Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

WOMEN OF THE LOST TERRITORY - HISTORIAN FLANNERY BURKE DELVES INTO THE STORIES OF FOUR EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN FROM NEW MEXICO, SHEDDING LIGHT ON THEIR OFTEN-OVERLOOKED LEGACIES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

HER STORY >>Faith Perez: So, Flannery, thank you for joining us today I'm so excited to talk to you about the woman of the Lost Territory.

What is the Lost Territory?

>>Flannery Burke: So, the Lost Territory is a phrase from the novelist and short story writer Kali Fajardo-Anstine.

The characters in her books talk about the place that they come from whether that is the San Luis Valley or Northern New Mexico as the Lost Territory and they mean that it is lost because it was lost in the U.S Mexico War um when the United States seized the territory that is now the southwest and so that was their homeland and it is lost in that they have left it but it is also lost in that that history is not always told and the women's history of that landscape is especially not always told and so it's also been lost to history in some regards so it's lost territory in that it is territory that was taken by a foreign power it's lost territory in that it's territory that they no longer live in and it's lost territory in that it's territory that is not always remembered by historians or in popular historical memory.

>>Faith: Well then who are some of the women of the Lost Territory?

>>Flannery: I think that depends on how you where you begin.

Some people might consider any you know woman in Southwestern History part of the Lost Territory because women's history is not as frequently told as men's history is and for decades was not even taught in universities or in high schools so that's you know we could say any woman our mothers our sisters our grandmothers our great grandmothers.

I think of some of my ancestors as women of the Lost Territory but I think it's also true that we might consider women of the Lost Territory to be Anglo women who moved to New Mexico and participated in major events in New Mexico history.

The creation of the nuclear bomb.

The making of an arts community.

We might also consider women of the Lost Territory to be indigenous and Nuevo Mexicanas whose stories also are not always told women like Nina Otero- Warren, the first woman to run for Congress in New Mexico.

People like Edith Warner, who I think we're going to talk about some more, a really private woman who came to New Mexico because she found the landscape healing.

>>Faith: So, tell me about more about Edith Warner.

>>Flannery: So, Edith Warner was originally from back east and she suffered a nervous breakdown actually and came to New Mexico and really found especially the landscape around the Pajarito Plateau to be inspiring and she wound up settling there and she was kind of a security guard so the Los Alamos Ranch School which was at the top of the Pajarito Plateau had supplies delivered via train and they often had to wait overnight before they went up the hill and so Edith Warner had a little house at the bottom of the plateau where she would meet the train watch the supplies and then they would be shipped up to the ranch School the boys school the next day.

So, that was her job and she ran a little tea room there so that people who stopped on the train could have refreshments.

>>Faith: What is important about her story to New Mexico especially I know she was hosting a lot of scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project at the Tea House could you tell me a little bit about that.

>>Flannery: Robert Oppenheimer had visited the tea room and had visited that part of New Mexico.

Oppenheimer loved riding horses, loved the outdoors, had already been to this part of the country, had already been to Edith Warner's tea room and when he was consulted by the federal government for a remote location for the creation of the atomic bomb he said how about there?

So, that he once said, "you know my two great loves are physics in New Mexico.

If only there was some way to combine them."

And suddenly there was a way to combine them so the lab site was chosen for that reason.

The federal government seized land from San Ildefonso Pueblo, Santa Clara Pueblo and neighboring Nuevo Mexicano populations as well as the property of the Los Alamos Ranch School and that meant that the Tea Room was nearby but Edith Warner no longer had the business.

You know, people weren't stopping on the train because they weren't running those routes to protect the secrecy of the bomb's creation and she was no longer watching the supplies.

But Oppenheimer managed to convince military security that they should keep the Tea Room open and scientists would go there to relax from the extraordinary stress of making the first atomic weapon ever and Edith Warner became good friends especially with many of the women who were in Los Alamos.

So unlike a lot of other military operations civilian scientists who are involved in the creation of the nuclear bomb were allowed to have their families with them so Edith Warner was witness to a baby boom at Los Alamos which kind of presaged the baby boom of the post-war period and got to be very close with the Fermis, with the Oppenheimers and with the Wilsons I think.

>>Faith: Tell me a little bit about Maria Villapando's story.

>>Flannery: So, in 1760 Maria Villapondo, who lived in Ranchos de Taos, was captured by Comanche raiders and there was a great deal of raiding back and forth between Nuevo Mexicano and Indigenous populations in the 18th century.

She was separated from her infant son Jose and traded to the Pawnee who lived on the plains at that time.

She lived with the Pawnee for 10 years and had a child while she was among the Pawnee and ultimately was ransomed or perhaps purchased.

So, some people see this captive trading as a slave trade.

So, she was either ransomed or purchased depending on what word you want to use, by a Frenchman who brought her to St Louis.

And the Frenchman actually had quite an extensive and profitable fur trading enterprise.

They were married in St Louis in 1770.

He returned to France and never came back.

And we don't know quite what happened to him and if he died on the journey.

If he died there.

For whatever reason, he didn't come back.

Maria Rosa Villalpando inherited this vast fur trading empire.

