Desert Drums: The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico 1540-1928

Description

Author: Crane, Leo (1881-1959?)

Publisher: Rio Grande Press (Glorieta, NM)

Pub Date: 1972 (Reprint edition)

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fair to Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Without dust jacket, as issued.  Map of pueblos as endpapers.  Some smudging to front and rear boards.  Light edge and corner wear.

Notes: Facsimile reprint of the 1928 edition.  Crane joined the Indian Bureau (today’s BIA) in 1903.  He worked at Keams Canyon until 1919, and then was transferred to Albuquerque, with a responsibility for the Pueblos.  He was transferred again to South Dakota, then worked with the Mohave and Chemchuevi along the lower Colorado River.  He was not a fan of the way the government treated his charges, and he went head-to-head with President Harding, and Senator (then Secretary of the Interior) Albert Bacon Fall, scrapes which cost him his job as an Indian agent.  A sympathetic examination of Pueblo relations with each other, the Spanish, New Mexico colonists, politicians, and the U.S. Government.  Today, we’d label Crane a whistleblower.