Geronimo
It’s December 2021 – nearly two years since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in New Mexico. The state has closed, reopened, closed again, reopened again. Masks have come and gone – and come back again. Few things have remained as they were in those early days of the pandemic, but less than 50 miles south of the Colorado border, tucked into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Taos Pueblo has remained closed to the public since March 2020.
The living Native American community, with its multi-storied adobe buildings and village of local artisan shops, has been continuously inhabited for over 1,000 years. It is the only living Native American community designated both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark. The risk of an unknown virus taking root in this community – where multigenerational families live together and access to healthcare is limited to only one hospital in the town of Taos – was far too perilous to chance.
And while the Pueblo has been closed to the public, life for the residents has continued on – more quietly, more traditionally. Amid the chaos and loss of the pandemic’s tragic waves, Taos Pueblo did not cancel any of its gatherings and celebrations, and Pueblo residents were brought back to each other to grow food, offer meals and share in their own community together.
Geronimo is a farmer and baker who helped to provide fresh food to families both on and off the Pueblo during COVID. Here, he shares his experience of life on Taos Pueblo during COVID-19, in his own words.
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I’m from Taos Pueblo. I’m a farmer, a baker – and I do a little bit of everything. I’m a traditional person from our village. We’re very traditional in our ancient ways and with what we still practice, but we’re also in this modern world. So, we learn to live in two worlds; it’s hard to be an Indian because there are two worlds that you have to deal with. Sometimes they clash, but you make it work.
I was raised on the farm – we didn’t have a lot of livestock, but we had enough to support a family. There were 10 children, so we learned to harvest what we raised and grew. We used everything that we had. We could never name our animals. We were very healthy; we never ever had any kind of sickness like we have now, mainly because we ate everything off the land. We grew everything on our fields – alfalfa and corn and pumpkins and beans.
We were the last family to use wagons with horses. When we were kids, as long as I can remember growing up, we were loaded into the wagon in the morning, before the sun came up, and hauled up into the fields. Depending on how old we were, we either played or we helped. That’s how we learned, and we grew everything. We had other fields, too, which had mostly alfalfa because of our horses. Back then, everyone grew; now it’s not like that anymore because of the modern ways. We’re relying on the stores to keep us surviving.
When Covid started, we couldn’t do anything. We just hung in there. And slowly, as time went on, people wanted food – they wanted my bread – so they ordered food from me. Every Friday, I made 25 loaves of bread and brought them to the Farmhouse Café at 2pm and put them in bags to send off to families from the schools who needed food for the weekend. Forty shops in our village didn’t have any income [during Covid]. They shut down. That’s 40 families. So, those families, we helped them out. They were the first ones who we took food to. We also have traditional families who take care of our traditional ways of life – so we took care of those people, too. And then the elders. After we took care of all them, we just went from road to road, house to house, and if people were there, we’d give the food. If not, we’d go onto the next house.
We did have food come in from the government. We had a committee that provided a list of food and it was awful food; it was commodity food. It was hotdogs – big ol’ packs of hotdogs. Pork patties and grilled chicken. It was all processed and a lot of people didn’t like it. Everybody complained, but we just said, “thank you,” because it’s something that was given to us. We got other items, too. Good stuff – lots of paper towels and cleaning supplies, and boxes of masks and gloves. We got air filters to put in our homes for the people who had electricity.
We were protected. If people got sick, they were taken to a hotel room until they got better. Groceries were taken to people if they were sick. We had an emergency crew that handled all of that. We were just very careful. The main thing is that our village took care of us – they locked us in. We have four gates that we could usually use for the Pueblo and they’re all closed. My gate is one of them. I live towards the ski valley. To get out of my house, I have to go through the Pueblo and out. It’s a 30-minute ride. Before, it would be 10 minutes on the highway. But we were taken care of.
We didn’t cancel any of our celebrations – any of our feast days. We’re the only village that did not cancel anything. All the other villages canceled all their dances, all their ceremonies. That’s what kept our spirits going. If not for that, we would have been different people. Everything we do, we do as a community. It’s not just a few of us who go; the whole tribe goes. We dress up in the fanciest Indian clothes we have – our traditional clothes. And we go do our ceremonies.
We have a traditional calendar that we follow. It starts on May 3rd and that’s when we wake up the earth. It’s our first corn dance and it’s all young people dancing – all the ones who have never been married and just got initiated. When I was younger, I asked one of our elders, “How come we dance the first one?” And he said, “It’s because you’re young. Your heart is strong. You’re full of life, so you’re waking up Mother Earth with all your powers.” All day long we dance. After that, we start plowing, getting the fields ready and we start planting.
People can’t come in and out of the Pueblo now [because of Covid], so the celebrations are just for us. They’ve always been for us – it’s just that the doors have always been open so people could come in. People could watch. They couldn’t participate or anything – no pictures or video or anything. But, this year, it was awesome because it was just us. I took my nieces to one of the corn dances – to watch the dancers, and it was just the three of us there. Usually, it’s all people everywhere. But it was beautiful and very quiet.
We have our main feast day on September 30th. It’s not just one day – it lasts for two weeks in our tradition. But, the main day is one day when everyone is in the village together. I provided ham, turkey, garbanzo beans with beef, enchiladas, chicken and red beans, the oven bread, cookies, pies and my specialty in my village is a cream puff. We got to visit with each other, and there was laughter everywhere. The whole village was there inside the plaza. There were people along the river, sitting along the river on their chairs to watch the clowns.
There are about 12 men who transform themselves into very traditional clowns. They are very special spirits – we call them clowns, but they’re not your red-nosed clowns. These men have corn husks in their headdresses and all they wear is a loin cloth – their whole bodies are painted black and white. We’re the only village that has unmasked kachinas. Some of the men you can recognize and some you can’t, but they don’t wear masks; it’s just painted faces.
It’s a blessing to have them, but they also come for discipline. They know if you’ve been bad, like Santa Claus. They come for adults, too – not just the kids. They come for everybody. We give them gifts for coming to bless us and give thanks to us. This time, the clowns went to bless all the houses in the village. Every house gave them baskets of food. We gave them watermelons and vegetables from the farm. They did a special prayer for us – for our family. And, after we gave them their gifts, they gave us a prayer that was unbelievable. It’s an all-day ceremony. Usually, they’re done by 3pm, but this time, they weren’t done until 5:30pm. They were able to take more time with the people – to actually be with the people.
We saw more of each other because we were all right there together. In the past, there were so many people – we would go zooming by each other so fast and you could barely see who passed you. But, this year, we said hi to each other. It was really nice. We’ve never had these feast days to ourselves. Some people were angry because their friends couldn’t come. But I said, “You know what, just think of it: we’ve never had this feast to ourselves. We’ve always had hordes of people coming to our village and joining us. So, enjoy it this moment. It may never happen again.”
