Frontier

In 1971 my friend Richard and I took a long car trip around the United States.  One stop was Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a center of Anasazi culture between the 7th and 14th centuries.  The question of why the inhabitants moved from the mesa tops into well-defended caves and then left the area was presented by ranger interpreters as a "mystery."  At that time, Richard was pursuing an archaeology major and he asked whether it was possible that this had to do with the upheaval in the Valley of Mexico coinciding with the arrival there of the Aztecs.  The question elicited a stunned silence.  Finally the ranger explained his discomfort: "But that's Mexico and this is the United States!"

Remember that we were discussing events in the late 1200's:  two hundred years before Columbus, and five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. (560-570 years before the US arrived in the area.)  One has to assume that the Border Patrol was short-handed at the time.  In his defense, I will note that the distance between Mexico City and Cortez, Colorado is about 1600 miles.  On the other hand, the cultural reach of central Mexican culture was extensive.  It is probable that the Mesoamerican ballgame Ullamaliztli was played in the areas now called New Mexico and Arizona.  200 sites resembling ball courts and several balls have been found at archeological sites.  And evidence of trade is everywhere in what is now the US in the form of products from central and southern Mexico.

But I started thinking about this differently around 1986 during a visit to Taos Pueblo.  People want Taos to manifest a kind of mystic connection with hidden powers.  It is roughly 1000 years old and the campaign to save the sacred Blue Lake was a big deal in the 1960's.  But when you visit Taos Pueblo, the members have little stores to sell you Coca Cola and fake-looking tomahawks made in Singapore.  My revelation was that Taos was the outermost pueblo of the Rio Grande Valley, doing business with the Plains Indians before Kit Carson and before the Spanish.  It may have been the farthest outpost of the empires in the Valley of Mexico.

Taos continued to play a role like that during the 1830's and 1840's.  But coming from St. Louis and headed to Santa Fe, the entry point to New Mexico was at the ford on the Pecos River.  Until 1800, then that frontier was Pecos Pueblo.  For about three-quarters of the 19th century it became San Miguel del Vado: Saint Michael of the Ford.  Once the Santa Fe Railroad was built, it moved to the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Now the frontier is about 300 miles further south, in El Paso, Texas.  But that is just a formal national boundary.  ICE sets up where they think illegal crossers will get back on I-10 or I-25.  And who knows what the future holds?