Santa Fe

the long version

The author who gave America a great book on Indian life, Laughing Boy, and a splendid succession of books of fiction and nonfiction based in the Southwest, as at last chosen Santa Fe, his own place of residence, for one of the most absorbing of his accounts. For 110 years, The New Mexican has been the mirror of Santa Fe life. It reflects the story of a peculiar community, at once raw frontier and older than any other surviving capital or any other settlement, with the possible exception of St. Augustine. From its pages, Mr. La Farge has extracted the narrative of the city, from its occupation by Americans after the Mexican War to the present. We see Santa Fe emerge from a remote Mexican provincial capital, newly annexed, besieged by hostile Indians. Then, as Indian troubles fade away, the era of the bad man, highway robbers, casual gunfights, and lynch law appears, to be followed by a modicum of law and order, gold rushers (mostly for no gold), a fake diamond find, the beginning of coal mining, and the appearance of tourists. How "modern" Santa Fe made its appearance is the story of how brick dwellings almost triumphed over the ancient adobe of other centuries. It is also the story of how the Indian returned to Santa Fe, from which his art and handicrafts have been diffused to the larger world. It is the story of great writers and artists: among the former, Alice Corbin, Carl Sandburg, Witter Bynner, and Mary Austin; and among the latter, Randall Davey and John Sloan. But the story of Santa Fe must be allowed to tell itself, as Oliver La Farge has wisely chosen to do in this interesting book -- Book jacket.