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Book Reviews
the postscript, stating, “Construction done with the kind of evidence I have
required some leaps of faith” (245). Nonetheless, Katie Gale is a contribution to the historiography of off-reservation narratives of post-treaty Indian
peoples of coastal Washington and to the limited but important collection
of publications that have emerged recently to examine the unique challenges
to Indian economic self-determination in maritime communities.
DOI 10.1215/00141801-2821787
Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century
New Mexico. By Tracy L. Brown. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
2013. viii + 236 pp., acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, tables, notes,
bibliography, index. $55.00 cloth.)
Jay T. Harrison, Fort Lewis College
Understanding the interactions of Pueblo peoples and Spaniards in New
Mexico—a particular cottage industry within the study of greater northern
New Spain—has bedeviled more than one scholar pursuing a complete view
of the relations between natives and Spanish interlopers. Tracy L. Brown
offers a measured approach to subaltern interpretations in this book, all
while walking the theoretical spaces between “Pueblofication,” compartmentalization, and upstreaming from the present. The refreshing part of
her discussion is her consideration of the many facets of Pueblo and Spanish
state making at the time she focuses her study—the long eighteenth century
in New Mexico that began with the reestablishment of the Spanish presence
under de Vargas.
Brown examines four aspects of the Pueblo-Spanish dynamic of the
period. She invests as much in the first aspect—the politically riven nature
of Pueblo societies between domestic and “foreign” affairs—as in all the
others together due to the importance of this localized separation of the two
spheres of community influence and action. Domestic functions could be
and were influenced by men and women, elite and nonelite, while the foreign affairs of most pueblos were the province of the male elites. Absorption
of the Spanish emphasis on male power did nothing to alter domestic politics but rather extended precontact males’ roles in external relations outside
the pueblo. Brown’s argument here is convincing. She argues for a form of
Pueblofication that extended existing norms of social function to incorporate Spanish inputs to Pueblo life. This was a response to external stimuli
that kept recognizable functions intact.
Published by Duke University Press
Ethnohistory
Book Reviews
183
After reviewing the political changes to Pueblo society, Brown delves
into an examination of Pueblo economies in which she considers gendered
and elite versus nonelite economic roles. This discussion leads to a chapter
that considers alternative paths to power for commoner men and women.
While the economic assessment considers women’s roles in producing and
vending products, the discussion of alternatives for expression and claiming
of power shows the varied opportunities open via healing, spiritual influencing, and, at times, acts of violence across the cultural systems of disparate linguistic groups within native New Mexico. The latter topic dovetails with Brown’s assessment in chapter 5 of intimate relations in and
between pueblos. This last chapter deals with common issues of intimacy
within native and conquering societies and is most interesting when assessing the clashes that occurred when a Pueblo woman or man from a matrilocal society married into a differing clan system. Such conflicts even led to
murder when a woman and her mother could not bear the relocation of the
daughter to her husband’s pueblo and people.
Where Brown wrestles with theoretical approaches in the introduction
to this study, her conclusions lead to an argument for a departure from the
“master narrative” approach to the study of the Southwestern borderlands
and the American West. She stresses the great diversity among the Pueblos
of New Mexico that disallows any sort of comprehensive classification of
native reactions to the presence of and attempted dominance by Spaniards
in the territory. Brown argues against the Boltonian dichotomy of civilization versus savagery, noting accurately that recent attempts to rehabilitate understandings of the colonial- era dialectic emphasize the inclusion
of native voices of that past. She contends that the native experience itself
was so diverse as to be hopelessly difficult to fully capture from the sources
available. By weaving archaeological data into her assessment of potential changes with Pueblo societies in the face of sustained Spanish influence, Brown shows that even the most developed studies of precontact and
postcontact Pueblo peoples leave much to be discovered. And so, with this
fragmented record at hand, the reworking of the history of the American
Southwest needs careful combing and all due caution, a lesson well suited to
graduate students and a new generation of scholars considering the remaining questions about daily life in the mixed cultural milieu of colonial northern New Spain.
DOI 10.1215/00141801-2821800
Published by Duke University Press
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