I first saw the practice on a mountain curve when on vacation in New
Mexico perhaps as early as 1965, but definitely by the time of trips in
1968 and 1973. The crosses we assumed were  at sites where people drove
off the mountains. We never saw any in the flat lands.

At that time, in those same mountains, the Sangre de Cristos Mountains
between Raton and Taos and the high mountain road between Taos and Santa
Fe, maybe also when I took the road over the mountains from Las Vegas to
Taos and Espanola, one would commonly see black crosses on the ridgelines
from penetate chapels.

When I was last in the area in 1999 and 2001, one still saw the highway
crosses, sometimes even in the flatlands, but the Penetate crosses had
mostly disappeared.

Mary Kirby
[log in to unmask]

On Tue, 13 May 2003 12:33:41 -0600 Lauraine Armstrong
<[log in to unmask]> writes:
> For what it's worth - I have seen relatively plain white crosses and
> crosses adorned with flowers along the roadside where people have
> been
> killed in accidents. This was in northern Saskatchewan for sure and
> I
> think northern Alberta as well. I am not sure if this is strictly a
> Native North American custom but these are regions with high
> aboriginal
> populations and reserves .
>
> Audra Oliver wrote:
>
> > ... Along these lines, in the Pacific Northwest white crosses have
> > been placed at roadsides where people have been killed in
> accidents
> > for as long as I can remember.  The first I remember of decorated
> > crosses in a similar situation was on Native American land in
> Idaho in
> > 1980.  Now there seems to be a widespread practice (at least in
> the
> > Rocky Mountain west) of heavily decorated roadside crosses.  Is
> this
> > more wide-spread or is it localized?
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Lauraine Armstrong
> Curator of Collections
>
> Northern Life Museum                    tel: 867-872-2859
> PO Box 420                              fax: 867-872-5808
> Fort Smith, NWT X0E 0P0
>
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