Lee Marmon, José Sanshu (Laguna)

Jose Sanchu (1879-1968) was born in Mesita, a village on the Laguna reservation. Some of his first memories were of the Santa Fe trains that first came to Laguna in the 1880s. Jose married a woman named Raphelita and they farmed in Mesita. They were close friends of Henry Marmon, my father, who at the time was running the family trading post in Laguna. It was while I was delivering groceries for my father that I was able to take Jose's picture.

I remember Jose and Raphelita as a very friendly, intelligent couple. Jose was a war chief and served many times as a village officer. He also took on the responsibility of driving tribal council members in his wagon to their day-long meetings in Laguna. When my daughter Leslie was seven or eight years old, she used to like to ride in Jose's wagon. So on meeting day, which was every Monday, she would go down to the river and wait for him to come by. She would wave him down and he would put her in the wagon to ride up to the meeting hall with him. Many times I would leave Leslie in Mesita with the Sanchus, and she would often return to Laguna with them in that same wagon. (Marmon, Laguna Pueblo: A Photographic History, p.132)