River guide & master storyteller l l
CISCO GUEVARA
Los Rios River Runners' founder Cisco Guevara has stories to tell.
In addition to hair-raising tales of white-water rafting “The Box,” learn how this raconteur really learned to dance.
4 Mining did not pay out for this Red River woman
6 Why river guides make great storytellers CISCO GUEVARA SHARES HIS INSIGHTS WITH TAOS NEWS ASSISTANT
Virginia Dodier
BETWEEN THE LINES TAOS COUNTY'S GRAND HISTORY , folks were, as Bill Bryson wrote, “quietly going about their daily business — eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavoring to be amused and … that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.”
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster Louis “Studs” Terkel knew this truth, and he made it his life’s work to gather oral histories from ordinary Americans — to share their stories.
It is true: everybody has a story, but Cisco Guevara has many stories. Look for a few of his true tales in this 26th issue of Raices, the second in our four-part Tradiciones series. We distilled these nuggets from an interview Geoffrey Plant, Taos News assistant editor, did with Guevara on Voices of Taos.
Red River once had a women miner called "Loco Lily" Smith, but — other than a gossip-fueled "character sketch by an unknown writer — not much is known about the woman who ended her own life in 1954.
In August Virginia Dodier gave a fascinating talk on New Mexico’s early Presbyterians for the Taos County Historical Society. You’ll find an excerpt from “‘Our Mexicans’: Nuevomexicano Presbyterian Missionaries in Northern New Mexico, Civil War to Statehood” inside. Dodier’s research ties in neatly with the 150th anniversary of the First Presbyterian Church in Taos and the congregation’s celebration planned for this November. We hope you enjoy reading about our Protestant neighbors.
If these stories inspire you to dig into Taos’ history, let us know what you discover!
Ellen Miller-Goins, Magazine Editor
Kit Carson is putting in the work now to ensure our future generations have a reliable, safe and affordable grid that utilizes renewable energy resources. Kit Carson Electric prioritizes forest fire mitigation and grid upgrades. Kit Carson Internet is upgrading it’s network for increased reliability. Kit Carson Propane stabilizes prices throughout the region for customer affordability.
Mining did not pan out for this Red River woman
Lily Smith’s shot at wealth ended tragically
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
RED RIVER
OLD TIMER TILLIE SIMEON
WAS WELL-KNOWN FOR SAYING, “RED RIVER IS OK FOR MEN AND DOGS BUT HELL ON WOMEN AND HORSES.”
In the case of Red River’s short-lived mining boom, it was likely hell on everybody. Mary Miller, curator at the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum, found several letters referencing the desperate times many miners faced during the Great Depression. A letter to Dr. M.F. Smith in Raton regarding the care of “Little Ida Phipps” noted “Bert [Phipps] has nothing except his mine prospect and : there is no work here at present.”
In 1895, the Raton Range may have proclaimed “Red River City is still booming,” but Red River’s “boom” was brief.
J. Rush Pierce and Royce Raven wrote in the Red River Miner, “By the time Red River City got into the full sway of gold fever, the days of striking it rich with a glorious ‘find’ were no longer the way to wealth for individuals in the mines of the American West. To discover a promising site was one thing, but to develop it properly required money. Low-grade ore and processing, which required transportation to places like Pueblo, Colorado, proved to be anything but cost efficient. Add the hardship of hard rock mining which was complicated by ground water which flooded tunnels and shafts. By 1905, the population which had once been touted as 1,500 to 3,000 souls dwindled to 150.”
She sought the motherlode
Still, Mrs. L.M. Priscilla “Lily” Smith must have been optimistic when she “found her way into Red River in 1922 with Charlie Young,” according to one of two “character sketches” found in the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum.
A U.S. Department of Labor blog, “A Brief History of Women in Mining” by Holly Armstrong, notes that in the 19th century, “women ‘grubstakers’ sometimes financed the initial cost of prospecting in return for part-interest in any claim.”
The Red River Miner notes Smith owned several mines and claims — called the “Silver Tip Group” — along Pioneer Creek. “Sometime in the early 1900s Mrs.
L. M. [Lily] Smith came to Red River and acquired several claims in the lower part of Pioneer Canyon. Tradition holds that she was from New York, but there are no records to indicate exactly how or why she obtained these … properties. Nevertheless, she remained in the area and worked the mines for a period of more than 10 years.”
