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Charlie Glass and the mystery woman.

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Charlie Glass mural, Moab, UT October 2023

I didn’t know who the lady beside Charlie Glass was when I put this piece up in Moab, UT in October of this year. When Mary Langworthy of Moab Museum presented me with several photos of Charlie (included below), I gravitated to the image of him above because it shows 2 handsome and stylishly dressed black people in the Southwest the 1920s. I knew that the man, Charlie Glass, was a cattleman from Oklahoma who settled in Moab in 1917 where he became legendary. I presumed the woman to be his girlfriend.

The widely accepted narrative about Glass is that he was a “a Black cowboy who worked at the Turner, Osborn, and Cunningham ranches. This cowboy was known for his grit and ingenuity, qualities admired during his time pushing cattle from Moab to Thompson Springs. Glass was known for his fierce loyalty to ranch bosses, but his reputation was really made in 1921 during the Sheep Wars era, a time of conflict between sheepherders and cowboys. Glass found himself in an altercation with Basque sheepherder named Felix Jesui whose flock was encroaching on Oscar L. Turner’s property. Glass fatally shot Jesui and claimed self-defense”, as noted on the Moab Museum website.

Charlie Glass, circa eary 1920s. This photo may be from the Sego, UT – home to a small black community near Moab which worked in a coal mine and the coal railroad there.

The commonly accepted narrative continues… “Glass’ bail was set at $10,000 (the equivalent of $157,000 today) which his boss, Turner, paid immediately and without question. After a well-attended court hearing, Glass was acquitted and continued to work on the Turner Ranch for another 16 years. In 1937, Glass was playing poker with the cousins of the man he’d shot years before. After what local lore calls an amiable game, the group parted ways. But later that evening, Glass was found dead in the back of the men’s pick-up truck—reportedly, Glass’s neck was broken. The cousins claimed no foul play, but the truth of the night remains a mystery to this day.”

While many accept the story above, serious sleuthing by serious sleuths suggest otherwise. I met such a sleuth after the mural was installed.

The sleuth’s name is Stephan P. Zacharias. Until this fall Stephan worked at Moab Museum as the History Programs Interpreter. He happened to be on the walking tour I did with people interested in learning about the mural. I was asked by a woman on the tour who the woman is in the photo with Charlie Glass?

Charlie Glass with an unknown woman, Grand Junction, CO,1921.

I admitted that despite my best efforts to learn more about her, I couldn’t find anything and assumed the woman was Charlie’s pregnant girlfriend. This unresolved question, left dangling in the air, began gnawing at Stephan which led to a most enlightening email exchange over a couple weeks. Some of the emails from Stephan follow…

October 6, 2023

7:48 am

Although, I will always take exception to the myth that has been perpetrated as “history” regarding his death. 

He was not murdered as many like to suggest. The sheepherders he was traveling with were not in fact Basque, they were both Frenchmen who immigrated to America. Felix Jusui whom Charlie Glass murdered in 1921 (or was acquitted of murdering) was Basque and a Sheep Camp Mover in the region so it is like he knew both men, but there is no concrete evidence to support that. And the fact is all three men were injured in the truck crash (the most likely explanation for the crash is drunk driving…not intent to kill Charlie or cover up a murder as some might suggest over the years). 

I have attached the 24 February 1937 article from Grand Junction, CO’s The Daily Sentinel  which describes the accident and the injuries to all three men.

Oct 10, 2023, 11:18 AM (1 day ago)

Chip,

I don’t know that I will be able to verify or confirm this information, but I was re-evaluating his Death Certificate and it would appear that during his time in the West, Charlie informed people, who in turn informed the undertaker who filled out his Death Certificate that his father was “Dick Glass”

This is pretty significant in that Dick Glass and his gang of Muscogee (Creek) outlaws were pretty notorious in the annals of American Outlaw History. I’m down the rabbit hole on this one searching for any references to his children or wives mentioned in old newspapers in hopes I might be able to verify this information. It is reasonable to assume that it could be true in that Dick Glass was a Freedman Muscogee whose gang operated in the area of Indian Territory that Charlie was from, at the same time Charlie would have been born and spent his years before coming to Colorado and Utah. 

But it’s also possible Charlie knew the significance of Dick Glass (as he was just as notorious as Jesse James) so he may have just claimed him as his father for the reputation and lore associated with being related to him. 

