a toll for people and animals to cross the bridge; the charge for a person was $1, fifty cents apiece for horse and cattle, and twentyfive cents for sheep. His stagecoach ser vice picked people up in the small town of Servilleta, 10 miles south of Tres Pie dras, a stop for the Chili Line Railroad. Dunn drove the stagecoach that brought passengers across the mesa through snow and hailstorms on a rough road that he helped build which descended to the river at Arroyo Hondo. Dunn would later own the first car in Taos, a Ford Model T, and transitioned his busi ness from stagecoach to automobile. The modern bridge today stands in the same place as Dunn’s original bridge.
JOHN DUNN SHOPS Dunn’s ten-room home where he lived with his wife, Adelaide, and his four daughters and son was located on Bent Street, and now houses a series of shops. Raye explains that “Harvey Mudd bought from John Dunn’s widow in 1969 or 1970 and renovated the house into shops. Mudd was from a rich family in Los Angles and had lived in the New Buffalo commune. His friends from New Buffalo wanted to open little businesses, so he converted the house into seven little shops.” Mudd sold the converted house to Raye in 1982 because they shared a philosophy about creating community and supporting merchants, rather than running a busi ness only to make money. She owned the Apple Tree Restaurant and was interested in creating a beautiful walkway to connect Bent Street with the Plaza. Dunn originally owned an acre of land with his house, orchard and stable on it.
NATHAN BURTON/TAOS NEWS FILE PHOTO ‘Today
Soon after Dunn bought the bridges at TAOS JUNCTION and ARROYO HONDO, a flood washed both of them out. Undeterred, he rebuilt the bridge in Arroyo Hondo, along with the hotel there. The modern bridge today stands in the same place as Dunn’s original bridge. a tomorrowreader, a leader.’
– Margaret Fuller
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The Taos County Bookmobile began operating in the early 1940’s. Its shelves held books that pushed the imagination. It gave rural areas a sense of belonging to the county, state and the nation. taoscounty.org
The whole incident has caused the boy, now grown to ask, “What do I want to believe?”
tradiciones: leyendas taos news / sept. 15, 202212 THE
Is it possible that such creatures exist and are merely an offshoot of the human family tree? Some reports have been proven to be false, but if we maintain an open mind, we can investigate further without having to decide if such a crea ture exists. LEGEND OF SASQUATCH BY CINDY BROWN SHUTTERSTOCK
WHEN HE WAS NO MORE THAN 12 OR 13 YEARS OLD, a local boy — we’ll call him José — went to the woods fishing with his father and uncle. In an area north of Taos, they drove down a rough road about four miles into an isolated area where not too many people go. The three walked miles into the backcountry just after a Thererainstorm.wasnotmuch water in the creek, but they found a good pool — it might have been a beaver pond. As they were fishing, José had the feeling that some thing was staring at them. His father and uncle continued to fish but the boy felt uneasy, like there was someone nearby. He wondered if it might be other fisher men or a hiker or maybe an animal like a bear or mountain lion. José stopped fishing and started to look around. When he glanced up to the ridge above them, he noticed something out of place. There was a figure standing there. It looked like a human but taller and very athletic. It had long legs and arms and was hairy but not like a bear. The creature looked almost as large as the remains of a nearby dead tree that was close to 10 feet tall. The creature was staring and bobbing itsThehead.boy called out for his father and uncle to come see the creature that was looking at them from the top of the hill. His father was crouched down baiting a hook, but soon, he and his uncle came to see what the boy was pointing at. No matter how he tried, José could not get them to look in the right spot. José was distracted for a moment and when he looked back, the creature was gone. “What did you see?” the men asked the boy. “It was tall — almost the size of that tree. It had hair but not like a bear,” he said. At that moment, the boy didn’t think about the possibility that it was a humanlikebeing known as Sasquatch, or Big Foot. They went back to fishing, but when it was time to leave, they had to walk up to the ridge where the creature had been to reach their truck. José made it a point to walk by the spot where he had seen the being.Asthey walked by, they smelled some thing, a kind of cross between a wet dog and the smell of an unwashed human. It was not a smell the boy had ever encoun tered before. And then they noticed the footprints in the wet grass. They couldn’t tell what kind of being had made the foot prints, whether it walked on two legs or four.The men and the boy followed the foot prints quite a way into a little canyon on a north-facing slope. Up ahead there was a small structure. As they approached it, they could see it was a lean-to built from tree boughs — some of them were fresh. The six-inch-diameter branches had not been cut with a saw or axe but looked as if they had been snapped off the tree. As they approached the lean-to, the distinctive smell was even more pronounced. When the boy looked inside, there was nothing there.Suddenly, they all felt like someone was watching them. The boy’s father started to yell and pulled his firearm, yelling “Get, get.” He fired two shots into the air and shouted, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” They ran down the hill in the direction of their truck. It seemed to take forever to get there. When, at last, they reached the truck, they threw their fishing gear in the bed, jumped in the cab and took off. When they got home, the boy’s mom and aunt were there. As the men and the boy told the story, José started drawing a picture of what he saw: not a man, not a bear but something else. Something tall with broad shoulders and reddish-brown hair.That day was the topic of conversations for many years. The boy’s father passed away, but he and his uncle still talk about it to this day. They have never been back to that Whenspot.José was older, he asked a teacher with a background in paleontology who specialized in mammals if she thought it was possible that there was such a thing as Sasquatch. She said, “Absolutely. Think of how we evolved. What we may be deal ing with is a branch of the human family tree that didn’t evolve as fast as we did and got lost in time. There are not a lot of them. They are hearty, stay away and become masters of hide-and-seek with humans.”
