“This book is a tour de force. Reading what the Spaniards’ Indigenous ‘auxiliaries’ wrote in their own words, often in their own language, Travis Jeffres has brilliantly brought to life both the complex nature of their experiences—neither purely victimized nor uniformly self-actualizing—and their central importance in the history of the borderlands.”—Camilla Townsend, author of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
“This fascinating study sheds dazzling light on relationships between the Spanish empire, the sedentary Native peoples of central Mexico, and the culturally alien peoples of the arid North. Using a painstakingly assembled archive of Native-language documents, Travis Jeffres allows us to witness the harrowing yet creative process by which migration to the northern frontier transformed the identities of Native settlers from central Mexico.”—Raphael Brewster Folsom, author of The Yaquis and the Empire: Violence, Spanish Imperial Power, and Native Resilience in Colonial Mexico
“The scholarship is most impressive. . . . Travis Jeffres manages to read Nahuatl sources against the grain, especially in his magnificent chapter on the town cabildos of San Esteban. His work pushes our understanding of the Nahuatl-speaking people on the frontier forward. And at the same time, he has updated and further historicized the northern Mexican frontier theses of Friedrich Katz, John Tutino, and others.”—James David Nichols, author of The Limits of Liberty: Mobility and the Making of the Eastern U.S.-Mexico Border
