The Many Faces of Josefa Jaramillo: (Mis)identifications and Historical Longing in the Colonial Present

Abstract

Abstract Before 1970, the public had never seen a picture of Josefa Jaramillo, the Taoseña who married frontiersman Kit Carson in 1843 and stayed with him until they both died in 1868. Then, within six months, two such images crossed the portal of the Carson museum in Taos, each from a different donor. For fifty years since, historians, curators, and descendants have embraced the photos as authentic. But they are not pictures of the same person and it is possible that neither of them is an image of Jaramillo. The provenance of the pictures tells the story of a New Mexico still in the grip of colonialisms that had been unfolding for centuries, producing by 1970 a place that often ranked with southern states at the bottom of lists measuring economic and social well-being. It tells the story of a state that did not yet acknowledge what it had in common with the South: a history of slavery. It tells a story of women deemed indistinguishable from and interchangeable with one another. It tells a story of generational pain rooted in the trauma of continental empire. It tells a story of the desire for history, for connection and belonging. It tells a story of mistaken identification.