Josefa Baca
Much of the history of Josefa Baca’s life, including details of her upbringing and marriage, remains unconfirmed and clouded by contradictory reports. However, historians do not dispute that in the late 1700s, she became the owner of the large tract of land that...
Doña Elena Gallegos
Doña Elena Gallegos was the daughter of early seventeenth-century Hispanic colonists Antonio Gallegos and Catalina Baca. They fled New Mexico with their newborn daughter during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. She returned as a young girl in 1693 with two brothers and an...
Zuni Olla Maidens
Zuni Olla Maidens are one of the most renowned dance groups in New Mexico. The members, all women, dance with fragile water jars, or ollas, balanced on the top of their heads. These women play an important role in Zuni, acting as cultural ambassadors for the community...
Women of Camino Real
Starting in 1598, when Juan de Oñate led the first colony from the Zacatecas area of what is today Mexico, thousands of women traveled over the Camino Real in both directions. In any season, whether over the Jornada del Muerto (the longer river route), or through the...
Women of Cochiti
By the late twentieth century, Pueblo figurative sculpture began to be valued as art, partly due to the popularity of storytellers, seated human figures with mouths wide open to represent the tradition of oral storytelling. Storytellers are now widely collected,...
Maria Rosa Villapando
From the seventeenth century into the nineteenth century, raiding and trading human beings, especially women and children, occurred with regularity in New Mexico. Native Americans took and traded human captives among themselves as well as in the communities in...
Kewa Women’s Co-op
According to oral and recorded history, the Santo Domingo people have consistently made and traded jewelry, including heishi, a shell drilled and ground into beads and strung into necklaces. Generations of Santo Domingo women have passed down this art. Recent...
Founding Women of Albuquerque
Official documents indicate that in February 1706, as many as thirty-five families participated in the founding of Albuquerque. While many of the names have been lost, within those families were at least twenty women who should rightfully be honored as the founding...