D.1: Formación de posgrado

Pre-contact Zuni people did not make use of a formal written language, relying instead upon oral transmission of origin accounts, migration stories, religious knowledge, folk tales, and other forms of history which continue to this day, as well as mnemonic symbols such as rock art that often serve as signs to recall specific stories. They were what Triloki Nath Pandey calls a “memory culture,” devoting energy to mouth-to-mouth learning as a means of preserving and passing on knowledge. As existing today, Zuni knowledge systems focus on human beings and relationships, and the context in which information sharing occurs is as important as the

information itself. The situation in which stories are told or prayers are taught, the social protocols guiding these interactions, and the authority and competence of the person passing on the information all shape the meaning of oral histories. While some Zuni ritual talks and prayers must be repeated word for word, many other accounts are performances in which the storyteller interactively reshapes the narrative to address the particular needs of the moment and relate to the modern world.1 Scholarly studies of Zuni oral accounts reaffirm that they contain diverse information about the Zuni landscape, geography, celestial observations, ceremonial practices, religious ideas, and historical happenings as “an independent source of historical information” transmitting Zuni culture to new generations and contributing to assessment of archaeological data.2

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Written history debuted in the Pueblo world as a way of knowing and remembering the past with the arrival of Spanish colonists. In contrast to the performative and contextual elements which convey meaning in oral histories, written documents provide an unchanging record of colonial-era events, many of which have been lost during subsequent centuries, and all incorporating the biased perspectives of their authors. Exploration and historical research took on new importance as tools for comprehending the Southwest under U.S. Territorial government from 1846 until 1912. Like the authors of Spanish and Mexican records before them, Anglo- American historians had their own prejudices and motivations that shaped their interpretations of the past, as well as subsequent conceptions of pueblo missions.

In this chapter, I consider representations of New Mexico missions appearing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, and contextualize the historical evidence that I rely upon in subsequent chapters. Several recurring topics emerge from this overview. One of these vital points is determining the significance of New Mexico’s missions, with scholars differing on their importance and relationship to Spanish and Indigenous building traditions. Some see the flat-roofed adobe structures as essentially Indigenous, while others interpret them as provincial emulations of more sophisticated Spanish architecture elsewhere. A related question is how to evaluate the impact of design factors such as the distant location, arid environment, limited resources, Franciscan ideals of poverty, and Native resistance. Were the style and design of New Mexico missions functional reactions to an impoverished frontier setting, or did these buildings encode specific rhetorical messages and connotations that were meaningful within their original socio-cultural contexts? As I will point out, earlier studies typically relied upon poverty, functionality, and environmental determinism to explain the style of New Mexico missions, and limited their study according to present-day state boundaries.

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Understanding contributions of Pueblo people to Spanish missions is another vital point about which scholars have differed. This question is essentially about agency—the ability of a person to make choices and pursue their own interests—and whether Indians were able to exercise agency in mission design, construction, ornamentation, and use. Did they contribute to the meaning of mission sites, or were they essentially coerced laborers enacting the will of guardian friars? Answering this question requires studying the residential spaces of missions, where the majority of social interactions took place. Rarely have historians made more than passing mention of mission conventos, or recognized the importance of co-resident groups of Native and Spanish people in shaping the meaning of missions as a whole, what I describe as the “mission community.” In the everyday practices and intimate interactions of convento life, Pueblo people were the most thoroughly exposed to European ideas but also more likely to experience a degree of agency in shaping the mission’s material environment. A primary objective of my research is to recover glimpses of that vernacular world and its complexities.

Territorial-Period Accounts

In 1846, the U.S. forces of General Stephen W. Kearny invaded Mexican territory, and Colonel Sterling Price subsequently occupied New Mexico as a northern front in the war between the United States and Mexico.3 War furnished a pretense for seizing vast areas of northern Mexico all the way to the Pacific, a key tenet in the emerging discourse of Manifest Destiny, which held that the U.S. and its ruling elites of northern-European descent were racially superior and divinely appointed to conquer the continent.4 _{Arizona and New Mexico would}

