1851 By Patricia Trujillo In a footnote in Marc Simmons, Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves, the author writes, “It should be noted that historian Twitchell in writing of Manuel relied heavily on information supplied by Amado” (226). Indeed, Simmons credits Chaves with compiling…
10 1885 By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint Born to mining engineer Alfred Kidder and his wife Kate Dalliba in Marquette, Michigan, in October 1885, Alfred Vincent Kidder was poised, at age 30, to become one of the leading figures in study of the prehistoric American Southwest. While…
By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint From 1927 until 1968, James F. Zimmerman and his executive assistant, Tom Popejoy, served successively as president of the University of New Mexico for 39 years, with only a short, two-year interregnum. That has been the longest period of administrative stability that…
Frances Webster Léon was born on August 6, 1917 in Irvington, New York. In 1940 at the age of 23, she married Morris H. Swadesh. Their marriage lasted until 1958, but she continued to use the surname Swadesh until 1978 when she married Miguel F. Quintana. Thereafter she…
8 14 1900 By Enrique R. Lamadrid University of New Mexico Linguist and folklorist Juan Bautista Rael, highly regarded for his pioneering work in collecting and documenting the Hispano folk stories, plays, and religious traditions of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, was born on August 14, 1900, in…
Terry Moody and Clarence Fielder The African-American Experience African-Americans have been significant to the history of southern New Mexico since the 1860s. The earliest African-Americans to spend more than a short period of time in the New Mexico Territory were troops of black soldiers—the famous “Buffalo Soldiers”—sent by the…
