Taos Pueblo

The bell tower presiding over the cemetery at Taos Pueblo. Photographed more often than I've had hot fry bread. A lot more often.

Taos Pueblo is an evocative place and I surprise myself sometimes by realising its taken me fifty years of being alive to actually get there. And the road to this one thousand year old Indian town isn't at all prepossessing as you drive out of the modern town of Taos in your friend's car:

It was back in May when my wife and I were visiting Bruce and Celia in their mountain fastness of Santa Fe, a city located at 7500 feet and filled with cool air when they took us on a road trip to Taos . I rode through this are in 1992 on a trip from Florida to California (on a Yamaha Maxim 650 for those that care) but I got overwhelmed by the crowds and commerce and fled with my tail between my legs without visiting the Pueblo. This time we took in the O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe and came out to the Indian settlement that she and the photographer Adams made famous. She painted this building over half a century ago and there it still is:

Ansel Adams shot this picture, more or less, of the back of the church of San Geronimo:

And he also took a gruesomely symmetrical picture of the front of the church which was the very devil for me to imitate as he didn't have all these gormless tourons standing around gawping and cluttering the view. Grr!

Anyway that's the famous stuff that made this place...well known! Pueblo in Spanish means town or people. In New Mexico (which some Americans fail to recognise is actually a US State!) the term Pueblo means Indian settlement or reservation. Some Pueblos don't have any actual towns any more but they are still considered Indian reservations. The Taos Pueblo doesn't suffer from the problem, this is a tribal unit that has the town and a whole bunch of impressive looking mountains on the horizon within it's boundaries- land that is off limits to non tribal members. the Blue Water Lake and mountains were returned to the tribe in 1970, giving the Pueblo an extension of almost 100,000 acres.

Visitors park in a tribal parking lot and line up for tickets to visit the town, at a charge of $10 a piece with a curious $5 surcharge for each camera, and a white ticket has to be attached to the apparatus to verify payment. Paying for the camera allows one to take pictures in the settlement but not of people unless the give their express permission, which is why my pictures have a curious dearth of people in them. Taos Pueblo isn't a ghost town.

While the rule book says nothing about photographing dogs, feeding them is strictly forbidden. This dog, pictured under a drying rack, the same rack ( for meat not clothes) painted by the late great O'Keeffe herself, later came by to beg some fry bread from us.

There was a delightful little old lady, a stereotype almost, chirping happily in her shop and selling knick knacks and the classic fry bread, in this case sprinkled with cinnamon and powdered sugar, which seemed rather decadent:

The important food photographed with the main plaza and the church in the far background.

Taos Pueblo is lived in year round by about 150 people which makes it in effect an Indian summer snow bird type of place, with most people retreating to lower elevations in Winter, the urban delights of Albuquerque. Living in Taos Pueblo in the summer is what you might call an occupational requirement for Indians who trade their arts and crafts, pottery. We bought a quail from Tseme who happily agreed to be photographed:And we got a teapot drum, modestly sized for our modest little home. Here too Phillip Martinez was happy to be photographed:And with our purchases they took time in this tourist low season to talk a little about their lives, which was fascinating to a degree I had not imagined. These are people who have traveled, studied, got degrees and have known the world outside the Pueblo and New Mexico itself. The worst of it was hearing how hard it was years ago for an Indian to make a living in the world outside. Not so long ago to be a Native American was to not be accepted in America. And so they do their crafts and hope to do better than subsist. Some do it with humor:But it was difficult to admire these award winning artists and realise they were here because their hopes of professional careers in the outside world were dashed because they were Indians. Had I been denied in the same way I might have been a tad more testy about the whole thing. Naturally we wandered like tourist stereotypes ourselves, our wives shopping and browsing......while Bruce and I sat on a bench in the main square in companionable manly silence, possibly exhaustion, and watched the comings and goings of the Pueblo:Another of the rules about the Pueblo includes not to piss or throw trash in the river that runs through the middle of the community, which seems reasonable enough on the face of it, and sparkling it was too in the high altitude (7200 feet) sunshine. They say they get their water from this open stream which seems a little surprising in this day and age. When I was a kid down on the farm I happily drank stream water but it always gurgled up from some dark safe place underground and came out of a familiar pipe. It was not open to God and everybody like this, but lacking plumbing this is what they have to use:The Indians of Taos Pueblo make a lot of rules about religious ceremonies and secret rituals that an unbeliever and sceptic like me would mess up entirely were I to witness them. The residents themselves seem pretty easy going about these strictures which luckily don't happen to interfere with commerce at all. taos Pueblo is full of people and activity and cars and in no way resenbles a cloister. I suppose there is a compensation factor at work, after centuries of interference you've got to have a secret club with initiations and passwords to make it worth while to be a member. Nevertheless St Jerome's Catholic Church (San Geronimo in Espanol) is the prominent structure in the Pueblo and does not conflict, they say with the ancient and complex Indian rituals. Which include bans on running water and electricity apparently. I find these limitations bizarre but like the photography rules I see no reason to violate them. Personally I love flush toilets and electrical outlets and value them everyday as tools for a more civilized life. I can't believe there is a God that frowns on their use, but what do I know.

Adobe is the material used for construction and Bruce explained something about it to me. it is naturally insulating but it is rather weak in compression so adobe homes are frequently dark for want of windows. Adobe melts in the rain if not treated so its important the buildings get some sort of plaster outer layer. Where the outer parts have broken down the walls simply melt back into the earth which seems appropriate and self sustaining in a manner of speaking:

The round dome is a traditional oven or Horno in Spanish:Eventually the shopping came to an end and we found our way back to the car and the open road beckoned:Needless to say my mind was on the Bonneville as we drove the winding mountain roads. Bruce has bought a BMW 650 since i was there so at least someone I know is enjoying these roads on two wheels, as they were meant to be ridden. Outside the Pueblo it's okay for people to live with electricity and plumbing and they take advantage of the slackness of modern living in their modest farm houses:

As opposed to the old fashioned style of independent living just outside the Pueblo:Luckily for us we were in time for a late lunch at the local eatery a couple of miles outside the Pueblo:the food was okay, American staples offered on fry bread instead of hamburger buns, but I did step outside the collective comfort zone as i always do when presented with something weird on the menu, and I ordered a cup of atole, which the shy young waitress endeavored to describe. Words failed her rather as they do me. Here's a picture:It's some sort of mild blue corn concoction which needs a fair bit of sugar to give it flavor. Its sort of gritty like a very thin gruel but not in the least offensive. Atole and a kruller- breakfast of champions. While we were lunching a young couple came in and propped their offspring on the counter and started a conversation with the waitress and her mother, the cook. I thought they were family members but by dint of listening they were apparently complete strangers, just curious about Indian cooking.It's at times like these you learn how really shy you are compared to some brazen people! Oh well.

And now we are long since home and still reminded of Taos Pueblo by the pottery quail on the office windowsill:

And the drum in the form of a teapot on the kitchen counter.Rather inadequate souvenirs of the oldest continuously occupied structure in the US. And they won't even notice if the lights go out, for the rest of us.