Taos Pueblo

After last year’s trip to Mesa Verde I was eager to further explore America’s Southwest Indians, particularly the Pueblo Indians this year. I hoped to extend our explorations to New Mexico and Arizona. After Leslie’s classmate’s invitation to visit in Santa Fé, I searched the internet for nearby places to visit. The most obvious was the Taos Pueblo, “one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.”

I’ll have to admit, though, that the pueblo wasn’t quite what I was expecting. In retrospect, I’m not sure what I was expecting, certainly something closer to what I saw in Mesa Verde last year. I thought “pueblo” described a particular kind of architecture, not that it was simply a synonym for “village.”

The Catholic Church that stands at the entrance of the Pueblo was the first indication that this was not going to be Mesa Verde.

As it turned out, Catholic Churches stood out everywhere I went in New Mexico, but especially in the small Pueblos.

It was only from a distance that Taos Pueblo reminded me of the Mesa Verde ruins,

but the brightly painted doors (and parked cars, of course) didn’t quite seem to fit in.

The other part of the village, across Red Willow Creek, looked even more traditional, at least from this angle.

Much of the village looked like a Western trading post, like this café which served a delicious green chili and fried bread.

Perhaps the most interest site to me was this church what was destroyed by the U.S. Army after braves killed Governor Charles Bent in a Taoist revolt during the Mexican-American War in 1847.

Apparently the warriors were under the illusion that they would receive sanctuary there. American troops bombarded the church killing or capturing those inside. Our tour of the village began with a visit to the destroyed church.