1802 rolls around.

This is when Lewis and Clark were preparing to leave St Louis for the famous Lewis and Clark Journey.

So, before Lewis and Clark, before the Santa Fe Trail, before the railroad, certainly before automobiles and the internet.

1802, who shows up in St Louis?

Jose.

And he had heard, you know, kind of through the network, the really dense network of indigenous people and Spanish and French Traders that stretched between St Louis and Northern New Mexico, he had heard that his mother was a very wealthy woman and he wanted to know if he could get a piece of that wealth.

If I am remembering correctly, he did not get very much.

Almost all of her wealth went to her French children and although she herself was a victim of this vast trading network, this vast slave trade network, she enslaved women of African descent in St Louis which was slave territory when it became part of the United States.

So, there are contradictions in her story.

>>Faith: And what about Genoveva Chavez.

>>Flannery: I love Genoveva Chavez's story quite a bit.

So, I'm originally from Santa Fe New Mexico and Genoveva Chavez was from Santa Fe.

She was born in 1942.

Graduated from Santa Fe High in 1960.

She was, by that time, already a Mariachi musician.

Her mother sang and her father played in a Mariachi band growing up and she performed for Santa Fe fiestas which a lot of your viewers probably know that is still ongoing.

She had already begun performing for fiestas, she graduated from high school, decided to go to Los Angeles to explore Ranchera music and continued Mariachi performance.

While she was in LA, she came out as a lesbian and it's likely that Los Angeles, which had a much wider network of queer people in the 1960s and 1970s was more comforting and supportive of her lesbian identity.

Well she lived in LA.

She performed on The Love Boat which served as the inspiration for the 1970s television show The Love Boat and I love that she was exploring her love life while she was doing that work.

But, ultimately she returned to Santa Fe and although the whole time she was in LA she would come back for Fiestas every year.

Which was very common for Santa Fens who moved to Los Angeles after World War II and a lot of Santa Fens moved to Los Angeles after World War II, a lot of them came back for fiestas.

So, she came back every year, but ultimately she returned and lived with her long-term partner Dorothy Rivera.

And she returned probably because she suffered from lupus and it was just hard to have that kind of demanding entertainment career alongside a chronic illness.

So, that's how she came back to Santa Fe, and by that point there was a larger less of an open secret um a queer community in Santa Fe and so she had a wider source of support then.

>>Faith: I think I remember reading a quote where she said she was just happy that she could make others happy with music I thought that was great >>Flannery: Well and she really broke a lot of ground and Mariachi musicians generally were not women in the 1940s and 1950s and so she was one of the women who helped change that in the 1960s and 1970s.

>>Faith: And Matilda Coxe Stevenson.

Who is she?

>>Flannery: Yeah, so, Matilda Coxe Stevenson was born in Texas, but grew up between Texas and Philadelphia.

She came from a pretty wealthy family.

She married a guy named James Stevenson who worked for he U.S Geological Survey.

The U.S Geological Survey was run by a guy named John Wesley Powell.

Powell was a Civil War veteran.

He had run the Colorado River with only one arm.

He had lost the arm during the war.

So, Powell was a really colorful figure.

He attracted these colorful figures to the Geological Survey and he had within the Geological Survey this uh federal government organization called The Bureau of Ethnology and Matilda Coxe Stevenson went to work for the Bureau of Ethnology.

Powell and the people who worked for him had a really Victorian mindset which largely believed that Native American people were dying out.

That Indigenous people were not going to live much longer so she did her ethnographic work believing that it would be necessary for the future so that future people would know about indigenous lives.

Now, of course, that wasn't true at all right?

That mindset was wrong.

Powell was wrong.

Matilda Coxe Stevenson was wrong.

None of that was true.

But because... she was really devoted to this and white ethnographers, white anthropologists, white male anthropologists were just the same as Matilda Coxe Stevenson, but she got a reputation because she was a woman of being pushy.

And white male anthropologists were you know stealing sacred information, they were taking artifacts that they should not have taken from native people, Matilda Cox Stevenson did that also, but she thought she had to do that because she thought that's what it meant you know to make it as an anthropologist.

>>Faith: I actually... she was the first anthropo... like one of the first women anthropologists?

>>Flannery: She was she was the first woman to work for the Bureau of Ethnology, so yeah, in that respect she was one of the first women anthropologists in the United States.

And she did most of her research at Zuni and became good friends with a non-binary figure named We'wha and befriended Matilda Coxe Stevenson in 1879.

Matilda Coxe Stevenson helped facilitate employment for We'wha.

We'wha journeyed to Washington DC in 1886, so a pretty important Zuni figure and is a great example of how even in this really unequal situation, you know, Matilda Coxe Stevenson is stealing stuff right and left.

Sharing things right and left that she should not share.

And yet still learns from We'wha that indigenous culture is different and is not necessarily on a lower level than white culture.

So for the 1880s that was revelatory and their friendship kind of shows, it kind of paved the way for a later generation of Anthropology, that said, "wait a minute, like, some cultures are not better than others, that's not the way it works."

And so that although, you know, Matilda Coxe Stevenson herself never fully emerged from that mindset she helped kind of prepare the ground for that.

