The treasures of Taos: art, culture, scenery

By Vera Vida, Globe Correspondent, Wednesday, April 3, 2002

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TAOS, N.M. - "We were living here when rocks were soft, before birds had their wings."

Marcie Winters of the Taos Pueblo was speaking of her people's history in poetic terms, but there is no question that their mud-and-straw buildings are ancient, dating from at least AD 1200. Three centuries before Columbus came upon the New World, before Europe emerged from the Dark Ages, Tiwa-speaking Taos people were living in a prehistoric apartment complex.

The Taos area is celebrated for its slopes, but for nonskiers, it offers three equally important attributes - the pueblo being perhaps the best. Appearing much as it did when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1540, the pueblo is mesmerizing, with its cube-on-cube buildings echoing the mountains in the background and its earth tones blending with the desert. The mica-laden adobe walls glisten in the southwestern sun, a sight that caused the Spaniards to believe they had discovered one of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.

Though the pueblo casts a spell on visitors, the vast majority of the 2,500 Taos Pueblo Indians don't find their ancestral home habitable today.

"Only about 100 to 150 of our people live in the pueblo," said Winters, our guide during the visit to the adobe complex, about two miles from Taos. She said most of the Indians live on the outskirts of the complex, in conventional houses that have - unlike the pueblo - electricity, running water, and telephones. But many sell their pottery and other enticing, affordable crafts in small shops on the ground floor of the pueblo.

The Pueblo Indians play an important role in the community's second important attraction: its art scene. Taos County, with a population of 29,000, has more than 1,000 artists; the locals like to point out that their community has more artists per capita than Paris. It also has 90 art galleries and seven museums.

The third treasure of Taos is its scenery. The town of 7,000, about 70 miles north of Santa Fe, is on a rolling mesa at the base of 11,819-foot-high Taos Mountain, with other peaks in the Sangre de Cristo range adding to the drama of the setting. Taos's many adobe buildings - some in Taos Plaza, the handsome heart of town - and the same-hued desert look enchanting under an azure sky that seems to go on forever.

It's easy to see why English novelist D. H. Lawrence was inspired to say, "You cannot come to Taos without feeling that here is one of the chosen spots on earth."

Skip Miller, an art historian originally from New Hampshire, said he loves "the scenic beauty and the cultural diversity here. You go into a store and hear Tiwa and Spanish."

Taos is tricultural. "The county is about 52 percent Hispanic, 41 percent Anglo - whatever that is - and 7 percent Native American. This is a community where 'Anglo' can be black or Chinese," Miller said; it's anybody who isn't Hispanic or Pueblo Indian.

He told us a bit about the history of the Pueblo Indians, whom the Spanish regarded as a "gente sin razon," a people without the ability to reason, and whom they enslaved. One woman was worth one mule, and slavery continued until the 19th century, Miller said.

Spanish brutality resulted in the 1680 Taos Rebellion, when the Spanish were driven out, and all the territory of New Mexico was again in Indian hands. Taos maintained its independence for almost two decades, holding out even after pueblos to the south were reconquered by the Spanish. Nowhere else did Native Americans rebel so long and successfully against the European invaders.

There's no question that this same sort of strength has served the Pueblo people well in their determination to keep their religion, language, and traditional ways alive through the centuries.

That evening, we stopped at the pueblo's four-year-old Taos Mountain Casino, which has blackjack tables, roulette, and 138 slot machines. "About 50 percent of the employees are from the pueblo," said Don Lightningbow, the casino manager. "The money goes to the Pueblo community." Losers at the casino may console themselves with the fact that their dollars are going to a better cause than they would in Las Vegas. The lucky players may help the Pueblo by spending their winnings on Indian artwork for sale in the casino.

For me, the most impressive artist in the Taos Pueblo and the larger community was sculptor John Suazo (his Indian name is "Hunter Watching"), whose alabaster carvings were so stunning that, could I have afforded it, I would have bought any one of them. The sculptures he was working on in his studio were of varied subjects, mostly humans, one with a spirit bird, and all of them embodying the ancient tribal ideals of beauty and strength.

"I was inspired by constantly watching my uncle, Ralph Suazo, carving in cedar," said the younger Suazo, who didn't study art until his fourth year at the University of New Mexico. Describing his work process, he said, "The stone seems to be alive, wanting to tell me a story and, in turn, I tell my story, so we work together harmoniously."

Texas-born Thom Wheeler is a different sort of Taos artist, the creator of what he calls "wall jewelry." Using aircraft aluminum, he makes striking - and gleaming - artwork with abstract designs or sometimes with motifs such as thunderbirds, fetish bears, or turtles. Turquoise, malachite, onyx, or other stones are embedded in the metal as part of the design.

No one can tell the story of Taos without giving star billing to two women who changed the community forever, one by making it a place for many celebrities to visit or live, the other by collecting superb Indian and Spanish colonial art that became the basis of a world-class museum.

Mabel Dodge Sterne was a thrice-married New York socialite who in 1917 moved to the sleepy little village of Taos, where she fell in love with a Taos Pueblo Indian named Antonio Luhan. Luhan became her fourth and and last husband and they lived together for more than 40 years.

The Luhans created an estate with a 22-room adobe Big House and several guesthouses that welcomed such celebrities as painter Georgia O'Keeffe; writers Willa Cather, Aldous Huxley, and Lawrence; photographer Ansel Adams; and conductor Leopold Stokowski. The guests flocked there from the 1920s through the '50s, drawn not only by the Luhans, but also by the area's beauty, the dry climate, and the Indian and Hispanic peoples who had maintained their cultural integrity - things that still delight visitors.

Millicent Rogers, a famous beauty and an artist in her own right, was a granddaughter of Henry Huttleston Rogers, one of the founders of Standard Oil. Settling in Taos in 1947, she was fascinated by Indian art and began collecting such items as jewelry, blankets, baskets, textiles, and santos (folk representations of saints, done mainly in wood).

Three years after her death in 1953, the Millicent Rogers Museum was established. It has continued to grow, and its collections are now considered among the most important in the realm of Southwestern art and design. The Indian jewelry is breathtaking, particularly one dramatic turquoise necklace that weighs 3 1/2 pounds. "Millicent weighed 97 pounds and she wore that," the guide said.

Vera Vida is a freelance writer who lives in Cohasset.