Publisher's Synopsis
This study illuminates the Spanish settlements founded on land grants along the northern reaches of Mexico - what came to be called new Mexico. Unlike the ""conquest culture"" to the south, these Hispanic pioneers colonized the northern territories to secure converts to Roman Catholicism, to protect as a buffer the more productive southern colonies (silver was discovered in 1531 in Michoacian), and to some extent for general territorial aggrandizement. The settlements followed the lines of life typical of small communities in Spain itself, though by the standards of the mother country of central Mexico, the villas and pueblos around centers like Santa Fe and Albuquerque were so unpretentious as to have certain recognition witheld. Van Ness provides the historical, geographical, economic and racial settings for these corporate communities and traces their existence through United States rule.
