Death and Dying in New Mexico (review)

?o6Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly for its southern and southeastern Indian neighbors. Toleration may have existed among the Creeks, but this was not the case elsewhere. During Reconstruction, for example, U.S. senators were repeatedly frustrated by the actions of Creek Indians and African Creeks when they tried to treat African Creeks as freed people . At about the same time, violent confrontations repeatedly took place between African Creeks and Cherokee Indians, neighbors who "during the postwar period did not exhibit the fluidity and flexibility found in die Creek county" (P- 124). Zellar's study focuses primarily on the political and the public, as it follows the history of race and citizenship through the maze of late-nineteenth- and early -twentieth-century Indian history. Only through federal interference through the Dawes Act and die allotment of lands did this era of tolerance end. At the turn of the twentieth century African Creeks had "full political, legal, and economic rights as citizens of the Creek Nation." Yet, within a decade, "the foundation of those rights—Creek citizenship and the right to hold and improve any part of the Creek domain—was kicked out from underneath them in the guise of reform and progress" (p. 257). Jim Crow would thereafter structure Creek society . African Creeks emphasizes the formalist interpretations ofsources and largely determines issues of identity through the legal issue of citizenship. Personal relationships and attitudes are largely overshadowed by political discussions, voting records, U.S. commission hearings, and public controversies. These discussions overwhelm the all-too-brief discussions of how African Creeks embraced or contributed elements of Creek culture or how they were actually integrated into the community. In this regard, Zellar's work differs from the studies by Claudio Saunt, Tiya Miles, Circe Sturm, and others who explore the intricacies of southeastern families with ethnohistorical evidence. Rather than attribute the CreekAfrican relationship to the widespread ethnic diversity within Creek society or to familial or clan ties, Zellar perhaps simplistically attributes it to Creek tolerance. Despite its shortcomings, African Creeks is a remarkably lucid, well-researched , and documented study that deserves the attention of southeastern Indian historians, as well as scholars of race, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Although it is certainly not the last word on the topic of Indians, race, and identity , it should help shape the future conversation. Florida Slate UniversityAndrew K. Frank Death and Dying in New Mexico. By Martina Will de Chaparro. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Pp. 286. Illustrations, figures, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 9780826341631. $29.95, cloth.) Having suffered the untimely death of a loved one in early adulthood, Martina Will approaches her topic with a respectfulness that transcends this careful, lucidly presented academic study, the first to probe the subject in New Mexico. Her eye is on human beings as she relates telling anecdotes that put flesh (at 2??8Book Reviews107 least temporarily) on the numbers. Probing their emotions and practices surrounding deatfi, she illuminates people's lives, demonstrating time and again how in colonial New Mexico death possessed a meaning beyond the immediate loss it represented. On occasion, for example, dying New Mexicans reached out in their wills to free or bind the living, listing as property captive Indians (and their children) who had grown up serving their families, preferring because of antislavery legislation the more benign term criado (one who has been raised) to esclavo. At the heart of diis study are analyses based on the author's examination of 469 wills (overall, a very small percentage of Hispanic and Pueblo Indian New Mexicans made wills) and of thousands of burial entries in sacramental registers. These are informed by literature on death and dying from Spain, Mexico, and North America. Core chapters consider "The Good Death," "Releasing Worldly and Spiritual Concerns," "Rituals to Aid the Soul," "Treating the Physical Remains ," and "Exiling the Dead." Will writes with precision and wit as when referring to outsiders who imposed their alien funeral industry during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their names must have fallen clumsily off the tongues of Spanish speakers: Spiegelman, Deibyshire, Klattenhoff (p. 175). And, following David Weber, she provides in the notes Spanish transcriptions of every passage she has translated. Spanish...