Raices

Raices

2 0 14 T R A D I C I O N E S | T H E TA O S N E W S

2 | Raices

Raices The history, traditions and events that shape who we are

Courtesy Red River Historical Society

Mining allowed businesses like the Jayhawk Store to flourish, grow and provide jobs that allowed the community to survive. The store was one of Red River’s first and most successful general stores.

Their unique marketing technique was to advertise with dozens of misspelled signs on the exterior of the building. See the story on page 8.

F

rom Costilla to Peñasco, the roots of Taos County run deep. Whether you are talking about the ancient histories of Picuris and Taos Pueblos, the centuries-old establishment of families who moved to Northern New Mexico when it was Spanish territory, or the longcelebrated art and hippie communities of our area, Taos County is all about roots. It’s a place where the question, “how long have you been in Taos” is more than a question. It’s a measuring stick of what you have endured and seen and how much room you have to comment on those experiences publicly.

People come to Northern New Mexico for a variety of reasons. And if they’ve been here a while, they’ve established some routines and traditions. The Taos News attempts to explore the roots (Raices) of some of these traditions and the history that has helped create them.

Raices is the second publication in a four-part series known as Tradiciones. We’ve been doing this for 14 years, which, depending on who you ask, might be almost long enough to be considered a local tradition of its own.

It’s obviously not as long a tradition as the one that involves local people cooking and sharing food. That’s probably the oldest tradition of all, in its purest form.

Local variations of that theme include the long-standing practice of the matanza. On page 4, J.R. Logan takes us to San Cristóbal for an in-depth look at the work and

respect for tradition that goes into a good matanza. The skill it takes to slaughter, prepare and cook your livestock, be it pig, goat, lamb or cow, involves not only practice, but also a whole lot of reverence for the land, the animals and the people to whom the meat will be fed.

Keeping with the agricultural theme, Logan also has a story about the engineering know-how that went into creating working acequias in the Hondo-Seco Valley.

Precision is one of the words that comes to mind when you are talking about 200-year-old ditches that manage to move water without much help from gravity.

The roots of the Roberts family are also strong, with a family homestead inside Carson National Forest that has been part of the family for four generations. The Taos News photographer Tina Larkin followed brothers Brian and Wade Roberts for a season to glimpse the life of a working ranch and the connection that these two young men have with the land and the livestock. Andrew Oxford provides some information for the photos, which can be seen beginning on page 17.

With history as the great contextualizer that shapes and guides our perceptions of ourselves as a community, we have several stories that look into that always lessthan-crystal ball known as the past. On page 6, Andy Dennison offers a history of rail travel in Taos County with the story of the Chili Line. The engineers could never figure out how to get the narrow-gauge railroad to

cross the Río Grande Gorge, but it did come close, with stops in Tres Piedras, Embudo and at Taos Junction.

On page 8, Yvonne Pesquera looks at the history of Red River as a village founded with one goal in mind: mineral extraction. While the efforts didn’t always pan out, the steady attempts to find gold, silver and copper (you name it) provided enough of a foot hold for the town to grow and prosper until the economy shifted toward tourism in the middle of the last century.

Elizabeth Cleary looks at the history of the San Cristóbal Valley Ranch on page 12. The ranch at one time served as a school, and later became a quaint guest ranch.

The Red Scare came to the ranch in the 1950s when some government officials were worried about proprietors Craig and Jenny Vincent’s involvement in socialist causes.

And on page 14, Jim O’Donnell takes on a far more controversial topic than communism (at least as far as most Taoseños are concerned). His story looks at the life and legend of one Christopher “Kit” Carson, the man whose place in history has recently been hotly debated around Taos. O’Donnell looks at who the man was and how communities can choose to associate with certain aspects of history more than others. Whether you like it or not, this is our Raices.

— Andy Jones, special sections editor

With history as the great contextualizer that shapes and guides our perceptions of ourselves as a community, we have several stories that look into that always-less-than crystal ball known as the past.

Raices | 3

Contents 6 4 The Chili Line:

The matanza: A nourishing tradition for the body and soul

By J.R. Logan

The little engine that, ultimately, couldn’t

Photo by Geraint Smith

8

Mining vein runs deep in Red River’s history

By Yvonne Pesquera

11

Hondo Valley acequias: Engineering marvels

By J.R. Logan

By Andy Dennison

San Cristóbal Valley Ranch’s unique past

12

Kit Carson: A divisive figure long after his time

14

17

By Elizabeth Cleary

By Jim O’Donnell

A photo essay by Tina Larkin with text by Andrew Oxford

STAFF Robin Martin, owner • Chris Baker, publisher • Joan Livingston, editor • Chris Wood, advertising manager • Andy Jones, special sections editor Michelle M. Gutierrez, lead editorial designer • Ray Seale, production, technology and digital director • Ayleen Lopez, digital administrator • Katharine Egli and Tina Larkin, Elizabeth Cleary, Cody Hooks, J.R. Logan and Andrew Oxford, staff writers CONTRIBUTORS Andy Dennison, writer • Jim O’Donnell,

writer •

Yvonne Pesquera,

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: A glimpse into the life of the Roberts brothers

photographers

writer

On the cover Brian Roberts picks up Athena, a goat for his 4-H project, at the Trujillo-Armstrong Ranch in San Cristóbal,

