The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988 Page: 398

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

venture to this remote region. The smaller operators hoped to strike a
fortune but would have been better off ignoring the area altogether.
Disappointments, not profits, rewarded their efforts.
Professor of history at North Texas State University (and longtime
visitor to the area he writes about), Jim Berry Pearson makes the most
of the history he found. The available sources were almost as shallow as
the ore deposits; without more information to flesh out the story, it is
difficult to make the people of the mines and the mining camps come
alive. Using a straightforward narrative, with little interpretation, Pear-
son does not attempt to attribute more importance to Red River-
Twining than is warranted. The volume certainly deserves better maps
but is fairly well served by the photographs. A little more effort to fit
this mining district into the larger picture of regional mining would
have been beneficial.
Tourism proved to be the ultimate bonanza for this beautiful moun-
tainous region north of Taos. Tourists, residents, and mining aficio-
nados will be the most likely purchasers of the book. The Red River-
Twining Area is not for readers who prefer success stories.
Fort Lewis College DUANE A. SMITH
Durango, Colorado
Legacy of Honor: The Life of Rafael Chacon, A Nineteenth-Century New
Mexican. Edited by Jacqueline Dorgan Meketa. (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Pp. x+439. Introduction,
maps, illustrations, appendices, notes, selected bibliography, in-
dex. $24-95, cloth; $12.95, paper.)
Students of New Mexico's past have long known that the story of that
state's history during the nineteenth century has been largely told by
Anglos. Jacqueline Dorgan Meketa has taken an important step to cor-
rect this imbalance in her careful editing of the memoirs of Rafael
Chacon, an extraordinary native New Mexican who was an eyewitness
to almost every major event during this transitional period from the
state's declining years as a Mexican territory to the year 1870, when
Chacon left for Trinidad, Colorado, to start a new life. Consequently,
an unusual native perspective is offered in this volume, along with
some of the most dramatic chapters in the state's history. Chacon,
for example, gives his impressions of the Chimayo Rebellion of 1837
(largely through the recollections of his father), the American conquest
of New Mexico in 1846, the Taos Uprising of 1847, and the Confeder-
ate invasion of the Union Territory of New Mexico during the early

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