Steven L. Davis is the author of the new book Beating Heart of the World: The Taos Art Colony, the Pueblo Resistance, and the Battle for Indigenous America. His other books include Dallas 1963. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Q: What inspired you to write Beating Heart of the World?
A: Hi Deborah, it’s good to talk with you again and thank you for inviting me back.
I’ve always been fascinated by the Taos art colony, which drew so many notable writers and painters in the early 20th century. This beautiful and remote creative oasis in New Mexico attracted luminaries like Georgia O’Keeffe, D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather and Carl Jung, along with scattered freethinkers and some colorful oddballs.
For years I’d read everything I could get my hands on – biographies, memoirs, academic studies. I sensed that the convergence of so many prominent people must have resulted in something important, but I could never find a thread that connected the various art colony intrigues to a larger world.
As it turned out, I was looking in the wrong direction. And here it’s important to note what attracted these outsiders to Taos. This was the homeland of Taos Pueblo, a native society that had been here at least a thousand years.
Many of the bohemians who came to Taos found the Pueblo’s culture quite appealing. The Taos People were peaceful and they lived in a communal society that sought to honor and sustain the natural world.
This was a big contrast to swaggering industrial America, which glorified individualism, fought countless wars, and seemed hell-bent on environmental destruction.
So I began reading more about native history and came across a book about Taos Pueblo’s long fight to regain its sacred Blue Lake, which had been seized by the US government in 1906.
This account mentioned a local man named Bert Phillips, who had aided the Pueblo’s early efforts to protect its homeland from white encroachment. The author described Phillips as, simply, a “Taos old-timer.” Yet I knew him as far more. Bert Phillips was the painter who founded the Taos art colony.
At that moment, the idea for this book was born. For I finally realized the historical context that had been missing from my view of the art colony.
At the very same time Taos was gaining international fame, the US government had targeted New Mexico’s Pueblos for extinction, aiming to destroy their cultures and seize their lands.
As I dug deeper, I learned that the Puebloans found a very creative way to resist — by recruiting the prominent whites in Taos as political allies. Founding artist Bert Phillips had been the first, but he was hardly the last.
When these two groups joined forces, they sparked the biggest mass movement for Indigenous justice the US had ever seen – and together they changed the course of history.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I’m a big believer in the power of archives, which are full of precious papers that transport you to the front lines of history. When you open a box you’ll see all kinds of firsthand accounts — personal letters written in the heat of the moment, journal entries, transcripts of testimony and long-forgotten government reports.
These vital resources are your tools to cut through decades of self-serving mythology and academic theory. They take you right to the heart of what really happened and connect you intimately to the lives of the people at the center of the story.
For a researcher, going into an archive is like having somebody hand you a key to a gold mine. You find all kinds of treasures and you are constantly surprised. You’re seeing things that have never been reported before, information that has eluded those AI dragnets.
To take one example, I learned that the beloved environmental icon Aldo Leopold not only viewed Taos Pueblo as his enemy, he also personally led the drive to exterminate every wolf in New Mexico. None of Leopold’s biographers ever brought this kind of stuff up, as it runs counter to his saintly reputation.
I also discovered that the founder of the Taos art colony, Bert Phillips — who had earlier tried to help Taos Pueblo protect its sacred Blue Lake —later got involved in a plot to steal Pueblo land. His actions led to a riot, a mass panic among whites that caused President Taft to order federal troops to Taos. And incredibly that wasn’t even the first riot this artist had caused in Taos.
Q: The writer Sandra Cisneros said of the book, “Beating Heart of the World is a story of tenacity, community organizing, and ultimately justice. Above all, it is the tale of the power of resistance. What an inspiration for our times!” What do you think of that assessment?
A: Sandra Cisneros is an incredibly generous person in addition to being a brilliant writer. She has worked tirelessly for years to nurture new generations of writers and build an inclusive literary community that is more representative of America. I’m honored that she somehow found the time to read and comment on this book.
Sandra recognizes that the odds were stacked against the Pueblo People at the beginning of the 20th century, and yet they persevered and found a very smart and creative way to resist the cultural genocide that had devastated so many other native communities.
The Puebloans’ white allies were hardly perfect, as the story of founding artist Bert Phillips demonstrates. But this inclusive, cross-cultural movement spread far beyond Taos Pueblo and positively impacted so many others across the country. That is community organizing at its finest and most inspiring, as Sandra pointed out.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: One of the major figures in Beating Heart of the World is a wealthy New York heiress named Mabel Dodge Luhan, who was regarded as America’s “Queen of Bohemia.”
Mabel had dabbled in peyote while directing famous “salon” conversations at her Greenwich Village apartment. Then she experienced a mystical vision that called her to Taos. She quickly became enamored with Taos Pueblo and she fell in love with a Pueblo leader, Tony Luján, who became her fourth husband.
Mabel believed that Taos Pueblo’s virtues could help inspire a spiritual renaissance across the US, creating a better and more sustainable society. She was a romantic, but she was also onto something.
For one thing, the Taos People were far more environmentally advanced than Anglo-American culture. They understood why old growth forests were so valuable and why they should be protected long before such knowledge began to dawn on the brightest technocrats at the US Forest Service.
With her husband Tony Luján, Mabel launched a crusade to bring world-class thinkers and artists to Taos and introduce them to Pueblo values as a means of jumpstarting her spiritual revolution.
So all these prominent people began arriving at the very same the US government launched its campaign to destroy Taos Pueblo and the other Pueblo societies in New Mexico. In the face of this existential threat, Mabel and Tony pivoted and became the unlikely catalysts for this long-shot resistance movement.
I bring up Tony and Mabel because they inspired the title for this book. Mabel reported that Tony had described Taos Pueblo’s sacred homeland to her as “the beating heart of the world.” And so I wanted to use “Beating Heart of the World,” as it honors Taos Pueblo and its successful battle to protect its homeland.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Deborah, I’m still resting from doing this book! Seriously, I worked on this for seven years, longer than any other book.
In many ways I saw it as my love letter to New Mexico, a state I’ve always wanted to live in. Our family had a chance to finally move to New Mexico last year and now I’m having so much fun getting to know this place and its people.
There are many fascinating stories here, and I’m already finding myself drawn to exploring some of those. But it’s still too early to tell what might develop into a full-length book project.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I want to salute my publisher, the University of New Mexico Press, which has been so supportive and wonderful to work with. This book is part of their trade imprint, High Road Books, and is distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Now, after all my years of desk work, I’m looking forward to getting out and doing events and meeting interesting people. I’ll be posting event updates and other news on my website at stevenldavis.org. I’m also on Facebook and Bluesky @litcoyote.bsky.social
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Steven L. Davis.
No comments:
Post a Comment