Photo by Tina Larkin

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4 | Raices

Katharine Egli

Top row, from left: Peyton DeVargas, 4, looks on as his grandfather Danny DeVargas, left, Mario Trujillo and Jim Armstrong grab a black sheep from the livestock pen on Aug. 30; Trujillo wheels the black sheep to be slaughtered; and Trujillo, left, and DeVargas slaughter the sheep. Bottom row, from left: Devargas, left, and Trujillo set the recently slain goat on a block to start the butchering process for the big Labor Day barbecue; Blood spurts flecked Delilah the dog’s nose after she stood by during the slaughter of the goat; and Peyton DeVargas mourns the death of the sheep and goat.

The matanza a nourishing tradition for the body and soul

T

By J.R. Logan

he matanza. You know that’s an old tradition. Most people used to slaughter their hogs around Thanksgiving time. So they’d invite the neighborhood over. The neighbors would all show up and they’d help with the peeling and the skinning, the making of the chicharrones. And then they would take certain cuts, after they slaughtered, and the women would make lunch and fix up a feast with the blood sauce, you know, and everything else. Then at the end of the day, the person who had the pig would keep maybe half and the rest was divided up between the people who went to help. And it went from household the household to household. So that by the time it was all said and done, everybody had some pig.” —Crestina Trujillo Armstrong, San Cristóbal Crestina Trujillo Armstrong was eight when her father first asked her to slaughter a lamb. He helped her hang the animal upsidedown from a rack, hind legs bound and front hooves kicking at thin air.

“You stand behind them, and you grab ahold of them by the ears and just, gghhk,” Trujillo Armstrong says, making a motion of a knife across the lamb’s neck. She remembers her father helped her skin the lamb, and he kept time as she butchered the still warm beast into halves. When she finished, she felt proud to have done something she’d seen done her entire life.

Animal slaughter was a typical part of growing up.

Trujillo Armstrong says the family always kept sheep,

cattle, chickens and other animals.

“Whenever we needed a lamb, we just went out and got one,” Trujillo Armstrong says. “People don’t do it that much anymore. It’s an anomaly.”

To kill those animals in order to eat wasn’t shocking or unusual. It was normal. In fact, having the chance to butcher a lamb was a step up.

“Before that, my main job was skinning the heads, and that’s horrible,” she says. “Heads are hard to skin.”

They do, however, offer what she considers some of the best meat.

“The brains are the best part,” she says. “It’s an acquired taste. On tortilla with green chile, ooooh.”

Armstrong Trujillo and her husband, Jim Armstrong, still live on a 50-acre ranch in San Cristóbal that’s been in her family for four generations.

It’s the same piece of land her great-grandfather, José António María Martínez, settled in the 1800s. It’s the same place she grew up with her brothers, raising animals and tending a garden.

The ranch is bisected by a small creek that flows for a narrow canyon above the village, and much of it is irrigated by an acequia that draws from the same stream.

Today, there’s a corral with sheep and goats, and a pond by the creek with ducks and geese.

For more than a decade, the Armstrongs have hosted a Labor Day barbecue. The garden is usually overflowing with vegetables, the weather is normally pleasant, and it’s a chance to get together with friends and family before

the winter sets in.

The centerpiece of the annual event is the meat.

“This has been going on for centuries in the sheep camps,” Trujillo Armstrong says. “When they get to the end of the season and they’re gathering up the sheep and doing a head count, and they take a couple of sheep and slaughter them and put them in the pit so everybody has something to eat.”

This year, the family slaughtered a goat and and lamb Saturday evening. The animals hang the next day while they forage from the garden to make sides like fresh cole slaw, corn and beans. At dawn Monday, Jim Armstrong has a fire of apple and juniper wood burning in a pit beside the house. The lamb and goat meat is slathered with a rub, wrapped in tin foil and stacked on the thick bed of coals.

The meat is then buried and a fire is lit on top of the covered pit to keep it warm overnight.

Twelve hours later, the meat is exhumed. Trujillo Armstrong says the shanks are always pulled out first to make sure everything is ready. By noon, the family is ready to serve the 100 guests who make the Labor Day barbecue a don’t-miss tradition.

While some of the goats and lambs the Armstrongs raise are for their own consumption, many of the animals go to 4-H youth who are learning to raise livestock themselves. Taos has no doubt changed over the years, but supporting young producers is one way to protect long-held traditions.

