Before Spanish rule, the land now known as New Mexico was inhabited by many indigenous tribes and pueblos with their own religious beliefs. When conquistadors arrived to search for the Seven Cities of Gold, they created settlements in the pueblos they conquered and forced Catholicism on the people they enslaved. While several of these original missions were destroyed during the Revolt of 1680, the surviving churches are cherished by the communities they now serve. Author Donna Blake Birchell guides you through the unique histories of more than twenty mission churches, their struggles and triumphs over the centuries and the preservation challenges they now face.

Adams and Chavez polish a unique window on late 18th-century New Mexico, providing a seamless translation of Father Domnguez's original work as well as explanatory materials.

This interpretive guide combines history and ethnography to represent living traditions at the adobe and stone churches of New Mexico. Each chapter treats a particular church or group of churches and includes photographs, practical information for visitors, and context pertinent to current understanding. Frank Graziano provides unprecedented coverage of the churches by combining his extensive fieldwork with research in archives and previous scholarship. The book is written in an engaging narrative prose that brings the reader inside of congregations in Indian and Hispanic villages. The focus is less on church buildings than on people in relation to churches -- parishioners, caretakers, priests, restorers -- and on the author's experiences researching among them.

The Franciscan letters and related documents, translated into English and published here for the first time, describe in detail the Pueblo Indian revolt of 1696 in New Mexico and the destruction of the Franciscan missions. The events are related by the missionaries themselves as they lived side by side with their Indian charges. The suppression of the revolt by the Spaniards, and the reestablishment of the missions, was a turning point in the history of the Southwest. The New Mexican colony had been founded and settled in 1598 and had endured until 1680, when an earlier Pueblo Indian revolt had forced the Spaniards co retreat south co El Paso. In 1692, Governor Diego de Vargas led a military expedition into New Mexico that met virtually no resistance, convincing him that he could return and reconquer and resettle the region for Spain. In 1693, after a bloody battle at Santa Fe, the Spanish colony was reestablished in the midst of the concentration of Indian pueblos along the upper Rio Grande. It was then that hostile Pueblo Indian leaders, recalling their victory in 1680, secretly plotted the revolt that cook place in 1696. J. Manuel Espinosa has written a superb introduction placing the Pueblo Indian revolt of 1696 in historical perspective and presenting the important events recorded in the documents that constitute the major part of the book. The letters and writs, by mission friars and Spanish military authorities, reveal the agonizing decisions that the colony of priests, soldiers, and farmers faced in meeting the challenge of undaunted Indian leaders. The documents also contain information on the pueblos and Indian life not found in any other source. This book presents a remarkable view, from the Spaniards' perspective, of the clash of cultures in the pueblos, as well as insights into the causes and results of the Pueblo revolt. The documents contribute greatly to our knowledge of events in northern New Spain that proved very significant in the development of the region. No other work deals in such detail with this period in New Mexico history or provides such broad documentary coverage.

The Spanish missions founded by Padre Eusebio Kino in Sonora, Mexico, during the 1690s and early 1700s are historical as well as architectural marvels. Once self-supporting villages with central churches, the missions stand today as monuments to perseverance in the face of a hostile New World. These "Kino Missions" were surveyed in 1935 by the National Park Service to prepare for the restoration of the mission at Tumacacori, Arizona, then a National Historic Monument. That report, which was never published, provided insights into the missions' history and architecture that remain of lasting relevance. Perhaps more important, it documented these structures in photographs and drawings—the latter including floor plans and sketches of architectural detail—that today are of historic as well as aesthetic interest. This volume reproduces that 1935 report in its entirety, focusing on sixteen missions and including two maps, 52 drawings, and 76 photographs. With a new introduction and appendixes that place the original study in context, The Missions of Northern Sonora is an invaluable reference for scholars and mission visitors alike.

Mexico's churches and conventos display a unique blend of European and native styles. Missionary Mendicant friars arrived in New Spain shortly after Cortes's conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521 and immediately related their own European architectural and visual arts styles to the tastes and expectations of native Indians. Right from the beginning the friars conceived of conventos as a special architectural theater in which to carry out their proselytizing. Over four hundred conventos were established in Mexico between 1526 and 1600, and more still in New Mexico in the century following, all built and decorated by native Indian artisans who became masters of European techniques and styles even as they added their own influence. The author argues that these magnificent sixteenth and seventeenth-century structures are as much part of the artistic patrimony of American Indians as their pre-Conquest temples, pyramids, and kivas. Mexican Indians, in fact, adapted European motifs to their own pictorial traditions and thus made a unique contribution to the worldwide spread of the Italian Renaissance. The author brings a wealth of knowledge of medieval and Renaissance European history, philosophy, theology, art, and architecture to bear on colonial Mexico at the same time as he focuses on indigenous contributions to the colonial enterprise. This ground-breaking study enriches our understanding of the colonial process and the reciprocal relationship between European friars and native artisans.

Offers a social history of the Mexican mission enterprise, emphasizing the centrality of indigenous politics, economics, and demographic catastrophe.