A history of the missions in the region included in the present states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California.

Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions offers a holistic view on the consequences of mission enterprises and how native peoples actively incorporated Spanish colonialism into their own landscapes. An innovative reorientation spanning the northern limits of Spanish colonialism, this volume brings together a variety of archaeologists focused on placing indigenous agency in the foreground of mission interpretation.

Describes the daily life of people who settled in the California missions, why the missions were built, and explores the reasons for the end of the mission era.

Bonded Leather binding

The traditional narrative of the American West tells of a frontier settled by pioneers emigrating from the east to the Pacific coast. Yet Spanish conquistadors arrived in Central America 150 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. With them came missionaries who tried to convert the Pueblo and Plains Indians to Christianity by force, a suppression of native religious beliefs that led to cultural clashes and outright war. This is the story--fully documented--of how Spanish explorers, soldiers and men of the church pushed north from Mexico in the 1500s, seeking riches and establishing settlements from Texas to California 250 years before the influx of American settlers in the mid-1800s.

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.