About 8500 years ago, hunting/gathering humans, living in the most fertile river valleys on earth, simultaneously discovered agriculture. And so modern civilization was born. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz brilliantly reported in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States, there were seven fertile cradles from which the advent of plant domestication would sow the seeds of great cities, pyramids, temples, a surplus of food and, in some locations, a societal caste system. Two in China, two in Africa, and three in the Western Hemisphere. Minions of unwashed Europeans would spend several more centuries, clubbing squirrels and digging up wild roots, before discovering the magical synergy of the plow, the seed, and water.
An alpine breeze, a gift from The Sangre de Cristo Range, caresses my face as I sit here on the bank of Red Willow Creek, between Hlaauma (North House) and Hlaukkwima (South House). Milky glacial spring runoff babbles by enthusiastically, flanked by the two main structures at Tuah-tah (Taos) Pueblo. Like the red willows for which the creek was named, the Tuah-tah People have lived on this land for more than a thousand years. And like the willows, they’ve survived because they’ve been able to bend with the passage of time and the winds of change.
A shiver runs down my spine. I’m awed and overwhelmed, contemplating the history of the Taos Pueblo. 4500 years after Central Mexico became one of the seven cradles of…