This remarkable book unfolds a detailed and thoughtful history beginning in 1598 and continuing through 1924. Chapters are devoted to events preceding the founding of the city; the Pueblo Revolution; the reconquest of the city by General Diego de Vargas; its 25 years as a Mexican provincial capital; the city during the military occupation period; and stories about Billy the Kid, Gov. Samuel B. Axtell, and the Santa Fe Ring.
This extensive volume presents New Mexico history from its prehistoric beginnings to the present in essays and articles by fifty prominent historians and scholars representing various disciplines including history, anthropology, Native American studies, and Chicano studies. Contributors include Rick Hendricks, John L. Kessell, Peter Iverson, Rina Swentzell, Sylvia Rodriguez, William deBuys, Robert J. Tórrez, Malcolm Ebright, Herman Agoyo, and Paula Gunn Allen, among many others.
First published in Germany in 2000, Schmid's experiences in the Southwest during WWII offer a unique glimpse of America as it looked to an enemy soldier.
This book is considered to be the starting place for anyone having family history ties to New Mexico, and for those interested in the history of New Mexico. Well before Jamestown and the Pilgrims, New Mexico was settled continuously beginning in 1598 by Spaniards whose descendants still make up a major portion of the population of New Mexico.
Although the New Mexico Territory was far distant from the main theaters of war, it was engulfed in the same violence and bloodshed as the rest of the nation. The Civil War in New Mexico was fought in the deserts and mountains of the huge territory, which was mostly wilderness, amid the continuing ancient wars against the wild Indian tribes waged by both sides. The armies were small, but the stakes were high: control of the Southwest. Retired lieutenant colonel and Civil War historian Dr. Walter Earl Pittman presents this concise history of New Mexico during the Civil War years from the Confederate invasion of 1861 to the Battles of Valverde and Glorieta to the end of the war.
In what follows can be found the doors to a house of words and stories. This house of words and stories is the Archive of New Mexico and the doors are each of the documents contained within it. Like any house, New Mexico's archive has a tale of its own origin and a complex history. Although its walls have changed many times, its doors and the encounters with those doors hold stories known and told and others not yet revealed. In the Archives, there are thousands of doors (4,481) that open to a time of kings and popes, of inquisition and revolution. "These archives," writes Ralph Emerson Twitchell, "are by far the most valuable and interesting of any in the Southwest." Many of these documents were given a number by Twitchell, small stickers that were appended to the first page of each document, an act of heresy to archivists and yet these stickers have now become part of the artifact. These are the doors that Ralph Emerson Twitchell opened at the dawn of the 20th century with a key that has served scholars, policy-makers, and activists for generations. In 1914 Twitchell published in two volumes The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, the first calendar and guide to the documents from the Spanish colonial period. Volume Two of the two volumes focuses on the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series II, or SANM II. These 3,087 documents consist of administrative, civil, military, and ecclesiastical records of the Spanish colonial government in New Mexico, 1621-1821. The materials span a broad range of subjects, revealing information about such topics as domestic relations, political intrigue, crime and punishment, material culture, the Camino Real, relations between Spanish settlers and indigenous peoples, the intrusion of Anglo-Americans, and the growing unrest that resulted in Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821. As is the case with Volume One, these documents tell many stories. They reflect, for example, the creation and maintenance of colonial society in New Mexico; itself founded upon the casting and construction of colonizing categories. Decisions made by popes, kings and viceroys thousands of miles away from New Mexico defined the lives of everyday citizens, as did the reports of governors and clergy sent back to their superiors. They represent the history of imperial power, conquest, and hegemony. Indeed, though the stories of indigenous people and women can be found in these documents, it may be fair to assume that not a single one of them was actually scripted by a woman or an American Indian during that time period. But there is another silence in this particular collection and series that is telling. Few pre-Revolt (1680) documents are contained in this collection. While the original colonial archive may well have contained thousands of documents that predate the European settlement of New Mexico in 1598, with the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680, all but four of those documents were destroyed. For historians, the tragedy cannot be calculated. Nevertheless, this absence and silence is important in its own right and is a part of the story, told and imagined. Let this effort and the key provided by Twitchell in his two volumes open the doors wide for knowledge to be useful today and tomorrow. --From the Foreword by Estevan Rael-Gálvez, New Mexico State Historian
Every book has a history of its own and New Mexico: A Brief Multi-History could be considered one of the mini-sagas worthy of inclusion in this comprehensive chronology of people, places, and events that begins with precontact inhabitants of the Southwest. The more than four hundred years of recorded history includes information on all the groups living in our New Mexico, the oldest European colony in what is today the USA, and is "the way history should be written." Enriched by many illustrations, this inclusive Multi-History is the most comprehensive single volume available for the New Mexican sagas of "ordinary and extraordinary people, places, and events" from 1598 to the present. The general reader, history buffs, students, and scholars alike will be empowered by this ". . . basic resource for New Mexico and the Southwest" because of its panorama of "cultural and historical events, profile biographies, and penetrating comparative analysis . . . a timeless triumph."