Smith’s mines included the Dyke Tunnel, the Silver Tip Tunnel, the New York Tunnel, the Rochester Tunnel and the Hillside Tunnel.
The late John H. “Johnny” Brandenburg, Red River old timer and co-founder of the Red River Historical Society, wrote, “My dad, Jack Brandenburg, worked for them during the 1920s and early 1930s.”
Jack Brandenburg built the small cabin that can be found just above the first river crossing up Pioneer Canyon. “Dad built a small log cabin at several of the locations so they would have a place to store tools and a place to relax over a cup of coffee.”
Jack Brandenburg experienced Smith’s ultimate failure firsthand. “When the Depression hit, they found it to be very hard to get venture capital, and when the money ran out, they found they could not continue work on the several claims and work stopped. My dad was never paid the money he had coming when hard times arrived.”
Not much is known about Smith’s life.
In 1986, the late Frances Williams, president and co-founder of the Red River Historical Society, wrote to Ruth Jeffers, Smith’s sister in Rochester, New York, asking for details about her husband’s name, “when he was deceased, and if he was buried in this area,” along with other details about Smith’s life. So far no reply has been found.
Under the subhead “Witness of Greed,” the writer of the Lily Smith “character sketches” notes Smith’s partner “Charlie gave up prospecting and moved to Texas” while Smith lived in a cabin on the present property of the Grand View.” (Grandview Cabins, located on land between Jay Hawk Trail and Golden Treasure Trail, were moved off site or torn down several decades ago. Look for Bearly Awake Coffee Co. and other businesses in that locale today.)
“Priscilla, or ‘loco Lily’ lived by her wits. One story is that she sold a cabin to a green horn for $1,000. This cabin was abandoned, but it was still not hers to sell.”
According to rumor, Lily became local miner and taxidermist Ed Westoby’s mistress, “though Priscilla was not greatly liked.” Our unknown writer shared Lily tried to prevent Westoby from attending his wife’s funeral. “Ed … told friends that
Priscilla had locked his clothes in trunks so he could not attend Margaret’s funeral. Their advice was to take a pick and break the locks. Since he did attend, their advice must have been taken.”
Worse still, “when Ed became sick and needed someone to care for him, Priscilla took his life over. ... Priscilla had Ed change his will” making her his heir. ‘Legacy of loneliness’
Was it her loneliness, guilt — or financial devastation that led to her suicide in 1954?
Continuing under the subhead, “Legacy of Loneliness,” the character-sketch writer notes, “With Ed Westoby’s death Lily or Priscilla … lives in Ed’s house and has to reconsider her past. What brings a person to the point of taking their own life this will never really be understood…. She tries to take her life any number of times, but just cannot take that last real plunge. She tells friends where to find a key to get in in case. She receives welfare in the amount of $40 a month and barely exists.”
According to our writer, Ruth Jeffers was staying at the Westoby House when she found her sister “dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. … Priscilla’s last wishes were to be buried in Fairmont cemetery in Raton, New Mexico. But instead, Ruth buries her in … the lower Rose Hill [Red River] Cemetery. … Services were held in the Red River schoolhouse. … A few women brought in wildflowers and tree branches for the funeral service.
“Did Priscilla really get what would make her happy by her wits, or did she outwit herself to loneliness and grief, even in death?
“In 1955 Ruth Jeffries sold the Westoby property for $7,000.” l
ELLEN MILLER-GOINS/Taos News
LEFT: Drill holes along The Dyke Tunnel prospect. RIGHT: Mary Miller of Red River explores a tunnel in The Dyke Tunnel prospect.
ELLEN MILLER-GOINS/Taos News
TOP LEFT: One of Lily Smith’s cabins is located above the first river crossing up Pioneer Canyon. TOP RIGHT: Interior of Lily Smith’s cabin. BOTTOM LEFT: Ed Westoby. BOTTOM RIGHT: Lily Smith’s grave at the Red River Cemetery
Cisco Guevara on why river guides make great storytellers
Excerpted
from
an interview with Taos News Assistant Editor Geoffrey Plant
EDITED BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
A FTER OVER 50 YEARS OF RUNNING THE RIO GRANDE AND RIO CHAMA
storyteller Cisco Guevara has an intimate knowledge of Northern New Mexico. He’s a founding member and current board president of Taos-based water protection group Amigos Bravos. He’s also the founder and president of the white-water rafting company Los Rios River Runners.
