A Pocketful of History

by Jim Noles

  If only one symbol could reflect and represent New Mexico’s multifaceted culture and history, it would be difficult to find one more compelling than the Zia sun symbol. The symbol takes its name from New Mexico’s Zia Pueblo, a settlement of Keres-speaking Indians situated atop a small mesa near the Jémez River in north-central New Mexico.

  At one time, the Zia Pueblo was one of the largest of the state’s Rio Grande pueblos, boasting eight plazas and 6,000 people. As of the 2000 census, however, the pueblo has decreased in size to a population of about 646 composed mostly of farmers and raisers of livestock living on their mesa in the foothills of the Nacimiento Mountains.

  Some claim that the Zia Pueblo was inhabited as early as 1250 AD, which would date back to a time when Indians abandoned a larger swath of Pueblo sites across the greater Southwest. The cause for such relocation remains unknown; anthropologists have identified such potential factors as warfare, disease, the collapse of social integration, resource depletion, droughts, arroyo cutting and unpredictable special distributions of rainfall, and even witchcraft. The descendants of the pueblo’s first inhabitants have their own explanation for the migration. According to them, the Great Spirit told their ancestors that they must move to a place of spring rains and winter snows, safe from droughts, floods, and their enemies.

  Listening, the Great Spirit’s people migrated south into the bountiful country along the Rio Grande River, where their numbers soon grew. The people spread out, established separate villages, and even began to speak different languages.

  Even then, however, the Great Spirit reminded them that if they were to continue to live in peace, they would have to remember to plant and tend their crops, to treat one another with dignity and respect, and to greet strangers with hospitality. They would have to remember to protect one another from their enemies, to remember and obey their laws and their leaders, and to honor their gods in prayer and ritual and dance. Most important, they would have to remember their shared experience as one people—and, in doing so, truly remain one people.

  Regardless of the actual reasons for the massive migration, its results were far more ascertainable, specifically, the migration and consolidation of those populations into such locations as New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley.

  Three centuries later, the Spanish arrived. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado explored New Mexico in 1541 in search of the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. Then, in 1598, Juan de Oñate founded the San Juan colony on the Rio Grande, the first permanent European settlement in the future state of New Mexico.

  Spanish colonization introduced more effective farming implements to the Pueblo people and provided military protection from Navajo and Apache raiding parties. On the other hand, however, the Spanish severely restricted the Pueblo people’s traditional religions and disrupted local economies by the imposition of the encomienda system—a system that essentially enslaved native peoples to the conquistadors to whom they were “entrusted.” Nevertheless, for seven decades the Pueblo people lived in relatively peaceful servitude to their colonial overseers.

  In the 1670s, however, drought and European-introduced diseases swept the region. The drought not only caused famine locally but also provoked increased attacks from neighboring tribes—attacks against which Spanish soldiers were unable to defend them. In response, the Pueblo people turned to their old religions, thereby provoking a wave of repression by the colony’s Franciscan missionaries. The repression culminated in the events of 1675, when forty-seven Pueblo medicine men were arrested and accused of practicing witchcraft. Three were hanged, a fourth committed suicide, and the others were publicly whipped and sentenced to prison. Only a march on Santa Fe convinced the Spanish governor to release the imprisoned medicine men—and convinced the Pueblo people that the Spanish were not omnipotent.

  Resentment simmered until 1680, when it erupted into open rebellion. In what became known as the Pueblo Revolt, the region’s Indians ejected the Spanish from New Mexico. The survivors retreated to El Paso and soon began to plot to reconquer their former colony.

  That effort began in earnest on August 10, 1690, when Domingo Jironza Petrís de Cruzate, the governor of the exiled colonists, led a force of eighty Spaniards and 120 Pueblo allies out of El Paso and north toward Santa Fe. Two and a half weeks later, Jironza’s force reached Zia Pueblo.

