The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake

By R.C. Gordon-McCutchan

Book Overview

This book, a tribute to the stubborn courage of a people, shows how this battle became the focus of national debate and the centrepiece for an entirely new governmental approach to Indian affairs. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878610120
• ISBN13: 9781878610126
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Museum of NM Press/Red Crane Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Blue Lake - the whole story

When Frank Waters published his novel *The Man Who Killed the Deer* in 1942, he brought the plight of the Taos Indians to the attention of the American public. A recurring theme of the novel, like a drumbeat through all of its pages, is Taos Pueblo's concern with the return of their sacred Blue Lake, which was taken away from them, without recompense, by the U.S. government in 1906.Taos Pueblo, nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Northern New Mexico, is the oldest continually occupied pueblo in North America, reputed to have been the refuge of the ancient Anasazi who fled a drought in the 13th Century. This lake is the site of emergence in the Taos religion.In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt established the Carson National Forest, taking the 50,000 acres of Taos land, the watershed of the Rio Lucero and Rio Pueblo that runs through Taos Pueblo as government land. The Taos Indians waived their right to the town of Taos and surrounding areas, asking only for the return of their sacred lake. They refused money for it. Instead, the U.S. Forest Service cut roads into the area, made it available to campers and tourists, built cabins and corrals, allowed fishing in the sacred lake itself, allowed grazing of herd animals into the area, allowed illegal clear cutting of some 2,000 acres of timber, and threatened to mine the area immediately adjoining Blue Lake. To the Indians, this was comparable to developers taking over the Washington Cathedral and turning it into a strip mall or a camping site.The Pueblo had formidable opponents - the Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Budget Committee, the BIA, and New Mexico Senator Clinton P. Anderson, who at first persuaded the Indians that he was on their side. But white man spoke with forked tongue and viciously opposed the bill to give back the land that Taos Indians had held since time immemorial. He refused to believe that these Native Americans didn't want to exploit their own land (as all true-blooded Americans do), with timbering grazing and mining. He had an underground deal with a mill owner who had already illegally clear cut a huge chunk of it.In 1921, using the Religious Crimes Act as its chief weapon, the U.S. government made the practice of Indian religious ceremonies a punishable offense. Government officials invaded the Tribal Council, stole and destroyed religious objects in their kivas and had the old Indian elders arrested and put in jail in Santa Fe. In other words, everyone in America had religious freedom except for its oldest inhabitants - the Indians.But the Pueblo people also had formidable friends throughout the 64 years of their struggle - writers and artists of Taos such as Mabel Dodge Luhan, Olivar La Farge, Frank Waters - and into the '50s and '60s when politicos got into the fray - Interior Secretary of the Interior under Johnson, Stuart Udall, his brother, Morris Udall, Senator from Arizona, Senators Edward and Robert Kennedy, Barry Go