If I find any confirmation of this I will keep you posted.

~Stephan

Oct 10, 2023, 12:37 PM (2 days ago), to me from Stephan

Chip,

Turns out Charles Glass was the son of “Badman Dick Glass” and brother to “Kid Glass” of American Outlaw fame. 

Found this article from 1973 in the Grand Junction (CO) paper where they confirmed the relationship.

Here’s some info on the father Dick Glass: http://www.cchsm.com/resources/misc/wortman_cc/glass_dick.html

Stephan’s enthusiasm about Charlie Glass’ family history led me to find Art Burton’s “Black and Indian Gunfights of the Indian Territories” to learn more about Dick Glass. The author notes “Historian Kenneth W. Porter has suggested, ‘If Robin Hood, legendary outlaw-champion of the Saxon peasantry, ever existed as a historical character, he probably resembled Dick Glass more than he did Robin Hood of ballads, novels and movies.’”

Art Burton goes on to write…

“Desparado” cover art by Robby McMurtry.

(The preceding excerpt from Art Burton’s book has been used without permission with a reproduction of the original art by Robby McMurtry.)

About Charlie’s brother, Kid Glass, Stephan writes:

Tue, October 10, 12:40 pm, from Stephan to me…

I forgot to add this clipping for “Kid Glass” who would have been Charlie’s brother and Richard Charles Glass, Jr.

Kid Glass Creek Freedman tribal enrollment papers – front

Kid Glass Creek Freedman tribal enrollment papers – back

kid glass draft card
kid-glass-leavenworth-prison-inmate

Meanwhile, back to Charlie Glass’ companion…

Oct 11, 2023, 11:41 AM (1 day ago) from Stephan to me…

Found this caption to the photo you used, and it would make sense. This would be when he resided in Cisco where the Census records indicate he is a homeowner. His sister Mrs. Lucy Pride would visit him once a year. 

So, we now know the woman to be Lucy Pride, Charlie’s sister, who was also a Creek Freedperson living in Tulsa, OK from a notorious outlaw family. However, this only raises more questions, like – was Miss Lucy in Tulsa May 31 – June 1, 1919 during the Tulsa Race Massacre? If so, how did she escape? We can only wonder.

Charlie Glass (a man who knew how to wear a hat), from the Moab Museum archive:

Shout out to Stephan P. Zacharias, Mary Langworthy, the #moabmuseum and Melisa Morgan of #marc.

Stephan in character as local Moab history docent.

My first question to Stephan after he shared the wealth of rich history with me was where he was over the past year as I was attempting to research Charlie Glass? He mentioned that he was new to the museum and no one involved him in the project. He went on to say…

“I have been asked many times why I do what I do, and it goes back to something I learned volunteering at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. : “A man dies twice, first with the physical death. And then, when know is left to speak his name.” 

My granddad is on that wall (KIA July 24, 1966 Chief of Smoke 2/9 Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division) His granddad died a POW at Camp Sumter in Andersonville, GA (Pvt. Lawson, Volunteer Infantry, 8th Tennessee). His cousin was Colonel Gaines Lawson 25th INF Regiment  (Colored) 1866-1892. Making sure that people know these stories and that who these men were and the things they overcame and accomplished is ultimately my family story as well. At least in my lifetime the goal is to at least one voice that keeps telling the story and when I can say their names. 

More to come on the uranium queens also installed in Moab and in which Stephan was instrumental in determining who’s who in that installation. Stay tuned.

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junaluska

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Jamison Whittington plays by a mural of his great grandfather, Sam Horton, Jr.

The Junaluska community in Boone, North Carolina is one of the earliest African American communities in western North Carolina.  “According to census records from 1850 Johnson Cuzzins (also spelled Cuzzens and Cousins) was a 44 year old farmer with a white wife named Charlotta (1). Johnson and Charlotta had nine children ranging from three months to eighteen years.  The census records also indicate that Johnson preceded his brother Ellington and family by at least one year. According to the 1860 census records Ellington, who was listed as a shoe and boot maker, lived in Boone with his wife Margaret, who was white, and their two daughters”[1]

Junaluska takes its name from a leader of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in the 19th century. The community is different from the other early black communities in western North Carolina in that it exists still.  Most of the early members of the community were freed enslaved people. However, “slaveholding was not common in the Appalachian Mountains.  Ninety percent of mountain people in western North Carolina had no enslaved people and those who did had only a few.”[2]  Although the people of Junaluska identify as African American their genealogies demonstrate a mix of white, Native and African American ancestry.  Susan Keefe, author of Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community notes “While Junaluskans can generally trace descent historically to white slaveowners one way or another, they do not consider them part of the family, nor do they trace descent through their white family tree.”[3]

“Some black residents who moved into the area were able to buy their parcel outright or were allowed to clear land and keep a portion.  Most Junaluska residents became landowners and homeowners, a fact that is still true in the community today.  Land ownership has been crucial to the survival of Junaluska as an ethnic community.”[4] The community reached its peak in 1942 with 191 black people in 59 families. By 2013 there were only 97 individuals in 42 households.  The rich ethnic and cultural tradition that characterizes Junaluska’s history is being threatened as the town of Boone expands and its population declines due to few job opportunities.

I was invited to learn this history last summer and to be a guest artist at Appalachian State University which I did from April 15 – 24.  The image chosen for an installation in Junaluska comes from the early 1950s and is found in Keefe’s book.  While installing it a member of the community drove by and stopped to share with my assistant, Travis Donavan (art professor at ASU), that it was her mom who found this photo in her archives and shared with Susan Keefe.

[1] http://junaluskaheritage.org/exhibits/show/history-of-junaluska-community/pre–depression

[2] https://shorturl.at/lBIJ5

[3] https://shorturl.at/bIK58

[4] https://shorturl.at/hquEK

From the book “Junaluska – Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community” by Susan Keefe

Family members of Sam Horton, Jr. identifying friends and family in the mural. Photo by Mary Anne Redding.

Chatting with Junaluskans related to people in the mural. Photo by Mary Anne Redding.

With my assistant, Travis Donavan. Photo by Mary Anne Redding.
 

A big shoutout goes to Sarah Donavan, Travis Donavan, Ron McCullum of Appalachian State University and Mary Anne Redding of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts for making this project possible.  Thank you to the Junaluska Heritage Association for the use of the image from the Chocolate Bar. #appalachia #blackappalachia #junaluska #blackjoy

climate change, climate justice, environment, Uncategorized

combining elements 1

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water

Ben washing up before supper at the winter hogan on Cumming’s Mesa. May 1995. (Installation at Gray Mountain, AZ with accompanying sound loop by Ken Ogawa.)

Anyone who has spent time in the southwest knows how precious a resource water is. A Washington Post headline in February of this year announced “Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1200 years” and “The past 22 years rank as the driest period since at least 800 A.D.” The Guardian in November 2021 noted that “Lake Powell reaches lowest level since construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963.” Sadly, the status of Lake Mead is as dismal.

Complicating the situation in this region is the historical exclusion of Native people from water rights treaties. Native people weren’t considered U.S. citizens when the Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922 dividing Colorado River water amongst 7 southwestern states and Mexico. (Native people became citizens with the right to vote in 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act.) Colorado Public Radio noted December 20, 2021… “Tribes were excluded from this agreement and had no direct say in how the water they relied on for millennia was divided – a racial injustice tribal leaders say continues to hurt their members.” Yet, Native households are 19 times more likely to lack piped water services than white households, according to a report from the Water & Tribes Initiative. The data also show that Native households are more likely to lack piped water services than any other racial group. Leaders of tribes who depend on the Colorado River say the century-old agreement on managing a resource vital to 40 million people across the West is a major factor fueling these and other water inequalities.”

There are 30 federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. Twenty two of these tribes have recognized rights to use 3.2 million-acre feet (maf) of Colorado River system water annually, or approximately 22 to 26 percent of the Basin’s average annual water supply. In addition, 12 of the tribes have unresolved water rights claims, which will likely increase the overall volume of tribal water rights in the Basin.

Wanting to better understand water issues and the legacy of uranium mining more my long time friend and collaborator for this project, Ken Ogawa, and I decided to make a series of sight and sound installations that speak to nuclear colonization and water issues on the Colorado Plateau. We talked with a local scientist and activists working at the grassroots level to bring potable water to homes on the Navajo nation where approximately 25% of homes lack running water. We also talked with activists working to clean up the over 500 abandoned uranium mine sites on the Navajo lands and to prevent future uranium mining and hauling of ore on the Navajo nation.

One of the people we spoke with was Diné geoscientist Dr. Tommy Rock who is completing postdoctoral work at Princeton University where he is studying the impact of oil and natural gas drilling and uranium extraction on local water sources. Tommy, the first in his family to attend college, is focusing his work on 3 communities on the Navajo nation (Sanders, AZ, Sand Springs, AZ and Monument Valley, UT), where he is developing a water filtration system that he can export to other Native communities. His work has tracked groundwater contamination as far as 80 miles from the site of a uranium mill spill at Church Rock in 1979. He is using this information to assure that available water is safe for human consumption. Tommy’s activism is empowering communities to hold corporations and the Federal Government responsible for uranium contamination and is truly inspiring.

Whereas Tommy’s approach to water filtration occurs at water sources, his colleague, Dr. Karletta Chief, Diné hydrologist at Arizona State University uses a different approach to providing potable water to Native communities. She’s developed a nano filtration system to be used in homes.

Ken writes “Water: About the sound
Shortly following my first arrival on the Navajo Reservation in 1986, I was told the story of how
the Navajo came to the world in which we all now live. They lived first below the surface of the
Earth until a great flood drove them to ascend to the present world through a reed into the
fourth or “Glittering World”. This is the journey I try to build in the audio loop for the “Water”
site. The source for nearly all the audio was extracted from video I made 30 years ago while on
a hike with Chip Thomas into Navajo Canyon, near the base of Navajo Mountain. I did add
some sounds of rain and thunder from more recent storms, but only to round out the narrative
I had built in my head. This loop lasts a little over 13 minutes.”

Jett in the rain. (Text painted by Daniel Josley with definitions from my co-worker who passed just before she shared this information with me, Rena Yazzie. The mural is dedicated to Rena.)

We asked Tommy to identify grassroots organizations on and around the Navajo nation involved in providing potable water to communities. He gave a shout out to the following groups:

  1. Dig Deep – Navajo Water Project
  2. Sixth World Solutions
  3. Black Mesa Water Coalition
  4. Diné Care
  5. Tó Nizhóní Ání (Sacred Water Speaks)

uranium

Kee John mining uranium ore in the early 1960s before his untimely death from a uranium related cancer in 2000. Installation at the old Waunta Trading Post with accompanying sound loops by Ken Ogawa.
What is your job?
Elegy/Thousands of Lives

Ken writes of these sound installations… “There are 2 audio loops at the ‘Uranium” site. The first begins with a recording of Geiger counter clicks which are modified electronically and combined with narration extracted from vintage civil defense and uranium mining films. This narration asks the question “What is your job?”, I hope prompting the listener to consider how they might engage with the bigger questions regarding the legacy of nuclear colonization.”


“The second loop is constructed from Geiger counter recordings distorted to an even greater
degree, combined with other sources, including the bell from my Japanese grandmother’s
Butsudan (home altar). In Buddhism, the bell’s sound is said to be calming and to induce a
suitable atmosphere for meditation. These bells are often used as a call to prayer. The ring of the
bell can represent the heavenly enlightened voice of the Buddha teaching the dharma and can
also be used as a call for protection and as a way to ward off evil spirits. I hope that this
represents a call to remember those that are lost and left suffering from the legacy of
irresponsible management of uranium mining. There are 2 loops, totaling nearly 20 minutes”

Moren Binale at home with his wife, Julia. Moren’s respiratory illness resulted from years spent in the 1990s remediating uranium mill sites on and around the Navajo nation.

July 16, 1945 was an ominous day in the history of humankind and the planet as the US Army’s Manhattan Project detonated Trinity, the first atomic bomb, in Jornada del Muerto, NM.  (“Jornada del Muerto” fittingly translates as “Journey of the Dead Man” or “Working Day of the Dead.”)  July 16 is also the day of one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history with the Church Rock, NM uranium tailings spill in 1979 on the Navajo nation (occurring 5 months after the nuclear reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island).

An earthen dam holding uranium tailings and other toxic waste ruptured releasing 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive water into the Rio Puerco and through Navajo lands. Sheep in the wash keeled over and died as did crops along the riverbank. According to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report the levels of radioactivity in the Rio Puerco near the breached dam were 7000 times that of what is allowed in drinking water.

In an effort to end WWII and to beat the Soviets in developing a hydrogen bomb uranium mining under the Manhattan Project began on Navajo and Lakota lands in 1944.  Two years later management of the program was transferred to the US Atomic Energy Commission. The Navajo nation provided the bulk of the country’s uranium ore for our nuclear arsenal until uranium prices dropped in the mid 80s and is largely responsible for our winning the Cold War.

However, environmental regulation for mining the ore was nonexistent in the period prior to the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. During this time uranium mining endangered thousands of Navajo workers in addition to producing contamination that persists in adversely affecting air + water quality and contaminating Navajo lands with over 500 abandoned, unsealed former mine sites.

Private companies hired thousands of Navajo men to work the uranium mines and disregarded recommendations to protect miners and mill workers.   In 1950 the U.S. Public Health Service began a human testing experiment on Navajo miners without their informed consent during the federal government’s study of the long-term health effects from radiation poisoning. (This study followed the same violation of human rights protocol as the US Public Health Service study on the long-term effects of syphilis on humans by experimenting on non-consenting African American men in what is known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment from 1932 – 1972.)

In May 1952 the Public Health Service and the Colorado Health Department publish a paper called “An interim Report of a Health Study of the Uranium Mines and Mills.

The report noted that levels of radioactive radon gas and radon particles (known as “radon daughters”), were so high in reservation mines that they recommended wetting down rocks while drilling to reduce dust which the miners breathed; giving respirators to the workers; mandating daily showers after a work shift, frequent changes of clothing, loading rocks into wagons immediately after being chipped from the wall to decrease time for radon to escape and for miners to receive pre-employment physicals. Sadly, the recommendations were ignored.

By 1960 the Public Health Service definitely declared that uranium miners faced an elevated risk of pulmonary cancer. However, it wasn’t until June 10, 1967 that the Secretary of Labor issued a regulation declaring that “…no uranium miner could be exposed to radon levels that would induce a higher risk of cancer than that faced by the general population.” By this time, it was too late. In the 15 years after the uranium boom the cancer death rate among the Diné doubled from the early 1970s to the late 1990s while the overall U.S. cancer death rate declined during this same interval.

Moren at the former Mexican Hat uranium and copper mill site where he worked in the 1990s to remediate it as a superfund site near his home in Halchita, Utah.

Native led organizations addressing nuclear colonialism:

  1. Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM)
  2. Haul No!
  3. Indigenous Environmental Network

Location of sites: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XgsNcRGmFSruPMGz9?g_st=ic

About the title – “combining elements 1”

These are the first 2 of 5 planned sight and sound collaborations drawing attention to the effects of climate change and the legacy of environmental mismanagement in the western United States.

In Traditional Chinese Philosophy, five elements (sometimes referred to as ‘phases’ or ‘agents’) provides a conceptual scheme used to describe the interactions and relationships between all things.

Five Element Theory asserts that the world changes according to the five elements generating or overcoming relationships.  Generating or overcoming are the complementary processes by which systems are harmonized and balance is maintained. 

It is our hope that having completed pieces representing ‘water’ and ‘metal’ we will continue with ‘wood’, ‘earth’, and ‘fire’.

Thank you to Stephen Stapleton of Culturunners, Daniel Josley, the late Rena Yazzie and Dr. Tommy Rock for helping to make this project possible.

community

Tacos La Pasadita

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I spent part of this past week in Green River, Utah as a guest of Epicenter whose mission statement reads “Epicenter stewards creative initiatives that honor the past, strengthen the present, and build the future that we envision alongside our community”. My engagement with Epicenter involved spending time with an extended Mexican family that moved to Green River in 2011 and who run a food truck with the best Mexican food in southern Utah. The family’s journey to Green River took a circuitous route. Upon leaving Veracruz, Mexico in 1992 the family first settled in Compton, California just in time for the Rodney King riots. Carlos Cruz, the patriarch of the family, works as a long distance trucker and was familiar with Green River from his trips between Compton and Colorado. Although life in Compton was challenging the kids of Carlos and Obdulia were reluctant to move to this little town in southern Utah but having been there now for 11 years they’ve grown to like it and call it home.

I was invited to do an installation on their building where the food truck is parked. However, when I went to meet the family in early March 2022 Obdulia was visiting a sick family member in California. So I met with Obdulia’s daughter, Jessenia who shared with me family photos from 30 years back and they became the source material for the installation at their food truck stand.

Tacos La Pasadita with a little guy running to the toilet
Veronica posing by the photo of her younger self taken in Compton shortly after she became manager at a Taco Bell 15 years ago.
Like his father Jorge is a long distance trucker who works between California and Colorado. He pulled up in his 18 wheeler while I was working and he wasn’t aware of the family photos being installed. He took a moment to pose with his younger self as Jessenia and her husband looked on.

Obdulia + Jessenia. The background image is from a surprise birthday party for Obdulia when she turned 50 a couple years ago.

Veronica, Obdulia + Jessenia

Interview with Obdulia Lujan, her daughter, Jessenia Rivera and Obdulia’s sister, Veronica Lujan

So the next time you’re cruising I-70 between Moab + Richfield stop by to say hey and get some good food. And tell them I sent you!

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Native Enslavement in the Southwest

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  • Gabriel Woodson, enslaved Navajo person, in the San Luis Valley (circa 1880). Juan Carson, enslaved Navajo youth of Kit Carson and his wife, Josepha appears in back. Per Cynthia S. Becker and P. David Smith in The Life & Times of Lafayette Head “Kit Carson’s wife, Josepha, traded the Utes a horse for a boy called ‘Juan,’ who was going to be killed. Everyone agreed Juan was treated the same as her own children. Juan lived with the Carson family until he was grown and found a wife.” (Page 194.)

On June 28, 1865, President Andrew Johnson had directed every Indian Agent in the Southwest to conduct a survey to determine persons holding Native American captives as slaves, although they were not at this time asked to free Indian slaves.  When Lafe submitted his list of Indian captives to Colorado Governor John Evan on July 17, 1865, he recorded over 160 names in Costilla and Conejos Counties.  His full transmittal letter reads as follows:

In the company of E.R. Harris, U.S. Marshal, I called upon all those persons that hold Indian captives in Costilla and Conejos Counties and interrogated the Indians themselves, and their replies to my inquiries, you will please find in the accompanying lists which embrace within my knowledge every Indian Captive in these two counties, and to the credit of the citizens here I would add, that they all manifested a prompt willingness on their part to give up said Captives, whenever called upon to do so, and in view of the facts, I would most respectfully recommend, that all the Navajo Captives here be returned to their Reservation in New Mexico.  Also the few Ute Indians residing in private families here, it is generally understood that they are there with the consent of their parents or friends, and enjoy the full privilege of returning to their people whenever they have the inclination or disposition to do so.  Very many of these Ute children are orphans, are therefore homeless and perhaps under these circumstances, their condition would not be so much benefited by your order.  Yet if your order is imperative, and you are instructing me to have them all removed, I will promptly do so.

I have notified all the people here, that in the future, no more Captives are to be purchased or sold as I shall immediately arrest both parties caught in the transaction.  This step, I think, will at once put an end to this most barbaric and inhuman practice, which has been in existence with the Mexicans for generations.

There are captives here who know not their own parents; nor can be speak their mother tongue, and who recognize no (sic) one but those who rescued them from the Merciless  (sic) Captors. What are we to do with these?  I would here add that I have not incorporated in the accompanying lists the large number of Captives that have legally married in the two Counties.

I shall wait for further orders from you in regard to their removal.  Please also instruct me what course I shall pursue in the premisis (sic) in regard to those who are not willing to return to their people.

A number of well-known men in the San Luis Valley were on Lafe’s list of slave owners, and Kit Carson was said to have three such captives.

Governor Evans promptly forwarded Lafe’s July 17list of captives to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington with the good suggestion (Probably influenced by Lafe’s transmittal letter) that those “slaves” who did not want to return home not be forced to leave their adopted families, and he considered the project closed.  Governor Evans, however, was not aware of one major problem with Lafe’s list – that it did not include any of the Indian children living on Lafe’s home or living with other families in the Town of Conejos.  Lafe would later submit a second list that would include himself and other Conejos residents that were slaveholders.

The Life & Times of Lafayette Head by Cynthia Becker and P. David Smith, Pages 190-191.

“List of Indian Captives acquired by purchase and now in the service of the citizen of Conejos County, C.T. (Colorado Territory), as taken and rendered by Lafayette Head, U.S. Indian Agent for the Tabeguache Utah Tribe of Indians. July 1865.”

