Go US:A visit to a Native American settlement can be a fascinating, moving experience, especially if it coincides with a ceremonial feast day, as Manchán Magan discovers in New Mexico
IN NOVEMBER, with the US presidential election just over, I decided to travel around the Native American reservations of New Mexico, bypassing the normal tourist destinations of pretty colonial churches, ranches and landscapes associated with the artist Georgia O’Keeffe or with the film City Slickers. I wanted to visit areas of the US that are not directly controlled by Washington DC.
Each Native American pueblo and reservation is independently governed, with its own police, courts and taxes (or, actually, lack of taxes). Native Americans make up 1 per cent of the US population overall; in New Mexico they make up 10 per cent. The state has 19 pueblos, or traditional settlements, most of which have huge reservations. They welcome visitors as long as respect is shown, photographic permits are paid for, mobile phones are not used and visitors keep away from ceremonial areas.
I chose three pueblos to visit: San Ildefonso, for its pottery, Taos, for its architecture, and Acoma (or Sky City), for its staggering location.
San Ildefonso, the nearest to Santa Fe, was founded in the 14th century by Native Americans fleeing drought in Bandelier. The Pentagon appropriated most of their land during the second World War, to secretly develop the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. It is now a sleepy adobe village with two dust roads, a school, a church, a tribal court and a kiva, a sacred ceremonial area.
At the local governor’s office I signed in and paid $7 (€5.60) for entry, locking my camera in my car rather than buying a $10 (€7.95) permit. (Bringing in a video camera costs $20/€16; the charge for a sketchpad is $25/€20.)
The visitor-liaison officer was still gleeful about Barack Obama’s victory a few days before: it was the first time she or any of her friends had opted to vote. She said it made no difference on the reservations who was president, but they owed it to the environment to get Obama into office.
She gave me a map of the village and laid out the strict guidelines I was to follow: respecting the keep-out signs that seemed to be posted everywhere and not picking up any pottery shards or walking in the beautiful mesquite-and-sage-covered hills, which are sacred areas.
Trying to keep the rules in mind while remaining on the haphazardly delineated track was nerve-racking at first, but soon I was ushered towards a house with a “visitors welcome” sign above the door, and I relaxed. Inside was a trestle table set up as a makeshift shop. A local potter, Michael Aguilar, took me through the process he and his father use to make the world-renowned traditional black-and-red pots, which sell for huge sums to collectors in Japan and New York. The clay is gathered in the surrounding hills and coiled and smoothed using traditional methods, then fired outside in a pit of burning manure.
Aguilar assured me that I needn’t feel intimidated by all the rules and that as long as I was respectful I would be welcome. The pueblo looked similar to the surrounding Hispanic villages, except for the tribal court and kiva (which I wasn’t allowed to approach) and the road signs, with names such as Povi Kaa Drive and Buu Pin-Gae Po.
Unusually for New Mexico, San Ildefonso pueblo does not have its own casino, so the place looked less affluent than other pueblos: there were fewer top-of-the-range pickups, and there was a certain shabbiness to many of the adobe homes. The tribe relies on the excellence of its pottery to attract tourists; for families that do not share the artistic tradition there is always work available at the government labs and research stations up the road in Los Alamos.
Aguilar told me that my visit coincided with a feast day in the neighbouring Tesuque pueblo, 24km away – one of the rare opportunities each year when outsiders are fully welcome to visit and even share food with the tribe. He told me to drive towards Camel Rock Casino, which the Tesuque tribe has built along a stretch of highway that intersects its land, but from there I’d have to find my own way through the desert to the pueblo, which the tribe keeps relatively hidden down a quiet dust road. I could find no signs for it, but after following a gleaming new Cadillac driven by an elderly Native American I eventually reached the pueblo. A stream of cars was being guided along tracks through beautifully maintained adobe houses by Tesuque tribal police dressed in elegant uniforms designed to set off their lustrous black hair and golden skin.
In the central plaza a winter buffalo dance was taking place on the ceremonial grounds – 60 boys dressed in black skirts, belts of clinging bells, buffalo-skinned moccasins and black-and-white feathers in sunburst patterns on their backs, stamped and swirled in time to a group of elders who were chanting and drumming in front of them.
The boys all had blackened faces and real antlers and fir branches tied to their heads, with pieces of rope hanging as tails. I had been to native pow-wows before, but never on an actual ceremonial site, which was at least 800 years old. The atmosphere was electric, and my skin tingled with the intensity. The community seemed deeply involved in the experience. An elder explained that the dance was a way of welcoming winter, but he refused to say any more, as it was forbidden to reveal the meanings to outsiders.
Most of the tribe don’t live in the pueblo any more – they had come back specifically for the occasion. They looked wealthier than the San Ildefonso tribe – the young folk dressed in designer labels and proudly leaned against huge chrome-spangled pickup trucks.
From Tesuque pueblo I drove to Bandolier National Park and climbed the golden canyon walls on rickety wooden ladders to caves where the ancestors of some of these tribes lived 800 years ago. From there, just to completely blow my mind with an overdose of experience for one day, I visited the Bradbury Museum in the spooky and still secretive town of Los Alamos, staring slack-jawed at the replica of Fat Man, the bomb they designed and built here and then dropped on Nagasaki.
On my way back to Santa Fe that evening I was reeling with an excess of mixed emotion, yet I felt duty-bound to stop at one of the Native American casinos lining the highway, choosing Buffalo Thunder Resort, purely because it was the newest and most extravagant. It was built by the Pojoaque pueblo this year in addition to the City of Gold Casino and Towa Golf Resort that it already owns. A young Native American with a petrol-black ponytail and Italian leather jacket pulled up beside me in a sleek Pontiac and handed his keys to a valet.
