THOSE PICTUREQUE NATIVES OF TAOS
Harding, T. Swann
Those Picturesque Natives Of Taos By T. SWANN HARDING" TAOS is a "quaint" town with a population of some eight or nine hundred. It has long been a New Mexican tourist Mecca. It is located in Taos...
...But as neither the village nor the county could thereafter sustain the institution, a Catholic sisterhood took over...
...So their community representatives appealed for aid to the Taos County Project, a branch of the University of New Mexico under the leadership of Dr...
...As a result they are dwarfed and physically puny, yet they are native-born American citizens from way back...
...A few years ago a wealthy Taos outlander built and furnished a magnificent home for a woman novelist who never even bothered to come there to live in it...
...Nearly all members of the Association's staff could do better elsewhere financially, but the nonmonetary returns on their services here win them to the Taos experiment...
...But it soon found that the mere making of loans, giving good advice, and trying to collect would not be enough...
...They could afford little charity work...
...There is immediate need for the services of some active, idealistic young doctor to assist...
...So an appeal was made to various institutions for financial assistance...
...This is a place for idealists...
...But the Taos druggists did demand that a specified number of prescriptions be routed through their stores, although the Association could buy and dispense its own drugs more economically...
...It is not surprising that they exhibited dietary deficiencies in many forms, nor that respiratory diseases—tuberculosis especially—abounded...
...Three station wagons were procured to use for transport and as ambulances...
...Drugs and dental extractions and fillings are part of the plan...
...The remainder, evenly divided, are Indians and Anglo-Americans...
...Because Taos society was organized patriarchically it was decided to try a unique plan here...
...For the people also needed aid in getting better acres to cultivate, in buying back their grazing lands lost for taxes, and in establishing buying and selling co-ops...
...Specialists in Albuquerque and Santa Fe are called upon as needed and Taos' own Proctor Eye Clinic also provides service...
...It costs about $72 per family per year, and families average a little over 5 people each...
...Taos County, which has a normal population of 18,-000, is now down to about 14,000, due to migrations into war industry and the armed forces...
...The Taos County Cooperative Health Association was incorporated and, with the assistance of the Catholic church, sought members...
...During its first year, when expenses for facilities and equipment were high, FSA made grants of $60,565 and the people of Taos County paid $13,798...
...If it were possible the project should be on a 5-year basis, for its premature termination would be disastrous...
...Finally, they were suspicious, superstitious, and resistant to change...
...Physicians not in the plan can still find good pickings outside...
...Infant mortality ran 107 per thousand live births, as compared with 47 for the rest of the United States...
...FSA gave aid in these ways also...
...The comprehensive medical and dental coverage is being provided most economically...
...There was a second hospital in Taos, the Thomas P. Martin in the Pueblo, but it was run by the Indian Service for our wards, the Indians...
...But, in view of low income levels, some subsidy-is inevitable for a long time to come...
...Just across the southern line of the county was the Embudo Presbyterian Hospital...
...About 96 per cent of its people are Spanish-Americans...
...This dominant class so ordained things that all the doctors and hospitals of the county were concentrated in Taos village...
...They have used meat as a sauce rather than as a food, and their customary diet lacked high-quality proteins, vitamins, and minerals...
...These acted as medical centers...
...Then contractural arrangements were made with all three of the above-mentioned hospitals, and a staff of doctors, dentists, nurses, and lay aids was hired on salary...
...One-third of the children dropped off before they reached the age of 18, the infants mostly from diarrhea and enteritis...
...Meanwhile the Farm Security Administration had begun work in Taos County to provide such tenant-purchase and rehabilitation loans as it could...
...Living in these high altitudes they have suffered a constant oxygen debt...
...The Association is just now staggering along with senile automotive equipment, while its medical director, in the absence of whom the interns could not practice, is nearly 75 and in poor health besides...
...The isolated mountain natives had to do the best they could, just so they remained picturesque...
...There were also infections and diseases of filth, for sanitary water supplies, fly-tight privies, and screens were generally lacking...
...They needed good food...
...Here important research is being carried out and a sound plan for providing comprehensive medical and dental care to a whole rural community is being evolved...
...It rightfully assumed that all people in the county were rural, and, as gross cash incomes for farmers here averaged only $307 a year, the income ceiling of $1,500 per year per family was no barrier...
...Insofar as possible, doctors do not visit homes, though the nurses, some of whom live at the branch clinics, do...
...They have fine homes there...
...But the natives remained picturesque, underfed, and in ill-health...
...Each plan was tailored to local needs...
...It is located in Taos County, full of beautiful mountain scenery and "picturesque" Spanish-Americans and Indians...
...vertically it is from 5,700 to 13,200 feet up in the air...
...J. T. Reid...
...However, the Department of Agriculture had an inter-agency committee on postwar plans, and it began to try out county-wide medical plans in half a dozen counties of various states...
...With this assistance an unincorporated health association was formed in 1940, and 800 families applied for membership...
...In fact two-thirds of the families grossed only $250 a year or less...
...The Association was formed June 24, 1942...
...It should riot be too difficult to find a progressive young doctor willing to join the Association upon which more than 6,000 of the county's people now depend for medical care...
...Is There A Doctor In The House...
...More members are joining, the membership is paying a larger percentage of the total cost, and unit costs are declining...
...But many of these people were scattered miles away on rough mountain roads...
...Just because rural incomes are so low—the average for New Mexican farmers as a whole is only $1,450 annually—the local medical profession has offered little objection...
...FSA was among them because it had already been setting up small rural group medical plans on a trusteeship basis...
...But the tourists will come again after the war to revel in the pictorial...
...For the time, it was all they could do to keep the place going...
...For the rural people of Taos County have lived submarginally and on an inadequate diet for three centuries...
...After all, they were isolated and remote, and the doctors in Taos village could prosper without fooling with them...
...They were conveniently located geographically, and two subclinics pieced out the coverage...
...Public-spirited citizens of Taos village had little difficulty persuading her then to donate the residence for transformation into a hospital...
...Of course they had a pretty good idea what was wrong...
...Measured horizontally the county is 38 by 78 miles...
...A number of wealthy American Bohemians have settled in Taos...
...This fiscal year the FSA grant is $50,000 and the Association's total budget is $72r000...
...Naturally the latter dominate business and professional life...
...As compared with other such plans this figure is good...
...Just now, since wartime has seriously cut the tourist business, Taos village and its Indian Pueblo live rather a drab, isolated life...
...But FSA doesn't know where it is itself half the time and can plan only year to year...
...Three clinics were built or rented and equipped...
...Yet it is just as sad to die when you add color to the landscape as when you do not...
...Various wealthy residents of Taos were next induced to finance the remodeling and equipment of the building...
...Nearly 70 per cent of the people passed on without medical attention or without certification of cause of death...
...But neither tourists nor Anglo-American natives looked beneath the veneer to find out what was there...
...Dwarfed By Inadequate Diets What was there would not have surprised any medical or nutrition authority...
...The druggists were thus placated...
...Let us hope they will look at the natives twice then...
...But the people themselves realized that their own poor health retarded their economic progress...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 51