Interesting if true Across all continents and across time, there have been sightings of huge humanlike creatures standing more than seven feet tall glimpsed in remote corners of the forest. Known as Big Foot, Sasquatch, Yeti and other names, the creature descrip tions are remarkably similar: tall, muscu lar, long arms and legs and hairy, often a reddish-brown or black color. Native peoples in the Southwest tell stories of Big Spirit Beings or Hairy Men, according to Christopher O’Brien in an excerpt from “Wood Knocks Volume Two, Journal of Sasquatch Research.”
tradiciones: leyendas taos news / sept. 15, 202213 Other stories
THERE HAVE BEEN A SURPRISING NUMBER OF SIGHTINGS and signs in Northern New Mexico. Southeast of Taos, a man went out to a pond on his property and saw a pair of creatures he couldn’t quite identify — not human, not bear. They appeared to be a male and female, based on their size and appearance, and had reddish-brown hair. The female was washing herself in the pond. The man ran back to his truck to get his phone so he could take a picture, but the pair quickly moved away, covering a lot of ground very quickly. When he checked for tracks, he could see their footpads, but they didn’t seem to imprint their toes, like humans and bears do. In Taos Canyon, a man saw something where a ravine met the road. He thought it was a man in a mechanics suit and then he saw the black hair. When the being took off walking like the creature in the short 1967 Patterson film, the man’s dogs didn’t pursue it, but whimpered and wanted back in his vehicle. Two brothers and three other men were out archery hunting for elk. They decided to separate. The first brother went into a canyon where he heard the elk bugling. Behind him, he heard someone smack ing a log across a tree, a common hunting practice known as raking that imitates the sound a bull elk makes in the trees. Once it started, though, the elk were quiet. Think ing it was his brother, the man went back to investigate. He saw something that took off through the trees. It was upright and covered with reddish-brown hair. In Sipapu, there are reports of screams and the sound of knocking on wood. Footprints have been seen in the snow, which were verified by the Big Foot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) as “obvi ously large, heavy bipedal.” Others report sightings near Peñasco and Las Vegas. There have been reports from Cimarron to Valdez and north to Cabresto. Outside of Arroyo Seco, a woman moved into a house that had been vacant for years. She and a friend found signs of occupancy like a napping nest under a huge pine tree. While she lived there, she noticed that rocks and bits of things would come and go from the porch in different designs. She found a giant greasy handprint high up outside the sunroom window where you’d have to be really tall to reach. A woman in Three Peaks reports that strange things happened on her land. A new chicken coop on a neighbor’s land was ripped apart. The woman came to realize that her land was directly below a Big Foot travel path. Over time, she even mapped out the paths from east to west that were used twice a year. The woman says that she had footprints. “The footprints were sent to the lab and were lost there. That was 35 years ago. That’s all I can say. But to be sure, Big Foot lives and thrives in and around Taos. They are, for the most part, unmolested here. I hope it can stay that way for them.”
Author’s note: Thank you to everyone who shared their story for this article. No one wanted their name used, as Sasquatch is regarded by many to be a fringe belief.
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Taos Mountain Casino is proud to honor those who both exemplify the best of the past and who help us weave it into the future. These people are our own links in what continues to be an unbroken circle of tradition at Taos Pueblo.
From right 2022 Taos Pueblo Governor Clyde M. Romero Sr., Lt. Gov. Samuel Gomez, Tribal Secretary Dwayne Lefthand Sr., First Sheriff James Duran, Second Sheriff Quanah Pemberton, Head Fiscale Evan Trujillo, Lt. Fiscale Raphael J. Suazo, Fiscale Curtis Sandoval Jr., Fiscale Angelo McHorse and Fiscale Damon Young.
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