Explorers in Eden: Pueblo Indians and the Promised Land

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University of New Mexico Press, 2006 - 205 pagine
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the pueblos of the Southwest frequently inspired Anglo-American visitors to express their sense of wonder and enchantment in biblical references. Frank Hamilton Cushing's first account of Zuni pueblo described a setting that looked like "The Pools of Palestine." Drawn to the Southwest, Mabel Dodge imagined "a garden of Eden, inhabited by an unfallen tribe of men and women." There she was attracted to Tony Luhan, a Taos Indian who looked "like a Biblical figure." When historian Jerold Auerbach first saw Edward S. Curtis's early twentieth-century photograph "Taos Water Girls," he realized that "here, indeed, was the biblical Rebecca, relocated to New Mexico from ancient Haran, where Abraham's faithful servant had journeyed to find a suitable wife for Isaac. Rebecca with her water pitcher is as familiar a biblical icon as Noah and his ark or Moses with the stone tablets. Curtis had recast her as the archetypal Pueblo maiden." "Explorers in Eden" uncovers an intriguing array of diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, paintings, postcards, advertisements, anthropological field studies, and scholarly monographs. They reveal how Anglo-Americans disenchanted with modern urban industrial society developed a deep and rich fascination with pueblo culture through their biblical associations.

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Sommario

American Holy Land 15
1
Cushing in Zuni
17
Visitors and Visions
44
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (2006)

Jerold S. Auerbach was born in Philadelphia on May 7, 1936. After graduating from Oberlin College, he entered Columbia Law School in the hopes of becoming a civil liberties lawyer. However, he quickly became disenchanted with the legal system and left the legal profession to pursue a career in history. He became a professor of history at Wellesley College. Auerbach's experiences with the law greatly influenced his writing. Through such works as Unequal Justice and Justice Without Law, he explored the darker side of the legal profession and struggled to understand and interpret law as it pertained to American society. His Jewish background also influenced his writing and provided us with such works as Rabbis and Lawyers and Jacob's Voices: Reflections of a Wandering American Jew, the latter an autobiographical work.

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