“The brains are the best part, it’s an acquired taste.

On tortilla with green chile, ooooh.”

Raices | 5

Katharine Egli

Mario Trujillo wheels the large cuts of the sheep and goat from the place of slaughter to the meat house.

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6 | Raices

Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), 011911.

The Denver and Río Grande Railroad narrow-gauge train at Taos Junction, New Mexico, sometime between 1921 and 1926.

The Chili Line The little engine that, ultimately, couldn’t

F

By Andy Dennison

rom the late 1800s through the early 1900s, railroad surveyors from the Denver & Río Grande tried time and again to find a feasible western route into Taos — all to no avail.

They were thwarted by steep grades, serpentine topography and the gaping Río Grande Gorge that made it impossible for even narrowgauge track to be laid all the way to Taos.

Therefore, local railroad buffs have to be content with the story of the Chili Line.

From 1880 to 1941, a narrow-gauge line named for the local cuisine carried passengers, mail and freight along tracks between Alamosa, Colo., and Española (later to Santa Fe).

Upon arrival at these termini, connections could be made to larger lines — the standard-gauge at Lamy south of Santa Fe or the north-running D&RG to Denver.

The Chili Line did get as close as Embudo and Tres Piedras, some 20 miles away from Taos, but never crossed to the east side of the river. Thus, to meet the train, Taoseños had to be content with riding a horse or wagon down into the gorge to Embudo, or across the Río Grande and out onto the plateau to either Tres Piedras or what was called Taos Junction, about 19 miles south where the road from Carson meets U.S. 285 today.

“When I was old enough to ride a horse, I would make trips to Embudo to meet my father who had been working

in Colorado or Utah,” wrote Antonio Durán of Dixon, in a local history document found in the Embudo Valley Library.

“The train would stop long enough to let passengers off and deliver mail to the different mail carriers who would pick up the mail for the local communities.”

In its heyday, the Chili Line brought fruits to urban markets, cattle to and from summer grazing pastures, sheep to the trading depots and piñon nuts. Lumber cut and milled in La Madera and Petaca, west of Tres Piedras, found a way to market on the Chili Line and, for a brief time, quartzite, lepidolite and mica ore also traveled the route.

The railway’s existence spawned settlement around its stops. For several decades, Embudo had a restaurant to feed passengers while the locomotive loaded up with coal and water. At one time, Taos Junction housed 175 homesteaders, two stores, a hotel and rec hall, and a school. Tres Piedras grew as short spurs into Ponderosa pine forests fostered a brief lumber boom.

Notorious Taos entrepreneurs, like gambler Long John Dunn and land-grabber Arthur Manby, established wagon service to Taos, and many farmers and ranchers hauled produce and livestock to the stations to get them to the more-lucrative urban markets.

The Chili Line was a short but vital link in 19th century railroad magnate Gen. William Palmer’s dream of a Denverto-Mexico rail line. Rebuffed in his attempt to get over Ratón Pass, he turned his attentions westward — over La Veta Pass and into the San Luis Valley. There, he envisioned a southward route that would track the Río Grande all the way to Mexico.

Standard-gauge track ran to Alamosa, whereupon “mixed cars” shifted to 3-foot axles behind narrow gauge locomotives to accommodate the twisting, loopy routes to the south. The station at Antonito sat at the junction of the Chili Line and the west-running D&RG to Chama and Durango.

The Chili Line’s steepest section ran between Barranca and Embudo — a slow, treacherous run down into the Río Grande canyon. With 4 percent grades and sharp, 22-degree turns, the train could go no faster than 15 mph. The sixmile incline took more than one hour to negotiate.

Here’s what U.S. Army John Bourke wrote in his diary in 1881 about the Embudo-Barranca run: “At Embudo begins a canyon of great severity and much majesty. Here the train twists around the sharpest of curves, pushes up the steepest of grades where engineering skill of the highest order has been called into service to fight the obstacles interposed by Nature …”

As was the case with many railroads in the 20th Century, the appearance of the automobile and the truck made the Chili Line obsolete. Paved roads sprung up in Northern New Mexico and, by 1935, the railway was in receivership.

Passenger service virtually dried up, and most foodstuffs got to market via truck. And, the Great Depression ground commerce to a virtual halt in rural New Mexico.

In 1941, about a dozen well-wishers boarded the Chili Line at Union Station in Santa Fe for its final run.

One week later, D&RG crews began digging up the tracks.

Sources: The Train Stops Here: New Mexico’s Railway Legacy, by Marci L. Riskin; The Chili Line and Santa Fe City Different, compiled by Richard L. Dorman; “Interview with Antonio Duran,” Embudo Valley Library; The Chili Line: The Narrow Rail Trail to Santa Fe, by John A Gjevre; New Mexico’s Railroads: A Historical Survey, by David Myrick

The Chili Line was a short but vital link in 19th century railroad magnate Gen. William Palmer’s dream of a Denver-to-Mexico rail line.

