The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 78, July 1974 - April, 1975 Page: 68
562 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
As I walked out of the village past the men on the look-out, past the
women on the roofs, past the old men in the doorways, it was made known
to me that this life so stable throughout century after century, so beautiful
and kindly in many of its phases, is doomed soon to disappear and be quite
swallowed up, even as the night engulfed it as we turned to look back upon
it, sighing regretfully to think we might never see it again.
Up at the station the boys and girls, the advance guard of the new order,
were gathered waiting for the train, with melons and apples and pottery
to sell." The boys were playing about the water tank, wrestling and shouting
in the dark, reminding me of the games we played at "school-meetings" in
my boyhood. Others sat talking quietly.
One bright boy of sixteen told me he had been to school one year and
that he wanted to go again.
"My fodda he no like me go to school. I like. I go two t'ree years. I like
Melican man. No like live in mud-house.
So the world-wide, life-long struggle between the new and the tradi-
tional, the young and the old goes on here in these mud walls under the
wide sky as elsewhere while the glories of moon and sun and stars fall as
ever into the heart of youth breeding the unrest which bids fair to reduce all
the world to the same complexion of interest. There is sorrow before both
man and maid, but my voice is for youth-my feet are set his way and my
hand-clasp is for him.
I left Isleta in the deep night and it seems now like a dream-a fantasy,
born of my reading, not of my actual living. Yet I know it was real and the
eyes of the ambitious boy turned toward me in the dim starlight will not
leave me, and his face more than any other thing, enables me to compre-
hend the awaking life of Isleta and to forecast some part of its future.
squatters get on their land, their timber is cut, and their stock stolen. In attending to
these matters the agent often has his hands full, but only in this way are the lands and
property of these Indians preserved to them and the machinations of designing men de-
feated." See "Report of Pueblo Agency," ibid., 221. In 1896 the story was the same:
"The usual crop of disputes has come up before me for settlement ... these spring from
the encroachments of their Mexican and American neighbors . on their lands with cattle,
sheep, and goats. Owing to the unusually dry season differences as to water rights and
privileges between one pueblo and another or between the Indians and Mexicans have
been very numerous...." "Report of Pueblo Agency," in Report of the Secretary of
the Interior (5 vols.), House Document, 54th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Serial 3489), II, Doe.
No. 5, P. 214 Some relief was seen on July 12, 1897, when the Department of Indian
Affairs employed George Hill Howard of Santa Fe to serve as counsel for the several
pueblos in the land and other masters. "Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,"
Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1898, p. 94.
21The inhabitants of Isleta have made no painted pottery since about I70o The pottery
called "Isleta" is almost exclusively the product of Oraibi, a small settlement of conserva-
tives from Laguna that "joined Isleta after splitting with the progressive faction at the
old site. This pottery is brick red with white slip and black and red design Stubbs,
Bird's-Eye Vzew of the Pueblos, 35, 38.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 78, July 1974 - April, 1975, periodical, 1974/1975; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117149/m1/86/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.