Rafting for a living
When I was a teenager, we would run down to the Rio Grande in inner tubes and jump in and have fun. But I remember many times having these dangerous near-drowning experiences and pulling my peers out of the river, semi-conscious, a bloody near-death kind of thing. But we were “smart,” so we came back the next weekend with bigger inner tubes. Same results. We got extra smart and tied the bigger inner tubes together into a big raft. But still, we would flip and take terrible swims and near-death experiences. Young and dumb ... Local Boy Scout leaders … taught us how to canoe, raft and kayak, and that was the beginning of our knowledge.
I was born and raised in Los Alamos, and so my career path was kind of set for me to follow in my dad’s footsteps. He was a thermonuclear engineer specializing in health physics. We had no idea what he did. He wasn’t allowed to tell us. I was in data analyst trainee program, but I ran into some problems with getting security clearance. [In an Oct. 11, 2018 Taos News story, Guevara recounted the lab found out he had stolen a police car in one of his more rebellious youthful moments.] They asked me to withdraw my request, so I realized I’m not going to get a good job at the labs. Right after high school I was working for two bucks an hour as a carpenter — big money. [Around 1973] we got a call from Doug Murphy, who had
started the first commercial raft company in New Mexico. He said, “I hear you guys know how to row the Taos Box. Come on up. I’ll give you jobs.” I made huge money. We got paid $25 a day. That’s good money and it was exciting, too, and tons of fun.
I’ve been doing that ever since.
On co-founding Amigos Bravos
I’ve seen how things have changed over time, differences in the water quantity, water quality. This group has had some fairly serious and successful lawsuits to protect water quality in Northern New Mexico. There’s a lot less water now, considerably less. And that becomes a concern because there’s the old adage that the solution to pollution is dilution. Well,
we don’t have enough water to dilute the same toxins, poisons, pollutants that are coming into the river, and through Amigos Bravos and our cohorts, we’ve been able to lessen those impacts and address those impacts and make people aware of them. And of course, we have very strong partnerships with New Mexico Environmental Law Center and some other strong environmental lawyers, so we hold polluters accountable. The main one is the Molycorp mine. We’ve been battling them for decades. That’s why we were founded. They wanted to put a tailings pond right above the Wild and Scenic River, just outside of Questa, and we said “Whoa, whoa. No, no, no, that ain’t gonna happen.” … We continue to hold them accountable. There’s not just less snow, there’s more warming and quicker runoff. And the problem with New Mexico is we’ve lost a lot of our sponge. If there’s a good amount of organic material, trees, grasses, etc., it’ll hold the water and slowly release it so your streams stay at a good level at a nice temperature all season long. But here in New Mexico, because of overgrazing,
I didn’t know I was a storyteller until SOMOS came 26 years ago and said, ‘We’re starting a Storytelling Festival. We want you to come tell a story.’ I said, ‘Thanks, ladies. I’m very honored. But I’m not a storyteller. I’m a raft guide.’ They said, ‘Cisco, we’ve been on your raft trips. You’re a storyteller.’
Cisco Guevara River guide & storyteller
mostly, it hits the ground and runs off right away and erodes and makes everything real muddy and erodes even more, creating these arroyos and canyons. It’s not just rafters who are affected. It’s irrigators. It’s downstream users. The impacts are really widespread.
Rafting and the art of storytelling
People who are drawn to being a river guide have a love of the outdoors, have a love of the river, have the love of the experience that it has to offer, and we want to share that in every way possible. So it’s just a natural segue into telling people more. The river has its own message to give to so it’s okay to not tell stories, just let people you know, absorb it. But if you’re seeing things and you’ re being told things about history and the scientific fact and the geology, etc., it makes a deeper experience and is more valuable to everybody.
I didn’t know I was a storyteller until SOMOS came 26 years ago and said, “We’re starting a Storytelling Festival. We want you to come tell a story.” I said, “Thanks, ladies. I’m very honored. But I’m not a storyteller. I’m a raft guide.” They said, “Cisco, we’ve been on your raft trips. You’re a storyteller.”
