Racism

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site

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Yes, there’s also a new fort, and no, I didn’t go there. The fort is a beautiful reconstruction made for the US Bicentennial. You might notice the fire damage around the edges. Just a few days earlier, a fire (under investigation) burned the fields and trees surrounding the fort. Fortunately, the fire department and rangers saved the fort and the animals. Even though I could still smell smoke, the ranger/ volunteer firewoman gave a full tour in period costume.

The Bents were merchants who traded buffalo bison hides and other goods on the Santa Fe trail. The fort was more of a commercial trading post than an active military base, but the lines were blurred. Kit Carson spent some of his early years around here hunting shooting bison. The US government used forts along the trail to protect the mail and to replace the Natives with white settlers.

Racism drove cultural hegemony. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Native Americans built homes, ate bison, hunted, fished, and grew mixed crops of corn, beans & squash. The superior settlers introduced a completely new way of using the land by building homes, eating beef, hunting, fishing and growing wheat. Oh wait, that’s exactly the same.

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

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I chose to visit Gran Quivara, since it has the largest pueblo ruins of the three missions, although the churches are better preserved at the other monument sites. The original pueblo ruins are in the foreground. The Spanish claimed the land for the King and forced the people here to build two churches, first the low ruin to the left and then the taller structure in the back. Some accounts describe the relations between the natives here and the Spanish as friendly and positive. From what I can tell, it’s hardly a coincidence that the pueblo was abandoned a few years after they started constructing the larger church for the missionaries. The local people endured Spanish diseases, grew Spanish plants that were ill adapted to the drought-stricken area, and other native tribes mistreated or attacked them as collaborators. They were prohibited from practicing their own religion, including singing native songs or performing dances, due to the strict rules of the Spanish Inquisition. If I had to go through any of that, I would leave too.