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!

Send us a text

Support the show

Check out the Enchantment Chronicles on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Music, or anywhere podcasts are found.

Follow the Enchantment Chronicles on your favorite social media!

Instagram: @EnchantmentChronicles
Twitter/X: @NewMexPodcast

https://www.enchantmentchronicles.com

Episode Transcript

Johnny (00:01):
Welcome to the Enchantment Chronicles.
My name is Johnny, otherwiseknown as the man of Enchantment,
and we have Drew here.

Drew (00:13):
I'm really not otherwise known as anything but Drew, but
that's alright.
And this is the EnchantmentChronicles.
It's our first episode.
Yeah, our focus is New Mexico'shistory.
It's a rich state, threecultures of history, and our

(00:34):
first topic is our state flagand some of the other state
symbols.
Here we have.

Johnny (00:41):
So today we'll be talking about the history of the
flag, how it came to be, why wehave the Zia, because I'm sure
not many people know that theZia hasn't been with us this
entire time.
Did you know that, Drew?

Drew (00:56):
No, I did not, Not until we started looking up the
history.
Here A little background.
New Mexico became a state in1912 after decades of
controversy.
A lot, yeah, and part of therules were that we had to be
partitioned from Arizona.
So Arizona and New Mexico bothjoined us in 1912.

(01:18):
The first flag was a littlerough looking.

Johnny (01:21):
It was well it was.
Some people love it, but itwasn't very well thought out,
that's for sure.
The first flag was created in1920, 1915.

Drew (01:39):
Yeah, it came along after our statehood.
That was not something that wasrequired, but in 1915, an
attorney, politician andhistorian, ralph Emerson
Twitchell, designed our firststate flag.
He was from Michigan and hejust wanted it to be shown at

(02:00):
the San Diego World's Fair, andit lasted for 15 years, or 10
years, for nearly 10 years,until somebody decided that was
enough.
It had a 47 in the upper rightcorner and an American flag, the
words New Mexico and the bottomright they had the state seal.

Johnny (02:25):
Which at that time it had the Sunshine State around it
.
We weren't the land ofenchantment yet, yeah, and it
was blue, background blue, andwhat it was just quickly put
together, not well thought out,and we had it for about 10 years
, until 1925.

Drew (02:45):
And now we have the Zia flag.
It's a red Zia sun symbol andthat came along after being kind
of appropriated from the Ziapueblo, so you can still write

(03:09):
to them for fair use of theirsymbol 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 aswe go along.
So the Zia flag came along andit had that Zia sun symbol.

(03:30):
The sun symbol has four stripessurrounding a central circle.
And each one of them representsstuff, right, yeah so the four
sets of stripes represent,according to the Indian Pueblo
Cultural Center right here inAlbuquerque, the Zia sun symbol.

(03:53):
And the four sets of stripesrepresent the four directions
north, south, east and west.
The four parts of the daymorning, afternoon, evening and
night the four stages of lifeinfant, childhood, adulthood and
old age and the four seasons.

(04:15):
And the sun circle binds us alltogether.

Johnny (04:23):
And they found they based it off a pot found in a
kiva in the Pueblo Zia.
Is that correct?

Drew (04:32):
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 to2000.

Johnny (04:47):
Wow, yeah, it was in a museum in Santa Fe, I believe,
for a long time until it wasgiven back.

Drew (04:56):
And so this symbol actually is one of words.
There is a North AmericanVexillological Association
that's a hard word to say, notVexillological, but
Vexillological Association andtheir job is to pretty much
judge flags, and our first flagwould have not passed mustard
with them, because they reallyhate state seals on a bed sheet,

(05:19):
and so, even though the stateseal was tiny in the bottom
right corner, it was notsomething that passed.
So we won awards for our Ziaflag, along with a controversy,
and speaking of controversy, weadded a flag salute that was

(05:41):
adopted in 1963 after beingproposed in 1955.

Johnny (05:46):
And what's the controversy?
Well, yeah, true.

Drew (05:51):
Well, it's kind of ironic, but the Portales Daughters of
the Confederacy actuallyproposed the New Mexico flag
salute, which we still use tothis day.
That Daughters of theConfederacy chapter is no longer
in existence, so we can't askabout their history.
That's right, but they proposedit in 1955.

(06:14):
That salute is, I salute theflag of the state of New Mexico,
the Zia, symbol of perfectfriendship among United cultures
.
And then it repeats in Spanish,and my Spanish is pretty rough,
but Do you?

Johnny (06:32):
want to go for it, Johnny.
Saludo la bandera del estado deNuevo México, el símbolo Zia de
Amistad Perfecta entre CulturasUnidas.
Yeah, there you go.
And there is a statutorycitation in MSA, new Mexico
Statutes Annotated 12-3-3, foranybody who's interested in

(06:55):
looking it up.
And speaking of statutes, theflag is also by statute and it's
a statute just before 1232.
And it mandates that the colorsalso, in addition to the Zia,
should be red and yellow of OldSpain bringing it all together.

Drew (07:19):
And the flag shall be a width of two thirds of its
length, the sun symbol one thirdthe length, and the stripes
extend outward, with each set atright angles one fifth longer,
the inner rays one fifth longerthan the outer rays of the group
, and the center the circle inthe center, is one third the

(07:45):
width of the symbol.
So it's all prescribed for us.
So yeah, it's a little ironicthat the daughters of the
Confederacy wanted to salute theperfect friendship among our
United cultures, but I guess wecould be proud of that.
You know what?

Johnny (07:59):
I mean, and I think the Zia came about because of a
different competition which,ironically, was the American.
The daughters of the AmericanRevolution put it on yeah.
So they called for a new flagand the winning prize was $25.

Drew (08:22):
And yeah, dr Harry Percival Mehta, an
anthropologist, and his wifeentered.
She sewed it after seeing thedesign on a piece of pottery
from Zia Pueblo at the localmuseum, so probably that same
stolen pot was the inspiration.
Absolutely.
And so he came out $25 richer.

(08:43):
No word on whether that $25 wasever reappropriated.

Johnny (08:47):
Probably not, probably not.
And so for just moving on toanother flag I don't know, drew,
I don't think we've talkedabout this, but the United
States flag.
For a minute, we had 47 starsuntil Arizona became part of the

(09:07):
union, and so I wonder if therewere 47 stars on that original
New Mexico flag up there in thecorner.

Drew (09:15):
Yeah, well, I guess probably not for the 1915 World
Fair, because that was probablynot Popped in within a few
months.
They would barely beat us, orbarely we barely beat them.
So until Alaska and Hawaiispoiled us, we were the last two

(09:35):
states of the union, yep.

Johnny (09:40):
So that's pretty much about the flag as far as I know.

Drew (09:45):
And you can stay tuned for another episode on our rich
state symbols.
We are not one of those stateslike Indiana that shirks the
responsibility to have, forexample, a state animal.
They don't.
No, they don't.
They have a state bird which isthe same as Illinois state
birds.
So there's controversy there.

(10:06):
Interesting, but yeah, NewMexico 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, allright.

Johnny (10:27):
Thank you.