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In This Issue: Books
Welcome to the Southwest Bookshelf, New Mexico Magazine's monthly column of book reviews serving as an indispensable guide to the latest poetry, fiction and non-fiction titles from New Mexico and the greater Southwest. Amber Hartley and Charles Bennett alternate in writing the column, anchored by a different guest review each month. Following are the reviews that appeared in the current 2008 issue of New Mexico Magazine.
Reviews by Charles Bennett
Native American History/Archaeoastronomy
CHACO ASTRONOMY:An Ancient American Cosmology
by Anna Sofaer and contributors to the Solstice Project
Ocean Tree Books, www.oceantree.com, 176 pages, paper, $24.95
In June 1977, Anna Sofaer was recording petroglyphs on Fajada Butte, a remote mesa in Chaco Culture National Historical Park (aka Chaco Canyon), when she spotted a spiral glyph carved on a cliff face behind three massive, vertical slabs of rock. She noticed that, at noon, the spiral was bisected by a “dagger” of light. After further observation, she concluded that this was a celestial calendar made by the Ancestral Puebloans to mark the summer and winter solstices, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and the 19-year cycle of the moon. Her discovery led to 30 years of research by an array of associates, including astronomers, archaeologists, geographers, and Native American scholars and elders, all now compiled in one book for the first time.
Sofaer organized the nonprofit Solstice Project to study and preserve the Sun Dagger and other astronomical sites of the Chaco culture, and to contextualize them within the science of archaeoastronomy: the study of the knowledge, interpretation, and practice of ancient cultures regarding celestial objects or phenomena.
One of the most extensive archaeological sites in North America, Chaco Canyon was occupied from AD 400 to 1300. Sofaer’s research has revealed that Chaco has many features that were probably used to mark solar and lunar alignments: Each of its 12 major buildings, as well as a road extending north of the canyon, are now thought to have been built to align with celestial bodies.
The nine essays, first published elsewhere in different journals and books, discuss the other petroglyphs of Fajada Butte; the 35-mile Great Northern Road, thought to be a cosmographic expression of the Chaco culture; and a computer restoration of the Sun Dagger site. The appendix contains abstracts of nine other publications that shed further light (pardon the pun) on the Sun Dagger.
Nature
MOUNTAIN WILDFLOWERS OF THE SOUTHERN ROCKIES: Revealing Their Natural History
by Carolyn Dodso and William W. Dunmire
University of New Mexico Press, www.unmpress.com, 192 pages, paper, $17.95
Western hikers and nature lovers will enjoy this extensive field guide covering the territory from southern Wyoming, through all the principal mountain ranges of Colorado, to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico.
The guide includes 143 color photos, 48 illustrations, a map, a glossary, and additional sources and a bibliography pertinent to 75 flowers from 37 plant families. Although the authors tell us that there are well over 1,000 species of wildflowers in the Southern Rockies, their intent here was to provide, in addition to an identification guide, a sampling of the most common and characteristic flowers, the most striking and representative of their family, and those with the most interesting stories to tell.
For example, the Rocky Mountain Beeplant, a member of the caper family, is a tall, bushy plant bearing round, three-inch clusters of delicate lavender flowers. It grows along roadsides and other disturbed places, and was a major source of food for prehistoric Native Americans. The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico call it “Indian Spinach” and boil it for eating. The plant has been used since prehistoric times in manufacturing black pigment for pottery, applied before firing.
The Western Wallflower, of the mustard family, was originally described by David Douglas (1799–1834), a professional gardener of the early 19th century sentby the London Horticultural Society tocollect U.S. plants that might be suitable for cultivation in England. Douglas made three trips to the Far West before meeting his end in Hawaii: He fell into a pit and was gored by a bull. He is remembered for his classification of the Douglas fir.
The authors are eminently qualified: Carolyn Dodson has a master’s degree in biological sciences and teaches wildflower identification classes. William W. Dunmire served 28 years in the National Park Service as a naturalist, was a field biologist for the Nature Conservancy, and has written three books about plants.
Camping/Survival
WILD GUIDE: The 2008 Passport to New Mexico’s Great Outdoors
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, www.nmwild.org, 204 pages, paper, $9.95
Call (505) 843-8696 for direct purchase or information about where the book can be purchased.
This is a great browsing book for planning what you’re going to do outdoors this summer. Part course catalog, part wilderness how-to, Wild Guide details the dates and times of guided hikes organized by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, interspersing them with tips for tracking wildlife, fast facts about the New Mexico landscape, and camping recipes -— such as a make-ahead dehydrated Bolognese sauce.
The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance is a 5,500-member nonprofit dedicated to the creation, protection, and restoration of wilderness in New Mexico; proceeds from sales of Wild Guide, an annual compendium, benefit their efforts. This year’s edition includes 48 self-guided and guided hikes, four car-camp outings, nine backpacking trips, and 27 volunteer service opportunities, some of which probe places not normally accessible to the public. (The Alliance’s 27 service projects span the state and, for the most part, involve the restoration of streams, springs, or riparian areas.) There are lots of juicy outdoor offerings here: info about destinations such as Cave Creek and Gold Hill, preservation efforts at Chaco Canyon, preserving the desert jaguar, fishing for cutthroat trout, and searching for a wolf pack in the Gila National Forest. The guided trips are presented in detail, with dates, distance, elevation range, and degree of difficulty, and range from easy, two-mile strolls in the Sandia Mountains to strenuous 20-mile day hikes and three-day backpacking trips in the Pecos Wilderness.