Raices | 7

Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), 044282

Denver and Río Grande engine near Embudo Canyon, New Mexico, sometime between 1908 and 1910. Closed in 1941, the branch of narrow gauge D&RG railway from Antonito, Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico, was called the Chili Line.

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“Mortals put an end to the darkness; they search out the farthest recesses for ore in the blackest darkness.

Far from human dwellings they cut a shaft, in places untouched by human feet; far from other people they dangle and sway. and no lion prowls there.

People assault the flinty rock with their hands and lay bare the roots of the mountains.

They tunnel through the rock; their eyes see all its treasures.

They search the sources of the rivers and bring hidden things to light.”

(Job 1:28)

Questa Mine thanks the generations of families in Northern New Mexico who have been a part the mining heritage for nearly a century.

8 | Raices

I

Mining vein runs deep in Red River’s history

By Yvonne Pesquera

n the mid 1860s, the country’s attention was rightly focused on the raging battles of the Civil War. Yet that didn’t preclude other historic events from happening elsewhere. In fact, right around the time of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, gold was discovered in locations around Taos County.

“The town of Red River was the last of the four gold camps to be settled –– and the only one to survive,” writes historian J. Rush Pierce in “Red River City.”

Red River is a pine-studded mountain valley enveloped by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in all four directions. The town limits stretch in a linear fashion to about three miles, and a stroll down Main Street puts a pedestrian at 8,750 feet above sea level.

Although the valley has been a hunting, fishing, and trapping locale for Native Americans for millennia, Red River didn’t get its first road until 1916. Up until then, its relative isolation necessitated a strong, independent spirit among its townspeople; and that legacy continues today.

Different from other towns in Taos County (and indeed, Northern New Mexico), Red River has no architectural or cultural signs of Spanish influence. Even though formally a part of the Spanish empire, the conquistadors circumvented Red River, preferring routes through more accessible mountain passes.

By and large, Red River was just simply left alone –– for centuries. And even after the first wave of gold discoveries (c.

1870s), it took until the gold boom of 1895 for the formal founding of Red River City.

During this second, more successful gold rush, prospectors poured into Red River from all across the country. Generally speaking, these were shopkeepers, farmers, businesspeople, schoolteachers, and even former Union and Confederate soldiers who had lost everything in the U.S. Financial Panic of 1893.

But one thing is certain: These prospectors were not professional miners.

At first, the tools of their trade were rudimentary by way of pick, shovel, and bucket. Over time, as claims became more hyped up and mining companies moved in, then sophisticated equipment –– such as turbines, hydraulics, mills, and explosives –– were introduced.

Nevertheless, Red River itself remained a town of rough mud roads and weathered cabins. That’s because by its nature, prospecting is a short-lived and transitory practice. Prospectors move across mountain ridges from one strike to the next, as is evident by the numerous pocket mines throughout the area.

Yet, it is important to note that around a gold boom, the economic infrastructure for a town quietly grows. Mercantile stores, blacksmiths, livery stables and hotels appeared. Even saloons, gambling halls and dance halls became a vital part of town life. For all of which, a steady customer demand made regular employment possible.

However, compared to other mining camps of the era, there was little in the way of criminal notoriety in Red River. The Taos gambler, John Dunn, was known to be a frequent visitor.

And it is highly probable that other historical characters have traveled through. For example, the Earp brothers stayed in nearby Cimarrón and likely came prospecting through Red River.

“Depending on who you ask: nobody got killed or up to a dozen people got killed,” says former Red River Town Marshal Jerry Hogrefe. “But make no mistake about it, there was no law in this land. And claim jumping was a big problem.”

Following the economic activity, civic interest began to appear. For example, the Mallette family was one of the first mining families in Red River and their name appears throughout town on institutions such as Mallette Canyon, Mallette Park, and Mallette Creek.

“Ultimately, the low-grade ore, the shallow water table, and the lack of milling capabilities resulted in the end of gold mining for Red River,” writes Michael Burney in “An Examination of Taos County Mining Records.”

Men searched for signs of lode gold in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains by prospecting the abundant streambeds for gold nuggets and working the rock outcrops for gold dust flakes.

But there is little to see anymore. Most of the log shafts and tunnel structures have collapsed.

“We are so proud of the history of Red River mining,” says Ron Weathers, former president of the Red River Historical Society. “Around town, all of our streets are named after the old mines.”

See MINING, Page 10

A Taos Tradition of Historic Proportions

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Raices | 9

Courtesy Red River Historical Society

The Victoria was one of Red River’s first hotels. It only operated in the early mining era and is no longer in existence.