I remember getting up on the stage, and I was petrified. I went to ladies and I said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m so nervous.” They said, it’s easy, Cisco, all you have to do is tell your most memorable days on the river. That’s easy. Those are the days I found dead bodies down there. So I soon got this reputation for telling these really graphic, gross tales, and they realized I need a little help. So as the Storytelling Festival got more popular, they were able to hire the bigger national, true, professional storytellers, and they mentored me over the years. … I have a lot of story in me, and if I can learn to step out of the way, it’ll come out. And that works. It’s a wonderful creative process.
CONTINUES ON 8
OPPOSITE: Los Rios River Runners founder and local storytelling legend Cisco Guevara watches as his guides and passengers prepare for a trip down the Racecourse on Friday (March 25). Having run the rafting outfitter for 55 years, Guevara shares a deep bond with the Rio Grande and notes his concern about the impacts of climate change as he looks to the future. NATHAN BURTON/TAOS NEWS TOP: Cisco Guevara with a group of passengers embarking on a river trip. COURTESY PHOTO BELOW: Cisco Guevara in one of his Los Rios River Runners rafts. COURTESY PHOTO
I’ve seen how things have changed over time, differences in the water quantity, water quality. This group has had some fairly serious and successful lawsuits to protect water quality in Northern New Mexico. There’s a lot less water now, considerably less. And that becomes a concern because there’s the old adage that the solution to pollution is dilution. Well, we don’t have enough water to dilute the same toxins, poisons, pollutants that are coming into the river, and through Amigos Bravos and our cohorts, we’ve been able to lessen those impacts and address those impacts and make people aware of them.
Cisco Guevara Founder of Amigos Bravos
Two-stepping to get the girl
In the early 1970s, old Martinez Hall was a very popular nightclub dance hall. Back then, there was 12 major communes around the Taos Valley, and they made a deal with the owners of the bar that every third Wednesday the hippies could have a dance there. And so we would gather our nickels and dimes and hire whatever band we could afford. And usually the only one we could afford was Three Faces West, a local band out of Red River. They loved to come down because they weren’t just stuck playing country-Western twostep stuff. They could play rockabilly and other things. It was quite the scene. I remember there was this one really beautiful cowgirl. I mean, she was stereotypical, classic, absolute American beauty, and she would sit at the end of the hall in her working cowgirl outfit. You know, you could tell she just came in from the ranch, and she would sit at the end of the bar with her drink, and I was so fascinated by her. And I would see guys come up and ask her a question, and then she would ask them a question, and they would shake their head no, and then she would shake her head no, and they’d walk away dejected. So I got a little closer where I could eavesdrop, and the guy would come up said, “Excuse me, ma’am, would you like to dance?” She goes, “I certainly would do. You know
how to two-step?” And they said, “No, I don’t.” And she goes, “Well, never mind.” And they’d walk away dejected.
I thought “Oh, this is great, I know how to two-step!” Because when I was an altar boy, they had tried to make the wakes of the funeral a little more celebratory of the deceased life. They actually hired a DJ to play music and taught us altar boys how to dance the waltz, the cha-cha and the two step. We had to dress up nice and not wipe our nose on our sleeves and ask the ladies to dance. So there’s my chance. I walk up there. “Excuse me, ma’am, would you like to dance?” “I sure would do. You know how to two step?” “I certainly do.” So she took my arm. We walked out on the floor. We did one circle around the dance floor, around all the undulating hippies in the middle of the floor, and right in the middle of song, she stopped, and said, “That was great, but it’s not the two-step.” And she turned and walked off the floor. I was devastated. In my rock ‘n’ roll ways, I had added a little extra beat in my twostep. I hired a friend of mine, a professional dance teacher, and I practiced for two months. I wore out the linoleum on my kitchen floor, going round and round, getting that rhythm in me, and I went back every third Wednesday for months and months and months, and never saw her again. l
TOP RIGHT: Los Rios River Runners, Amigos Bravos founder and local storytelling legend Cisco Guevara dances a home grown two-step with a lady patron at Old Martina's Hall. COURTESY
PHOTO ABOVE: Cisco Guevara rows his Los Rios River Runners raft toward the Taos Junction Bridge in Pilar, New Mexico. COURTESY PHOTO
First Presbyterian Church celebrates 150 years this November
Padre Martínez inadvertently seeded the Taos church
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
IN “DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP,” NOVELIST WILLA CATHER MADE PADRE ANTONIO JOSÉ MARTÍNEZ AN UNSAVORY CHARACTER. THE TRUTH, AS THE LATE JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR RICHARD BENKE WROTE IN HIS 1994 STORY “HISTORY SHINES KINDER LIGHT ON 19TH-CENTURY NEW MEXICO PRIEST,” IS MORE NUANCED.
