Pueblo Rights in the Land of Enchantment

Malcolm Ebright, Rick Hendricks and Richard W. Hughes’ Four Square Leagues: Pueblo Indian Land in New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, $65) is a readable, engaging history of the New Mexican Pueblos’ work to maintain their land holdings over the last four hundred years.

From the legally nebulous but widely recognized “Pueblo league” under  Spanish colonization to the reclamation of Blue Lake by Taos Pueblo in 1970, the authors provide a detailed history of the failures and successes of land reclamation for the Pueblo people in New Mexico under three different governments. Their analysis will be valuable to Indian communities working on maintaining or reclaiming their lands throughout the United States, as well as the lawyers and politicians involved in these legal proceedings.

—Kara Carroll author of “Coming to Grips with America: The Japanese American Experience in the Southwest”