>>Faith: Well, what about each of their stories really speaks to you?

>>Flannery: I think something in all of their stories that speaks to me is the way in which travel can educate.

So, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, you know, went from a really different world, you know, Washington DC to New Mexico.

Genoviva Chavez went from Santa Fe to Los Angeles.

We'wha went from New Mexico to Washington DC.

Edith Warner went from Back East to New Mexico.

So, all of them were seekers in one way or another and all of them found a way of making a home and celebrating what they most appreciated about their home and advocating for what they most appreciated about their home, wherever they landed.

So, one scientist, regarding Edith Warner, said she proved that men can create more than Wars and bombs.

So to even though she was you know in a way an assistant to the creation of the bomb, she wasn't remembered that way by the scientists who participated in the creation of that, you know, really horrific invention, and they knew it was a really horrific invention.

And yet, she allowed them to retain their humanity in the course of that process.

I think that's what the travel was about for all of those women.

How do we retain our humanity?

How do we share what is best about our culture without risking what is best about our culture?

And all of them took risks and there were some losses.

But at the end of the day, I think that's what I find most inspirational about them.

>>Faith: And how is each of their stories relevant to us?

>>Flannery: Right well, I think that's where the mistakes come in handy.

Genoviva Chavez was willing to have her sexuality be an open secret.

But there's a cost.

There's a cost and a connection to communities, there's a legal cost when sexuality is an open secret and so you know I don't know she had she had limited choices um so I don't want to call it a mistake but I think we can learn from our collective mistake, you know, of insisting that it be an open secret.

That her sexuality be an open secret.

Edith Warner, I think, you know, was really troubled by the bomb's creation.

There were opportunities all along the way for those scientists to say, "we're not going to do this after all."

So, you know, that's a huge mistake.

Matilda Coxe Stevenson, I think, was so ambitious as an Anthropologist that that outweighed her friendship with We'wha.

Her sharing of information.

She could have been a lot more respectful, had she, you know, troubled to think about what is most lasting in our lives.

Is it our friendships or is it our professional success?

And I know that some figures in Zuni and We'wha may have been one of them, have received a program, you know, from the rest of Zuni Pueblo about sharing information that shouldn't have been shared.

So, and that was a quandary I think for all indigenous people of the late 19th century.

How to protect homelands.

How to protect sovereignty in the midst of this onslaught of U.S Federal and Anglo interest and attention and desire for Pueblo knowledge, Pueblo land, Pueblo information.

>>Faith: How do you think Maria Villapando's story is relevant to us?

>>Flannery: Yes, so, I tell the story of Maria Villalpando because she provides a name and a memorable story for the thousands of women and children who were a part of this slave trade in the 18th century.

The historian Estevan Rael-G�lvez is engaged on in on a super ambitious exciting project to name all of those people.

All of those people who were enslaved in the new world as a part of this other slave trade um aside from it is other in that it is different from um the African and African-American uh slave trade that existed in the U.S.

So, he is giving a name to everyone.

In the meantime we have Maria Rosa Villapando's story to stand for all of these nameless women and children who traded hands in the 18th century as a part of that slave network.

>>Faith: And why don't we know more about these women?

>>Flannery: I think that's a product of a few a few issues.

One is that women's history was not widely taught in universities or in high schools until the 1970s.

A second reason is that those stories have been taught unevenly.

So, there's a kind of waxing and waning in interest and enthusiasm and support for women's history and for history of sexuality and when that declines then those stories don't get told anymore.

A third reason is that, and I call myself to task for this, historians like me have not always done a great job of proving how women's stories are critical.

How they change the story.

That when you include women, that actually changes the story.

So, instead of, you know, putting Edith Warner, or putting Maria Villapando in a little box on the side of our text, in the textbook, they should be the main part of the text.

Right?

They changed the story.

And so, that's why, I think, we don't always hear them.

Is that, when they do get included they often get include did in this ancillary, off to the side way.

>>Faith: And why is it important for you to share their stories with us?

>>Flannery: Well, number one, it's my job.

Right?

I'm a Professor of American Studies.

It's my job to teach the history and literature and culture of the United States and of North America so, that's one reason I think it's important.

It's my job because a lot of other people think it's important for girls especially.

It's important to hear their stories told as vital to the historical record because then they realize that what they do matters.

So, it matters in that regard but it also matters in that if women changed the story, you know, if we understand the slave network that Maria Rosa Villapando was a part of.

If we understand that then all of us can make better decisions in the future by virtue of our historical understanding but if you don't include the women and children who dominated um, you know, the trade products of that trade, if you don't include them then you don't know that story and then you can't learn from that story in the future.

>>Faith: So, is there anything else that you would like to discuss about the women?

>>Flannery: I'd say only that all of these women are just a little first taste, you know, an appetizer in the banquet that is women's history of New Mexico and of the Southwest and so if anyone is interested in any of these women's stories there are there is so much to learn um and so many great books um that can carry people further.

>>Faith Perez: Well, thank you so much Flannery, that was awesome, I appreciate it, >>Flannery Burke: Thank you.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.