Photo’s by Sean Kelly Portraits, Taos, NM www.seankellyportraits.com

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1 0 | Raices

Courtesy Red River Historical Society

Counter clockwise, from top right: Hydraulic mining was a cheaper and easier way of moving material quickly. It was limited to areas where gold was not in solid rock and was close to a water source; Main Street in 1900 consisted of hastily built structures and bears little resemblance to the town of Red River today; Starting from scratch, all timber had to be cut and milled (usually on site). All other materials and machinery had to be brought over long distances; The Buffalo Mine was one of the larger mines on Placer Creek and one of the few to turn much of a profit. Evidence of this mine can still be seen in the area.

From MINING, Page 8

their friends and family in a gorgeous, tranquil mountain environment.

“Red River is far from the county seat. But we’ve been showing people a good time for over a hundred years,” says Weathers.

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Photo by Tina Larkin

R

ed River has since grown to become a year-round vacation destination for visitors from all over the country. The Red River Ski Area is the main draw

in the winter, but the other three seasons are just as busy with hiking, camping, biking, fishing, and numerous other outdoor activities.

Today, Red River visitors come here to mine for a different type of “treasure” –– to spend quality time with

Raices | 1 1

Courtesy Taos Soil and Water Conservation District

The Acequia de Atalaya clings to the northern rim of the Hondo Valley in order to irrigate about 300 acres on a mesa perched above the Río Grande Gorge. When it crosses NM 522, the acequia stands about 160 feet above the valley bottom.

Hondo Valley acequias Engineering marvels

A

By J.R. Logan

bout 200 years ago, Hispano settlers in the Hondo Valley undertook an impressive feat of engineering: the construction of a miles-long acequia to carry water from the Río Hondo, along a steep hillside, to a series of fields that sit on a shelf of land perched between the valley and the Río Grande Gorge.

Looking north from the edge of the Hondo mesa, the acequia gives the illusion that it’s steadily gaining altitude. In fact, if you trace the path of the Atalaya on a topographic map, it mirrors the same contour line from its diversion point just below the cliffs of Cañoncito until it crosses beneath NM 522 more than two miles away.

According to the topo map, the elevation of the acequia falls only 40 feet while covering that rocky, arroyo-riddled distance. In that same stretch, the Río Hondo falls about 200 feet.

“It’s amazing they could do this at all,” says Richard McCracken, a commissioner on the Atalaya. He points to the spot on a map where the acequia diverts from the Río Hondo and shakes his head. “If this had been two feet higher, they probably couldn’t have done it. They couldn’t have gone any further up the river with the intake because they’re right along a cliff.”

For the first two miles, the acequia clings to the side of a steep slope on the north side of the Hondo valley. The acequia follows the contour of the hill, and in some places, fill was used to build up the mountain to keep the water flowing.

The ingenuity it took to construct the Atalaya is mirrored by the Cuchilla ditch upstream. The Cuchilla

shuttles water from the Río Hondo, along a steep embankment on the south side of the Hondo valley to the flatlands of Des Montes.

While the actual date of construction of these ditches is hotly debated, both were built sometime in the early 1800s with the same rudimentary tools — wood-hardened picks and shovels, and plenty of pure brawn. “It’s really a testament to those early people, to their ingenuity,” says Jai Cross, a commissioner on the Atalaya ditch. “You can imagine they’re out there with horses or oxen, cutting through rock and the vegetation that’s always been there.

My God, what a labor.”

According to historian John Baxter, the growing population of Taos proper led to the establishment of new communities like Arroyo Hondo in around 1815. Settlers immediately got to work digging the ditches that now permeate the valley. Before long, much of the rich valley bottom was put into production. While the fields had poorer soil and would be harder to irrigate, the flatlands of the mesa on the north side of the valley offered more room to expand the agrarian community.

“These are probably the last fields they were going to irrigate because the valley was taken,” McCracken says. “I don’t know why anybody would come up here otherwise.”

Spanish records show that in 1825, 36 settlers asked permission to occupy the mesa irrigated by the Atalaya.

Baxter notes in his book that language in documents from the time suggest the settlers replaced Hispanos that had previously lived on the land and left.

The exact date of construction of the Atalaya has tremendous import to its parciantes today. New Mexico water law gives priority to the oldest water users. With so many acequias tapping the Río Hondo, there has been

plenty of squabbling between residents of Hondo, Valdéz and Des Montes over who has first dibs.

Officially, the Atalaya has a priority date of 1825, which makes it one of the most junior ditches on the Hondo river system. While it’s only 10 years behind other Hondo acequias, it’s an eternity when it comes to water law. The disputed dates were somewhat resolved when the Hondo ditches agreed to a water sharing agreement to ensure no irrigators were left dry.

Questionable priority dates aren’t the only challenge the Atalaya is facing. Dwinding water supply is also a big problem.

Willows, which bound nearly the entire ditch, soak up a lot of the water. Leakage in the sandy soil along the ditch route also contributes to water loss. Even evaporation is a problem since water moves very slowly along the almost level ditch. Sections of the ditch are almost like a lake.