Biography
SADIE ORCHARD: The Time of Her Life
BY PATSY CROW KING
PDX Printing, bpking3@elp.rr.com, 123 pages, paper, $13
THE LADY WAS A GAMBLER: True Stories of Notorious Women of the Old West
by Chris Enss
TwoDot/Globe Pequot Press, www.GlobePequot.com, 160 pages, paper, $12.95
Both Sadie Orchard (in its second edition) and The Lady Was a Gambler document women who engaged in professions outside the box for their time.
Sarah Jane Creech, aka Sadie Orchard (1865–1943), arrived in the Black Range Mountains of south-central New Mexico’s Sierra County in the 1880s during the mining boom. She operated brothels in the towns of Kingston and Hillsboro, as well as a stagecoach line, two hotels, and a restaurant, and remains a legendary character of New Mexico territorial history. She seems to be best remembered for driving a heavy stage with a four-horse team, kicking the foot brake as good as any man, and for riding, Lady Godiva style, down Hillsboro’s Main Street upon losing a bet.
Orchard was that rarity -— a madam who actually had a heart of gold. She led efforts to build a church in Kingston, served -— with her “girls” —- as a nurse during a smallpox epidemic, and offered financial help to widows and struggling families. But when Hillsboro lost the Sierra County seat to Hot Springs, the town dried up, Orchard’s business ventures waned, and she died seven years later with $45 in her estate after funeral expenses. Her Concord stagecoach, the Mountain Pride, is in the collections of the Palace of the Governors History Museum and is presently exhibited in the Lincoln County Courthouse. The book includes 38 black-and-white photographs, seven facsimiles of documents, and two maps.
The Lady Was a Gambler takes as its subjects 13 women gamblers, including Belle Star; Martha Jane Canary, better known as Calamity Jane; and Eleanora Dumont, a “stunningly beautiful and demure young woman” whose meteoric rise included owning a highly successful blackjack parlor in Nevada City, California. A wealthy woman, Dumont unwisely married a scamp,lost everything, and returned to dealing blackjack in mining camps before her demise in Bodie, California. Another character was Mary Hamlin, a lucky poker player and bunko artist who pulled off several big scores: In 1869, the “sale” of shipping rights to the Mississippi River to a group of French investors, a scam akin to selling the Brooklyn Bridge, netted her more than a quarter-million dollars; and in a diamond hoax a few years later, frequently referred to as “the West’s Greatest hoax,” she and accomplices salted a claim with bogus diamonds, sapphires, and opals, and secured $1 million for it from a wealthy San Francisco banker before leaving town. Hamlin seems to have been one of the few women who lived on the edge and spent most of her life in luxury.
Also included in The Lady Was a Gambler is the legendary Gertrudes Barcelo (circa 1800–1852), aka Dona Tules, a well-known monte dealer and operator of gambling saloons and entertainment houses in Santa Fe, of which there were many, beginning about 1833. Two new histories provide more accurate details about Barcelo and Calamity Jane: Dona Tules: Santa Fe’s Courtesan and Gambler, by Mary J. Straw Cook (University of New Mexico Press); and James D. McLaird’s Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend (University of Oklahoma Press). Nevertheless, Enss’s and King’s efforts whet the appetite for more information about these compelling women, whose lives were hardly the norm for women of the West.
Native American History
OLD TRADING POSTS OF THE FOUR CORNERS: A Guide to Early-Day Trading Posts Established On or Around the Navajo, Hopi, and Ute Mountain Ute Reservations
by Richard C. Berkholz
Western Reflections Publishing Co., www.westernreflectionspub.com, 208 pages, paper, $16.95
For the serious collector of Native art or the reader who loves the history of the Four Corners region, this one-of-a-kind book is a roundup of trading posts, mostly in the Navajoland, ranging from the completely abandoned to establishments still in business today.
Author Richard C. Berkholz tells us that it’s not known when traders began dealing with Native Americans in the Southwest, although trade was authorized by the U.S. government in an 1849 treaty with the Navajos. According to experts, intertribal trade “fairs” were held in Taos and the pueblos of the Pecos area during protohistoric times and throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods. Focusing on the post-Bosque Redondo (1868) trading posts of the Navajo Nation, as well as the Hopi and Ute reservations, the book chronicles the first such posts, which seem to have been established in the Fort Defiance area and spread out from there across the sprawling Navajo Nation. By 1890 there were 19 known trading posts, with 30 more at variouslocations outside the reservation.
In those days, trading posts were more than stores; they also served as meeting places, post offices, and banks. Indian traders were not only merchants, they also served as translators, arbiters, doctors, undertakers, and legal advisors. There was a time when trading posts were the only connection their Native patrons had to the outside world.
The book is in seven chapters, with past and present trading posts organized by location and rated on their authenticity and historical interest. Driving directions and contact information are provided. Old Trading Posts of the Four Corners will be a boon to anyone road tripping through the Four Corners area who desires to venture off the highway to experience an important chapter of Southwestern history and culture.
