Santa
Fe, NM, USA
a food heritage community
Eating
History of Santa Fe | First
Americans | Colonial
| Territorial/Statehood
|
| Food Santa
Fe: guide to organizations promoting
food awareness |
Santa Fe, New
Mexico is the oldest capital city in
North America and also the oldest European
city west of the Mississippi.
Santa Fe is the site
of both the oldest public building in
America, the Palace of the Governors:,
and the nation's oldest community celebration,
the Santa Fe Fiesta, established in
1712 to remember the Spanish reconquest
of New Mexico in the summer of 1692.
The city has been the
capital for the Spanish "Kingdom
of New Mexico," the Mexican province
of Nuevo Mejico, the American territory
of New Mexico (which contained what
is today Arizona and New Mexico) and
since 1912, the state of New Mexico.
Santa Fe was originally occupied by
a number of Pueblo Indian villages –
mostly the Tewa people. Read
more about the history of Santa Fe here.
Eating in Santa
Fe: a brief history
"Acequia Madre"
mural by Frederico
M. Vigil (west wall Acequia Madre
Elementary School)
In Santa Fe..Puebloan, Spanish and
English speaking peoples representing
three vital civilizations converged
for the first time, co-mingling their
cultures, especially their foodways.
For thousands of years, Paleo-Indians
visited the Santa Fe area seasonally,
hunting and gathering.
Early Puebloans inhabited the Santa
Fe region as early as the 1300's, building
villages and farming. They were drawn
there for its year-round tolerable climate
and resources of wood and water. Fish
and game were plentiful.
Santa Fe developed as an important
stop on Pre-Columbian trade routes,
especially to the east. Foot paths followed
the Santa Fe river canyon connecting
the Pecos Valley pueblo and beyond.
Pueblo Pindi was a two hundred room
community dating from 1300.
Excavation of Pueblo
Pindi turkey pens
It was named for its profusion of
turkey bones, eggshells and turkey-pens
found on the site near the Santa Fe
suburb and traditional farming village
of Agua Fria.
The Spanish were attracted to the area
for the same reasons as the Indians--the
moderate climate, two rivers, forest
products, trade routes and favorable
farming conditions.
Santa Fe became the most far-flung
capital of the Spanish empire. The settlers
built a fortified village which contained
government offices, an arsenal, church,
community garden, animal corrals and
markets.
Palace of the Governors
decked out for the annual city Fiesta
in September.
Names of the city's founding families
are displayed.
An important style implemented in planning
the city was the radiating grid of streets
centering from the central Plaza. Many
were narrow and included small alley-ways,
but each gradually merged into the more
casual byways of the agricultural perimeter
areas.
The Spanish built an irrigation canal
system known as the Acequia Madre (Mother
Ditch) which supplied water to the fortified
plaza area and farm lands that developed
along the Santa Fe river drainage.
View of Santa Fe's
Acequia Madre with a burro drinking
from the ditch (early 20th century)
Spanish settlers shared the work and
bounty of the plaza community garden
and were given their own land to cultivate
outside the walls. They started gardens,
vineyards, orchards.
As an outreach to the Puebloan communities,
the Francisans developed mission churches
which featured gardens, olive groves,
vineyards and orchards. The Puebloans
and Christians began to exhange foods
and foodways.
Canyon Road became the earliest farming
village outside the fortified plaza
area. Farmhouses were built along the
former Indian footpath. As families
expanded rooms were added onto the houses.
Close to the houses kitchen gardens
were maintained. Beyond which were orchards,
corn and wheat fields all watered by
the irrigation system of the Acequia
Madre.
Possibly the most
authentic property along Canyon Road
is the former Sena-Rodriguez farmhouse.
Olive Rush, one of the first Santa Fe
woman artists, preserved the house as
it was when she first moved in and willed
it to the Quakers, who continued to
maintain it without major alterations.
The building on the left was a former
goat shed. A grape vine and cherry trees
are still producing food. A kitchen
and herb garden is cultivated annually
on this historic farmland.
The diet of the colonists was quite
similar to the Puebloans---both ate
daily corn mush flavored with chile
peppers. They also ate beans, squash
and flat tortilla breads. Both groups
used adobe beehive ovens known as "hornos,"
technology developed by the Moors in
Spain. The Spanish frequently used wheat
which they introduced from Europe. The
Puebloans preferred their native corn
meal.
Pueblo women tending their
horno (left); an Hispanic horno at Los
Golondrinas
The Puebloans suffered from European
diseases and harsh treatment by a segment
of the Spanish who extracted tribute
(a portion of their hunt and harvest)
and forced labor. This led to the Pueblo
revolt and the Spanish withdrawal to
El Paso for ten years. Laying seige
to Santa Fe and cutting off the supply
of water was a tactic used first by
the Puebloan rebels to force the colonialists
out. Later the Spanish used the same
method on re-taking Santa Fe.
