For Thursday, please read Hal Rothman, Devil’s Bargains, chap. 4. Then, in a 100-word comment to this post, comment on how Edgar L. Hewett harnessed Indian and Hispanic culture in ways that created the veneer of a place apart that obscured the reality of a place very much dominated by the dominant Anglo culture.
About Mark Souther
I am an associate professor of history at Cleveland State University and public history director of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities. I'm the author of New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City, editor of American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition (forthcoming), and am researching a new book on perceptions of decline in postwar Cleveland. Apart from my involvement in CPHDH, I authored a recent successful National Register of Historic Places nomination and serve on the Cleveland Heights Landmark Commission. My history interests include urban and suburban history, 20th-century U.S. political and cultural history, leisure and tourism, and architecture and historic preservation, not to mention that I'm a self-indulgent hunter-gatherer of antiques and ephemera.
A few of the major changes Hewett made to Santa Fe that gave it the appearance of an authentic Indian and Hispanic town, untouched by the rapidly changing and industrialized American culture, were the changing of the street names to sound as if they belonged in his “New Old Santa Fe,” and standardizing architectural types to capture the town in a time before frame and Victorian style architecture saw Santa Fe’s streets. Although based on the past, the iconography Hewett created (and helped inspire) for Santa Fe was not a completely accurate representation of the town as it was in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Using his archaeological endeavors, no matter how disrespected by the community they were, Hewett was able to gain an understanding of past cultures present in Santa Fe and basically “box” them up. He placed the more undesirable and dark notions of its ancient cultures and early history in the context of America and tamed them down, made them presentable, and made great efforts to ignore those things the wider American audience might find unsettling. He seized on the aspects of Santa Fe’s old culture that would create the ever-important concept of a tourist location being “a place apart.” He took the tame cultural aesthetics and emphasized those as being the whole of Santa Fe’s past and blended it with grandiose announcements and publications that emphasized the natural beauty surrounding the city and that was present throughout the entire south west. In doing so, he created a “presentable” Santa Fe for outsiders to visit and enjoy, but at the cost of the important historical and cultural significance of those peoples settled in the region for hundreds and thousands of years before him.
Edgar L. Hewett took advantage of the fears created by the fin de siecle by suggesting that answers could be found in archeology. He combined these interests and used his property in the Santa Fe area to create a specific tourist attraction. His founding of the Museum of New Mexico as well as the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe along with building codes in Santa Fe created a look that while loosely based on Indian and Hispanic culture. Santa Fe was transformed into the myth Hewett created. Hewett wanted to bring archeology to a broader public and in so doing was able to market the cultural heritage of the area. Santa Fe style persists to this day.
Edgar L. Hewett was a polarizing figure among many white Americans, yet could also be seen as a protector of Native American culture amongst American Indians. In a western society that was being overrun rapidly by White Americans culture, Hewett was able to preserve Native American culture in Santa Fe. Hewett promoted the Indian culture, making sure to preserve the architecture of the city and to promote the natural beauty of the landscape in itself as a tourist attraction. Hewett founded the Museum of New Mexico, which contains one of the finest art museums of Native American art. In a world dominated by ever changing Anglo-culture, Hewett was able to preserve the original history of Native Americans.
Edgar Hewett used his passion for archeology to put Santa Fe on tourists’ radars. After receiving a Central American Fellowship from the Archaeological Institute of America to establish a research center in Santa Fe, Hewett opened various tourist attractions showcasing his findings such as the Museum of New Mexico, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, an Indian Market and the Santa Fe Fiesta. Hewett’s passion for the local culture lead him to come up with a loose building code based on native architecture to unify the town and enhance its historic charm. According to Rotham, “this combination of culture and show transformed Santa Fe and its environs into a place new and different in American society.” Hewett profited by marketing the culture of Santa Fe’s native people. The history of the area had a sense of romance that attracted the Anglo tourists. Hewett realized that Santa Fe was different than any where in the country because of its historic cultural significance and slow, quaint way of life and attracted tourists based on those qualities.
Edgar L. Hewett, an entrepreneur used archaeology as a catalyst to preserve, revive, and expand the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe’s preindustrial attributes accompanied with Indian and Hispanic culture widely became of romantic interest to the dominant Anglo culture. Hewett understood that tourism could be a big hit in a place such as, Santa Fe. Hewett, with the help of others, orchestrated ways to make developments to the façade of the city. Architecturally, he made renovations to historical foundations, ultimately blending concepts of mystique and the definite. The indigenous people of the town provided the authentic backdrop to the revitalized impressions, and the upper classes took notice.
Unlike the ‘creators’ of eastern spring resorts, battlefield attractions, or the Grand Canyon destination, Edgar Hewett did not have the natural resource attraction to ‘market’ via tourist accomodations. He utilized his passion for archaeology to “rescue Santa Fe and transform it into a place with a special resonance in American culture.” He created an intellectual appeal based upon the tri-cultural features of the area and the synthesis of the unique American blend of place and culture. The entrepenuerial effort and its resultant success placed the Anglo culture ‘in control’ of a place featuring the native Hispanic and Indian art and archetecture.
Edgar L. Hewitt came from a scholarly background, and he used those skills in an attempt to transform Santa Fe. He turned to archaeology to reconstruct Santa Fe’s past and to influence more Americans to visit the city. It was known as a mystical pre-railroad town, and he capitalized on the positive notes in order to downplay its reputation as being part of the “Wild West.” Hewitt established many cultural institutions in New Mexico, including museums, a fine arts center, and even moved the School of Archaeology to the area. He published his findings in romanticized, easy-to-understand ways that the general public could identify with. His efforts caused Santa Fe to become the cultural hotspot of the West and the model for progress that would ease the minds of the modern and industrialized population.
In part Hewett created a veneer of Indian and Hispanic culture by maintaining the old Hispanic facades of the buildings in Santa Fe, and created cultural institutions and museums dedicated to highlighting the pre-Anglo history of the area through often through his amateur archaeological excavations. What he really did was transform Santa Fe into a novelty-town by marketing the ‘dying’ culture of the local Indian population to draw in curious tourists travelling the AT&SF, and demonstrate the progress, or manifest destiny, of Anglo-Americans . The fact that the railroad travelled near and not through Santa Fe helped tourists get the sense of a lost frontier, especially when combined with the sight of Hispanic and Pueblo Revival architecture, along with experiencing elements of local Indian and Hispanic culture. In actuality Hewett’s Santa Fe was a town refurbished for tourism-based profit.