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This chapter discusses changes in federal Indian policies during the second half of the twentieth century, which greatly impacted how Black Rock would move into the new millennium. Among these is the Indian Reorganization Act, commonly known as the “Indian New Deal,” signed on 18 June 1934. Its fundamental aims were the development of Indian economic resources and the restoration of Indian self-determination through the revival of tribal governments. Beginning in the early 1960s, Black Rock became a focal point of economic development programs initiated not by forces outside the reservation, but by the Zuni Tribe itself.

This chapter presents accounts of how the Zuni people came to occupy Black Rock and the Zuni River valley. One account is stored in Zuni memory and remembered through Zuni oral history. Other accounts, based on archaeological evidence, suggest that the ancestors of the people referred to as “Native Americans” migrated to North America across a land bridge that spanned the Asian and American continents during the end of the last ice age—the Pleistocene Period.

This chapter describes the transformation of the town of Black Rock into a place for non-Zunis during the early decades of the twentieth century. Anglo residents took over a landscape and transformed it—they bestowed meaning to this place. The failure of the Zuni Dam to fulfill the promises made by its designers regarding its irrigation potential, as well as the strong cultural identity of the Zuni people, combined to defeat the government’s assimilationist policies aimed at dismantling Pueblo culture. Instead, the Zunis accepted the new agricultural technologies and educational opportunities offered them and learned to co-exist with the new community on the black rocks.

This chapter reviews the changes in Black Rock’s cultural landscape. Prior to the twentieth century, Black Rock was a place to live, to grow crops, hunt for game, and collect plants. The turn of the twentieth century brought in new people with new ideas, new values, and new meanings for the landscape, many of which clashed with the Zuni people’s cultural identity. Today, while Black Rock is a mixed Zuni-Anglo community, it is still considered not really a Zuni place. When a Zuni becomes engaged in exclusively Zuni activities, activities that are rooted in ceremony and tradition, he or she goes to the Middle Place.

The mesas, drainages, springs, and lava flow that make up the Black Rock landscape have been formed over the eons by natural forces and interpreted by modern-day geologists. These landforms have also been interpreted by the imagination and spiritual beliefs of the Zuni people themselves. This chapter discusses how the interplay between these two world views paints a fascinating picture of Black Rock.

This chapter presents the story of the construction of the Zuni Dam. It shows that the federal government’s decision to build the dam and adjacent town had a profound cultural and political impact on the Zuni people’s lifestyle and worldview. The project was plagued by the dam failure, huge construction cost overruns, and an uncontrollable silt problem.