Inside, most of the gamblers were poor and white, the waistbands on their tracksuits hinting at obesity. The staff were largely Hispanic or Asian, except for a security guard from the Santa Clara tribe who admitted that the Pojoaque worked only in management now; they didn’t need the lower-paid jobs. Their influence could at least be tasted in the bowl of green chilli I ordered – it had heirloom blue corn kernels mixed in and local desert herbs that only the native people use.
The following day I took the High Road to Taos, through scrubby ochre desert and up into high pine-clad mountains with rustic farms and villages inhabited by an odd mix of the descendants of the original Spanish homesteaders and ecologically-minded artists. Taos pueblo, just north of Taos town, is the only Native American community designated as both a Unesco World Heritage site and a National Historic Monument. It has been a cultural centre for settled and nomadic Native Americans for centuries and is one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever been.
The original five-story adobe housing blocks, built in the 12th century, are still being used today. Houses were built on top of each other for protection against roaming Apache and Comanche bands, with doors in the roofs accessed by ladders. Nowadays most families live in modern homes built beside the pueblo with profits from the nearby Taos Mountain Casino, but a reasonable number of families still live on the site, and all tribal ceremonies are performed here.
Despite the tens of thousands of visitors who come each year, the elders I met seemed genuinely welcoming, and the local girl who guided me around was eager to share her culture, telling me of their plans to close the casino, as so many of their own people were getting addicted to gambling, and how on election day the polling station in the pueblo had been more crowded with voters than ever before. The young natives had convinced the elders that it was time to switch their loyalty from the Republicans, who had always stood for less federal control and freer gun laws.
My next stop was Acoma pueblo, or Sky City, 320km south, near Albuquerque. It is the oldest continually inhabited settlement in the US, built on a staggering flat-topped outcrop of sandstone, more than 100m above the desert.
The site is unimaginably dramatic, as is a 16th-century church decorated with pagan symbols of corn and rainbows, where Catholic and native rituals are still held throughout the year. The atmosphere, though, was less welcoming than in Taos. The guides were surly and only interested in herding us from one pottery stall to another.
A Hawaiian lady dared suggest that the spirit of the place didn’t seem as vibrant as at other pueblos; the guide snapped back that it was probably due to the Spanish general who had massacred the tribe in the 16th century and ordered a foot to be chopped off every surviving male while the women and children were sold into slavery.
I was in New Mexico for two months, but the few days I spent driving around the pueblos were the ones that will stay with me for longest. Some 98 per cent of tourists to New Mexico head straight for Santa Fe, and although its galleries, museums and opera are wonderful, missing out on the pueblos would be a crying shame. Once the various permits and rules have been negotiated, they are welcoming places.
Many pueblos depend on tourism for their survival, especially the weavers, potters and jewellers whose studios are there. They are open all year, apart from specific ceremonial days, but the best time to visit is on one of the communal feast days, when everyone is welcome – as long, of course, as no photos are taken, no sketching is done and no mobile phones are used.
Where to go and stay and what to buy in New Mexico
Where to stay
■ For a range of options, try All Santa Fe Reservations (00-1-877-7377366, www.allsantafe.com).
Where to eat
■ Native American food is like a more rustic version of Hispanic food. Tewa Kitchen, in Taos pueblo, has authentic native food, such as blue corn, buffalo and bison.
■ The casinos are good for tacos, game stews and food made with piñon nuts, squash, chillies and beans.
■ Taos and Acoma pueblos have bakeries selling traditional clay-oven bread and cakes.
■ At feast days, be politely inquisitive and you’ll get invited into a native home to share a meal – especially if you mention being Irish and your shared history of oppression.
Where to go
■ San Ildefonso pueblo Drive north on US 285/84 and turn west on to NM502 for Los Alamos. You’ll see signs on the right after about 16km.
■ Tesuque pueblo About 20km north of Santa Fe on Highway 84/285. Governor’s office: 00-1-505-9832667.
■ Taos pueblo Drive north on US 285/84 from Santa Fe for 90 minutes to Taos town. Taos pueblo is just north of the town. www.taospueblo.com, 00-1-575-7589593.
■ Acoma Pueblo, Sky City Take I-25 from Santa Fe south for 13km to Albuquerque and turn on to I-40. Drive west for 120km. Take exit 102, turn south and drive through the desert for 18km. www.skycity.com, 00-1-800- 7470181. Drive back to Santa Fe or stay at Sky City Casino Hotel in Acoma, 18km north of the old mesa-top pueblo. www.skycity.com/Hotel.
What to buy
■ Local hand-decorated coiled pottery is available in San Ildefonso and Acoma pueblos. Avoid cheaper painted ceramic imitations, and make sure it’s hand-coiled and fired locally in an open fire.
■ Drums, handmade jewellery and crude mica pottery is available in shops in Taos pueblo. Check that any turquoise jewellery contains real turquoise and not synthetic stone.
Go there
American Airlines (www. americanairlines.ie) flies to Albuquerque from Dublin via Chicago. Delta Air Lines (www.delta.com) flies via Atlanta. Try Kayak.com and Orbitz.com for multiflight deals. From Albuquerque airport, take the Sandia shuttle bus (00-1-505- 4745696, www.sandia shuttle.com) to Santa Fe and rent a car from a company such as Enterprise (www. enterprise.com). Don’t include the weekend in the days you book; firms will normally almost throw it in free, as they dislike keeping cars over the weekend.