Pueblo runners remain still
Sculpture of messengers who helped spread word of 1680 Pueblo Revolt has yet to be installed in Santa Fe
As the city of Santa Fe prepares to tackle a highly sensitive community conversation about monuments to controversial figures or periods in history, the installation of a finished statue of two Native American runners who played a pivotal role in the deadly Pueblo Revolt of 1680 remains on hold.
In May 2018, the City Council formally accepted from Tesuque Pueblo the gift of a bronze sculpture in honor of Catua and Omtua, young men from the pueblo who set out on foot to notify other tribes about a planned uprising against Spanish colonizers before the two were captured and killed.
Their execution sparked, in part, an early start to the rebellion, which left 400 Spaniards dead and drove some 2,000 settlers out of the area for 12 years.
A resolution the City Council adopted at the time called for the sculpture to be installed in an outside area between City Hall and the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, which already has a courtyard dedicated to Catua and Omtua. A plaque marking the dedication notes the courtyard rests on the pueblo’s ancestral lands.
The city’s plans to install the life-size statue — valued at $300,000 and created by noted sculptor and former Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. George Rivera — were first interrupted earlier this year by the coronavirus pandemic, said Pauline Kanako Kamiyama, director of the city’s Arts and Culture Department.
“When COVID hit, everything got
put on hold,” she said, adding installation of the sculpture was previously on track for the spring.
But now, as the city embarks on a community dialogue about historic markers following the destruction Oct. 12 of the 152-year-old obelisk in the middle of the Santa Fe Plaza, Kamiyama said she hopes the artwork in honor of the two messengers will be part of that larger conversation.
The effort will led by what Mayor Alan Webber is calling a commission on culture, history, art, reconciliation and truth, or CHART.
“It’s really something that needs to be taken into context and have discussion and dialogue with the community and have this part of, I’m hoping, the [proposed commission] as one of their initiatives to look at,” Kamiyama said of Rivera’s piece.
The mayor has called the coming discussions “a reckoning on race, on history, on justice — and on creating a future that acknowledges the pain and honors the best of our past.”
Rivera said it’s up to the city and Tesuque Pueblo to determine the future of the artwork, which is being stored at his studio and home in Pojoaque Pueblo.
He noted the project already has been vetted and that the city accepted it as a gift by resolution.
Rivera called the sculpture a “significant piece” because of its history. He said it was important to him to create a piece that “has so much meaning to our region.”
“Most of the Pueblo people feel that the Pueblo Revolt was the only way for them to save their culture because it was being wiped out — literally,” he said. “They were burning the kivas and burning anything that had to do with the Pueblo religion, and the Pueblo people were slaves. That kind of oppression changed after the Pueblo Revolt, so even when the Spanish [returned] 12 years later and there was the reconquest of this land, it wasn’t as severe as it was initially. I think the relations were better.”
In the sculpture, Catua and Omtua, whose feet are brushing up against a yucca plant, are wearing only loincloths, their muscles, tendons and ribs showing in fine detail. Each runner is carrying a knotted cord, which symbolized the number of days before the Pueblo Revolt was set to begin.
“They’re running in full speed because Tesuque would have picked their best runners to do this job,” Rivera said.
Legend has it the two messengers didn’t know what the knotted cord meant.
“The composition I created has them holding the cords while they’re running, questioning each other, ‘What do these cords mean?’ ” Rivera said, adding he’s always viewed Catua and Omtua as the “innocent messengers.”
In a brief telephone interview, Tesuque Pueblo Gov. Robert Mora Sr. said he supported a delay in the statue’s installation. He said preservation of the sculpture could be in jeopardy in the current environment.
In a letter to the editor submitted Tuesday, Mora wrote that Tesuque Pueblo residents “have thought long and hard about the goings-on in our ancestral home of ‘Ogapoge — Place of the White Shell.’ ” He also wrote that Tesuque was “deeply saddened” to see newspaper accounts of the toppling of the obelisk by protesters.
The obelisk, a war monument, had been dedicated to soldiers who fought against the Confederacy in the Civil War. But it also was dedicated to the “heroes” who died in battle “with savage Indians in the Territory of New Mexico” — a remembrance that generated calls for its removal and, ultimately, its destruction.
Mora wrote that Tesuque Pueblo “isn’t affiliated with any current associations of individuals advocating for the removal of certain statues and monuments dedicated to historical individuals that were factually cruel and oppressive to Indigenous and certain minority groups in New Mexico.”
Nonetheless, Mora wrote, “the pueblo of Tesuque also wishes to ensure that a candid and robust discussion with elected officials in the state of New Mexico continues in a respectful and beneficial manner to remove certain tributes to historical figures out of respect for all victims of historical trauma and through proper education of all New Mexicans.”
In an open letter to residents, the mayor said Santa Fe is in an “enormous moment.” His proposed commission, he wrote, “will create a place where everyone’s voice can be heard and where everyone’s views will count.”
“Its job is to chart a path forward for all of us,” Webber wrote. “This is a critical step in our city coming together and developing solutions and a way forward — for the Plaza and beyond.”