Mixed Messages: Pablita Verlarde, Kay Bennett, and the Changing Meaning of Anglo-Indian Intermarriage in Twentieth-Century New Mexico

The most famous Anglo-Indian marriage in twentieth-century New Mexico is that of Mabel Dodge and Antonio Lujan: since their 1923 wedding, Americans have been continually amazed by the rich Anglo woman who came from New York, married a man from Taos Pueblo, and remained with him, in the house they built near the village, until the end of her life.¹ Fueled by this attention, Mabel Dodge Luhan (who changed the spelling of her last name to accommodate Anglos) wrote two autobiographical books portraying her marriage as a necessary reversal of the Pocahontas story, emphasizing that it was not Indian "savagery" that threatened Anglos, but American civilization itself.² Her 1937 book, Edge of Taos Desert, in which she portrayed her arrival in New Mexico and the beginning of her relationship with Tony, describes her journey as an "escape to reality" that, by exposure to the "ancient" ways of Taos, "cur[ed] her of her epoch."³ Luhan's disruption of perceived cultural hierarchies, as well as her seeming desire to become "Indian," has ensured her continuing fame among students of modernist culture and contemporary residents of and visitors to New Mexico.

Luhan's story stands out, in short, because she was an Anglo woman who married an Indian man. Turning to the stories of twentieth-century New Mexican Indian women who married Anglo men reveals that these marriages, while conforming to Pocahontas's less threatening model, also provoked reflection about cultural difference and women's perceived role in maintaining traditions. Unlike the Luhan story's consistent cultural shock value, however, perceptions of these Indian women's stories changed significantly over time; though initially considered by Anglos to be positive symbols of assimilation, these marriages eventually were perceived as disturbing representations of cultural loss. Pablita Velarde, a painter from Santa Clara Pueblo born in 1918, and Kay Bennett, a Navajo writer and politician who lived from 1920 to 1997, each sought and achieved status as a mediator between her community of origin and an Anglo audience eager for "authentic" depictions of American Indian life. To do so, they drew from their experiences as young women in the 1930s, when "traditional" Indian identities gained a temporary precedence in reform-oriented U.S. government policy. During the 1950s and early 1960s, an era in which they published autobiographical books, a "Termination Policy" reflected Americans' renewal of an assimilative approach to Indian affairs, and Velarde and Bennett found that their marriages were received by Anglos as key elements of their suitability as cultural spokeswomen, even though they wrote only about "traditional" culture. But by the end of the 1960s, both women found their reputations in question—not only among Anglo audiences, but, perhaps more significantly, also by the people whose stories they claimed to tell: American Indians.

Figure 1.

Mabel Dodge Luhan and Antonio Luhan, Taos, New Mexico, 1924. This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

In many ways, the stories of Velarde and Bennett could take place only in New Mexico. Interracial marriages have long formed part of the state's cultural fabric, and the state's tourism-dominated economy increasingly depended on the image of harmonious coexistence between Anglos, Indians, and Hispanics. By way of comparison, it is worth noting that the Supreme Court of the neighboring state of Arizona upheld a constitutional ban on interracial marriages only two years before Mabel and Tony married. Even in New Mexico, interracial marriages could be controversial; they complicated New Mexico's coexistence model because they (and the children born from them) blurred the lines of cultural demarcation between groups. Indeed, Mabel Dodge Luhan voiced such concerns about interethnic marriage in a 1933 letter to her longtime friend and political ally, John Collier. Collier served as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from 1933 to 1945, a position in which he pursued extensive reform of U.S. Indian policy. "Although I married an Indian," Luhan wrote to Collier...