On Tuesday, New Mexicans elected the nation’s first Hispanic woman governor. Regardless of your personal political leanings, that’s a historical milepost and, given that we’re in the business of celebrating our history, we’re taking the opportunity to remember another Hispanic who made history as governor of New Mexico.
A photo of Donaciano Vigil, taken by Albright Art Parlors, 188-82?. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, No. 011405.
Donaciano Vigil was the first native New Mexican Hispanic to serve as New Mexico governor after Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny raised the American flag over the Palace of the Governors. According to the State Historian’s web site: “(H)e was undoubtedly the most important native Hispanic leader in the transition of the Territory from Mexican to American government. His decision to support the American annexation of the New Mexico territory and join the new American sponsored government in 1847 helped ensure the status of New Mexico in the American nation and to assure the participation of Hispanos in that system. ”
In its July 3, 2010, edition, the Santa Fe New Mexican singled out Vigil as one of eight people critical to the preservation of the city’s heritage:
Born in Santa Fe in 1802, Donaciano Vigil chose when he turned 21 to make the military his career. After U.S. conquest of New Mexico in 1846, Vigil’s acceptance of American rule influenced other Hispanos to recognize the reality of the federal presence and calm largely political unrest in the territorial period. During the earlier Spanish colonial period, government and church officials were careful to preserve historical records. After arrival of the Americans, however, it fell to Vigil to champion the cause of saving historical records. As New Mexico’s first civil governor, Vigil organized archival records and made it his cause to preserve New Mexico’s history.
In its newsletter, distributed today, the Historical Society of New Mexico features a remembrance of Vigil by HSN President Mike Stevenson, who quoted a passage from Vigil’s speech to the first Territorial Legislature on Sept. 24, 1847. Stevenson thought, and we agree, that Vigil’s words have only grown more powerful in the 163 years since, as advice to those who would lead us and to we who are choosing those leaders:
If our government here is to be republican—if it is to be based upon democratic republican principles—and if the will of the majority is one day to be the law of the land and the government of the people, it is evident, for this will to be properly exercised, the people must be enlightened and instructed. And it is particularly important in a country where the right of suffrage is accorded and secured to all, that all should be instructed, and that every[one] should be able to read to inform himself of the passing events of the day, and of the matters interesting to his country and government. This is the age of improvement, both in government and society, and it more particularly becomes us, when commencing as it were a new order of things, to profit by and promote such improvements, and they can only be encouraged and promoted by diffusing knowledge and instruction among the people…All that the legislature can do in the cause of education for the people is most earnestly pressed upon them and will meet with my hearty approval and cooperation. (Emphasis added.)
Tom Leech and James Bourland, the keepers of the Press, happily agreed and turned their “office” into a working classroom for the students.
“Together they composed two poems, one in English, the other in Spanish, an illustration of Obama as a calavera (skeleton), and as a class we designed a broadside,” Nathan said. “At the Palace of the Governors Print Shop, their poem was hand-set in lead type, a linoleum block was carved and several hundred broadsides were printed.”
“It’s a broadside for centavos, Posada’s tradition come to life, not to mention a huge celebration for 
Opening this weekend, The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: Espana y los Estados Unidos) weaves the story of Spain’s first 300 years in the Americas. The History Museum marks the U.S. debut of 138 rare and precious documents, maps, illustrations and paintings — but it’s only here until Jan. 9, 2011, so get it on your calendar. (You’ll also enjoy the 12 weeks of lectures, concerts and Chautauqua performances accompanying it; every one of them is free.)
Here, the installation crew buzzes in the part of the gallery where we’ve hung Giuseppe Perovani’s 1796 portrait of George Washington. Many Americans are unaware of the critical role Spain played in helping to win the Revolutionary War. Perovani lived for several years in the United States and, in 1801, with the prestige he had earned, went to Cuba on contract with Archbishop Espejo to help decorate the Cathedral of Havana. He also worked as a teacher there and, afterward, moved back to Mexico, where he became an academic of merit and second director of painting in the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos.
Dr. Frances Levine (left), director of the museum, points to and talks about one of her favorite pieces in the exhibit,a 1786 agreement, hand-written in the Palace of the Governors, between 
Some of the media members who came to our preview was the 
Among EF’s interviews was one with 
Dr. Levine and Josef Diaz, the museum’s curator of Southwest and Mexican Art and History, examine an illustration of La Belle. The image is the main “brand” of the exhibit; see it above as part of the exhibit title.)
Josef Diaz; Mayor Coss; and Dr. Levine.