Quoting Rev. Juan Romero of Los Angeles, who completed a translation of Padre Martínez’s autobiography in 1994, Benke wrote: “Padre Martínez did a lot more not only for Catholics but all people of the Southwest. ... He was a great person in terms of a priest, of culture, protector of the poor, a deeply religious man who did a lot in establishing a native clergy.”
Padre Martínez also ministered to a group of people who would become the founders of First Presbyterian Church in Taos. The church came about because of two disparate events: the death of Padre Martínez and the availability of Presbyterian missionary James Madison Roberts. According to the church’s website, Roberts, his wife Martha and their two children had fled for their lives after trying unsuccessfully to minister to Navajo people in New Mexico and Arizona. While in Santa Fe, a group of Taoseños asked him come minister to them.
“The church was started by a group of followers of Padre Martínez,” explained the church’s pastor Rev. Virginia “Ginna” Bairby. “They weren’t welcome in the Catholic church anymore, Padre Martínez had died, this failed missionary was on his way home, and these guys said, ‘Hey, we’d like a pastor’ — and so that’s how they became Presbyterians. What was important to them was not the specific denomination, but having a church, having someone — and somewhere — to nurture their faith. They were sort of in this middle ground. They were not Catholic, they were not yet Protestant.”
Taos’ First Presbyterian Church was officially established on Nov. 15, 1874 by charter members Vicente Ferrer Romero (Padre Martínez’ son), Jose Mondragon, Maria Mondragon, Martha Roberts, and Joaquin Sandoval. Beginning in 1882, members built their first church and a nearby mission school on land Padre Martínez had bequeathed to Romero in El Prado. According to the church’s website, “Teachers who came mainly from New England states were well-trained, young, dedicated individuals who were willing to devote their energies and affections to this mission.” The school was closed in 1916.
Often the setting for big dinners, box suppers, meetings and community entertainment, the church served as a hospital during the World War I influenza epidemic. Mabel Dodge Luhan married Antonio Lujan in the church with noted Taos modernist painter Andrew Dasburg as a witness. When the congregation began to outgrow the walls of its first church, in 1941 they decided to build a new one. Taos luminaries Jack and Dorothy Brandenburg contacted their friend, famed architect John Gaw Meem. Bert Phillips, a co-founder of the famed Taos Society of Artists, agreed to donate one of his original paintings as payment for Meem’s building plans. World War II delayed construction but on March 5, 1950, the congregation voted to apply for a grant of $2,000 and a loan of $7,000 from the Board of National Missions to build a new church on property formerly owned by Arthur Manby.
By the time they dedicated their new church on June 22, 1952, the congregation had spent about $50,000 on its construction. The church sanctuary and education building, built in 1964, beautifully showcase Meem’s renowned Pueblo Revival-style architecture.
What was important to them was not the specific denomination, but having a church, having someone — and somewhere — to nurture their faith. They were sort of in this middle ground. They were not Catholic, they were not yet Protestant.
Rev. Virginia “Ginna” Bairby Church Pastor
Referencing “Meem’s sensitive appreciation for the legacy of Spanish-Pueblo architecture, as well as its adoption by the diverse immigrant culture of the Southwest,” the writer Stephen Holmgren praises two of his contributions to New Mexico architecture: the La Fonda Hotel de Taos extension and UNM’s Zimmerman Library in Albuquerque. Other works include the John Gaw Meem Historic Courthouse in Santa Fe, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties; the Cristo Rey Catholic Church and the Felipe B. Delgado House, both in Santa Fe; and Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm in Albuquerque’s North Valley.
From 1874–1900, the church had 174 members and, with the exception of 17, all were Spanish. Today, according to 2020 census data, 221 people in Taos claim the Presbyterian faith.
