Indigenous Peoples' Day.

So this weekend, I did a thing I have never done, even though I've lived in Santa Fe for five years and vacationed here for much longer: I checked out a couple of art studio tours. These events are organized by artists who live in a specific location, whether a city, town, or village. Artists who live there agree to open their studios, even if they're in their own homes, and invite the hoi polloi to traipse through, chat with them about their work, and (the gods willing) buy something from them.

Since I rarely do things by halves, I hit two studio tours this weekend: the one in Abiquiu on Saturday and the one in Galisteo yesterday. After I got home, it dawned on me that both Abiquiu and Galisteo were originally pueblos -- that is, they were Native American settlements -- but neither is a pueblo today. So what happened to the Indians? As the saying goes, it's complicated -- and a fitting topic for Indigenous Peoples' Day. 

Let's talk about Galisteo first. This sign is right on State Road 41.

Lynne Cantwell 2025

Here's the gist of the text, with some amplification by me: When the Spanish conquistadores showed up in 1540 in what later became New Mexico, they found a bunch of Tano-speaking settlements in the Galisteo Basin, which is about 25 miles south of Santa Fe. The Spanish called the settlements "pueblos", the Spanish word for "village", which is how the inhabitants became known as Pueblo Indians. The sign says these folks were among the leaders of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 -- the only time when Native Americans have ever succeeded in pushing the European invaders out. The Spanish came back, though, in 1692. In 1706, 150 Tano-speaking families were resettled (the sign doesn't say by whom, but it was the Spanish) in Galisteo Pueblo, but the pueblo was abandoned by 1788. Drought, famine, disease, and Comanche raids all played a part. The sign says most of the survivors moved to Santo Domingo Pueblo.

Here are more details from galisteo.nmarchaeology.org:

Early Spanish documents frequently mention Pueblo Galisteo, which has been tentatively identified as Pueblo Ximena, which was still occupied in 1540 when visited by Coronado. Castaño de Sosa saw the village in 1590 and called it San Lucas. [Don Juan de] Oñate visited the pueblo in 1598 and renamed it Santa Ana, but the name was changed to Santa Cruz de Galisteo. The pueblo participated in the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 and was abandoned when the populace, fearing reprisals, moved to Santa Fe, where they stayed until 1693, yielding the city to Don Diego de Vargas after a bitter fight. Many were killed or sold into slavery by de Vargas. In 1706 Governor Cuevo y Valdes collected the remnants, then living at Tesuque, and reestablished the pueblo under the name of Santa María de Galisteo. Ninety Tano Indians were moved at that time. In 1782 there were 52 families, but by 1794, smallpox and Comanche raids forced its inhabitants to move to Santo Domingo Pueblo.

I trust you noticed the part about some of them being sold into slavery? I've written here before that slavery worked differently here than it did in the American South. After a period of time, the slaves here were released. But they had lost their tribal identities and had been Catholicized and taught Spanish, so they created their own culture. They became known as genízaros, and they formed communities around northern New Mexico. Here's a link to an NPR story from a few years back about the genízaros in Abiquiu. "Genízaro" is the Spanish word for janissary; NPR says janissaries were war captives in Spain who were conscripted to fight against the Ottoman Sultan, and that some of genízaros in New Mexico gained their freedom by helping to protect their settlements against Indian raids. In the beginning, the word was used as a racial slur, but it has become more of a descriptor now.

Like I said: complicated. The histories of modern Native Americans are as varied as their languages and cultures.

Happy Indigenous People's Day.

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These moments of historical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!