Native and Spanish New Worlds: Sixteenth-Century Entradas in the American Southwest and Southeast

Editors’ Preface

Editors’ Preface This volume had its origins in the vanishing twilight of a weekend in the fall of 2007 spent mapping sixteenth-century artifacts in the urban core of Albuquerque, New Mexico. With the light fading, and the only source of illumination for the pin flags at his feet being the dim light of a GPS unit, one of us (CM) felt the gentle tug of a metaphor. Whatever small light our modest findings were going to shed on the Vázquez de Coronado expedition, it seemed clear that we needed to connect our ideas and energies with like-minded colleagues if we were to illuminate anything of broader significance. This volume reflects a considerable effort on the part of many individuals to make meaningful connections between subjects and regions that were, in some cases at least, no more closely connected in the sixteenth century than they are at present. Inevitably, this formidable endeavor has its historical roots in the pioneering work of scholars such as Henri Ternaux-Compans, Adolf Bandelier, Herbert Bolton, Frederick Hodge, George Hammond, Agapito Rey, and John Swanton. Its more recent scholastic ties lie with a host of other archaeological, anthropological, and historical work, particularly the contributions of Charles Hudson, Kathleen Deagan, David Hurst Thomas, Stanley South, Patricia Galloway, Vernon Knight, Marvin Smith, Chester DePratter, Paul Hoffman, John Hann, Charles Ewen, Russell Skowronek, Jerald Milanich, Robbie Ethridge, Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint, Tom Chávez, Robert Preucel, T. J. Ferguson , Thomas Sheridan, Carroll Riley, John Kessell, Marc Simmons, and David Snow. A more direct line of descent for the book can be traced to two recent conference sessions. The first was organized by Charles Haecker and Clay Mathers for the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings in Albuquerque in 2008, which focused on the activities and impacts of the Vázquez de Coronado entrada in New Mexico. In the following year, a second session with a broader canvas was organized by Clay Mathers, Charles Haecker, and Matthew Schmader at the 2009 meetings of the Society for American Archaeology in Atlanta. The latter was our first attempt to address formally the principal theme x Editors’ Preface of this volume, which is a comparison of sixteenth-century entradas in what is now the Southwestern and Southeastern United States. We owe a profound debt of gratitude to all of the contributors to those sessions including Chris Adams, Nahide Aydin, Robin Beck, Dennis Blanton, Dick Chapman, Jonathan Damp, Robbie Ethridge, Charles Ewen, Richard Flint, Shirley Cushing Flint, Dale Hutchinson, Phil Leckman , Francis Levine, Gene Lyon, David Moore, Ann Ramenofsky, Chris Rodning, Joseph Sánchez, Matt Schmader, Dan Simplicio, David Hurst Thomas, Robert Thrower, Carla Van West, Brad Vierra, Tom Windes, and John Worth. Retracing part of the Soto route through western Tennessee and eastern Arkansas on the drive home to New Mexico from the Atlanta SAAs, we were more fortunate than Don Hernando’s entrada nearly 470 years earlier having met and joined forces with Jeffrey Mitchem. At the University of Arizona Press, we are especially grateful to Editor-in-Chief Allyson Carter and her colleagues for their patience, thoughtful comments, and quintessential professionalism they have extended to us throughout this project. The quality of our final product owes much to their diligent and conscientious work. A special thanks is owed to our Native American colleagues—Dan Simplicio, Robert Thrower, Tom Kennedy, and Joseph Suina—all of whom helped in a variety of ways to give voice to a very difficult and transformational experience in their communities’ pasts. While these perspectives remain sensitive, elusive, and underrepresented for a variety of reasons, they continue to be essential to understanding early entradas and European colonialism in any meaningful way. With their help, and the assistance of others such as Kurt and Cindy Dongoske, we look forward to an ongoing and productive discourse that we feel certain will enrich our understanding of the Early Historic Period in both the Southwest and Southeast. We also wish to extend our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers who evaluated an earlier version of this manuscript. Their care, attention , and thoughtful advice were greatly appreciated by all of us. Finally, our deepest appreciation is to the Amerind Foundation and the Society for American Archaeology for their generosity in granting us their 2009 conference award and for the opportunity to continue and expand our discussions at the Foundation’s spectacular facility in [3.145.16.90] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 04:40 GMT...