Reconnoitering "Pueblo" Ethnicity: The 1852 Tesuque Delegation to Washington‪.‬

In 1852, five leading men from Tesuque Pueblo in New Mexico journeyed more than 2,600 miles--by horseback, steamboat, and train--to meet with President Millard Fillmore in Washington. In all, the round-trip lasted seven months. The party comprised some of the pueblo's principal officials, at a time when Tesuque's entire population numbered fewer than 120 people. This delegation, almost completely neglected in histories of the Pueblo Southwest, was remarkable for the circumstances that gave rise to it, for the difficulties of the journey, and for what it reveals about Pueblo life in New Mexico at that historic moment. Moreover, it brings to light questions of Pueblo ethnic identity as it was reconfigured under U.S. administration. In application to the Pueblos, U.S. Indian policy proved intractable--were they "Indians" or "citizens"?--an administrative paradox that remained unresolved for another six decades and that has continuing effects into the present. The delegation metonymized the emergent relationship between the Pueblos and the U.S. government. While the "Pueblos" already had some political unity, especially since the revolt of 1680, and had discernible sociocultural ties going deep into prehistory, their consolidation as an ethnic entity occurs in the conjuncture with the American nation-state. A primary aim of the delegation was to argue for rights promised in a Pueblo treaty signed in 1850. But there was a good deal more involved, both for Territorial Governor James S. Calhoun, who initially led the trip, and for the delegates, at this millenarian moment of their encounter with the "Great Father," a potential reincarnation of Montezuma who would liberate the Pueblos from colonial oppression. (1) For Calhoun, the very survival of New Mexico Territory was at stake: It lay perilously close to anarchy. He sought to cement an alliance with the Pueblos, a powerful indigenous bloc he feared might revert to a resurgent Mexican nationalist movement. The Tesuque party would speak for all of the Pueblos' common interests, desiring intelligence of the new regime and its mores; Specifically, the delegates sought government aid against settler encroachments upon Pueblo land grants and against raids by nomadic tribes.