“We’ve got people in this church who are members here, so they’re technically Presbyterians, but they’ll tell you, ‘Oh, I’m Catholic. I grew up Catholic. I’m just also Presbyterian,’” Bairby said. “It’s much more fluid now. We have an energetic group of folks. Some of them have been here for generations upon generations. There were Romeros in the beginning of the founding of the church, and there’s Romeros today. And then others have come here from all over the country, all over the world. It’s a fun mix of people.”
Bairby said the church’s “official big party” is set for Sunday, Nov. 17. “We’re going to have a big lunch at the Sagebrush after worship, but also, in the lead up to Nov. 17, every Sunday in worship we’re covering one decade of the church’s history and telling stories from that decade.
“We’re also doing just an open-house cake and ice cream party for the community at 12:30 after worship on Oct. 13,” Bairby continued, “and we’re inviting anyone that wants to come but especially the vendors who work with us, just to say ‘thank you’ to the folks who have made it possible to keep being a church for 150 years.” †
COURTESY PHOTOS
OPPOSITE TOP: A joint concert of the Taos Community Chorus and Albuquerque Civic Chorus. OPPOSITE
BOTTOM: Exterior view of the church. TOP: Left to right, church members Jack, Dorothy and Barbara Brandenburg, Minister Heemstra, Ruth Fish, Selma Kay, Joan Pond, and Lou Pond. The remaining four are not identified. MIDDLE: The old church building at La Loma no longer stands. BELOW: A baptismal ceremony taking place at the church. RIGHT: Church pastor Rev. Virginia “Ginna” Bairby
‘Our Mexicans,’ Vicente Ferrer Romero and Presbyterians in Taos
BY VIRGINIA DODIER
EXCERPTED FROM “‘OUR MEXICANS’ : NUEVOMEXICANO PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONARIES IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, CIVIL WAR TO STATEHOOD,” A TAOS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY LECTURE FROM AUG. 3, 2024
“Our Mexicans” — from the 1904 book, “Our Mexicans,” by missionary Rev. Robert M. Craig — was how the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions described the Spanish-speaking New Mexicans who converted to Presbyterianism and became missionaries to their own people. Rev. Craig wrote in his introduction, “To speak of the Spanish-speaking people within our gates as ‘Mexicans,’ in contradistinction to Americans … if anybody is entitled to the name ‘American’ it surely is the people who are descendants of men and women who lived in New Mexico [centuries ago].”
The term, “Our Mexicans,” was aimed not at the Presbyterians of New Mexico but at their supporters: folks who lived back East and in the Midwest — faithful churchgoers who believed in proselytizing. The Board of Home Missions (that is, missions within the U.S. and its territories and possessions) gathered supplies and funds from supporters to distribute throughout the mission fields. The cover of the Home Mission Monthly reproduces sketches of each region or community served — including Native American tribes and pueblos, Native Alaskans, the Mormons of Utah, the Freedmen (formerly enslaved persons) of the South, the people of Appalachia, and the “Mexicans” of New Mexico Territory (including Arizona).
Presbyterians were not the first Protestants to visit New Mexico. Methodist and Baptist missionaries arrived before the Civil War, but their congregations failed. The first Presbyterian missionary came in 1850 but had no success. After the Civil War, Presbyterians renewed their mission efforts. They wanted to spread the word, to serve the people and to unite all the different regions of the U.S. into one America. As stated in the Home Mission Monthly in 1887, “Let us take them [potential converts] kindly by the hand and help them to … become an intelligent and honored part of our Christian nation.” Or as the magazine’s motto says succinctly: “Our land for Christ.”
The first Presbyterian missionaries in New Mexico after the war were: Rev. D. F. McFarland, who founded the first Presbyterian church in the Territory in Santa Fe, 1867; Rev. John A. Annin, in Las Vegas as of 1869; and Rev. James M. Roberts, who was invited to Taos about 1870. In 50 years, these emissaries of the Presbyterian church inspired 51 Presbyterian ministers, 65 churches and 2900 members (according to The Soul of America: The Contribution of Presbyterian Home Missions, by Charles Lemuel Thompson (1919)). The secret of their success was in converting and recruiting native New Mexicans into teaching, evangelization and ministry —folks who could talk in their own language to their own folks.
