This volume traces the evolution and interaction of Native American groups, Hispanic soldiers and settlers, and American pioneers--and the clash of national powers--in the Southwest. Against the backdrop of global and regional processes, Hall chronicles the way previously autonomous groups were transformed into ethnic minorities, some groups were destroyed, and others were assimilated and survived. A ground-breaking volume that merits serious consideration by all scholars who are interested in understanding the development of the American Southwest.--American Anthropologist

This book will have an impact on Mexican and American national histories. . . . Scholars and history enthusiasts of the Borderlands and the American West will benefit greatly from it. Instructors who teach either of these fields should not fail to assign it; their students will be richer for having read it.--Journal of American History

This is an impressive book. It should be evaluated within two genres. The first is other histories of frontier interaction in the U.S. Southwest. In this context it is very clear that Hall's book will replace earlier works as the standard. The second genre is now a large corpus of studies that closely examine the processes of incorporation and peripheralization into the expanding Europe-centered world-system as they occur within a particular region. . . . In this context Hall's is certainly one of the very best.--Christopher Chase Dunn in Contemporary Sociology