Description: A history of land conflicts and legal cultures in the way the West was won. The story takes place in New Mexico, as it evolved from a Mexican colony to a U.S., territory. The author shows how ideas about land, ownership, and rights clashed in this transition from a legal culture based on pre-industrial norms to the modern market system of the U.S.
Review Quotes:
"A splendid study of the role of U.S. courts in consolidating colonialism. . . . This is the historian's craft at its best."--Ramón Gutiérrez, author of When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away
"A unique and important contribution to the history of the American West and to Chicano history."--Sarah Deutsch, author of No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940