  Forming a battle line, the returning exiles and their Pueblo auxiliaries stormed the mesa. In the fierce and bloody battle that followed, 600 Zia Pueblo lost their lives. Many others were taken captive, including a warrior named Bartolomé de Ojeda. Suffering two wounds he believed to be fatal, Ojeda, who had been baptized into the Catholic Church in the years before the 1680 uprising, called for a Franciscan friar to hear his confession and administer the last rites.

  Meanwhile, Jironza realized that he had won a Pyrrhic victory. Over half of his Spanish officers and troops—the backbone of his expedition—were wounded. Rather than press on with this recon-quest, he decided to withdraw to El Paso. He took Ojeda, who seemed to have miraculously survived his wounds, with him.

  In El Paso, Ojeda not only provided key intelligence about the fragmenting Pueblo alliance but also revealed gory details regarding the deaths of a number of Franciscans in the 1680 revolt. His testimony helped to inflame the Spanish colonists’ thirst to reclaim their lost colony. In August 1692, a four-month campaign of reconquest began. That October, even the remnants of Ojeda’s home pueblo of Zia acquiesced to Spanish rule, with Ojeda eventually becoming the governor and principal captain of both the Zia and Santa Ana pueblos. Historians have recognized that, but for the cooperation of Pueblo leaders such as Ojeda, New Mexico might never have returned to Spanish control.

  In the years to come, control of New Mexico passed from Spain to Mexico and finally to the United States. By 1912, New Mexico became the forty-seventh state; by 1925, the state legislature had realized that a new flag was needed to replace the crowded banner that had ushered in statehood. And, once again, the Zia Pueblo played a key role in New Mexico’s history.

  In Santa Fe, Dr. Harry Mera, a physician and anthropologist at the Museum of Anthropology, noticed a pot displayed in the museum, one crafted by an anonymous Zia potter of the late 1800s. The pot featured a circle of white ringed in red, from which three rays emanated in each of the four prime directions. In the center were two triangular eyes and a rectangular mouth in black. Suitably inspired, Mera stylized a red ring with four rays and offered it as New Mexico’s state symbol—the same symbol that appears on its modern-day flag.

  Mera may not have realized it at the time, but the symbolism that underlay the Zia design further underscored the wisdom of his choice. The four rays reflect the significance of the number four, as illustrated in the four directions of the compass, the four seasons of the year, the four times of the day (sunrise, noon, evening, and night), and in life’s four divisions (childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age). Furthermore, the Zia believe that humans have four sacred obligations: to develop a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and a devotion to others’ welfare. For its part, the circle represents the circle of life, without beginning and without end.

  That same circularity can be observed in the Zia sun symbol itself. As New Mexico’s state quarter reminds us, it is a symbol that traces its roots to the thirteenth century but finds expression through its universal message on the coinage of the twenty-first century.

  48

  ARIZONA

  The Grand Design

  If you plan a visit to Arizona’s Grand Canyon, do not let the state quarter mislead you. Despite the imagery depicted on its reverse, you will not find an iconic saguaro cactus in the canyon—the towering saguaros grow farther south, in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. It is a discrepancy that attracted no small amount of debate and discussion when Arizona contemplated a design for its addition to the 50 State Quarters® Program.

  So consider yourself forewarned. And regardless of what else you know about the Grand Canyon, rest assured that i
t is probably more than John Wesley Powell knew in 1869, when he boldly decided to undertake an exploration of its forbidding wilderness.

  To say “boldly” is not mere hyperbole. The Grand Canyon is a massive 277-mile long rift carved in the Colorado Plateau, spanning as much as eighteen miles in width and reaching depths of over one mile in places. Owing to its overwhelming size and grandiose vistas, the Grand Canyon presents an awesome spectacle—from its uppermost peaks to the rolling rapids of the Colorado River running through its depths.

  In September 1540, members of a Spanish patrol led by García López de Cárdenas and guided by Hopi Indians were the first Europeans to visit the canyon. Despite several days of trying, the Spaniards were unable to reach the canyon’s floor. Even three centuries later, the canyon continued to defy exploration, such as when two steamboat expeditions only forced their way as far into the canyon as Black Canyon in 1857.