Andy and Daniel Razatos, owners of the 
The best part is that you can then enjoy them on the second-floor cafe’s outdoor terrace overlooking the Palace of the Governors Courtyard and the rooftops of downtown Santa Fe.
In 1893, on the winter plains of New Mexico, a drama played out between a wolf pack and a wolf hunter named Ernest Thompson Seton. Through his interaction with the wild canines, Seton underwent a personal transformation, changing from their persecutor to their protector, becoming a leading proponent of wildlife conservation. Seton reached an international audience of millions through his drawings, paintings, books and lectures. He wrote the first realistic animal story and established important principles for the sciences of animal behavior and ecology. His passion for self-reliance, ethics, and outdoor youth education led him to become a founder of the worldwide Boy Scout movement. Seton’s insights sparked a revolution in our perceptions of wild nature, provided a model for environmentalism, and inspired generations of youths and adults to take to the outdoors for recreation, adventure, and solace.
On October 22, 1893, 33-year-old Canadian naturalist and artist Ernest Thompson Seton arrived in Clayton, New Mexico. He had been hired to hunt wolves. As buffalo, antelope and deer had been eliminated through hunting and habitat loss, wolves turned to killing cattle. They threatened the livelihood of ranchers. For the next three months as Seton rode the rangeland of Union County, he thought a great deal about wilderness, wildlife and our relationship to the land. The wolves he hunted were becoming his teachers. Seton hunted a wolf pack along the Corrumpa Creek (“Currumpaw”) which flows east from Capulin Volcano National Monument, an ideal area for wildlife. He wrote: “The place seemed uninviting to a stranger from the lush and fertile prairies of Manitoba, but the more I saw of it the more it was revealed as a paradise.”
From “The King of Currumpaw”:
Seton published articles and monographs on wildlife from an early age. “Roger Tory Peterson freely acknowledges that the idea for his now familiar technique of identifying birds in the field came from Seton…In this way, Seton provided some of the impetus that has led to the present era of enjoyment and understanding of birds.” Robert W. Nero, American Ornithologists’ Union, 1975.
He ran a more formal weekend camp at Summit, New Jersey at the beginning of July. At the same time, he wrote a six-part series for Ladies’ Home Journal, “Ernest Thompson Seton’s Boys.” Thousands of boys joined what became known as the “Woodcraft” movement. The camps and articles established principles of outdoor education influencing the programming of summer youth camps for the next century. His main intent was to help youths connect with nature — an aim the History Museum shares in both the design of the exhibit’s interior space with trunks from real aspen trees (where 
As part of his own efforts through Woodcraft, Seton made illustrations and items to show Scouts and Woodcrafters how to make their own items. He handcrafted a number of items for his own use.
The Palace Courtyard was cool, with a reasonable amount of shade this morning — a far cry from the lightning storm predicted for later today. A perfect time, in short, to try out a little plein air painting, New Mexico-style. The teachers participating in this week’s 
For as long as people have called New Mexico home, they have pulled gems and minerals from its soil. Today, that tradition yields oil, gas, coal, uranium, and always, the gems that decorate our jewelry. Primary among those gems is a a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminum known worldwide as turquoise.
According to a New York newspaper: That is a turquoise far and away the finest in America, and it came from these new mines in New Mexico. It is worth $4,000. … (I)t is probable that gems to the value of $200,000 a year may be obtained from this mine. Kunz recognized the possibilities of further branding the Tiffany Blue color by maintaining almost-exclusive rights to the turquoise he had made suddenly valuable.
The Gem & Mineral Show, in conjunction with the Palace of the Governors Native American Artisan Program, allows gem and mineral dealers and Native American artisans to tell their unique stories about the historical relationships that have existed between Native silversmiths and jewelers, miners, and gem and mineral traders.
By the time Ernest Thompson Seton arrived in Clayton, N.M., in 1893 as a hired gun to kill wolves, nearly all the wolves were dead. Post-Civil War New Mexico had welcomed an influx of cattle ranchers and sport hunters who saw the gray wolf as a varmint, a nuisance, something easily expendable with poison, a bullet or a rope.
He only had an hour, so Witt chose to focus on that pivotal year, beginning in 1893, when Seton brought his wolf-hunting skills to New Mexico: “At thirty-three, he almost certainly had more blood on his hands than anyone else in Clayton. None of it was human,” Witt writes in the book.
Wolf blood would yet be spilled before Seton’s great transformation would take place. The story of how Blanca and Lobo died is a difficult one, Witt acknowledged in his lecture. He described the manic, melancholy howling of Lobo after Blanca was killed. He took care to give the audience only brief glimpses of either wolf in their fatal traps (the black wolf “Lobo” in his trap, at left).