“Combining all of that, there simply isn’t enough water now” McCracken says. “Whether there ever was, I don’t know.”

Also, because the acequia must traverse such challenging terrain, the ditch is constantly being washed out. Fixing the ditch in these spots takes a lot of work. And because the Atalaya irrigates just 300 acres owned by 40 people, there aren’t a lot of parciantes to lend a hand or cover the cost of maintenance.

Cross says things were probably even tougher for those who first used the ditch two centuries ago. “They must have had all kinds of blowouts,” Cross says. “If we’re still having problems, imagine what it was like before the banks were compacted. Every year must have been a series of disasters. And yet they persevered.”

1 2 | Raices

Courtesy Jenny Vincent

Jenny Vincent playing guitar on the patio at her home, San Cristóbal Valley Ranch in 1949.

The unique past of San Cristóbal Valley Ranch

T

By Elizabeth Cleary

he property is not open to the public and it doesn’t look like much, but at times during the past 100 years or so the area that was once called the San Cristóbal Valley Ranch has undergone several transformations, had a number of famous visitors and was even at the center of a federal investigation during the Red Scare.

Very little written information exists on the history of the property. Probably one of the most thorough accounts is contained in the book “Sing My Whole Life Long,” a biography of longtime San Cristóbal resident and folk musicologist Jenny Vincent. Craig Smith wrote the book in 2007 after meeting her at his son’s wedding 10 or so years ago. Vincent was there with some of her bandmates to play music at the wedding, and Smith said he became fascinated with her life story and soon got the idea to turn it into a book. Vincent even influenced Smith to learn to play the accordion.

Vincent and Dan Wells (she would later remarry and take the surname Vincent) bought the ranch in San Cristóbal in 1937. They were a young couple from back East that fell in love with the area in Northern New Mexico after paying visits to their friend Freida Lawrence, widow of the famous author D.H. Lawrence. Vincent and Wells cared deeply for their new neighbors and community in San Cristóbal, and soon after buying the ranch the couple decided to start a

school for grades nine through 12 for boarders and daytime students on the property.

The school allowed San Cristóbal Valley residents to attend high school without having to make the 30-mile round trip to Taos every day. The school was such a success that they soon added grades five through eight.

“A lot of it was built around the things kids did together — chores, building, caring for their rooms, outdoor activities,” Vincent told Smith for his book.

In 1943, Vincent became the Taos County representative for the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, which, according to Smith’s book, was founded in 1908 to help farmers in New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming improve and market products.

“The farmers union was a milestone for Jenny’s personal and political maturation,” Smith wrote. “In this work she found meaningful expression and practical application for her growing political convictions.” That same year, Vincent joined the Communist Party.

Vincent moved to New York for a while during the 1940s and returned to San Cristóbal following a split from Wells.

After returning to New Mexico in 1947, Vincent met and fell in love with Craig Vincent, a man who shared many of her political convictions and worked for a nonprofit dedicated to improving conditions for the underprivileged in Denver. The two married in 1949, and settled down at the San Cristóbal property, where they decided to start a guest ranch. It was

not long after that San Cristóbal caught the attention of the communist-fearing right, during the era of “McCarthyism,” so-called for Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy.

In 1950, a man who went by the name of Harvey Matusow came to stay at the ranch for one week. His real name was Harvey Matt, and he was working undercover as an informant for the FBI. Two years later, Matt testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). According to Smith’s book, many of the accusations, such as Matt’s assertion that Jenny and Craig Vincent went on an “intelligence gathering” mission to Los Alamos, were nonsense.

In 1954, Craig Vincent was subpoenaed to testify at a trial of his friend, Clinton Jencks, who was accused of falsely signing an affidavit that claimed he was not a communist. Craig Vincent refused to hand over the San Cristóbal ranch’s guest list as well as other information concerning the ranch, and was sentenced to five years in prison, although he never served his sentence.

Smith received much of the information for his book from conversations with Jenny Vincent herself.

Now 101 years old, Jenny Vincent spoke with a reporter who came to visit her at the Taos Retirement Village in July of this year. When asked about the FBI investigations at the ranch, Jenny Vincent simply said, “I’m trying to forget.”

Raices | 1 3

“M

y memory is not as good in that area as it is in remembering a song,” she said.

Jenny Vincent still plays folk music at the retirement home every Tuesday, and each week she attracts a sizable audience. Her husband has been dead for more than 30 years.

By the time Craig was subpoenaed to testify, he and Vincent had already sold the ranch. According to Smith’s book, Craig Vincent wrote in a letter to the Taos Chamber of Commerce that he and Jenny Vincent “could no longer in all fairness to our guests and ourselves subject them to the overt danger of being framed in this way, to satisfy the evil political purposes of those who would subvert the Constitution.”

