The Enchantment Chronicles: New Mexico's Flag and Symbolic Journey

As your trusty guides through the Enchantment Chronicles, we're thrilled to kick things off with a riveting journey back in time. Brace yourself as we unearth the captivating tales surrounding New Mexico's state flag, tracing its humble beginnings as and ugly mess at the 1915 San Diego World's Fair to its evolution into the iconic, yet controversial,  Zia flag, which gracefully replaced the original design in 1925. Then we dissect the controversy surrounding its appropriation from the Zia Pueblo.  And if that's not enough, we explore the irony of the New Mexico Flag Salutes, which salutes the unity of three cultures, being proposed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1954.  The Zia flag, a symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures, is a source of great pride for us and we hope it will be for you too. 
 
After that, we take you through a whirlwind tour from the roots of the state flag to the present state bird, and even hint at the tantalizing possibility of a state smell. Explore with us the selection of New Mexico's shared state bird, and discover how the list of symbols continues to grow every year. So strap in, and get ready to be entranced by the rich history and symbols of the Land of Enchantment in our upcoming episode. You won't want to miss it!

Transcript

Johnny: 0:01

Welcome to the Enchantment Chronicles. My name is Johnny, otherwise known as the man of Enchantment, and we have Drew here.

Drew: 0:13

I'm really not otherwise known as anything but Drew, but that's alright. And this is the Enchantment Chronicles. It's our first episode. Yeah, our focus is New Mexico's history. It's a rich state, three cultures of history, and our first topic is our state flag and some of the other state symbols. Here we have.

Johnny: 0:41

So today we'll be talking about the history of the flag, how it came to be, why we have the Zia, because I'm sure not many people know that the Zia hasn't been with us this entire time. Did you know that, Drew?

Drew: 0:56

No, I did not, Not until we started looking up the history. Here A little background. New Mexico became a state in 1912 after decades of controversy. A lot, yeah, and part of the rules were that we had to be partitioned from Arizona. So Arizona and New Mexico both joined us in 1912. The first flag was a little rough looking.

Johnny: 1:21

It was well it was. Some people love it, but it wasn't very well thought out, that's for sure. The first flag was created in 1920, 1915.

Drew: 1:39

Yeah, it came along after our statehood. That was not something that was required, but in 1915, an attorney, politician and historian, ralph Emerson Twitchell, designed our first state flag. He was from Michigan and he just wanted it to be shown at the San Diego World's Fair, and it lasted for 15 years, or 10 years, for nearly 10 years, until somebody decided that was enough. It had a 47 in the upper right corner and an American flag, the words New Mexico and the bottom right they had the state seal.

Johnny: 2:25

Which at that time it had the Sunshine State around it. We weren't the land of enchantment yet, yeah, and it was blue, background blue, and what it was just quickly put together, not well thought out, and we had it for about 10 years, until 1925.

Drew: 2:45

And now we have the Zia flag. It's a red Zia sun symbol and that came along after being kind of appropriated from the Zia pueblo, so you can still write to them for fair use of their symbol and they ask for a donation to a scholarship fund. We'll put that in our substack, right, Johnny? Yeah, I hope so. We'll link to all that stuff as we go along. So the Zia flag came along and it had that Zia sun symbol. The sun symbol has four stripes surrounding a central circle.

Drew: 3:38

And each one of them represents stuff, right, yeah so the four sets of stripes represent, according to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center right here in Albuquerque, the Zia sun symbol. And the four sets of stripes represent the four directions north, south, east and west. The four parts of the day morning, afternoon, evening and night the four stages of life infant, childhood, adulthood and old age and the four seasons. And the sun circle binds us all together.

Johnny: 4:23

And they found they based it off a pot found in a kiva in the Pueblo Zia. Is that correct?

Drew: 4:32

Yes, and that pot was actually repatriated to the Zia Pueblo just about 2010. It was kind of controversial. Oh no, I'm sorry, returned to 2000.

Johnny: 4:47

Wow, yeah, it was in a museum in Santa Fe, I believe, for a long time until it was given back.

Drew: 4:56

And so this symbol actually is one of words. There is a North American Vexillological Association that's a hard word to say, not Vexillological, but Vexillological Association and their job is to pretty much judge flags, and our first flag would have not passed mustard with them, because they really hate state seals on a bed sheet, and so, even though the state seal was tiny in the bottom right corner, it was not something that passed. So we won awards for our Zia flag, along with a controversy, and speaking of controversy, we added a flag salute that was adopted in 1963 after being proposed in 1955.

Johnny: 5:46

And what's the controversy? Well, yeah, true.

Drew: 5:51

Well, it's kind of ironic, but the Portales Daughters of the Confederacy actually proposed the New Mexico flag salute, which we still use to this day. That Daughters of the Confederacy chapter is no longer in existence, so we can't ask about their history. That's right, but they proposed it in 1955. That salute is, I salute the flag of the state of New Mexico, the Zia, symbol of perfect friendship among United cultures. And then it repeats in Spanish, and my Spanish is pretty rough, but Do you?

Johnny: 6:32

want to go for it, Johnny. Saludo la bandera del estado de Nuevo México, el símbolo Zia de Amistad Perfecta entre Culturas Unidas. Yeah, there you go. And there is a statutory citation in MSA, new Mexico Statutes Annotated 12-3-3, for anybody who's interested in looking it up. And speaking of statutes, the flag is also by statute and it's a statute just before 1232. And it mandates that the colors also, in addition to the Zia, should be red and yellow of Old Spain bringing it all together.

Drew: 7:19

And the flag shall be a width of two thirds of its length, the sun symbol one third the length, and the stripes extend outward, with each set at right angles one fifth longer, the inner rays one fifth longer than the outer rays of the group, and the center the circle in the center, is one third the width of the symbol. So it's all prescribed for us. So yeah, it's a little ironic that the daughters of the Confederacy wanted to salute the perfect friendship among our United cultures, but I guess we could be proud of that. You know what?

Johnny: 7:59

I mean, and I think the Zia came about because of a different competition which, ironically, was the American. The daughters of the American Revolution put it on yeah. So they called for a new flag and the winning prize was $25.

Drew: 8:22

And yeah, dr Harry Percival Mehta, an anthropologist, and his wife entered. She sewed it after seeing the design on a piece of pottery from Zia Pueblo at the local museum, so probably that same stolen pot was the inspiration. Absolutely. And so he came out $25 richer. No word on whether that $25 was ever reappropriated.

Johnny: 8:47

Probably not, probably not. And so for just moving on to another flag I don't know, drew, I don't think we've talked about this, but the United States flag. For a minute, we had 47 stars until Arizona became part of the union, and so I wonder if there were 47 stars on that original New Mexico flag up there in the corner.

Drew: 9:15

Yeah, well, I guess probably not for the 1915 World Fair, because that was probably not Popped in within a few months. They would barely beat us, or barely we barely beat them. So until Alaska and Hawaii spoiled us, we were the last two states of the union, yep.

Johnny: 9:40

So that's pretty much about the flag as far as I know.

Drew: 9:45

And you can stay tuned for another episode on our rich state symbols. We are not one of those states like Indiana that shirks the responsibility to have, for example, a state animal. They don't. No, they don't. They have a state bird which is the same as Illinois state birds. So there's controversy there. Interesting, but yeah, New Mexico has a plethora of state symbols.

Johnny: 10:13

So is adding. Every year we add more.

Drew: 10:17

Absolutely, absolutely. So stay tuned for episode two, when you'll hear about such wonders as the state smell, all right.

Johnny: 10:27

Thank you.