Dissertation

SPIRITED LAND: THE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN SANGRE DE CRISTO MOUNTAINS, NEW MEXICO

DEBUYS, WILLIAM ENO

1982

Overview

This study traces the history of the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico from pre-history to the present, emphasizing particularly the relationships of the region's three main culture groups to their mountain environment. New Mexico's history is remarkable both for its length and its continuity. Still today, in spite of centuries of intimate contact and periodically intense pressure toward homogenization, the Pueblo, Hispano, and Anglo cultures of the region remain independently vigorous and distinct. Paradoxically, however, New Mexican history is even more deeply marked by discontinuity. In the seventeenth century Spanish colonists overwhelmed and restructured the Pueblo world. Two centuries later a similar conquest by Anglo-Americans forced the restructuring of Hispanic society in New Mexico. Geographical influences account in part for the enduring paradox of continuity coexisting with discontinuity in New Mexican history, but this study makes no argument for environmental determinism. Rather it finds that reciprocity characterizes the relationship of northern New Mexicans to their rugged environment. In adapting to the environment the people of the region have changed it both purposefully and by accident--and then have adapted, in turn, to the changes they wrought. In northern New Mexico these cycles of adaptation have helped to shape the character of Hispanic and Pueblo Indian culture, and they profoundly influence the prospects for continued survival of these peoples' traditional values and customs. The study is divided into three \"Books,\" the first of which treats Native American and Hispanic history up to the time of sustained Anglo contact. Book II examines the military and economic conquest of New Mexico by Anglo society during the nineteenth century. Book III postulates that the U.S. Forest Service and other scientifically oriented agencies that represent the United States as a collectivity carried out a second Anglo conquest of New Mexico in the twentieth century. Having incorporated the common lands of many former Spanish and Mexican land grants into the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests, the Forest Service continues to possess tremendous power to preserve or destroy traditional Hispanic culture in the mountain villages of the Sangre de Cristo. This study argues that the preservation of traditional culture is in the best interests of all New Mexicans and of Anglo-American society in general.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: American studies
• ISBN: 9798413158609