Near the end of summer, everyone’s invited to a fiesta in Southwest Colorado. It’s called Durango Fiesta Days. There’s a rodeo queen contest, barrel racing, and a carnival. It’s one of those times when cowboys and horses take over the La Plata County fairgrounds. But there’s more to the event’s history.
“It was a cultural event, to share the cultures. The Anglo, Spanish and Native cultures,” said Cindi Brevik, president of the Durango Fiesta Days Committee. “A lot of people just think about it being a rodeo, and don’t remember that it was a cultural blending and recognition and getting along and sharing our cultures. That’s what started the whole thing.”
The event dates back to 1935, when it was known as the Spanish Trails Fiesta. Brevik says back then, there was more open space in Durango, especially around the present-day fairgrounds. When it came time for the fiesta, travelers from around the Four Corners would gather to set up tents and cook together.
According to Brevik, there was mainly one group of people camping near the Animas River.
“From what I understand, that’s where the Native people set up their camp, right along the river between the tracks and where the end of the fairgrounds is right now,” she said.
It’s a distinct image: Indigenous people from nearby tribes, setting up tents and building fires after a day at the fiesta. Brevik hasn’t seen any photos of these campsites, and she’s only heard stories from people who witnessed the camps.
It’s possible these sites were set up around the present-day high school football field and the fairground horse stalls. But without much proof, it’s hard to say.
This story also fascinates me because I’m Indigenous. I’m a member of the Navajo Nation. Were any of my people camping out at the fiesta? What about people from nearby Native Nations? So much history of Indigenous life remains invisible and undocumented. With only hearsay to rely on, this story seemed to point toward invisibility. I wanted to find someone who actually camped by the river for the Spanish Trails Fiesta.
Who were those people? Their stories are hard to find.
Demystifying local history about the Fiesta
Before we get to that, there’s other fiesta lore to clear up, such as how did this event start? Cindi Brevik offers a theory. She believes the event happened organically as a result of people gathering together to celebrate the region’s diverse history. But then another local historian has a different explanation.
“Durango businessmen got together and, long story short, created the Spanish Trails Fiesta,” said Robert McDaniel, a fourth-generation Durango resident and retired founding director of the Animas Museum. “People were out of work, people didn’t have money. Business was slow. And not just a business thing or economic thing, but it lifted spirits. It was a big party.”
Like Brevik, Robert McDaniel grew up attending the Spanish Trails Fiesta. He also doesn’t remember seeing Native people camped along the river, but the lore intrigued him enough to speculate.
“So they may have been camped up where it was level, which would be some distance from the river. And you have to remember the railroad tracks are there too.”
I could theorize and time-travel all day with historians. But I still needed to hear from someone who was actually there camping out.
A Southern Ute elder remembers
I visited various museums and archival collections around Durango. I searched through news records, dusty old pamphlets, and photographs. I spent weeks sending emails and making phone calls on this quest for an eyewitness account, but I kept hitting dead ends.
Then I finally had a breakthrough.
“You know where the train track is? Just up the bank, all that was empty. [There were] no buildings or anything; then you could camp there,” recalled Byron Frost, a member of the Southern Ute Tribe.
Frost is 74 years old and grew up in Bayfield, east of Durango. He remembers attending the Spanish Trails Fiesta in the mid-1950s. “The grandstand was on the west side. And you had the racetrack around in front of the grandstand on the east side. And further east was the river down below.”
He also vividly remembers camping out with his family near the river.
“You had room on the bank where people camped out on top; we had to get over there to find a spot that we wanted, and that’s where we used to camp out.”
Frost said it looked like any other campground. Tents spread out. Children playing around while families build a fire for dinner.
“And we used to have a real big tent that all of us could fit in. There was maybe 5 of us, 6 of us, in there. Best thing was in the morning smelling the bacon and all that. I mean, everybody could smell that bacon cooking.”
Frost recalled seeing people from other tribes in the campgrounds, including the Diné and Jicarilla Apache. Their reasons for camping are unclear. Byron Frost said his family camped out so they could be near their horses.
Frost comes from a ranching family. And they were actively involved with the fiesta. His siblings competed in the horse races, and his father had a dance group that performed in town. “He had a pow-wow group called the [Many Feathers] Friendship Club.”
Frost said the group would set up by the train station in downtown Durango.
“We’d go down there and dance and sing for the tourists that come in with the train. And that way they’d know the Utes were still around.”
The dance group consisted of eight Southern Ute performers, and Frost has positive memories about the group’s reception.
“You could tell the tourists are rocking and rolling with their bodies, listening and watching the dancers.”
It was the Durango Chamber of Commerce that encouraged his father to bring the dance group into town. Frost says that support from the city meant a lot to his father.
“Don’t talk your language, you need to talk English”
Even though the city encouraged these cultural performances, Frost said there wasn’t any singing or dancing happening at the campsites.
“Indians were kind of embarrassed to show that tradition out there in the open,” Frost recounts. “Maybe we might offend the people there that’s at the rodeo grounds.”
That sense of embarrassment stemmed from the U.S. government’s assimilation policies enforced on Native communities from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. This era included boarding schools and English-only education. Indigenous people were prohibited from practicing spiritual ceremonies and speaking their language.
Frost remembers how those restrictions affected his upbringing.
“I mean, my parents said, ‘You can’t do this in school, you can’t talk your language.’ And they’d tell you, ‘Don’t talk your language, you need to talk English.’ You had to do these to be part of society. So that assimilation kinda took away the thought of us being the traditional type of people that we’re brought up [to be].”
He said the experience distanced him from his identity.
“So when that happened, it kind of like you forget about the Indianness in you.”
As Frost became a young adult, he regained a sense of pride for his Indigenous identity and culture.
Back at the fairgrounds during fiesta time, Frost and his family had a chance to celebrate their Native culture. Through singing and dancing, his father’s group reminded the public of something important.
“So they know that [we as a Ute tribe] are here, next to the community of Durango, as part of the whole ethnic background of everybody living together.”
The dance group was also inclusive, letting white tourists participate. And there’s a specific reason why Frost’s father named his dance group the Many Feathers Friendship Club.
“Because my dad felt that them feathers means all of us together, that we should be [friends] with one another as we dance.”
Keep in mind, this is only one person’s story. It’s hard to say if we’ll ever hear about the experiences of other Indigenous people who attended the fiesta in those early days. For now, those histories remain unrecorded. But Byron Frost’s story alone adds more texture to the Spanish Trails Fiesta.
And since there were so many attempts by the U.S. government to erase Indigenous existence, I take delight in hearing a story about Native families traveling to Durango and camping out.
It’s another confirmation that Indigenous people have always been here. That we will always belong to this land.