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During this period, numerous military, surveying, and scientific expeditions made their way through the Southwest, producing expedition reports and introducing the U.S. public to these newly acquired territories. The Corp of Topographical Engineers oversaw exploration of the region between 1843 and 1863, including production of drawings, watercolors, and textual descriptions of missions in publications found in libraries throughout the U.S.5 Under the direction of James Harvey Simpson, surveys for a transcontinental railroad route also passed through western New Mexico, with expedition artists and brothers Richard and Edward Kern sketching missions in Santo Domingo, Jemez, Zuni, and Laguna Pueblos.6 Richard’s

illustrations in the 1852 Sitgreaves Expedition publications are particularly valuable representations of Zuni life and architecture (figures 2.1-2.2).7

During the 1870s, technological developments facilitated field photography, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan set forth with U.S. Geological Surveys of George M. Wheeler, exploring lands west of the hundredth meridian (1871 to 1874). O’Sullivan photographed pre-contact sites, pueblos, and colonial churches in New Mexico with large-scale, stand-alone treatment in the subsequent publications (figure 2.3). John K. Hillers accompanied the Stevenson expedition for Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology (known as the Bureau of American Ethnology or BAE after 1897) to New Mexico from 1879 to 1880, producing revealing images of Zuni Pueblo’s mission falling slowly into disrepair (figures 2.4-2.5). O’Sullivan and Hillers’s work reached a wide audience through stereographic reproductions, but beyond images, these expeditions produced few details about New Mexico’s former missions.8

As closely related, emergent disciplines in the later nineteenth century, U.S.

anthropologists and archaeologists came to view the Southwest as an “internal exotic” location for testing and developing concepts of cultural diversity, and generated new interest in Spanish

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missions as a byproduct. These anthropologists sought greater scientific rigor, distancing themselves from earlier speculations by seeking the origins, “typical” examples, and

developmental history of specific Native cultures.9 Many found what seemed to be an objective methodological foundation in the evolutionary theory of Lewis Henry Morgan, who believed human societies universally passed through the same stages of developmental progression, though some might potentially remain stuck in earlier, more primitive states.

For evolutionary anthropologists, identifying cultural origins and remains were crucial for fitting modern Native American societies into their models. Artifacts and architecture manifested culture in ways that anthropologists could describe and measure, producing ostensibly objective data.10 They also saw “traditional” materials as endangered and rapidly disappearing resources, rushing to collect as much as possible for their institutions.11 This acquisitive competition was a symptom of their underlying and false belief that Native cultures were doomed to succumb to Anglo-American society. They believed that it was their duty to “rescue” Native cultures through scientific documentation and collection before they completely disappeared, even if Native peoples themselves objected.12

One of the first expeditions to document Native American cultural development in the Southwest was that of Colonel James Stevenson for the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879. When his party stopped at Zuni Pueblo, the young Frank Hamilton Cushing decided to remain, learning Zuni cultural practices and beliefs first hand over four years as the first anthropologist to practice methods of “participant observation.”13 _{In the same years, brothers Victor and Cosmos}

Mindeleff worked throughout western New Mexico and Arizona, collecting specimens,

documenting Pueblo architecture, and surveying Native ruins for the Bureau of Ethnology 1881 to 1889).14 They used their photos and measurements to make models of the western pueblos for

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the National Museum.15 While Cushing and the Mindeleffs were not interested specifically in missions, they furnish valuable descriptions, oral histories, measurements, photographs, and comparative architectural details for understanding mission architecture, including Zuni Pueblo and the Hawikku and Kechiba:wa sites (figures 2.6-2.7). For the Mindeleffs, missions’ form and construction exemplified an intrusive architectural style amongst Pueblo constructions, with the arid climate and defensive requirements as primary stylistic factors.16

After a hiatus in Washington, DC, Cushing returned to direct the interdisciplinary Hemenway Southwestern Expedition in 1886, the first professional archaeological project in the region.17 The expedition began in Arizona Territory along the Salt River, continued to Zuni Pueblo and nearby sites, where Cushing’s crew expanded his home in hopes of founding a base for ongoing Southwestern anthropological research, and concluded at the Hopi Mesas in

