ebooks Not All Okies Are White: The Lives of Black Cotton Pickers in Arizona by Geta LeSeur in History

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Beginning in the late nineteenth century; the pueblos of the Southwest frequently inspired Anglo-American visitors to express their sense of wonder and enchantment in biblical references. Frank Hamilton Cushing's first account of Zuni pueblo described a setting that looked like "The Pools of Palestine." Drawn to the Southwest; Mabel Dodge imagined "a garden of Eden; inhabited by an unfallen tribe of men and women." There she was attracted to Tony Luhan; a Taos Indian who looked "like a Biblical figure."When historian Jerold Auerbach first saw Edward S. Curtis's early twentieth-century photograph Taos Water Girls; he realized that "here; indeed; was the biblical Rebecca; relocated to New Mexico from ancient Haran; where Abraham's faithful servant had journeyed to find a suitable wife for Isaac. Rebecca with her water pitcher is as familiar a biblical icon as Noah and his ark or Moses with the stone tablets. Curtis had recast her as the archetypal Pueblo maiden."Explorers in Eden uncovers an intriguing array of diaries; letters; memoirs; photographs; paintings; postcards; advertisements; anthropological field studies; and scholarly monographs. They reveal how Anglo-Americans disenchanted with modern urban industrial society developed a deep and rich fascination with pueblo culture through their biblical associations.