Ever wonder what New Mexico was like in the nineteenth cen tury? In 1876, newspaperman William D. Dawson undertook a series of journeys that took him the entire length of the territory from the D&RG railhead near Fort Garland, Colorado, to the Mesilla Valley and west to the mines of Silver City and Pinos Altos, New Mexico. Here for the first time in print since they appeared in the pages of The Santa Fe Daily New Mexican nearly a century and a half ago, are descriptions of New Mexico's tow...

Rio arriba. In Spanish, the lower case rio arriba stands for the “upper river,” that portion of northern New Mexico that straddles the Rio del Norte, the historic name of the Rio Grande. In the upper case, they stand for Rio Arriba County, a geopolitical entity that constitutes a small portion of the historic rio arriba. The words define a vast portion of New Mexico that extends from the historic villa of Santa Fe north into the San Luis Valley of today’s southern Colorado. Former New Mexi...

The Pulitzer Prize– and Bancroft Prize–winning epic history of the American Southwest from the acclaimed twentieth-century author of Lamy of Santa Fe.Great River was hailed as a literary masterpiece and enduring classic when it first appeared in 1954. It is an epic history of four civilizations—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—that people the Southwest through ten centuries. With the skill of a novelist, the veracity of a schol...

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors-many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures-were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ral...

Hispanic America, Texas, and the Mexican War examines the history of the southwestern area of the United States. Topics covered include the settlement of the area that became the southwestern portion of the United States, detailing how it evolved from land settled by Native Americans, to Spanish territory, to states that were pawns between the North and South prior to the Civil War.

San Antonio native, military veteran, merchant, and mayor pro tem José Antonio Menchaca (1800–1879) was one of only a few Tejano leaders to leave behind an extensive manuscript of recollections. Portions of the document were published in 1907, followed by a “corrected” edition in 1937, but the complete work could not be published without painstaking reconstruction. At last available in its entirety, Menchaca’s book of reminiscences captures the social life, people, and events that shaped t...

"Among the ten best Western books of all time. It has that rare combination, a personal reminiscence covering important events, and a thoroughly scholarly and reliable treatment." — Westerners Brand Book. For fifteen years John G. Bourke served under General George Crook as they fought side by side on the frontiers of the United States from Mexico to the Canadian border. Crook and his troops clashed against some of the most formidable opponents of the nineteenth century during the Great Si...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST | WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century.Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There w...

**Claudio Saunt is an advisor for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt on PBSThis panoramic account of 1776 chronicles the other revolutions unfolding that year across North America, far beyond the British colonies.**In this unique history of 1776, Claudio Saunt looks beyond the familiar story of the thirteen colonies to explore the many other revolutions roiling the turbulent American continent. In that fateful year, the Spanish l...

A masterful reconstruction of one of the worst Indian massacres in American historyIn April 1871, a group of Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O?odham Indians surrounded an Apache village at dawn and murdered nearly 150 men, women, and children in their sleep. In the past century the attack, which came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, has largely faded from memory. Now, drawing on oral histories, contemporary newspaper reports, and the participants? own accoun...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, the gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century.**“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -**Washington PostIn 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a des...

Browne takes us on a journey through the new territory during the latter part of the civil war when settlers were having some of the worst troubles with the Apache nation and troops were busy in the east. Taken from the original serialization in 1864 and 65, Browne introduces the old west through the eyes of a contemporary traveler, complete with the prevailing thought of day. This is a journey worth taking to understand the life and times and thought of mid nineteenth century Arizona and ...