Letters from the Southwest, September 20, 1884 to March 14, 1885


Book Description

Lummis' other set of letters, to the Los Angeles times, are well-known as the basis for his A Tramp across the continent (Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1892). These are the 24 letters written to the Chillicothe Leader. They are more robust than the Times versions, which were more deliberately crafted, more commercial. An essential for Western collections. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR







Sam Chance


Book Description

In the cattle country of Northwest Texas in the late nineteenth century, a man had to be smart and tough. Sam Chance was both. Mustering out of the Confederate army as a sergeant, Chance was possessed of steady nerves and a good business head. Like so many rugged men of his day, he headed west in 1865, determined to make good and to turn his dreams into reality. When he achieves near-legendary status and makes his fortune, Chance is forced to pay the steep price that the frontier exacts in exchange for such success. Book jacket.




The Southwest in the American Imagination


Book Description

In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zu–is with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into all of southwestern prehistory. Drawing on materials housed in half a dozen institutions and now brought together for the first time, this projected seven-volume work presents a cultural history of the Hemenway Expedition and early anthropology in the American Southwest, told in the voices of its participants and interpreted by contemporary scholars. Taken as a whole, the series comprises a thorough study and presentation of the cultural, historical, literary, and archaeological significance of the expedition, with each volume posing distinct themes and problems through a set of original writings such as letters, reports, and diaries. Accompanying essays guide readers to a coherent understanding of the history of the expedition and discuss the cultural and scientific significance of these data in modern debates. This first volume, The Southwest in the American Imagination, presents the writings of Sylvester Baxter, a journalist who became Cushing's friend and publicist in the early 1880s and who traveled to the Southwest and wrote accounts of the expedition. Included are Baxter's early writings about Cushing and the Southwest, from 1881 to 1883, which reported enthusiastically on the anthropologist's work and lifestyle at Zu–i before the expedition. Also included are published accounts of the Hemenway Expedition and its scientific promise, from 1888 to 1889, drawing on Baxter's central role in expedition affairs as secretary-treasurer of the advisory board. Series co-editor Curtis Hinsley provides an introductory essay that reviews Baxter's relationship with Cushing and his career as a journalist and civic activist in Boston, and a closing essay that inquires further into the lasting implications of the "invention of the Southwest," arguing that this aesthetic was central to the emergence and development of southwestern archaeology. Seen a century later, the Hemenway Expedition provides unusual insights into such themes as the formation of a Southwestern identity, the roots of museum anthropology, gender relations and social reform in the late nineteenth century, and the grounding of American nationhood in prehistoric cultures. It also conveys an intellectual struggle, ongoing today, to understand cultures that are different from the dominant culture and to come to grips with questions concerning America's meaning and destiny.




Hallmarks of the Southwest


Book Description

The author has matched maker's marks used on jewelry, pots, fetish carvings, rugs, and baskets with their names, tribes, relatives, and style notes.




Promised Lands


Book Description

Elizabeth Crook's vast yet intimate novel of the Texas Revolution takes us beyond the traditional setpieces of the Alamo and San Jacinto to the other places where the war was fought—to the forest traces and prairies and Gulf Coast beaches, and to the hearts of the novel's vibrant characters. Among them: Domingo de la Rosa—the great Tejano ranchero, implacable and devout, for whom the fight against the Anglo "heretics" is nothing less than a holy war. Hugh Kenner—a physician whose son has run away to the war. Hugh will discover the heroic strength of his compassion, and also its brutal cost. Katie Kenner—Hugh's restless daughter, a refugee caught up in the massive human stampede known as The Runaway Scrape, who finds herself in love with a foreigner and responsible for the life of an orphan baby. Adelaido Pacheco—a dashing tobacco smuggler loyal to no cause but his own, a man without a country and in peril of becoming a man without a soul. Crucita Pacheco—Adelaido's beautiful sister who has lost her family, all but Adelaido, in the cholera epidemic of 1832. Feeling that God has forsaken her, she enters Domingo de la Rosa's employ as a spy against the Anglo rebels, and discovers an improbable love. Through these people and others, Promised Lands brings a myth-encrusted chapter of American history to authentic life. Elizabeth Crook demonstrates once again a stunning command of her period and a passionate regard for her characters. Promised Lands bears the hallmark of a master novelist: a grand vision, rendered on an unforgettably human scale.







Mary Colter


Book Description

"Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter ... was an architect and interior designer who spent virtually her entire career working simultaneously for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway."--p. 9.




Letters from Wupatki


Book Description

The year was 1938, and the newlyweds had come to Wupatki National Monument as full-time National Park Service caretakers for the ruin. Vivid and engaging, Courtney's letters home spill over with a sense of adventure: her friendships with local Navajo families, their sings and celebrations, and her good luck in being a part of it all.




The Grand Canyon and the Southwest


Book Description

Next to Yosemite and the High Sierra, the Southwest was closest to Ansel Adams' heart. It was there, in the early 1930s, that he met photographer Paul Strand and decided to make photography his life's work. In his words, "wherever one goes in the Southwest one encounters magic, strength, and beauty." In The Grand Canyon and the Southwest, Adam's little known images of the Grand Canyon make up roughly one quarter of the photographs selected and edited by his longtime editor, Andrea Stillman. The varied images portray the balance of desolation and stark beauty in the Southwestern landscape, from Texas to California. The pictures are complemented by an introduction by Andrea Stillman and a selection of Adams' vivid letters about the region. In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz he writes, "It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake it into you. The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite . . ."




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