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>>Chavez: The
Segresser Hide 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 are one
of the earliest visual account of New Mexican life and so they date sometime between 1720
and 1729. >>Segresser 1 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 are 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 a Spanish outfit
with a Spanish epaulets, you know, as an officer. It looks like he has feathers on his head,
but what it is is there's actually a helmet and he's attacking on horseback in full kind
of leather armor and you know the horse is covered and everything and then behind him
come others. And it's almost, you know, text book European strategy of attack, an array
of attack. And so the 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. (singing)
>>There's a mesa in this and on top of the mesa these women and children who all have
these happy faces. And from the way their hair is done up and everything we can tell
those are Pueblo Indians and so they are probably captives of the Apaches and the people attacking
the Apaches are probably there to release the Pueblo captives.
>>We know from Segresser 2 for example the battle, the Villasur 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 uh the painting in itself has it all there.
So it's almost eerie in the accuracy. The battle itself was important in that it was
a battle over territory between France and Spain in Europe. They went to war so of course
the colonies gotta fight each other. And there was this big big fear in Mexico City that
the French were gonna send an army into the Spanish empire through the Illa Ny country
into New Mexico 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 they were ambushed and in the confluence of the loop and Platt river
in Nebraska, present day 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 what they are doing, they're 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. >>The Spanish and the Pueblo Indians are on
horseback and you can see that clearly in this that their horses are off to the right
being guarded. There were no horses on the plains at that time so none of the Plains
Indians had horses so the Pawnees and the Ottos who are doing the attacking are on foot.
The Frenchmen are dressed like colonial soldiers you know with the tri caps and that kind of
stuff. The New Mexican soldiers from the presidio here are kinda dressed really neat. They're
kinda cool man. if I was gonna dress I'd look that way because you know women would swoon
and stuff. You know they'd have like a leather jacket and pantaloons and they have the ardaga
shield which is kind of a bull hide shield and then they have these wide brimmed hats,
flat wide-brimmed hats. And then the weaponry, uh, the muskets that the Spanish are using
are micklea locks which is what Spain used so they have those and they are actually shooting
them from their hip which is really how they did it. The other things which are really
interesting are the attacking uh, uh people; the Pawnees and Ottos. Uh, for example in
here there's 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. Ooo! You know, a father-son combination with the surname
of Tejada. If that's true, the son died in this expedition, in the Villasur 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 painting are unique in this country.
I mean they are almost like the Bayeux tapestries are to say Europe. They are not just to New
Mexico but to the United States.