Description

Shepherd Entertainment gives you the history of the oldest capital city in the US Santa Fe and shows you its sites and attractions.

Transcript

We continue our way on to the American west following historic Route 66 to New Mexico State. The capital of New Mexico famous for Kitt Carson and the Apache Chief Geronimo is Santa Fe, a city with a unique atmosphere. On the Sta. Fe trail, tens of thousands of settlers were on their way to the southwest. Sta. Fe trail was the famous film of Michael Curtis in which Ronald Reagan played General Custer sharing the screen with Errol Lynn and Olivia de Havilland. The city is the oldest capital city in the US. The Spanish colonial government moved here in 1610 but archeologists say the Indians have established a settlement here 300 years earlier. The historical city core still reflects the peaceful atmosphere of the Spanish and Indian era. However, in line with the expansion of tourism, there’s no lack of hotels and souvenir shops. Local potters decorate their pots and pictures made out of foot operated wheels with traditional motifs. The objects obtainable here are very similar to the ones seen in the museum of Indian art and culture. In its exhibition, the culture and art of the southwest Indians are shown from the times before Christ. Sta. Fe is the city of holy faith as its name says. The cathedral named after St. Francis of Assisi is the first church in this state to be elevated by the pope to the rank of basilica. The city was a center of the conquest of Indian Territory and at the same time, that of the natives conversion to Christianity. Many consider the San Miguel Church the oldest church of the United States. It was built in 1621. In a guidebook, we read Sta. Fe is an especially lively city, many times the festivities and parades overlap among the Spanish houses with their red tiled roofs or the yellowish adobe houses of the antique downtown. The most spectacular is of course the holiday of the city, the Sta. Fe Fiesta held is early autumn on the weekend before Labor Day and including parades colorful carnivals, Indian dance shows and fairs. The main square of the old town is the plaza. It has preserved its old image and its narrow streets are edged by adobe buildings. Typical of the city are the round adobe walls using natural materials and colors of the surrounding land and the usage of the pueblo Indians inheritance. The flat roofs of the yellowish pink cube shaped houses are held by stumped beams which are here called vigas. In the city, we can still find the charm of incomparable architecture with its link to nature. Under the shaded arcades of the Sta. Fe Village, craftsmen’s objects are on display. Indian tapestries are spread over the corridor stones to serve as a backdrop for the various wares. Pottery, musical instruments and mainly decorative objects and jewelry are the focus of this market but we can also buy genuine Indian feather decorations. Jewelry is partially made of turquoise which is mined in large quantities in the nearby mountains. The motifs derived from Indian folk art and some pieces are even made of arrow heads threaded on a leather string. Who would like to buy more traditional but more expensive bracelets or earrings can choose from silver goods. Sta. Fe not only has numerous museums and exhibition houses but there’s an extraordinarily large number of art galleries as well. The colors and lights of the land inspire painters and photographers alike. The center of the surrounding Indian pueblos is Espanola. Indians of Kachina, Borjuak, Sta. Clara and San Ildefonso live somewhere in the neighboring cave city. They built parts of their houses in the caves, hollowed in cliffs. They made multistory caves and there were buildings even on the tops of the Mesas. They hollowed out separate caves as storage places for food. Their communal house which has recently been excavated consisted of a thousand rooms. They left their caves in the 15th century to move into dwellings which became the pueblos of today. Karl May writes in his novel Winnetou, there are ancestral traditions for this unique building method. The pueblo Indians usually choose a high bank of a river or the cliffs of a dried up canyon. They cleverly make use of the circumstances putting up several storey high strong stone walls in the slits of the rock faces. Each storey is a bit further in than the one below it and there’s a terrace extending in front of it which is actually the ceiling of the storey below soothe ground floor is the most spacious and the floors above it are progressively smaller and smaller. The whole thing is like a pyramid consisting of sails or house of cards. There are not stairs in the building. Approaching each floor is possible only from outside climbing a ladder. If an enemy is coming the ladders are pulled in and only those who can climb up who have brought a ladder with them.