Memories of Migration: New Mexico, Part 7

Childhood

The Exhibit Design Class students who prototyped the Memories of Migration project spent a lot of time discussing how to make the "memory gathering" experience interesting and relevant to diverse audiences, including children. When the students consulted their parents and grandparents about their childhoods, they often heard descriptions of reality far different from the idealized image of childhood reflected in museum collections and storybooks. 

Natasha Rudolph, who works part-time in the Las Vegas Carnegie Public Library, spearheaded a section of the exhibit that included graphics panels and a play area for children featuring multicultural storybooks about migration from a child's perspective, traditional toys and games of the type brought by settler children who traveled the Old Santa Fe Trail, and traditional schoolhouse supplies, such as a slate board and chalk. She consulted with the City of Las Vegas Museum and Rough Riders Memorial Collection and photographed artifacts from the collection for the graphics panel. 

Childhood: Like children all over the world, children growing up in Las Vegas were prepared for their gender roles and adult responsibilities from a very young age through their play and helping with chores. Boys play centered on sports and outdoor games, while girls play tended to center on homemaking skills and role-playing with dolls.

Education: During the settlement of the West it was the teachers who were the immigrants, sent into the new territories to prepare the populations that were already there for U.S. statehood and citizenship. When New Mexico became a U.S. Territory in 1846, educating children became an essential part of assimilation and the Americanization of the population. Teachers were brought in from outside the Territory because no system of public education or teacher training existed here yet. Prior to that time, children had been mostly educated at home and on the ranch, and the main language spoken was Spanish. Upper class Hispanics sent their sons to Mexico and St. Louis for education. Daughters continued to be educated at home. Among the first teachers to arrive in Las Vegas, in 1869, were the Sisters of Loretto, an order of nuns founded in Kentucky whose mission was to educate poor children on the Western frontier. Strict discipline was a hallmark of their schools. In 1893, New Mexico Normal School (now New Mexico Highlands University) was established to train teachers locally.