San Antonio College Library

Robert S. Weddle describes how, in six expeditions by land and five by sea, Spanish explorers combed the coastal region from the Florida Kes to Tampico.

Three essays revised and with a new prologue from the author's Great River ; the Rio Grande in North American history.

An absorbing social history of the lives of the intrepid settlers who rallied around their traditional institutions--mission centers, municipalities, and the military arm of the crown--to secure the northernmost frontier of New Spain and to convert theland, as much as they were capable, into a productive segment of the empire... This volume merits a wide audience especially among social scientists engaged in providing meaning to the Mexican American...

Examines the origins and legacies of a captive exchange economy within and among native American and Euramerican communities throughout the Southwest Borderlands from the Spanish colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century, detailing a "slave system" in which victims symbolized social wealth, performed services for their masters, and produced material goods under the threat of violence, with slave and livestock raiding and trading among Apaches,...

A fast-paced, abundantly illustrated history of the Spanish colonies that became the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. Chronicling the period of Hispanic activity from the time of Columbus to Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, Kessell traces the three great swells of Hispanic exploration, encounter, and influence that rolled north form Mexico across the coasts and high deserts of the western borderlands. The first surge,...