ABSTRACT

Leslie Marmon Silko, of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and Anglo-American descent, was born on March 5, 1948, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Old Laguna. Her white great-grandfather, Robert G. Marmon, settled in Laguna in 1872. His brother, Walter Marmon, had gone there from Ohio in 1869 to survey the pueblo boundary and later become a government schoolteacher at Laguna in 1871. Both brothers served terms as pueblo governors during the 1870s, experiencing political power and leaving a legacy that would influence their great-granddaughter years later. Robert G. Marmon’s second wife was Maria Anaya, a Laguna, who was Silko’s great-grandmother, whom she called “Grandma A’mooh.” Her aunt Susie Reyes Marmon, also Laguna, was the wife of her grandfather’s brother. Both women played an important role in the transfer of traditional Laguna cultural knowledge to Silko when she was a child (Clements and Roemer 277).