UNM Professors Help Write the Book on New Mexico History

“Telling New Mexico – A New History” is a chorus of voices, edited by UNM Regents Professor of Anthropology Marta Weigle, with New Mexico History Museum Director Frances Levine and Senior Curator and UNM alumni Louise Stiver. The book is designed as a general history of the state, prepared in anticipation of the state’s centennial in 2012, but unlike most history books, this one consists of dozens of essays, many of them from UNM faculty. Whether it is Professor of Anthropology Sylvia Rodriguez writing about how acequias, the ditches New Mexicans use to irrigate the fields, work or former UNM Press Director Roland Dickey writing about how to survive the howling windstorms in eastern New Mexico, the writers give a panorama of perspectives about the state. In his essay “The Memorable Visitation of Bishop Pedro Tamarón, 1760” Department of History Professor Emeritus John Kessell writes about the visit of the Bishop of Durango to the pueblos of northern New Mexico. In another essay he examines tall tales about the Pecos Pueblo and its reputed connection to Montezuma and worship of a giant snake. Want to know about the first revolution ever to take place in North America? Read the essay by former Anthropology Professor Alfonso Ortiz as he explores the aggravation and frustration that led Native Americans in the pueblos to violently overthrow the Spanish colonists in 1680, chasing them all the way to El Paso nearly 100 years before the American Revolution...UNM Today