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20ogBook Reviews443 relocation to the Rio Grande near contemporary Bernalillo, New Mexico, and die bitter winter (1539-1540) spent there; the march to the Texas Panhandle and beyond to the Arkansas River in present-day Kansas; and the retreat to the Rio Grande, followed by the expedition's subsequent wididrawal to Mexico City. What is different, however, makes this book a landmark study. Flint argues that Coronado and his men had much more nuanced motives than is generally accorded them. They primarily sought advanced indigenous communities wealthy enough to permit the granting of royal encomiendas (the right to collect tribute or labor from native polities), rather dian discovering easily exploitable gold and silver. Not finding such, they returned to Mexico deeply in debt. The author also emphasizes that virtually every Spanish expedition in the Americas relied heavily on Indian allies. These native auxiliaries should be given more credit for their role in Spanish exploration, including die Coronado entrada. Significantly, the author attributes the "longevity of reputation" (p. 123), along with the difficulty of precise understandings between native speakers and Spaniards, to explain what other scholars have recendy concluded. Namely, that what the Indian called "the Turk" described as the wonders of Quivira were likely references to long-ago, mound-building cultures of the Mississippi River basin. The unfortunate Turk had unwittingly conflated "lore of the past as news of the present." (p. 164). Flint, however, adds new insight on Cibola by asserting that its presumed wealth may likewise have been confused with Chacoan cultural centers at their zenith. Lastly, one caveat about this otherwise tour de force study. It is somewhat disconcerting to find bold-faced subtitles in many of the chapters. As an accomplished historian and stylist, Flint might have worked at bit harder as crafting transitional phrases and sentences. Nevertheless, if the reviewer has done justice to this superb volume in limited space, the reader will understand why it belongs in every college and university library and on the book shelves of all historians of Texas and the Southwest. University ofNorth Texas (Emeritus)Donald E. Chipman Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530—182 1. By Gloria Fraser Giffords. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. Pp. 478. Map, figures, illustrations, notes, sources, index. ISBN 9780816525898, 75.00 cloth.) For many years now, the University ofArizona Press has specialized in publishing source books and reference works focusing on the Hispanic legacy of the American Southwest and northern Mexico. This latest offering, Gloria Fraser Giffords's magisterial survey of the architecture and arts of the region's Spanish colonial churches, is perhaps the most useful of all. An art conservator by training with thirty years' experience, Giffords has an eye for detail and a concern for minutiae that make Sancularies ofEarth, Stone, and Light a handbook for under- 444Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril standing the technicalities of religious life in the Catholic world of colonial Mexico. Unlike an encyclopedia with discreet entries in alphabetical order, Sanctuaries ofEarth, Stone, and Light is organized around themes. The first chapters deal with architecture, emphasizing commonalities of style, techniques, and materials. Among the most useful elements in these chapters is the profusion of photographs and figures, all of them well labeled and defined. Her discussion of die builders, for instance, stresses the usually ignored facts that die labor of women was often necessary, and that the complexities of diese projects required the regular importation of skilled labor from the central portions of the viceroyalty, since most projects were beyond die capacities of priests and unskilled Indians to carry out. For those fascinated by how such large structures could be built with die simple tools at die disposal of colonial workmen, her discussion of scaffolding , centering, and stonework will be very revealing, especially as it is accompanied by excellent diagrams and photographic examples. The later chapters of die book are concerned with the material culture diat occupied the buildings. Here separate chapters on furnishings, liturgical linens and objects, images and altarpieces, are accompanied by ones focusing on iconography and symbolism. The chapter on die religious hierarchy will prove particularly instructive to anyone unfamiliar with die complexities of die Roman Church's...

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