Acclaimed by readers and reviewers alike, the first volume of The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain was a landmark in the documentary study of seventeenth-century Spanish Colonial Mexico. Here, Charles W. Polzer and Thomas E. Sheridan bring the same incisive scholarship and careful editing to long-awaited Volume Two, covering the years 1700-1765. The two-part second volume looks at the Spanish expansion as occurring in four north-south corridors that carried the main components of social and political activity. Divided geographically, materials in this book (part 1) relate to the two westernmost corridors, while those in the projected book (part 2) will cover the corridors north to New Mexico and northeast into Texas. Documents in both books demonstrate the importance of regional hostilities rather than exterior threats in the establishment of presidios. Materials in this book relate to events and episodes in the Californias (the peninsula of Baja California) where the situation of the presidial forces was unique in New Spain. By bringing into focus the ways that civil-religious relations affected the military garrison there, these documents contribute immeasurably to a greater understanding of how California itself emerged in history. Also covering Sinaloa and Sonora, the mainland of the west coast of New Spain, records in the book reveal how the Sinaloa coastal forces differed from those in the interior and how they were depended upon for protection in the northern expansion, both civil and missionary. Because documents on the presidios in northern New Spain are vast in number and varied in content, these selections are meant to provide for the reader or researcher a framework around which more elaborate studies might be constructed. All of the records have been translated from the Spanish language into readable, modern English and are accompanied by transcribed versions of the originals. Valuable to both non-specialists and specialists, here is an unparalleled resource important not only for the careful selection, preparation, and presentation of documents, but also for the excellent background information that puts them into context and makes them come alive.

From the earliest days of their empire in the New World, the Spanish sought to gain control of the native peoples and lands of what is now Sonora. While missionaries were successful in pacifying many Indians, the Seris--independent groups of hunter-gatherers who lived on the desert shores and islands of the Gulf of California--steadfastly defied Spanish efforts to subjugate them. Empire of Sand is a documentary history of Spanish attempts to convert, control, and ultimately annihilate the Seris. These papers of religious, military, and government officials attest to the Seris' resilience in the face of numerous Spanish attempts to conquer them and remove them from their lands. Most of the documents are being made available for the first time, while the few that have been published are extremely difficult to find. They include early observations of the Seris by Jesuit missionaries; the collapse of the Seri mission system in 1748; accounts of the invasion of Tibur¢n Island in 1750 and the Sonora Expedition of 1767-1771; and reports of late-eighteenth-century Seri hostilities. Thomas Sheridan's introduction puts the documents in perspective, while his notes objectively clarify their significance. In a superb analysis of contact history, Sheridan shows through these documents that Spaniards and Seris understood one another well, and it was their inability to tolerate each other's radically different societies and cultures that led to endless conflict between them. By skillfully weaving the documents into a coherent narrative of Spanish-Seri interaction, he has produced a compelling account of empire and resistance that speaks to anthropologists, historians, and all readers who take heart in stories of resistance to oppression.

John L. Kessell’s Spain in the Southwest presents a fast-paced, abundantly illustrated history of the Spanish colonies that became the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. With an eye for human interest, Kessell tells the story of New Spain’s vast frontier--today’s American Southwest and Mexican North--which for two centuries served as a dynamic yet disjoined periphery of the Spanish empire. Chronicling the period of Hispanic activity from the time of Columbus to Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, Kessell traces the three great swells of Hispanic exploration, encounter, and influence that rolled north from Mexico across the coasts and high deserts of the western borderlands. Throughout this sprawling historical landscape, Kessell treats grand themes through the lives of individuals. He explains the frequent cultural clashes and accommodations in remarkably balanced terms. Stereotypes, the author writes, are of no help. Indians could be arrogant and brutal, Spaniards caring, and vice versa. If we select the facts to fit preconceived notions, we can make the story come out the way we want, but if the peoples of the colonial Southwest are seen as they really were--more alike than diverse, sharing similar inconstant natures--then we need have no favorites.

This copious collection of reminiscences, reports, letters, and documents allows readers to experience the vast and varied landscape of early California from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. What emerges is not the Spanish California depicted by casual visitors—a culture obsessed with finery, horses, and fandangos—but an ever-shifting world of aspiration and tragedy, pride and loss. Conflicts between missionaries and soldiers, Indians and settlers, friends and neighbors spill from these pages, bringing the ferment of daily life into sharp focus.

When the Spanish began colonizing the Americas in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they brought with them the plants and foods of their homeland—wheat, melons, grapes, vegetables, and every kind of Mediterranean fruit. Missionaries and colonists introduced these plants to the native peoples of Mexico and the American Southwest, where they became staple crops alongside the corn, beans, and squash that had traditionally sustained the original Americans. This intermingling of Old and New World plants and foods was one of the most significant fusions in the history of international cuisine and gave rise to many of the foods that we so enjoy today. Gardens of New Spain tells the fascinating story of the diffusion of plants, gardens, agriculture, and cuisine from late medieval Spain to the colonial frontier of Hispanic America. Beginning in the Old World, William Dunmire describes how Spain came to adopt plants and their foods from the Fertile Crescent, Asia, and Africa. Crossing the Atlantic, he first examines the agricultural scene of Pre-Columbian Mexico and the Southwest. Then he traces the spread of plants and foods introduced from the Mediterranean to Spain’s settlements in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. In lively prose, Dunmire tells stories of the settlers, missionaries, and natives who blended their growing and eating practices into regional plantways and cuisines that live on today in every corner of America.