The Railroad and the Pueblo Indians

In The Railroad and the Pueblo Indians , Richard H. Frost gives us a thumbnail history of the Santa Fe Railroad with a focus on New Mexico. The railroad’s managers drove the line into the territory in 1879, despite the Southwest’s paltry economic promise “more out of temperament than reason” (p. 23). Geographic considerations unmitigated by any sensitivity to the wishes of the peoples whose lands were crossed dictated that tracks passed near or even through Pueblo villages. While Frost relies almost exclusively on secondary sources for his railroad history, the book’s real contribution is the story it tells of the effect of the railroad on the Pueblos and what followed in its wake. The negative impacts included trains killing Indians and their livestock, rights-of-way ruining crops and vital irrigation systems, the appropriation of scarce water, and the undermining of access to and ownership of land. Frost also describes the much broader avalanche of change—settlers with their own animals seeking good grazing, laws, schools, disease, and a host of inquisitive artists and social scientists, to name a few.

Appropriation · Archaeology · Ethnology · Frost (temperature) · Geography · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine