Thank my ancestor for our great Western cowboy culture
The Albuquerque Journal front-page headline, “City faces new calls to remove Oñate ‘La Jornada’ sculpture” June 13 begs for some historical perspective. The Albuquerque Museum Board of Trustees claims the removal of the monument is long overdue on the basis it is disrespectful to Native Americans.
As a quintessential son of New Mexico, I am a native Mestizo, born to Hispanic parents in Santa Fe and lifelong resident in communities all over New Mexico as well as Indian Country. My 23&Me DNA profile identifies my Native American ancestry at 20%. Specifically, I am a direct descendant of many of the 560 original Spanish colonists who arrived in 1598 with Gov. Juan “El Mozo”de Oñate y Salazar. Oñate is my uncle 14 generations back.
Through New Mexico, these original Spanish colonists brought to what is now the United States our Western culture and an improved quality of life to Native Americans. To Indian crops like corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, chili and melons, my Spanish grandparents added oats, wheat, Spanish grapes, brewer’s yeast to make beer and wine, Spanish brandy, pisco, American brandy, grappa, cheese, eau-devie, hornos to make bread, which required the use of Spanish yeast, and all kinds of fruit trees as well as European livestock such as the horse, cows, sheep, pigs and poultry. Cowboy spirit, culture, the wheel, iron long guns/gunpowder for hunting and self-defense, and ranching technology were adopted and embraced to this day by rural Native Americans far more than their pre-Columbian ways. Today, when they come to town they pay great homage to Oñate, donning western hats, cowboy tack, boots, driving modern trucks with their European horses and other livestock in tow.
These Spanish colonists are my family, and I profoundly resent the many unilateral false, libelous and slanderous accusations which started with the Black Legend of the 16th Century and persist today. On the issue of monuments, memorials and sculptures, Oñate and my other antecedents have the same rights to be honored for their significant accomplishments in memorials, written and statuary, as does Popé, the Tewa Pueblo Indian whose statue occupies the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., leader of the 1680 massacre of 400 Spanish men, women and children . ...
To listen to these whiners, you would get the impression that Native American history commenced on the day the Spanish arrived in 1492, because prior to 1598 you hear nary a word of history.
That is the trouble with oral history. In fact, if you read Oñate’s military journal, he writes that the punishment for Acoma’s unprovoked act of war was to remove “las puntas de los pies;” i.e., their toes, not their feet. The other part of their punishment was to serve as laborers to Spanish families. So it makes no sense those Acoma male laborers, needing to carry water and firewood, would be disabled to the point of walking around on a bloody stump.
Wiser words were never spoken than when Maya Angelou said, “I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.” To sanitize history is to be learning disabled.
What I can say with 100% certainty is that whatever happens to the Oñate monument, so objectionable to certain Indians, is of little importance in light of the great Spanish culture of the Western cowboy he contributed to these United States of America and huge message of acceptance, love, and veneration Oñate and his party are paid every day by millions of Indians and everyone else in the world who has ever put on a cowboy hat, boots or anything of a Western ranching nature ....
Keep the focus on actual history rather than giving credence and sway to a few hypocrite malcontent dissidents who whine, distort the truth and are not a representative sample of the vast majority of both Indian and non-Indian fans of Don Juan de Oñate, inventor of the American cowboy.