Explorers in Eden: Pueblo Indians and the Promised Land (review)

?o6Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly ofhis buUdings. This newbook celebrates twenty-two ofthose restorations, all ofwhich are in Texas. It is a handsome coffee-table book profusely illustrated with archival images and beautiful newcolorphotographs by the author's husband, W. Eugene George. Scholars will find the documentation sections inferior to footnotes, however. Readers familiar with the 1972 book may experience déjà vu perusing the present volume. It is laid out in much die same manner, opening with background information on Giles and San Antonio. Those seeking a new biography will be disappointed to find paragraphs from the earlier book repeated nearly verbatim. The author adds some new detail, notably regarding the architect's family and work in Mexico, but clearly this book is more about restoration projects than about significantly advancing information on Giles. Nevertheless, George's scholarship remains the essential source on the architect. Next come individual discussions of the featured buildings and restorations. While uneven, these essays can be fascinatingand will be ofspecial interest to preservationists , urban planners, restoration architects, and developers. For instance, the discussion ofthe Sullivan Stable and Coach House (San Antonio, 1896) covers decades of dashed reuse plans, looming demolition threats, compromises, and ultimately a painstaking dismanding and reassembly at a new location. George identifies and salutes those responsible, including property owners, philanthropists, civic organizations, and public agencies. History and architecture buffs will find these tales heartening: while much of our historic built environment still deserves rescue, this book demonstrates thatgreatstrides have been made in the technology and viability of historic preservation in recent decades. In the firstappendix George seeks to correctsome misinformation surrounding GUes'swork. One instance concerns dieaudiorship ofthe Presidio CountyCourthouse in Marfa (1886), which is often attributed to Giles. The author rejects this because county records document the design work going to a contractor. While true, this reviewer argued in an article in the October 2004 Southwestern Hutorical (Quarterly for the likelihood diat Giles designed tins courthouse all the same. George's stance is understandable, but it means that the splendid restoration ofdie Presidio courthouse is not treated within her book. The second appendix is a valuable, updated checklist of Giles buildings in Texas and Mexico. As of this count, they total 159. TheArchitecturalLegacy ofAlfred Giles: Selected Restorations is a worthy and attractive addition to any coUection of preservation or Texas architecture books (even those that already contain George's now-scarce earlier volume, despite some redundancies) . Royal Oak, MichiganChris Meister Explorers in Eden:Pueblo Indians and thePromisedLand. Byjerold S. Auerbach. (Albuquerque : University ofNew Mexico Press, 2006. Pp. 216. Illustrations, sources, notes, index. ISBN 082633945X. $34.95, cloth.) The literature on non-Indians' perceptions of Indians is vast and varied. Whether focusing on European or American explorers, trappers, diplomats, 2007Book Reviews107 artists, reformers, spiritual leaders, or anthropologists, the conclusions of this genre are similar: non-Indians viewed and interpreted Indian cultures through their own culturally specific lenses. Rather than seeing indigenous peoples as they might perceive themselves, these interlopers constructed tropes of Indians as foils ofthemselves. Whether as "savage other," "noble primitive," or "ecological shaman," non-Indians projected their own anxieties and desires onto peoples that they never really tried to understand. Jerold Auerbach, a professor of history at Wellesley College, has offered an important contribution to this sizeable historiography. He focuses his work on the Pueblo Indians specifically, arguing thatAmericans conceived ofthe Southwest and its indigenous inhabitants in uniquely Biblical terms. Situating these perceptions within westward expansion, industrialization, and modernity, Auerbach claims that resdess non-Indians saw the Pueblos as a people in Eden, living a communal life in stark contrast to the anomie of fin de siècle America. Previous scholars have illustrated how the Southwest became an important symbol ofpre-modern liberation and egalitarianism, but few have so deftly interwoven religious rhetoric, scientific rationalism, nation building, and gender in such an engaging manner. Auerbach divides the book into two sections that reflect his emphasis on gender as a lens of historical analysis. Part One investigates the Southwest as a "testing ground" ofmasculinity. Frank Hamilton Cushing and his ethnographic study ofthe Zuni and Fred Harvey's construction and commodification ofland and people may be well known to most readers, but Matilda...