  In 1869, however, the canyon met its match in the form of a wiry, bearded, one-armed army officer and naturalist named John Wesley Powell.

  In his youth, Powell had cobbled together an academic career distinguished primarily by oft-interrupted studies at Illinois College, Wheaton College, and Oberlin College. Nevertheless, he displayed an abiding interest in natural sciences and demonstrated a remarkable adventurous streak evident in such endeavors as a four-month hike across Wisconsin and a rowboat trip down the Mississippi River from St. Anthony, Minnesota, to the Gulf of Mexico.

  With the outbreak of the Civil War, Powell volunteered and soon rose through the ranks to command an artillery battery, only to be shot through the wrist at the Battle of Shiloh. The resulting amputation cost him most of his right arm. Nevertheless, he returned to duty and saw hard fighting at Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Nashville, and found occasional diversions collecting fossils and unearthing Indian artifacts. He ended the war with the rank of major, an honorary degree from Illinois Wesleyan University, and a proven ability to lead men.

  After the war, Powell became a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan and also helped found the Illinois Museum of Natural History. Field study beckoned, however, and he soon began a series of explorations of the American West. The first came in 1867, when he led a scientific expedition to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The following year, he did the same, this time joining the first group of climbers to summit Longs Peak—the mountain featured on Colorado’s state quarter.

  By now, Powell’s mind was fired with the idea of another expedition— to fully explore the Grand Canyon by running a boat down the Colorado River. During 1868–1869 he planned his expedition while wintering with the Ute Indians (where he earned the Indian name Ka-pu-rats, or “Arm Off”). As spring came, Powell traveled to Chicago and procured four specially designed boats—three larger, water-tight vessels, twenty-one feet in length and made of oak, and a smaller, more maneuverable boat constructed of pine and christened the Emma Dean after Powell’s wife.

  Able to take advantage of the recently completed Union Pacific Railroad, Powell transported his boats to Green River, Wyoming, where he joined what one historian described as a “ragtag collection of adventure seekers, unemployed veterans, and assorted nobodies” assembled for the impending adventure. The attitude of Frank Goodman, who recounted his story several decades later, may have been close to universal. “Having nothing particular to do at the time,” his interviewer recounted, “as trapping is best from November to April on account summer pelts are inferior to winter furs, he joined up with Mr. Powell.”

  The magnitude of Powell’s impending endeavor was rivaled only by the modest scale of his organization and financing. The railroads had provided free transportation, the U.S. government authorized him to draw rations from U.S. Army posts en route, and several academic institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, contributed several hundred dollars. But for the most part, Powell financed the expedition with $2,000 of his own money.

  On May 24, 1869, Powell and his nine companions launched their descent of the canyon from the Green River trestle and began a daring voyage into the abyss of the unknown. Americans would not see its likes again until a century later, when the United States dispatched the Apollo mission to the moon. This time, the vehicles of discovery bore the names Emma Dean, Maid of the Cañon, Kitty Clyde’s Sister, and No Name.

  According to Goodman, “the trip started out fine—a joy ride through new country and a jolly good time.” Red Canyon, at the Green River’s Ashley Falls, presented their first challenge. Powell lost some of his supplies running those rapids but pressed on. A few days later, worse trouble struck. In Lodore Canyon, the expedition lost the No Name, nearly a ton of cargo, all three of the important barometers, and, in Goodman’s case, practically all of his clothes. At this point, the expedition was scarcely three weeks old.

  By the time the remnants of the flotilla reached the calmer waters and could collect itself, it was clear that Powell now had too many men and not enough boats or provisions. At this point, according to Goodman’s chronicler, the trapper “figured he would just as soon take his chances with the Indians as in the river—did not care much now where the river went to.” Wearing only a set of red flannel underwear and carrying his extra pair of shoes with him, Goodman hiked out of the canyon. Ten days later, he reached safety at a newly established Indian agency among the Ute Indians.

