Moments of Enchantment; Ogha Po'oge

Moments of Enchantment, number 162, Oga Pogay. Moments of Enchantment brought to you by the New Mexico Office of Cultural Affairs. Santa Fe, the name itself brings to mind images of Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, and American pioneers. But it was the early Pueblo Indians, who were the first to call the Santa Fe area home. They called their village, Oga Pogay, more in a moment. We think of Santa Fe's rich history as beginning with Spanish explorations into northern New Mexico in the middle 1500s. The city's formal founding was in 1609, but Santa Fe had a long history before the first Europeans ever arrived. Roaming Indian Hunters camped along the Santa Fe River as long ago as 10,000 BC. And after that, hunters and gatherers inhabited the area during summers, staying in temporary shelters.

By the year 600, Indians were living in the Santa Fe area year-round in underground pit houses. And by the year 1000, Pueblo Indians were living in an above-ground Adobe village on the site of present day downtown Santa Fe. The multi-story department buildings probably looked a great deal like the Taos Pueblo, and the village had a plaza in about the same location as today's Santa Fe Plaza. From the village area around the plaza, the Oga Pogay community spanned outward for nearly a mile to the west and to the south, as many as 2,000 residents lived in the town. For nearly 500 years, Oga Pogay prospered until the early 1400s when severe famine and drought drove its residents away. During the next century, when Spanish explorers arrived, they found only Adobe Ruins and pottery fragments. Four centuries of European settlement have wiped out the remains of these early Santa Fe Indians,

but their lifeways are still evident in Santa Fe today. To learn more about New Mexico's early history, plan to visit the Palace of the Governor's History Museum in Santa Fe. Moments of Enchantment brought to you by the New Mexico Office of Cultural Affairs. For Moments of Enchantment, I'm David Griffin.