Arizona. Cushing romantically cast himself as a scientist-explorer, going out into the nation’s “unknown” peripheries, in order to return and incorporate them into the national fabric by introduction to eastern audiences through his reports. His approach was intensely personal; Cushing believed four years among the Zuni equipped him with an insider’s perspective,

allowing him to intuitively understand Native traces on the landscape as if connecting to his own ancestors. He organized the Hemenway expedition as a “reconnaissance,” alternating between wider mapping and periodic stops for in-depth excavation. This rhythm allowed for

improvisatory responses to sites that felt significant, but resulted in an ad hoc process as Cushing jumped from one inspiration to the next.18

A major premise underlying the work the Mindeleff and Hemenway expeditions was the idea that Pueblo origin and migration accounts had factual bases, and ethnologists could link these oral histories to specific archaeological sites, establishing an evolutionary trajectory

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according to Morgan’s models.19 _{Neither expedition focused on the colonial period, but both}

visited mission sites and their publications stimulated interest in the story of Spanish contact with Pueblo peoples, particularly for Cushing’s field secretary, Frederick Webb Hodge. Adolph Bandelier, the first trained historian of the Southwest, was also associated with the Hemenway Expedition. He visited and documented many of the pueblos and began the first organized efforts to compile primary sources as a historical record of the territory. Among other

accomplishments was a 1,400-page manuscript history of missions in northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest for Pope Leo XVIII’s 1888 Golden Jubilee. This document disappeared into Vatican archives and has yet to be fully published; thus, it had little direct effect on mission historiography, although Bandelier discusses mission history in many other publications.20

As anthropologists initiated study of Southwestern pueblos, a growing travel literature appeared in the popular press, through such publications as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, circulating popular mythology and misinformation that propelled imaginative speculations by early visitors.21 The completion of the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad line in 1879-1880 made New Mexico more readily available to tourists. New Mexico’s architectural traditions, seemingly so different from the buildings of the eastern U.S., became a means of romanticizing the problematic past and featured prominently in photographic collections of the late nineteenth century.22 Through publications such as Charles Lummis’s The Land of Poco Tiempo,

quintessentially romanticizing New Mexico as a land of enchantment, as well as his magazine The Land of Sunshine (later Out West), and railroad advertisements, missions became associated with cliff dwellings and pueblos in a the popular Anglo-American imagination.23

As Cushing’s scientist-explorer persona suggests, anthropologists and academics were part of this romanticization. Some struck a duel posture combining academic research and

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touristic boosterism, as for example in an unpublished “little book” from the 1890s by Walter Hough.24 _{Focusing on Isleta, Laguna, Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi Pueblos, Hough provides a guide}

for tourists leaving the railroad on short side-visits, based in the aesthetics of the “picturesque,” or selective views emphasizing diverse terrain, varied textures, and contrasting colors as William Gilpin theorized.25 Hough betrays a desire to experience pueblos as “unmodified” by Euro- American culture, directly contradicting federal assimilationist policy then in effect, which sought to recondition Indians and replace their culture with Anglo norms.26

Hough was particularly fond of the Hopi Pueblos, judging them to be the “most primitive,” and “a picture of the ancient life as true as may be found in this day.”27 In his estimation, missions represented inherently foreign introductions, under whose “mild and judicious” sway the Pueblos communities lived and divided their attentions between Christian and traditional religious expressions.28 _{Hough’s picturesque impulse and desire to keep Pueblo}

people separated from modernity were common, not only among tourists, but also the Anglo- American artists who began to arrive in New Mexico by the end of the nineteenth century.29

Statehood and the Rhetoric of Tri-Ethnic Harmony

Anglo-American prejudices against New Mexico’s Spanish-speaking Catholic population delayed its entry into statehood until 1912.30 Many Anglos believed pseudo-scientific ideas that racial intermixing among Mexicans had led to degeneration. New Mexico’s boosters sought to counteract racial prejudice through a “tri-culturalist” rhetoric postulating that Anglo-Americans, “Spanish-Americans” (rather than “Mexicans”), and Indians lived harmoniously in New Mexico as three distinct and un-mixed races. Tri-cultural harmony became a foundational mythology in

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the territory and later state, representing a partial truth that fostered cultural productivity but also sanitized historical realities of violence, cultural exchange, and intermarriage.31

Among the first New Mexicans to voice the rhetoric of tri-cultural harmony was L. Bradford Prince, a strong advocate for statehood as chief-justice in the territorial Supreme Court (1878 to 1882), territorial Governor (1889 to 1893), and delegate to New Mexico’s 1911 state constitutional convention. In his Historical Sketches of New Mexico from the Earliest Records to the American Occupation (1883), Prince dedicated his work to the “People of New Mexico, Three-fold in origin and language, but now one in nationality, in purpose, and in destiny […]”32 Prince continued to promote tri-ethnic harmony in later publications, compiling New Mexico’s history and popularizing it as a tourist destination.

