As a longtime aficionado of the history of the Francisco Vázquez de Coronado expedition in the US Southwest, I was thrilled to be asked to review Matthew F. Schmader’s Uncovering America’s First War. If I had to sum up this book in one word, it would be “rich.” It is rich in historical context, in archaeological data and illustrations, and in ethnography. Its richness is enhanced by providing Spanish and Native American perspectives of the events that occurred in 1540–1541 during the “Tiguex War” in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Schmader appropriately characterizes the intense and violent interactions between the Coronado expedition and Tiwa-speaking peoples of central New Mexico as “America’s First War.” His book is an intensive study of a single battle site—Piedras Marcadas (LA 290)—located near modern Albuquerque. It was one of several villages to which Coronado laid siege, and the book presents compelling archaeological evidence of this warfare.
Uncovering America’s First War has 11 chapters, 103 figures, and 19 data tables. Chapters 1 and 2 provide historical context for the Coronado expedition, and chapter 3 discusses mid-sixteenth-century weaponry of the Spaniards, the indios amigos (Indigenous people from Mexico who accompanied the expedition and outnumbered the Spaniards by three to one), and the Tiwa peoples defending their homeland. The Spanish used crossbows and arquebuses, along with horses and attack dogs. The indios amigos had their own weapons, including obsidian blade-edge wooden clubs. The Tiwa used bows and arrows, stone axes, throwing stones (thrown from rooftops), and slings and slingstones. A slingstone is a weapon system used around the world by many peoples, but it is greatly underrepresented in the archaeological record because of our inability to recognize the subtle evidence.
Chapter 4 describes the Middle Rio Grande Valley, or Tiguex province. Chapter 5 summarizes the arrival of Coronado into the region, with accounts of battles that occurred at different pueblos. Chapter 6 then outlines the archaeology and history of the “Southern Tiwa World” and describes the archaeological sites that comprise the pueblos encountered by Coronado.
Chapter 7 reviews decades of previous archaeological investigations and looting at Piedras Marcadas, followed by accounts of recent investigations that are the main focus of the book. After the establishment of Petroglyph National Monument in 1990, consultation with modern pueblos led to various investigations, including noninvasive geophysical surveys, surface surveys and mapping, metal detecting, 3D reconstructions of the large pueblo complex, and limited subsurface testing.
Archaeologists with interests in Coronado artifacts and Indigenous defensive weaponry—especially the slingstones and throwing stones used by the Tiwa—will appreciate chapter 8. It is a catalog of Coronado period artifacts, with descriptions and illustrations of a diverse assemblage of mid-sixteenth-century material culture: lead musket balls and baling seals; copper crossbow bolt heads, bells, and tinklers; and wrought-iron facet-headed nails. Especially important are the discussions of chipped-stone arrow points, axe heads, throwing stones, and slingstones used by the Tiwa.
Chapter 9 summarizes technical analyses of items found at Piedras Marcadas. Lead isotope and XRF analyses were used to study lead balls; copper bolt heads; bronze and brass buckles, bells, and aglets; and iron facet-head nails. It is notable that some of the Piedras Marcadas lead and brass artifacts are close geochemical matches of specimens recovered from the Jimmy Owen site (41FL81), a well-documented Coronado campsite in the Texas Panhandle. XRF was also used to source obsidian items, and three specimens were linked a source in central Mexico, representing obsidian weapons brought by the indios amigos. Metallurgical studies of iron and slag were also conducted.
Chapter 10 presents a spatial analysis of selected material culture, especially weapon-related artifacts, recovered from Piedras Marcadas. The large volume of diagnostic Coronado period metal artifacts is impressive enough to convince me that Piedras Marcadas was one of the Tiwa pueblos under siege, but I am skeptical that all the specimens identified as throwing stones and slingstones were actually weapons used during the Coronado attacks—many of them probably are but just not all of them. Chapter 11 then describes the aftermath of Coronado’s expedition. By all accounts it was a failure, and the Spaniards managed to alienate Native peoples and set the stage for centuries of mistrust, animosity, and violence.
In the foreword to the book, consummate Coronado historians Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint characterize Schmader’s book as “truly transformative.” The afterword, written by Theodore S. Jojola, Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico, provides an Indigenous perspective on Tiwa worldviews and the importance of this book.
Schmader has done an amazing job of presenting extensive new evidence in a well-written treatise that is a must-read for anyone interested in European colonialism in the American Southwest. Schmader presents an honest synthesis of the brutality of the Coronado entrada and, at the same time, recognizes the “Tiwa’s survival story” (p. xix). I wholeheartedly agree with Schmader: “Achieving a better understanding of the active defense mounted by the Tiwas is one of the most important advances in the current study” (p. 3).
