New Mexico and the Pimería Alta : The Colonial Period in the American Southwest

Winner of the 2017 Arizona Literary Award for Published Nonfiction

Focusing on the two major areas of the Southwest that witnessed the most intensive and sustained colonial encounters, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta compares how different forms of colonialism and indigenous political economies resulted in diverse outcomes for colonists and Native peoples. Taking a holistic approach and studying both colonist and indigenous perspectives through archaeological, ethnohistorical, historical, and landscape data, contributors examine how the processes of colonialism played out in the American Southwest.

Although these broad areas—New Mexico and southern Arizona/northern Sonora—share a similar early colonial history, the particular combination of players, sociohistorical trajectories, and social relations within each area led to, and were transformed by, markedly diverse colonial encounters. Understanding these different mixes of players, history, and social relations provides the foundation for conceptualizing the enormous changes wrought by colonialism throughout the region. The presentations of different cultural trajectories also offer important avenues for future thought and discussion on the strategies for missionization and colonialism.

The case studies tackle how cultures evolved in the light of radical transformations in cultural traits or traditions and how different groups reconciled to this change. A much needed up-to-date examination of the colonial era in the Southwest, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta demonstrates the intertwined relationships between cultural continuity and transformation during a time of immense change and highlights contemporary thought on the colonial experience.

Contributors: Joseph Aguilar, Jimmy Arterberry, Heather Atherton, Dale Brenneman, J. Andrew Darling, John G. Douglass, B. Sunday Eiselt, Severin Fowles, William M. Graves, Lauren Jelinek, Kelly L. Jenks, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Phillip O. Leckman, Matthew Liebmann, Kent G. Lightfoot, Lindsay Montgomery, Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Robert Preucel, Matthew Schmader, Thomas E. Sheridan, Colleen Strawhacker, J. Homer Thiel, David Hurst Thomas, Laurie D. Webster

John G. Douglass is the director of research and standards at Statistical Research, Inc. and is also a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology. He has undertaken archaeological research in California, the American Southwest and Midwest, Honduras, and Belize over the past twenty-five years. Over the past decade, he has focused his research interests on colonial/indigenous interaction in the American Southwest and California from both archaeological and ethnohistoric perspectives.

William M. Graves is a Principal Investigator with Logan Simpson and a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology. He has conducted research projects in the Salinas Pueblos area of New Mexico, the San Juan Basin, the Silver Creek drainage in east-central Arizona, and the Phoenix and Tucson Basins. His research focuses on examining changes in sociopolitical organization, inequality, and cultural identity during the late pre-Hispanic and early colonial periods.