Drawing on Lummis and author Helen Hunt Jackson, who had spurred interest in California’s missions, Prince featured colonial religious architecture in his Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico (1915).33 Immediately following statehood, this book was a victory lap parading the new state’s rich antiquities. He argues New Mexico’s colonial churches are “far more interesting” and “superior” to California’s mission churches in terms of antiquity, varied history, and architectural form.34 Representing Franciscan evangelization as a virtuous effort that corrupt civil officials and Mexican rule had undermined, Prince’s book is a generalized guide for “the tourist, the antiquarian, and the religious enthusiast,” complete with touring routes and itineraries for exploring pueblos and their feast days.35

To Prince, the colonial period was a triumph of Spaniards and self-sacrificing friars who brought about the “civilization” of savages with minimal conflict.36 _{He acknowledges Native}

labor built the missions, following Benavides in attributing wall construction and plastering to Pueblo women and children.37 Going further in a paper at the nineteenth International Congress

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of Americanists in Washington, DC (1915), Prince describes the Salinas missions with their thick walls of unshaped stone as “essentially aboriginal” in style, but he seems to have lacked a framework for conceptualizing mixtures of Spanish and Pueblo cultures.38 Prince readily appreciated seemingly “pure” Native artforms—dances, religious ceremonials, pottery, and weaving—but was critical of mixed artistic styles and cultural traditions.39 Within his

segregationist logic of tri-ethnic harmony, Indians were better off sticking to the things they did well, than in trying to be Spanish.40 _{Ultimately, Prince ascribed all agency to the missionaries,}

and imagined their living quarters as exclusively Spanish spaces. He had relatively little to say about New Mexico conventos, but his every mention describes them as residences for individual friars, or as stopover for traveling brethren at larger conventos.41 Although he had read the primary sources, he could not imagine conventos as spaces of cultural exchange.

Despite limitations, Prince’s Spanish Mission Churches was the first scholarly survey published of the region’s religious architecture. Directly resulting from his personal history and commitment to statehood, Prince only selected buildings within the state boundaries he had helped to create, prioritizing twentieth-century concerns over more pertinent colonial

boundaries.42 This “state bias” underlies an enduring tendency to treat New Mexico missions as isolated and regionally district phenomena, rather than considering their relationship to missions elsewhere in New Spain.43 It has remained in force among later scholars, with reinforcement from state research funding and twentieth-century architectural developments. The revivalist architecture known as the “Santa Fe style” that Edgar L. Hewitt and staff developed at the Museum of New Mexico strengthened this perception of regional uniqueness. Incorporating flat roofs, projecting beams, and planar walls, the Santa Fe style was an “invented tradition” exuding authenticity while disguising its modern nature beneath historically derived details.44

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Hewett’s young staff member Jesse L. Nusbaum was partly responsible for the codification of these architectural features. Because he published little and spread his

contributions broadly across the fields of photography, architecture, design, and anthropology, Nusbaum remains underappreciated in Southwestern history.45 Born in Greely, CO in 1887, he grew up working for his father who was a contractor and ran a local brickyard. Nusbaum taught himself photography and participated in summer field surveys of Mesa Verde and the Pajarito Plateau for Hewett and the School of American Archaeology in 1907. With 1909’s opening of the Museum of New Mexico, Hewett hired Nusbaum as Superintendent of Construction, where he would play a critical role in the development of Santa Fe revivalist architecture, as well as excavating and restoring a number of important monuments such as the Alcove House kiva in Frijoles Canyon of Bandelier National Monument (c. 1910; figure 2.8).46 Nusbaum employed