El Gringo: New Mexico and Her People

By William Watts Hart Davis

Book Overview

A veteran of the Mexican War, W. W. H. Davis returned to New Mexico in 1853 to become United States Attorney for the territory. He soon thought of himself as El Gringo, the stranger, who had much to learn about his new home and its people. Equipped with a few changes of clothes, a two-book law library, and a ravenous curiosity, Davis recorded in his diary all that impressed him on his thousand-mile trip to Santa F? and his thousand-mile court circuit. In 1856 he ransacked the diary to write El Gringo , selecting those features of custom, language, landscape, and history most likely to interest general readers. El Gringo caught on quickly. His duties took him far and wide, to ramshackle jails locked with twine and to the homes of the rich and powerful. His legal training intensified his interest in and understanding of the longstanding quarrels between Indians and whites, between New Mexicans and Texans, between the established Spanish-speaking population and the influx of new settlers and traders from the United States. His description of New Mexico is one of the earliest full-length accounts to appear in English and provides a stunning picture of a newly conquered land.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803216653
• ISBN13: 9780803216655
• Release Date: September 1982
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent, Probably the Best Book on New Mexico in the 1850's

This book is part travelogue, part history, part adventure and very well done. If you liked reading "Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail" by Lewis Hl Garrard and "Adventures in Mexico and Rocky Mountains" by George Frederick Ruxton and "Commerce of th Praires" by Josiah Greg you will like this book, too. The author served as US Attorney in New Mexico for several years starting in 1853. He says in the introduction he relied on records he translated from Spanish for much of the detail and information in his book. It is thorough. The account of his trip from Missouri along the Santa Fe Trail is especially worthwhile because his day-by-day account of trip gives miles covered and descriptions of the stops and landscape. It is surprising how fast a stage coach could go. Then his descriptions of the people in New Mexico, the Mexican and Indians, has to be the best written at that time because it is so thorough, thoughtful and wonderfully personal. Chapter headings will give you an idea of what it covers: Manners and Customs of the People, The Pueblo Indians, Winter in Santa Fe, Riding the Circuit (as U.S. Attorney) and a trip to the Navajo country. Something he mentions that some others of the same period mention is the fine wine made in El Paso, wine that had been made since 1650. I used to live not too far from El Paso in the 1950's and 1960's, and I never heard that. I love surprises like that.