Summary
Is history, in effect, collective memory, or has our view of history been spoon-fed to us by a select group of historians whose ideas gained prominence because they were good writers? In either case, the work of historian James F. Brooks, president of the School of American Research, reveals that the Southwest's view of itself is based on oversimplified notions of history as the struggle between victims and conquerors rather than dynamic interplay among a host of cultural and ethnic groups that have each been sometimes noble, sometimes ignominious, and most often a tapestry of both.
Brooks' work reveals that raids between tribes in which women and children were captured and assimilated were transformed by Spanish colonialists into a full-blown slave trade. He contends that even the slave labor predicated on kidnapping and violence produced a host of unexpected side effects, including the complex social tapestry that is both a strength and a stumbling block for the Southwest. Drawing upon archaeology, history, ethnography, literature, art, and music, Brooks presents The American Southwest: Our Troubled Paradise, a lecture on the forces that have sculpted this region rich in human diversity and scarce in vital resources.See the full content of this document
Extract
A History of Violence
Brooks is the author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), Confounding the Color Line: the Indian-Black Experience in North America (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), and Women & Gender in the North American West (University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Hi...
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