Moments in Time: Stories of New Mexico's History; New Mexico's Segesser Hide Paintings

The The Segissar Hyde paintings are invaluable to the history and patrimony of New Mexico. And there's a number of reasons for that. One is they were done so early and they're one of the earliest visual accounts of New Mexican life and so they date some to sometime between 1720 and 1729. The Segissar one is a more mysterious painting and there are two major pieces missing and so as a result of these pieces missing we haven't pinned down the exact battle. Now the scene in the painting

is a battle and it looks like it's between two groups of Native Americans, the Apaches that we've identified and someone who are allies to the Spanish and why do we say allies to the Spanish because they're dressed in part in Spanish uniforms and using Spanish weaponry. The faces are Native American but one of the people on horseback is completely dressed in Spanish outfit with the Spanish Epilates you know as an officer you know it looks like he has feathers on his head but what it is is that there's actually a helmet and he's attacking on horseback in full kind of leather armor you know the horse is covered in everything and then behind him come others and it's almost you know textbook European strategy of attack and array of attack and so the main main army will be behind them and we don't know who's in that main army and that's that's the big question. There's a mace in this and on top of the mace are these women and children who all have these happy faces and from their way their hair is done up and everything we can tell those

are pueblo Indians and so they're probably captives of the of the Apaches and the people attacking the Apaches are there to release the pueblo captives. We know from segueser 2 for example the battle the via sewer battle we know from descriptions of the battle from the survivors what happened in that battle and it's all been pieced together by all this testimony but the painting itself has it all there and so it's almost eerie in it in the accuracy. The battle itself was important in that it was a battle over territory between France and in Spain and Europe they went to war and so of course the colonies got to fight each other and there was this big big fear in Mexico city that the French were going to send an army into the Spanish Empire through through the Illinois country into New Mexico and so the governor here had to send an expedition actually two of them this was the second one and find the French and they didn't find the French but they heard

about the French and then they were ambushed in the confluence of the loop and plat river in Nebraska present day in Nebraska if you can imagine a full third of the soldiers in New Mexico were killed in that battle and then there's the final stand and the final stand is probably the most obvious thing in the focus of the painting and those are the guys that all died and with there going there in a circle almost back to back if you look close at the faces each one is individualized there's everything from ecstasy to despair Spanish and the Pueblo Indians are on horseback and you can see that clearly in this they're horses off to the right being guarded there were no horses on the plains at that time so none of the plains Indians had horses and so the ponies and the otos were doing the tacking are on foot the Frenchmen are they're dressed

like colonial soldiers you know with the tricaps and and that kind of stuff the New Mexican soldiers from from the Presidio here are kind of dressed really neat you know they're kind of cool man if I was going to dress I'd look that way because you know women would swim and stuff I mean they have you know like a leather jacket and paneloons and and they have the Ardaga shield which is kind of a bull hide shield and then they have these wide brimmed hats flat white brimmed hats and then the weaponry the muskets that the Spanish are using are Mipelae locks which is what Spain used so they have those and they're actually shooting them from their hip which is really how they did it the other things that are really interesting are the attacking people the ponies and otos for example there's a in here a spear that's covered with buffalo hide well that's been described in documents but never seen we even have a good guess as to who the two painters were which even adds to the mystery of it all you know in that and then a father son combination with the surname of Tejeda if that's true the son died in this expedition and the Viosaur expedition so

the father was executing a painting in which his son you know of a scene in which his son had died so for all those reasons these paintings are unique in this country I mean they're almost like the Bayou tapestries are to say Europe you know they are to not just New Mexico but to the United States