The Land of the PueblosSusan E. Wallace takes us into the heart of nineteenth-century New Mexico and its surrounding Indian Pueblos. Eagerly, she shares her adventures and observations about the land, history, customs and inhabitants. We start with her journey West first by rail and then by buckboard. We go with her to her first contact with Native Americans and attend an Indian ceremony. We share her excitement as she forces open a heavy wooden door into a locked and forgotten room in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. Her discovery? Not a treasure of gold or jewels but tumbled piles of written records, some of them dating from the early 1600s. This is only one of the many accounts Wallace wrote about her time in New Mexico. While her husband, Lew Wallace, was busy with his duties as the governor of the New Mexico Territory and working on what was to be his most popular book, "Ben Hur," Susan was having her articles published in the popular magazines of the day. They were later collected and published in book form in 1888 and are now once more available in this facsimile edition. |
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Page 17 - He tells of famishing with hunger till they devoured dogs with relish ; of marching " without water and without way" among savages of giant stature, dressed in robes, " with wrought ties of lion-skin, making a brave show, — the women dressed in wool that grows on trees ; " * of meeting cyclopean tribes, who had the sight of but one eye ; of being enslaved and going naked — "as we were unaccustomed to being so, twice a year we cast our skin, like serpents ;" of his escape, and, after living six...
Page 16 - Permission to invade that 1526 territory was next sought for and obtained by Pamphilo de Narvaez, a man of no great virtue or reputation. This is the same person who had been sent by the jealous governor of Cuba to take Cortes prisoner, and who, after having declared him an outlaw, was himself easily defeated. He lost an eye in the affray, and his own troops deserted him. When brought into the presence of the man whom he had promised to arrest, he said to him, " Esteem it great good fortune, that...