New Mexican Lives: Profiles and Historical Stories

Book Overview

In New Mexican Lives, Richard Etulain and a distinguished group of twelve collaborators re-interpret the state's history through biography. Profiles of fourteen notable, complex characters provide a unique view into New Mexico's development from prehistoric times to the present. Here are lives of men and women that illustrate memorable events: from Popé and the Pueblo Revolt to Spanish colonizers Juan de Oñate and Diego de Vargas; from Hispanic widows exercising their property rights to Billy the Kid and the shoot-out in Lincoln; from Mabel Dodge Luhan and her avant-garde, idealistic salon to Senator Dennis Chavez and the exercise of Hispanic political power on a national level. By emphasizing the links between important New Mexicans and their times, this book makes history a personal story of drama and pathos played out within a larger context of pivotal events and formative ideas. For example, we see the contradictory forces compelling Chiricahua Apache Mangas Coloradas to be committed to peace while nevertheless waging ceaseless war on Mexico, Kit Carson's struggle to find a humane way to carry out his duty to wage war on the Navajo, and Susan McSween's valiant and determined effort to modernize a seemingly untamed town.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826324339
• ISBN13: 9780826324337
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Unm Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Influential New Mexicans ..Great stories

I really liked this book...The variety of characters that span the generations was fascinating....Read Hunka's review for more detail..he hit the nail on the head...

Famous New Mexicans

"New Mexican Lives"Richard W. Etulain, EditorISBN 0-8263-2433-9This book offers eleven chapters by different authors on various personalities in the history of what is now the state of New Mexico. The most interesting to me are about Tony Hillerman, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Pope and Wendell Chino.Two of the least interesting chapters are about Billy the Kid and Kit Carson. Kathleen P. Chamberlain tells us that at least 250 books and hundreds of articles have been written about Billy the Kid, a part of a "search for a romantic old West that never existed." Barton H. Barbour describes the "powerful resonance" of Kit Carson's mythic life. In other words, the reputations of these men have as much to do with fiction as fact.A lesser-known subject is Wendell Chino. Through Mr. Chino's leadership, the Mescalero Apaches have, perhaps, been the most successful tribe in New Mexico at becoming financially independent through the development of their gambling casino and Ski Apache resort area.Pope was an Indian from San Juan Pueblo, who organized the revolt of 1680. Joe S. Sando, who wrote this chapter, describes this revolt as the original American revolution. It is difficult not too sympathize with the Pueblos in their rebellion against the Spanish conquerors who set about destroying everything these people held dear and exploiting them for Spain's purposes. Pope, it would appear, was a legitimate Indian hero.Lois Palken Rudnick's chapter about Mabel Dodge Luhan is interesting. Luhan had already had several previous lives of wealth and glamour in Europe and New York prior to showing up in New Mexico. In 1918, she began an affair with Tony Lujan of Taos Pueblo, to whom she was ultimately married for thirty nine years. In Taos Pueblo, Luhan discovered a community that was a model of permanence and stability, where individual, social, artistic, and religious values were completely integrated in a way that she had not previously known. Ultimately, Luhan played a key role in promoting modern art in New Mexico and the work of people such as Andrew Dassburg, Ansel Adams, D. H. Lawrence, Georgia O'Keefe, and Frank Waters.In the chapter on Tony Hillerman, Ferenc M. Szasz does a good job of characterizing the author's accomplishments. Hillerman, born in Oklahoma, has become a major New Mexico phenomenon as well as a literary voice for the Navajo and the American southwest in general. Szasz explains that Hillerman's themes in his sixteen novels include the following: the nuclear world and the cold war, southwestern anthropology and western history, Indian gaming, alcohol abuse, hantavirus, Indian education, and, in particular, the Navajo view of these things. Hillerman's writing, as it turns out, complements well the state's multi-million dollar tourism industry, said to employ 60,000 New Mexicans. It has been suggested that Hillerman's novels have brought more tourists to New Mexico than any other single source.On the whole, for those interested in New Mexico, Richard E