Fiesta de Santa Fe
is the nation's oldest continuously
held community event.
It features the reenactment of the reentry
of the Spanish led by Governor De Vargas
after the Pueblo Revolt
The Spanish and Puebloans formed alliances
to ward off their common enemy the attacks
from nomadic Apaches and Commanches.
Puebloans began to learn Spanish and
intermarry with the colonialists. The
Puebloans began to diversify their diet.
Santa Fe and outlying communities became
self-sufficient due to their remoteness
from Mexico. Every three years the capital
was resupplied by wagon trains from
Mexico City via Chihuahua. These traveled
on what became known as El Camino Real.
All original domestic animals, such
as cattle, horses, sheep, goats and
pigs walked to Santa Fe. Chickens rode
in the wooden carts known as carretas
which carried seeds, farm and kitchen
implements.
Domestic animals
brought to New Mexico by Spanish
settlers
honored in Santa Fe's Cathedral Park
statue
On the outskirts of Santa Fe at the
village of La Bajada, at the base of
the mesa, the contents of all wagons
were unloaded and carried to the top
by burros. The empty wagons were hauled
up a series of switchbacks and then
reloaded.
Rituals and festivals which featured
community or family feasting marked
the agrarian year for most residents
of Santa Fe. In late winter there was
the clearing of the irrigation canals.
Spring brought planting ceremonies.
Summer brought ceremonies and processions
blessing the fields and ditches. Fall
harvest festivals included public butchering
and barbeques.
"Matanza" by
Ray
Martin Abeyta (1999)
Mexico gained its independence from
Spain, and Santa Fe became the capital
of the province of New Mexico. For a
brief period in 1837, northern New Mexico
farmers rebelled against Mexican rule,
killed the provincial governor in what
has been called the Chimayó Rebellion
and occupied the capital. Their grievances
included the bad food they were served
during forced military duty against
the Navajo and Apaches.The rebels were
soon defeated, however, and three years
later, Santa Fe was peaceful again.
American trappers and traders moved
into the region. William Becknell opened
the 1,000-mile-long Santa Fe Trail,
from Arrow Rock, Missouri, with 21 men
and a pack train of goods.
End of Santa Fe Trail
marker. Goods were off loaded near this
spot which drew great crowds and excitement.
Wagon trains brought a wealth of manufactured
goods into Santa Fe including processed
foods, the latest farming implements
and milling equipment. The Americans
added their tastes and eating habits
to the mix.
In the early period of the Mexican
American War, an American army general,
Stephen Watts Kearny, took Santa Fe
in 1846 and raised the American flag
over the Plaza. Two years later, Mexico
signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
giving New Mexico (including what we
now call Arizona) and California to
the United States. Even more Americans
poured into the city and the agrarian
nature of Santa Fe began to change forever.
The Americans planted crops and orchard
trees in the plaza.
In 1851, Jean B. Lamy, arrived in Santa
Fe where he began construction of the
Saint Francis Cathedral. The Bishop's
retreat a few miles north of the city
overlooked an orchard, which he said
reminded him of his native France.
With the coming of the Atchison, Topeka
and the Santa Fe Railroad and the invention
of the telegraph in 1880, Santa Fe and
New Mexico underwent an economic revolution.
El Ortiz Hotel and
Lunchroom at the Santa Fe railway station
in nearby Lamy. The hotel was under
the management of the legendary Fred
Harvey.
American artists, writers and intellectuals
began to settle in Santa Fe in the early
20th century. They were among the first
to identify Santa Fe as a "city
different." They championed its
unique environment, architectural and
cultural mix. Their patronage of the
city's eating establishments was key
to the foundation of Santa Fe's robust
and diverse restaurant and cafe scene.
Modern Santa Fe ranks as one of the
nation's leading culinary capitals.
Its restaurants, cafes, and markets
are spread throughout "one of the
most intriguing cities in the nation,
due largely to the city's preservation
of historic buildings and a modern zoning
code, passed in 1958, that mandates
the city's distinctive Spanish-Pueblo
style of architecture.
Two restaurants in adobe
buildings: The Pink Adobe (left) and Pasqual's
(right)
This architecture is based on the adobe
(mud and straw) and wood construction
of the past. Also preserved are the
traditions of the city's rich cultural
heritage which helps make Santa Fe one
of the country's most diverse and interesting
places to visit." ( NB Adobe brick
making also derives from the Moors of
Spain.) (source:http://www.thesantafesite.com/history.html)
Continue
our exhibit on Santa Fe's food heritage
here.
Click
on the images below to visit all the
New Mexico Food Heritage Exhibits.
