front cover of Debating American Identity
Debating American Identity
Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration
Linda C. Noel
University of Arizona Press, 2014
In the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt, New Mexico governors Miguel Antonio Otero and Octaviano Larrazolo, and Arizona legislator Carl Hayden—along with the voices of less well-known American women and men—promoted very different views on what being an American meant. Their writings and speeches contributed to definitions of American national identity during a tumultuous and dynamic era. At stake in these heated debates was the very meaning of what constituted an American, the political boundaries for the United States, and the legitimacy of cultural diversity in modern America.

In Debating American Identity, Linda C. Noel examines several nation-defining events—the proposed statehood of Arizona and New Mexico, the creation of a temporary worker program during the First World War, immigration restriction in the 1920s, and the repatriation of immigrants in the early 1930s. Noel uncovers the differing ways in which Americans argued about how newcomers could fit within the nation-state, in terms of assimilation, pluralism, or marginalization, and the significance of class status, race, and culture in determining American identity.

Noel shows not only how the definition of American was contested, but also how the economic and political power of people of Mexican descent, their desire to incorporate as Americans or not, and the demand for their territory or labor by other Americans played an important part in shaping decisions about statehood and national immigration policies. Debating American Identity skillfully shows how early twentieth century debates over statehood influenced later ones concerning immigration; in doing so, it resonates with current discussions, resulting in a well-timed look at twentieth century citizenship.
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front cover of Defending The Dinetah
Defending The Dinetah
Ronald H Towner
University of Utah Press, 2003
Among the most striking features of the northwestern New Mexico landscape are the more than 130 fortresses and towers built on boulders, promontories, and mesa rims. These "pueblitos" in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinétah have been a key piece of evidence used by archaeologists to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish re-conquest of New Mexico (ca. 1700), yet they have never been comprehensively analyzed.

Using a database of tree-ring dates taken from beams and wood used to construct these pueblitos, Ronald Towner shows in this volume that most pueblitos are unrelated to Puebloan immigration or the re-conquest. He concludes that Navajos constructed the masonry structures and hogans contemporaneously for protection against Ute raiders and later Spanish entradas. Further, most were occupied for relatively brief periods and population density was much lower than has been assumed.

Towner points to a new model of Navajo ethnogenesis, based on a revised early population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture, making Defending the Dinétah a major contribution to Navajo studies. 
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front cover of Desert Puma
Desert Puma
Evolutionary Ecology And Conservation Of An Enduring Carnivore
Kenneth A. Logan and Linda L. Sweanor; Foreword by Maurice G. Hornocker
Island Press, 2001
Scientists and conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of top carnivores to the health and integrity of fully functioning ecosystems. As burgeoning human populations continue to impinge on natural landscapes, the need for understanding carnivore populations and how we affect them is becoming increasingly acute.Desert Puma represents one of the most detailed assessments ever produced of the biology and ecology of a top carnivore. The husband-and-wife team of Kenneth Logan and Linda Sweanor set forth extensive data gathered from their ten-year field study of pumas in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico, also drawing on other reliable scientific data gathered throughout the puma's geographic range. Chapters examine: the evolutionary and modern history of pumas, their taxonomy, and physical description a detailed description and history of the study area in the Chihuahua Desert field techniques that were used in the research puma population dynamics and life history strategies the implications of puma behavior and social organization the relationships of pumas and their preyThe authors provide important new information about both the biology of pumas and their evolutionary ecology -- not only what pumas do, but why they do it. Logan and Sweanor explain how an understanding of puma evolutionary ecology can, and must, inform long-term conservation strategies. They end the book with their ideas regarding strategies for puma management and conservation, along with a consideration of the future of pumas and humans. Desert Puma makes a significant and original contribution to the science not only of pumas in desert ecosystems but of the role of top predators in all environments. It is an essential contribution to the bookshelf of any wildlife biologist or conservationist involved in large-scale land management or wildlife management.
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front cover of A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish
A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish
Revised and Expanded Edition
Rubén Cobos
Museum of New Mexico Press, 2011
Continuously in print since 1983, Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, has become a classic Spanish reference book, widely used in classrooms across the United States. As a teenager in Albuquerque, esteemed linguist and folkorist Rubén Cobos (1911-2010) was intrigued by and began documenting the regional variations of spoken Spanish. This was to become his work of a lifetime spanning seventy-five years. Dr. Cobos began recording Indo-Hispanic folklore material in the early 1940s. With the co-operation of the villagers, farmers, sheepherders, and other hard-working people in the small towns throughout New Mexico and Southern Colorado he recorded the nuances, slang and the regionally distinctive words of Spanish spoken in the communities of the upper Rio Grande and Southern Colorado.

Ruben Cobos spent a decade working on the revised and expanded edition of the dictionary, published in 2003. The Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish has assumed its place as the most authoritative reference on the archaic dialect of Spanish spoken in this region.
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front cover of The Discovery of New Mexico by the Franciscan Monk Friar Marcos de Niza in 1539
The Discovery of New Mexico by the Franciscan Monk Friar Marcos de Niza in 1539
Adolph F. Bandelier; Translated and Edited by Madeleine Turrell Rodack
University of Arizona Press, 1980
The story of Fray Marcos and the Seven Cities of Cíbola was a favorite of Adolph Bandelier (1840–1914). Bandelier’s combination of methodological sophistication and control of the archival data makes the Marcos de Niza paper important, not only as a landmark in Southwestern ethnohistory, but as a work of scholarship in its own rights, with insights on Cabeza de Vaca, Marcos, and early Southwestern exploration that are still valid today.
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front cover of Distant Bugles, Distant Drums
Distant Bugles, Distant Drums
The Union Response to the Confederate Invasion of New Mexico
Flint Whitlock
University Press of Colorado, 2006
Although most accounts of the Civil War's New Mexico campaign have focused on the Confederate effort, Distant Bugles, Distant Drums brings to life the epic march of 1,000 men recruited from Colorado's towns, farms, and mining camps to fight 3,000 Confederate soldiers in New Mexico.

Drawing on previously overlooked diaries, letters, and contemporary newspaper accounts, military historian Flint Whitlock brings the Civil War in the West to life. Distant Bugles, Distant Drums details the battles of 1,000 Coloradans against 3,000 Confederate soldiers in New Mexico and offers vivid portraits of the leaders and soldiers involved - men whose strengths and flaws would shape the fate of the nation.

On their way to Colorado in search of gold and silver for the Confederacy's dwindling coffers, Texan Confederates won a series of engagements along the Rio Grande. Hastily assembled troops that had marched to meet them from Colorado finally turned them back in an epic conflict at Gloriéta Pass.

Miners, farmers, and peacetime officers turned themselves overnight into soldiers to keep the Confederacy from capturing the West's mines, shaping the outcome of the Civil War. Distant Bugles, Distant Drums tells their story. Southwest Book Award Winner from the Border Regional Library Association

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