Captive Women in the Slave System of the Southwest Borderland A Home Lands lecture

Join Dr. James F. Brooks for the kickoff of the programming series for Home Lands: How Women Made the West. At 2 pm on Sunday, June 26, Brooks, president of the School for Advanced Research, speaks on “Captive Women in the Slave System of the Southwest Borderland.” The lecture is free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents) in the History Museum Auditorium.

Brooks is the author Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). The book explores the origins and legacies of a flourishing captive exchange economy within and among Native American communities and European colonists. His research begins in the Spanish colonial era and runs through 1909, when an American woman discovered she had inherited 32 Ute slaves – possibly the last slaves in the United States.

Brooks writes that indigenous and colonial traditions of capture, servitude, and kinship formed a "slave system" in which victims symbolized social wealth, performed services for their masters, and produced material goods under the threat of violence. Slave and livestock raiding and trading provided labor, redistributed wealth, and fostered kin connections that integrated disparate groups even as they renewed cycles of violence.

In its Rio Arriba section, Home Lands includes a late 19th-century blanket woven by a Navajo woman held captive in a Spanish home. The blanket shows how the forced blending of cultures resulted in an evolution of weaving traditions, with Native American techniques influencing Spanish techniques, and vice versa. (Download a high-resolution image of the blanket by clicking here.)

Home Lands, open June 19 through Sept. 11, anchors a summer-long celebration of history’s unsung heroes. Its companion exhibits: Ranch Women of New Mexico through Oct. 30; New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable, through Oct. 9; and Heart of the Home, through Nov. 20. Originally organized by the Autry Museum and augmented with items from the History Museum, Home Lands explores the stories of women across the centuries in three geographic regions: New Mexico’s Rio Arriba, Colorado’s Front Range, and Washington’s Puget Sound.

The full schedule of lectures and workshops supporting these exhibitions; all are free and in the History Museum auditorium unless other noted:

Sunday, June 12, 2-4 pm: Symposium on “The Journey of the African American North,” including stories from Santa Fe and Española.

Sunday, June 26, 2 pm: “Captive Women in the Slave System of the Southwest Borderland.” Lecture by James F. Brooks, president of the School for Advanced Research and prize-winning author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.

Sunday, July 10, 2 pm: “Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and The Good Life.” Lecture by Tey Diana Rebolledo, regents professor at the University of New Mexico.

Sunday, July 17, 2 pm: “Moving Around to Settle In: Women of the Plains and Range.” Lecture by Virginia Scharff, co-curator of Home Lands and director of UNM’s Center for the Southwest.

Monday, July 25, 9 am to 4:30 pm, and Tuesday, July 26, 9 am to 12 pm: "Planting Seeds:  Home, Healing and Horticulture." Conference in collaboration with the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. $25.

Sunday, Aug. 7, 2-4 pm: “Homespun: Northern New Mexico Spinning and Weaving Techniques.” Members of the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center demonstrate Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish techniques in the Palace Courtyard.

Friday, Aug. 12, 6 pm: “Through Her Eyes: An American Indian Woman’s Perspective.” Lecture by Eunice Petramala, park ranger at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Sunday, Sept. 25, 2-4 pm: Symposium on “Entrepreneurship in the African American Community,” from barbers to caterers, mechanics to artists.

Home Lands is generously supported by Cam and Peter Starret, Ernst & Young, Eastman Kodak Company, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Unified Grocers, Wells Fargo, KCET and the Friends of the Autry. Local support is provided by Stanley S. and Karen Hubbard, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, the Palace Guard and the Montezuma Ball.