Founded in 1781 by pioneers from what is today northern Mexico, El Pueblo de Los Angeles mirrors the history and heritage of the city to which it gave birth. When the pueblo was the capital of Mexico’s Alta California, the region’s rancheros came here to celebrate mass or to attend fiestas in the historic Plaza. Following California’s statehood in 1850, the pueblo for a time ranked among the most lawless towns of the American West. American speculators, wealthy rancheros, and Italian wine merchants crowded its dusty streets. The town’s first barrio and the vibrant precincts of Old Chinatown soon grew up nearby. As Los Angeles burgeoned into a modern metropolis, its historic heart fell into ruin, to be revitalized by the creation in 1930 of the romantic Mexican marketplace at Olvera Street. Here, two years later, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted the landmark mural América Tropical, whose story is a fascinating tale of art, politics, and censorship. In the decades since, the pueblo has remained one of Southern California’s most enduring and most complex cultural symbols. El Pueblo vividly recounts the story of the birthplace of Los Angeles. An engaging historical narrative is complemented by abundant illustrations and a tour of the pueblo’s historic buildings. The book also describes initiatives to preserve the pueblo’s rich heritage and considers the significance of its multicultural legacy for Los Angeles today

It is one of the great mysteries in the archaeology of the Americas: the depopulation of the northern Southwest in the late thirteenth-century AD. Considering the numbers of people affected, the distances moved, the permanence of the departures, the severity of the surrounding conditions, and the human suffering and culture change that accompanied them, the abrupt conclusion to the farming way of life in this region is one of the greatest disruptions in recorded history. Much new paleoenvironmental data, and a great deal of archaeological survey and excavation, permit the fifteen scientists represented here much greater precision in determining the timing of the depopulation, the number of people affected, and the ways in which northern Pueblo peoples coped—and failed to cope—with the rapidly changing environmental and demographic conditions they encountered throughout the 1200s. In addition, some of the scientists in this volume use models to provide insights into the processes behind the patterns they find, helping to narrow the range of plausible explanations. What emerges from these investigations is a highly pertinent story of conflict and disruption as a result of climate change, environmental degradation, social rigidity, and conflict. Taken as a whole, these contributions recognize this era as having witnessed a competition between differing social and economic organizations, in which selective migration was considerably hastened by severe climatic, environmental, and social upheaval. Moreover, the chapters show that it is at least as true that emigration led to the collapse of the northern Southwest as it is that collapse led to emigration.

The first collection of essays on public history in the American West.

Attracted to the rich ceremonial life and unique architecture of the New Mexico pueblos, many early-twentieth-century artists depicted Pueblo peoples, places, and culture in paintings. These artists’ encounters with Pueblo Indians fostered their awareness of Native political struggles and led them to join with Pueblo communities to champion Indian rights. In this book, art historian Sascha T. Scott examines the ways in which non-Pueblo and Pueblo artists advocated for American Indian cultures by confronting some of the cultural, legal, and political issues of the day. Scott closely examines the work of five diverse artists, exploring how their art was shaped by and helped to shape Indian politics. She places the art within the context of the interwar period, 1915–30, a time when federal Indian policy shifted away from forced assimilation and toward preservation of Native cultures. Through careful analysis of paintings by Ernest L. Blumenschein, John Sloan, Marsden Hartley, and Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal), Scott shows how their depictions of thriving Pueblo life and rituals promoted cultural preservation and challenged the pervasive romanticizing theme of the “vanishing Indian.” Georgia O’Keeffe’s images of Pueblo dances, which connect abstraction with lived experience, testify to the legacy of these political and aesthetic transformations. Scott makes use of anthropology, history, and indigenous studies in her art historical narrative. She is one of the first scholars to address varied responses to issues of cultural preservation by aesthetically and culturally diverse artists, including Pueblo painters. Beautifully designed, this book features nearly sixty artworks reproduced in full color.

Excerpt from Two Summers' Work in Pueblo Ruins Summer of 1897 - continued. Ruins in Pueblo Viej o - continued. Pottery from Pueblo Viej o - continued. Color and surface finish - continued. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.