A Brief Timeline of Native History
850: First great houses built at Pueblo Bonito and Una Vida in Chaco Canyon. 1050: Chaco culture reaches its height. 1068–1072: First Chacoan structures built at what is now called Salmon Ruins. 1105:…
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Ancient Enigmas
IN THE 17TH CENTURY, the Four Corners region turned cruel. Chaco’s Ancestral Puebloan people had fled three centuries earlier, their elaborate social structure abandoned as the culture’s various…
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Cultural Vocabulary Lesson
Navajo people use the name Diné to describe themselves. The Bureau of Land Management area with Navajo defensive sites is called the Dinétah by archaeologists. In the Diné language, Dinétah refers…
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Protect Our Historic Sites
Volunteers donate time and gas money to monitor archaeological sites all across the state for erosion, vandalism, looting, and deteriorating conditions. The Salmon Ruins Museum’s team of site stewards…
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Explore Archaeology
THE CHACOAN PAST enthralls visitors to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, southwest of Nageezi; Aztec Ruins National Monument, in Aztec; and Salmon Ruins Museum, in Bloomfield, which also tells…
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The Stolen Smith Family Totem Pole
RISING A TRIUMPHANT 41 FEET INSIDE THE HIBBEN CENTER on the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque campus, the Smith Family Totem Pole traveled a long and controversial route from the Tlowitsis Nation…
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What We're Reading: Blind Eye
A DOUBLE MURDER ANCHORS MARTHA BURNS’S debut novel, Blind Eye (Atmosphere Press), but the mystery of its perpetrator fits into larger dramas of generational abuse and a community’s reluctance to…
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Give The Telephone Museum a Ring
DEEMED TOO DELICATE FOR ERECTING TELEPHONE POLES and laying cables, women were relegated to uncomfortable chairs and repetitive-injury-inducing switchboard tasks. They had to “always smile when…
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In Praise of New Mexico Churches
IN HISTORIC CHURCHES OF NEW MEXICO TODAY (Oxford University Press, 2017), Frank Graziano travels throughout the state to detail the history of churches and the people who care for them today…
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Tomé's Church Renovation Is No Small Miracle
"PEOPLE ARE DRAWN TO THE MIRACLES Jesus performed,” Father Michael Demkovich tells a dozen parishioners at Tomé’s Immaculate Conception Church during a Wednesday morning Mass. “But that wasn’t why he…
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