THE PAST 100 YEARS

From The Santa Fe New Mexican:

Aug. 10, 1923: Santa Fe, which had never seen Warren G. Harding in life, paid him a tribute of genuine sorrow as a great and a good man in death.

A crowd of more than 600 filled the hall of representatives on the third floor of the capitol for the community memorial program. The representatives’ desks had been taken out to make room for more chairs, but the seating arrangements proved inadequate. There were no vacant chairs a few minutes after the arrival of the procession from downtown.

Aug. 10, 1948: State Game Warden Elliott Barker said today there has been some expressed dissatisfaction over closing the northern half of the state to band-tail pigeon hunting.

The Department of Interior announced last week hunting of the pigeons in New Mexico will be limited to that portion of the state south of U.S. Highway 60.

Barker said today closing of the northern half “may be heading off a situation in which we would have no pigeons to hunt.”

Aug. 10, 1973: The suggested wording of a marker to blunt the wording on the controversial Plaza monument was released Thursday by Gov. Bruce King’s office.

The wording is designed to explain the reference to “savage Indians” that appears on the monument, dedicated in 1868.

The explanatory wording would be: “Monument texts are wont to reflect the character of the time in which they are written and the temper of those who wrote them.

“This monument was dedicated in 1868 near the close of a period of intense strife, pitting Northerner against Southerner, Indian against white and Indian against Indian. Thus we see in this monument, as in other records, the use of such terms as ‘savage’ and ‘rebel.’ Hopefully, attitudes change and prejudices dissolve.”

“Wont,” a word no longer in daily usage, means inclined.

Aug. 10, 1998: CHIMAYO — In a holy place 400 years after the introduction of Catholicism to New Mexico, the Catholic Church on Sunday sought reconciliation for a history of repression against American Indians.