Pueblo and Mission: Cultural Roots of the Southwest

The American Southwest is one of the most compelling landscapes on Earth, drawing millions of visitors to its beauty, its Monument Valley spires and red rock cliffs and mountain-studded cactus valleys. It's also a very challenging environment in which to live. If any landscape on Earth speaks powerfully to its human inhabitants, it should be this landscape. "Pueblo and Mission" explores how this landscape has manifested itself in the spiritual lives of its inhabitants. Organized around the four seasons, "Pueblo and Mission" follows the cycle of religious ceremonies as desert inhabitants wait for the rain and for the crops to grow and for the harvest, as humans are constantly reminded of their depen/dance on mysterious nature, as they watch other creatures struggling for survival, and as they celebrate the life nature bestows on them. Author Susan Lamb searches for common patterns in the ceremonies of diverse tribes. Did they learn these common patterns from one another, or was the power of the land speaking the same meanings to all? This is an anthropologically elusive subject, but Lamb brings out enough common patterns--shared across tribes with otherwise very different histories and lifestyles--that its easy to hear the landscape speaking through what is, after all, universal human flesh and spirit. What makes this book unusual these days is that Lamb doesn't stop with the native tribes but includes Hispanic culture. For quite awhile now, revisionist historians have emphasized what makes native culture different from European culture, with the Europeans playing the bad guys. But Lamb points out that Hispanics have been living in this landscape for many centuries now and have also heard its power. There are obvious ways in which Hispanic and native cultures have been influencing one another, but in the end its the landscape that proves more powerful than human cultures. Lamb concludes by saying that for Anglos the Southwest is still defined largely by cultural images brought with us from the east and from Europe and forged in a brief pioneering era, but eventually this landscape will speak powerfully to us also and give us a deeper sense of connection with it.

As a resident of the southwest, I appreciated that the author clearly knows this region's rich cultural history well and recounts it lovingly in a very accessible way. It's beautifully written and the photographs are striking. I highly recommend it.