Montoya, Petra

Petra Montoya Gutierrez was born in 1907 and passed on in 1992. Her father was José Antonio Montoya (Pojoaque) and her mother was Maria de la Paz Gray (Dineh). Petra always listed her lineage as being Pojoaque Pueblo and Santa Clara Pueblo.

In the early 1900s, Pojoaque Pueblo suffered through a severe smallpox epidemic. It reduced the community to only a few people, and most of them left the pueblo in 1908. Petra’s family was among those who went to Santa Clara and settled among relatives.

In the mid 1930s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs placed ads in the local papers to try to find some Pojoaque people and have them come back to their pueblo. If they didn’t return, the lands of the pueblo would be forfeit and the tribe would be declared extinct. Within a couple months 14 people showed up to reclaim their land and homes. A year later that number was over a hundred. They were returning to one of the most impoverished places in New Mexico. Today it is one of the most prosperous areas in the state.

When she was in her 30s, Petra got interested in learning how to make pottery so she worked with her mother-in-law, Pasqualita Tani Gutierrez (Sarafina Tafoya‘s younger sister), learning how to make polychrome pottery in the Santa Clara style. As they got older, Petra taught her daughters, Lois Gutierrez, Minnie Vigil, Gloria Goldenrod Garcia and Thelma Talachy, how to make pottery, too.