Book description
The most thorough account ever written of southwestern life in the
early seventeenth century, this engaging book was first published in
1630 as an official report to the king of Spain by Fray Alonso de
Benavides, a Portuguese Franciscan who was the third head of the
mission churches of New Mexico. In 1625, Father Benavides and his
party traveled north from Mexico City to New Mexico, a strange land of
frozen rivers, Indian citadels, and mines full of silver and garnets.
Benavides and his Franciscan brothers built schools, erected churches,
engineered peace treaties, and were said to perform miracles.
Benavides's riveting exploration narrative provides portraits of the
Pueblo Indians, the Apaches, and the Navajos at a time of fundamental
change. It also gives us the first full picture of European colonial
life in the southern Rockies, the southwestern deserts, and the Great
Plains, along with an account of mission architecture and mission life
and a unique evocation of faith in the wilderness.
Baker H. Morrow, FASLA, is a landscape architect in Albuquerque and
an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. He is the
founding director of the master's program in landscape architecture at
the University of New Mexico.