  Meanwhile, Powell continued down the river, passing through Glen Canyon. “Past these towering monuments, past these mounded billows of orange sandstone, past these oak set glens, past these fern decked alcoves, past these mural curves, we glide hour after hour, stopping now and then, as our attention is diverted by some new wonder.” Today, however, one must rely on Powell’s description— the whole region was flooded when the Glen Canyon Dam was built.

  Powell’s sense of wonder only heightened as he entered the Grand Canyon. But even the canyon’s grand spectacle began to dim as one bone-jarring rapid led to another and the men’s supplies dwindled with each passing day. Finally, on August 29, William H. Dunn, Oramel Howland, and Howland’s brother Seneca had had enough of the interminable canyon. They decided to try their luck climbing for safety to the canyon’s rim rather than face a particularly daunting section of rapids in their path.

  “Some tears are shed,” Powell wrote. “It is rather a solemn parting; each party thinks the other is taking the dangerous course.” For his part, Powell believed that the end of the canyon was surely within reach. But he could not dissuade Dunn and the Howland brothers, and they left the expedition at what became known as Separation Canyon.

  In the end, the three men’s decision cost them their lives. They were never seen again. Some say they died at the hands of Paiute Indians who mistook them for miners who had earlier killed an Indian woman. Others surmised they met their fate at the hands of white outlaws.

  In a cruel twist of fate, Powell’s men emerged from the canyon only a day later—with a scant five days of supplies left. On August 30, after an expedition that had spanned ninety-nine days, covered nearly 1,000 miles, and bested almost 500 rapids, they reached the mouth of the Virgin River, where they encountered a small group of Mormon settlers fishing.

  Acclaimed as a national hero for his daring descent, Powell retraced his route in 1871 to 1872 in an expedition with much better funding. In 1881, he became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Powell also served as the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology until his death in 1902. By then, the Grand Canyon was already under federal protection; it would become a national park in 1919.

  Some estimate that by 2010, as many as 7.5 million men, women, and children will be coming from around the world to marvel at the Grand Canyon. No wonder that, in 2007, Arizonans decided that it would share the canyon—and the saguaro cactus—with those who had not yet made the trip. Other finalist designs included a version of the Grand Canyon scene by itself; a cactus-desert landscape; John Wesley Powell running the Colorado River; and a pair of World War II Navajo code tal
kers.

  It was the combined Grand Canyon–Saguaro cactus design, however, that proved to be the clear favorite in an online poll conducted by Governor Janet Napolitano’s office, and that was tabbed to appear on the state quarter. And even though the Powell image trailed a distant fifth in the voting, it is hard to think of the Grand Canyon without imagining what it must have been like for the one-armed major and his motley crew of adventurers to have conquered its hidden depths.

  49

  ALASKA

  Call of the Wild

  Many state quarters celebrate the triumph of technology and the conquest of frontiers—for example, the settlement of Jamestown, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the Wright brothers’ first flight, and the exploration of space. Alaska, on the other hand, chose to remind America of the untamed wilderness that first brought conquistadors, explorers, and settlers to North America’s shores. And nothing provides a better reminder than the grizzly bear.

  Just ask Michael Mungoven.

  In May 2006, Mungoven was running along a wooded path near his North Fork, Alaska, home with his two dogs. As he passed a thick clump of black spruce, a violent thrashing of branches signaled that he and his dogs were not alone on this particular Sunday morning. A split second later, a male grizzly bear burst through the spruce a scant foot away.

  “He was on all fours but had his shoulders up big and his head was about a foot over my head,” Mungoven recalled. “He was saying, ‘This is how big I am. How about you?’”

  Mungoven fell backward and, for a moment, tried to scramble back up. The bear, however, had other ideas.

  “He didn’t want me to get up so he bit me on the left butt cheek, the left side of my chest, under my arm on the left side, and then on the left side of my head and neck,” Mungoven remembered. “Split my neck wide open, took most of my left ear off and split my scalp open from the temple to behind the ear.”