Yesterday’s highlight was the Taos Pueblo. Buildings there date back 1000 years or more and is the only First Nation living community that is also a World Heritage UNESCO and National Historic Landmark. The houses have walls made of mud bricks and mud plaster and are 3-5feet thick. There is no running water or electricity. It’s a complicated history of Spanish occupation and religious conversion simultaneously coexisting with traditional ways and religious faith. Some of the buildings are several stories high and each door represents a family home.
A few more tidbits….their language is Tiwa and is unwritten and unrecorded and is passed down orally. The annually elected tribal entities are Governor and Warchief.
We are missing their biggest feast day on 9/30, there were men working to patch the adobe roof of the St Jerome church when we were there, had a nice chat with them.
Down below is a beehive looking item: it’s a Horno which is oven in Spanish and was introduced by the Spanish and are still in use today. The colorful doors are to ward off evil spirits.
The cemetery is only tended on All Souls Day, and the guide who explained this noted they are only ‘allowed’ to do it then. Not sure what that implies. But the ruined church is due to a bombing by the US army, killing 150 men women and children taking refuge there.
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