In 1964, however, Jenny and Craig Vincent

decided to buy the ranch back. Five years later, the couple decided to rent the ranch out to Reis Tijerina, who was to use it as an Indo-Hispano cultural center. An announcement was made on the afternoon of Feb. 2, 1969, and by that evening the ranch home and other structures had burned to the ground. Craig Vincent was convinced this was arson. So did Tijerina, who according to Smith’s book, thought of the fire as “further proof of the conspiracy to keep Hispanic peoples from developing their culture, rights and heritage.”

Jenny and Craig Vincent later sold the property, and it became the site of the San Felipe del Río Children’s Home. And later it became a drug and alcohol treatment center. The owners of the treatment center still own the property, although it closed in January, 2013. The property currently houses the domestic water system for San Cristóbal.

An announcement was made on the afternoon of Feb. 2, 1969, and by that evening the ranch home and other structures had burned to the ground.

Courtesy Jenny Vincent

Joe Santistevan, Henry Wallace and Pete Tagger in the summer of 1948 at San Cristóbal Valley Ranch.

Wallace was a former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt, was running for president that year on the Progressive Party ticket. Jenny Vincent sang with Pete Seeger at the party’s nominating convention in Philadelphia, and Wallace later visited her in San Cristóbal, when this photo was taken.

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1 4 | Raices

Kit Carson A divisive figure long after his time

H

By Jim O’Donnell

istory can be uncomfortable. Likewise, the future can be more than a bit nerveracking. It is the future, however, that offers much more opportunity than the past ever will.

Most of us have a vague idea of who Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson (1809-1868) was as a historical figure. An illiterate man who abandoned American society for a life in the wilds of the West. He was at once a trapper, a scout, allegiant soldier, adventurer, loyal husband and father, devoted friend, cold-blooded killer and ultimately a legend whose life defines the America of “Manifest Destiny”.

One of the things that makes Kit Carson the human being so uncomfortable for us in the present is that his life represents the larger forces at play during a very difficult time in our nation’s history and certainly in the history of the Southwest. For some, he is a sort of national hero while for others he is the devil incarnate.

The fact is, he was neither devil nor hero. He was a man of his times and a figure of towering historical significance.

Manifest Destiny was not just an abstract theory that floated loosely through American society. It was rather a very powerful ideology that served as a basis for American imperialist expansion into The West. The idea of Manifest Destiny gifted Euro-Americans a racial superiority and assumed right to expropriate land, water and people.

Carson was of a nation that clung to this deeply-held, and faulted, ideology.

The debate over the name of our town’s most prominent park seems more about how we misunderstand the complexities of history, and particularly the history of the Southwest, than about Kit Carson the man. Sadly, we learn our nation’s history with clean-cut dates, battles

Courtesy Kit Carson Home and Museum

Christopher “Kit” Carson.

and speeches that are taught in a way meant to represent culture-wide and landscape-scale events. What is forgotten is that real live human beings and cultures make up that history, and those human beings and cultures are as complex as we are.

Instead of living in our past, the fierce discussion about the name of our park opens up the opportunity to better understand the complexities of Taos history and to answer, at least in part, the question of how we as a community want to be seen going forward.

The Southwest in those days was messy. The entire West was messy. It was a violent and morally bankrupt time defined by the clash of multiple cultures across an

incredibly diverse landscape. The forces at play in those times were were like nothing we experience today. As Hampton Sides so accurately described in his book “Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West,” low-level warfare reigned king across the Southwest and murder, torture, raiding, stealing, and abducting slaves defined daily existence in the Southwest — and it wasn’t just one group doing it to the rest. It was everyone doing it to each other.

“The Navajo were expert raiders who stole women, children, cattle, and especially sheep in seasonal attacks. In turn, the Spanish and the Pueblo Indians regularly went into Navajo country to retaliate by stealing Navajo women, children, cattle and sheep,” Sides told me.

The icing on the cake was the American juggernaught rolling its way over everything. There is a reason I tell my children that, in reality, the “good old days” were actually the “bad old days.” This was the time in which Kit Carson lived.

“What really motivated Carson was personal loyalty and tribal loyalty. If he was your friend, he was your friend for life,” Sides said. “If he befriended a tribe, that tribe was always an ally. The enemy of his friend was then his enemy.

This gets closer than anything I’ve found to explaining the way Carson operated.

“For example, he was the lifelong friend of the Utes, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, and many other tribes,” Sides says.

“Later in life he joined another ‘tribe’ — the Spanish. The perennial enemy of the Spanish was the Navajo. So when he went to war against the Navajo, it meshed perfectly with his value system ... The Spanish and the Pueblos were absolutely in favor of Carson’s punitive campaign into Navajo country — and they actively participated in it.”

There is a reason I tell my children that, in reality, the “good old days” were actually the “bad old days.” This was the time in which Kit Carson lived.