Perhaps the appeal of Presbyterianism to Roman Catholics at that time can be summed up as: access to the Bible, and Bible study; locally organized church structures, from the bottom up, not the top down—there is no “head” of the Presbyterian church in the same position of
authority as the Pope. Married men could become ministers. Plus, the Presbyterian schools offered education in English and as well as an introduction to American history and culture.
Padre Martínez’s son helps found Taos church
Vicente Ferrer Romero, a son of Padre Antonio José Martínez and Teodora Romero, was born in Taos in 1844 and died in 1928. As discussed by Fray Angélico Chávez in his 1981 book “But Time and Chance: The Story of Padre Martinez” and by Father Juan Romero in his blog “The Taos Connection,” Romero may have been the anonymous author of some pro-Protestant and anti-Catholic publications issued by Padre Martinez’s El Crepúsculo press between 1858 and 1861 — though he was a teenager. Chávez (pp. 156-157) writes that all these tracts “seem to be the products of … Romero who … was promoting a sort of religious cult of his own, part Protestant and part Catholic in concept.”
The Presbyterian historian J. Shannon Webster in an unpublished article titled “José Martinez and the New Mexico Reformation” writes, “Presbyterians are the beneficiaries [of Padre Martínez] … Presbyterian missions enjoyed such success in New Mexico when it had struggled among Hispano populations elsewhere. The answer is, it was handed to us on a silver platter.”
Romero was a founding member of the Presbyterian Church in Taos — the congregation that is now First Presbyterian. In the 1974 booklet “Transitions,” the centennial history of Taos First Presbyterian, Rowena M. Martinez writes that around 1870 Romero was part of a group from the Taos area that asked Rev. Roberts to come preach the gospel. In 1874 they formed a church, the charter members including elders V.F. Romero and José Domingo Mondragon, a former Penitente.
The first church and mission school building were on land owned by Romero in El Prado. Romero preached in this church.
This is an English translation excerpted from a sermon held in the Menaul Historical Library titled “The Necessity of Cultivating the Mind and the Heart” that he gave on September 27, 1884:
“Beloved brothers: So long as we cannot grow or advance in our religious duties, we are like the good seed sown in a desert … What … keeps us … growing … in this desert of immense ignorance, fanaticism, superstition, and wickedness is the broad cultivation both of our mind and our heart. For only with this and the aid of God almighty … can we cut the thick roots … that we have unfortunately inherited from the Roman Papacy, which for so long a time has ruled over us … keeping us in … ignorance.”
Another missionary, Rev. Gabino Rendón of Las Vegas, called my great-great-grandfather Rev. John M. Whitlock his “father in the gospel” and asked rhetorically, “What if John Whitlock had not been sent to work in Las Vegas?”
When Rendón realized that he was becoming a Protestante, he wept. His father told him that he would be aborrecido — but was still welcome at home. Rendón joined the Presbyterian church in 1885. His daughter Myrtle, a teacher, married Jacob M. Bernal, who was Taos school superintendent and president of the Taos County Historical Society. Of course he invited his father-in-law to speak, as trumpeted in this headline from the Taos News: “96 Year Old Man Addresses Meet” of the TCHS, July 8, 1960. †
Virginia Dodier is a museum professional, archivist, librarian and published author. She holds degrees in fine art, art history, and library and archives science. She retired to Taos, where several of her ancestors were born, in 2018.
The Rev. John M. Whitlock, another Presbyterian missionary, was the grandfather of her grandfather, John Whitlock Hernandez.
INSET: This famous image of Padre Antonio José Martínez is an original daguerrotype from the Palace of the Governors in Santa
From “ Presbyterian Missionaries in Rural Northern New Mexico” by Dale B. Gerdeman COURTESY PHOTO
Fe. COURTESY PHOTO
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TAOS PUEBLO
OVER 1,000 YEARS OF TRADITION
“Taos Pueblo represents a significant stage in the history of urban, community and cultural life and development in the region . . .continuously inhabited and the largest of the Pueblos that still exist.” —UNESCO
From left are Lt. War Chief Michael A. Martinez, War Chief Carpio T. Bernal, and War Chief Secretary Gabriel V. Romero.
Rick Romancito for the Taos News