Esther Martinez, P'oe Tsą́wą́ˀ (1912-2006)

A girl punished at boarding school for speaking Tewa spent her later life writing it down. Esther Martinez, P'oe Tsą́wą́ˀ, Blue Water, worked with the linguist Randall Speirs from the 1960s on the San Juan Pueblo Tewa Dictionary and taught the language at Ohkay Owingeh from about 1974 to 1989. On September 16, 2006, days after accepting the fellowship the panel names, she was killed in Española by a driver suspected of drinking. On December 14 the act Congress named for her became law, funding Native language nests and survival schools. The panel's back face was gone by 2011.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Esther Martinez P'oe Tsą́wą́ˀ (1912-2006) Ohkay Owingeh Esther Martinez served her community as an educator, linguist and storyteller. Her foremost contributions to our state are documenting and preserving the Tewa language and the art of storytelling. Esther was named a National Heritage Fellow in 2006 by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation's highest honor for artists.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 8.3 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.
• Fuller Lodge — 18 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Bandelier National Monument — 22 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 27 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

More markers nearby

• San Gabriel On the Camino Real — steps away
• Dominguez Escalante Trail — 2.4 mi
• Española Valley — 2.9 mi
• Santa Cruz de la Cañada / Santa Cruz Plaza on the Camino Real — 4.2 mi