Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico

Ethnohistory 182 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. 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