1865 Costilla County list of enslaved Native people as documented by Lafe Head.

Millions of Indigenous people lived in North America before European colonial powers invaded. Along with an insatiable desire for free labor to cut sugarcane and to mine gold in the Caribbean and later to mine silver in New Spain (Mexico), Europeans brought a system of slavery that significantly differed from the system of enslavement practiced by Native nations which both pre and postdated African slavery. European concepts of bondage transformed the way Native nations interacted with each other, resulted in the enslavement and death of millions of Indigenous people, and sparked widespread resistance by Native nations in North and South America against colonizing powers (primarily Portugal, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Spain).

Nestled at the foot of Mount Blana, a mountain sacred to local tribes and one of four Sacred Mountains to the Diné (Navajo), Fort Garland was constructed by the U.S. Army in July 1858 to protect settlers from tribes whose land the settlers took. The fort was abandoned in 1883 after confining the tribes defending their land to reservations in Utah, Arizona and Colorado.

Wanting to engage the local community in difficult conversations about Native enslavement in the San Luis Valley Fort Garland Museum held a series of Zoom conversations encouraging participants to share family stories and photos of distant enslaved family members. One Latino participant shared how DNA testing is changing awareness of Native ancestry for many people in the valley. Inspired by an invitation from Fort Garland Museum to install work related to Native enslavement in the San Luis Valley I used this opportunity to begin learning more of this obscured history. As someone who has spent the past 34 years living and working with with the Diné on the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona and as an African-American this history intrigues me. Many Diné friends shared stories with me over the years of family oral histories that involve distant relatives being captured in battle with other tribes and being held captive.  Learning of Native enslavement wasn’t new information for me. However, the motivations, extent and consequences of it were.

Navajo captive youth pictured behind the Conejos County list of enslaved Native people
photo by Eric Carpio

Maria Rita Gallegos near the Costilla County list

Deluvina Maxwell
The Conejos County listing of enslaved Native people on the former dwelling of enslaved people at the Lafayette Head compound in Conejos County.
The Head list in the quarters of the enslaved at the Head homesite in Conejos.

Text from Virginia Sanchez’s chapter in Nacion Genizaro

Thank you Drew Ludwig, Esther Belin, Ronald Rael, Estevan Rael – Galvez, Eric Carpio, Dawn DiPrince, Delia Charley, the Fort Garland Museum staff, Richard Saxton and the good people of M12 for helping to make this work possible. It takes a village to prevent truth decay.

Last page of the Native Enslavement in the Americas Timeline zine

Unsilenced is part of the Landlines Initiative organized by M12 STUDIO. Since 2018, the Landlines Initiative has connected new art installations and cultural work throughout Colorado’s rural San Luis Valley. This work is supported by awards from Colorado’s Arts and Society, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

rez living

Diné Covid 19 PSA Posters (for downloading)

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On April 14, 2020, a Huffington Post headline read, “Navajo Nation Reports More Coronavirus Cases per Capita Than All but 2 U.S. States: Only New York and New Jersey Have More Confirmed Infections per 100,000 people.” The last point is key, because testing on the Navajo Nation has not been as robust as for New York and New Jersey. Sadly, the rate of infection for the Navajo Nation will continue to increase, as will the mortality rate.

In light of the emergency on the Navajo Nation, several mutual-aid, grassroots organizations have formed to get supplies of food, water, personal hygiene items, and firewood to elders living remotely and to provide hand-washing stations for unsheltered relatives in Kinłani (Flagstaff, AZ). Though the reservation is rich in natural resources that have been and continue to be exploited (including coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, and water in aquifers), roughly 25 percent of the 180,000 inhabitants are without running water and another 20 percent are without electricity.

This poster is designed to inform the community of the public-health strategy to provide optimal health during this time and to support the work of Navajo Hopi Solidarity and Kinlani/Flagstaff Mutual Aid. Additionally, this Diné COVID PSA is a collaboration with Shi Buddy, who provided the poster’s text, and grass dancer Ryan Pinto, who is pictured on the poster and who collaborated on the photograph’s production. Diné COVID PSA is part of a larger collaborative project that is currently underway with poets and visual artists—to drop soon.

Shout-out to Art Journal Open for the opportunity to spread the word and to all the people providing essential work during this time. Thank you. We see you and appreciate you.

The full story and high resolution, downloadable graphics are available at:  http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=13396.  For those interested in supporting community based mutual aid projects during the pandemic, contact http://www.kinlanimutualaid.org and http://www.navajohopisolidarity.org.