See KIT CARSON, Page 16

Raices | 1 5

Courtesy Kit Carson Home and Museum

Kit Carson Home, sometime in the early 20th Century.

1 6 | Raices

Courtesy Kit Carson Home and Museum

A group of people in front of the Kit Carson Home and Museum, date unknown.

From KIT CARSON, Page 14

H

istory is complex. And while history is more often than not very instructive, it frequently serves as a Sisyphean weight on the back of the present and the future.

“The renaming of Kit Carson Memorial Park opened the door to the possibility of understanding how our history is remembered, represented and symbolized in Taos today,” says former Taos judge and long-time resident Peggy Nelson. “It has little or nothing to do with whether Kit Carson was a villain

or a hero, or with white washing or rewriting history. It has everything to do with hearing other voices as they interpret our history, coming to some common understanding and deciding as a community what the symbols of our future should be.

Whether you love him or hate him, Kit Carson is a potent symbol of American expansion, imperialism and Manifest Destiny. The deep fissures within our community and the legacies of history that live on, including loss of land, poverty, violence, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and cultural conflict tell me that we need a symbol that unites rather than divides the community.”

Sides doesn’t quite see it the same way.

GIVE INSPIRE HISTORY FAMILIES ENCOURAGE LEGACY

“Taos should simply accept that Carson was a substantial and actually quite fascinating figure in the town’s history. Love him or hate him, he’s simply there, an important cornerstone of this community’s past. You can’t sweep him under the rug and pretend he’s didn’t exist.”

Nor should we. But while we acknowledge the massive impact Carson had on the history of our nation, region and town we also have the opportunity to say the past is the past. And while we honor that past we nonetheless have the opportunity to project both to the world and to ourselves that we strive for a future community where all Taoseños have equal opportunity to thrive.

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A volunteer descends a ladder at the San Antonio del Rio Colorado church in Questa.

RAICES The families peppered throughout Northern New Mexico are exemplified by their character. They show up without asking. They stay without reward. And they ask for nothing in return. Their footprint is almost invisible yet their impression is long-lasting for years and decades to come....

Raices | 1 7

From left to right: Rancher Crestina Trujillo Armstrong, right, hands Brian Roberts a receipt for goats he and his brother, Wade, purchased for 4-H projects. 4-H is a tradition in the family and Brian formerly served as an ambassador for the state’s 4-H program; Brian and his goat bond in the barn. He understands that giving his livestock names as he and his brother have traditionally done over the years makes it harder when time comes to sell them at auction; At the homestead, Brian places his hands around an inset sketch of Spring Creek on a topographic map of the Carson National Forest.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch A glimpse into the life of the Roberts brothers

Photos essay by Tina Larkin • Text By Andrew Oxford

T

here may be no better demonstration of how sturdy Northern New Mexico’s agricultural roots really are than the annual Taos County Fair.

Each year’s 4-H exhibitions offer a glimpse at the next generation of farmers and ranchers who will continue a tradition that, in many cases, began with their ancestors centuries ago.

But raising cattle and tending fields is not exactly a young man’s game. The average American farmer is 57 years old and that number is rising. Young people appear to be leaving agriculture.

Who is New Mexico’s agricultural heritage depending on?

Photographer Tina Larkin sought to find out by getting to know two 4-H participants more intimately than a brief march around the auction ring allows.

a season in 4-H for two boys who she found had a close connection to the land.

Brian and Wade Roberts, 18 and 16, respectively, live much of the year with their family on their homestead in the Carson National Forest. The 158 acres known as Spring Creek were claimed by their great-grandfather, John Schofield.

Out at the family’s home, the Roberts brothers live much as the cowboys and farmers who came before them.

In this collection of photographs, Larkin documents

Photos continue on pages 18 and 19.

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1 8 | Raices

Clockwise, from top left: Wade’s hands perfectly frame the prestigious Taos County Fair Champion Exhibitor Analisa Alicia Martínez belt buckle, an award described as a true honor to the family’s agricultural heritage; Brian, left, and Wade walk their goats Athena and Loki to a trailer after they were purchased at the Taos County Fair livestock auction; and Wade says goodbye after selling his reserve champion steer, Buford, at the Taos County Fair livestock auction.

Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales

History.

State Representative District #42 Democrat Raices, “Roots” are the Foundation of the Rich Heritage of the People of Northern New Mexico.

State Representative Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales District 42, Democrat

Thank you Taos County for your ongoing support. If I may assist you please call 575-770-3178.

We cherish the lives of our ancestors for their perseverance.

Through their valor we, as a people, have a place in this world.

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Tina Larkin

Wade and Brian Roberts walk in the horse pasture at Spring Creek with their dog Ricochet.

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2014 Taos Pueblo War Chief, David G. Gomez

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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 theFormer future. people PuebloThese Governor, Tony are our own links in what continues to be an unbroken circle of tradition at Taos Pueblo.