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Title: New Mexican Lives: Profiles and Historical Stories by Richard W. Etulain, University of New Mexico Center for the American West ISBN: 0-8263-2433-9 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Famous New Mexicans
Comment: "New Mexican Lives"
Richard W. Etulain, Editor
ISBN 0-8263-2433-9

This book offers eleven chapters by different authors on various personalities in the history of what is now the state of New Mexico. The most interesting to me are about Tony Hillerman, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Pope and Wendell Chino.

Two of the least interesting chapters are about Billy the Kid and Kit Carson. Kathleen P. Chamberlain tells us that at least 250 books and hundreds of articles have been written about Billy the Kid, a part of a "search for a romantic old West that never existed." Barton H. Barbour describes the "powerful resonance" of Kit Carson's mythic life. In other words, the reputations of these men have as much to do with fiction as fact.

A lesser-known subject is Wendell Chino. Through Mr. Chino's leadership, the Mescalero Apaches have, perhaps, been the most successful tribe in New Mexico at becoming financially independent through the development of their gambling casino and Ski Apache resort area.

Pope was an Indian from San Juan Pueblo, who organized the revolt of 1680. Joe S. Sando, who wrote this chapter, describes this revolt as the original American revolution. It is difficult not too sympathize with the Pueblos in their rebellion against the Spanish conquerors who set about destroying everything these people held dear and exploiting them for Spain's purposes. Pope, it would appear, was a legitimate Indian hero.

Lois Palken Rudnick's chapter about Mabel Dodge Luhan is interesting. Luhan had already had several previous lives of wealth and glamour in Europe and New York prior to showing up in New Mexico. In 1918, she began an affair with Tony Lujan of Taos Pueblo, to whom she was ultimately married for thirty nine years. In Taos Pueblo, Luhan discovered a community that was a model of permanence and stability, where individual, social, artistic, and religious values were completely integrated in a way that she had not previously known. Ultimately, Luhan played a key role in promoting modern art in New Mexico and the work of people such as Andrew Dassburg, Ansel Adams, D. H. Lawrence, Georgia O'Keefe, and Frank Waters.

In the chapter on Tony Hillerman, Ferenc M. Szasz does a good job of characterizing the author's accomplishments. Hillerman, born in Oklahoma, has become a major New Mexico phenomenon as well as a literary voice for the Navajo and the American southwest in general. Szasz explains that Hillerman's themes in his sixteen novels include the following: the nuclear world and the cold war, southwestern anthropology and western history, Indian gaming, alcohol abuse, hantavirus, Indian education, and, in particular, the Navajo view of these things. Hillerman's writing, as it turns out, complements well the state's multi-million dollar tourism industry, said to employ 60,000 New Mexicans. It has been suggested that Hillerman's novels have brought more tourists to New Mexico than any other single source.

On the whole, for those interested in New Mexico, Richard Etulain has brought together some appealing reading.