The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other Indian Country Affairs

Albuquerque, New Mexco: University of New Mexico Press, 1973. First Edition Stated . Hard Back. Fine/Very Good. 5 3/4" x 8 1/4. Stouffer, Dan. 147 Pages. Tan boards with black lettering and decorations to front and spine. Very light rippling to bottom edge of back board. Barely noticeable. There are two half-inch closed tears to the cover. One at the top of the spine and another to the lower spine area. The $5.95 flap price is not clipped. What is New Mexico? Of the many writers who have tried to answer that question, we think Tony Hillerman comes closest to answering it without romanticizing this desert country. He is not a historian, not a guidebook-writer; his book, as he says, is "not intended to convert the Lubbock-Jersey City philistia, or to please any chambers of commerce." The essays that make up The Great Taos Bank Robbery tell of a wide variety of incidents, characters, and places that "offer insights into the mystique of this high, dry tag-end of the American Rockies." We hope, with the author, that one could send it away to a literate friend and have him understand a little better the hold this country has on many who live here. Among the tales and sketches in this book are "The Great Taos Bank Robbery"-an examination of the nature of Taos, as exposed by the community's reaction to the efforts of a pair of inept bad men to rob the First National Bank and to the subsequent comic opera manhunt. "The Very Heart of Our Country"-a look at the Holy Land of the Navajos and its mythic landmarks. "We All Fall Down"-the Pecos high country visited on a tense hunt for the foci of bubonic plague bacilli which had already killed two men. "The Conversion of Cletus Xywanda"-the peculiarities of Santa Fe considered in terms of their impact on a Nigerian political editor. "The Hunt for the Lost American"-a profile of the excavation of a Folsom Man hunting camp on the Llano de Albuquerque. "Quijote in Rio Arriba County"-a study of the gentle mystic radical Reies Lopez Tijerina and his Land Grant movement. "Othello in Union County"-how a closed- minded physical anthropologist and a black scholar-cowboy made Folsom, New Mexico famous. Contents in Nine Chapters: The Great Taos Bank Robbery The Navajo Who Had So Many Friends He Couldn't Get No Wire Strung, The Very Heart of Our Country The Mountain on the Guardrail at Exit 164B, We All Fall Down The Messenger Birds, The Conversion of Cletus Xywanda The Apache Who Wouldn't Be Missed, The Hunt for the Lost American How Quemado Got Quemado, Las Trampas Black Jack Ketchum and the Sixteen Faithful Bartenders, Othello in Union County The Committee and the Mule Deer, Quijote in Rio Arriba County Keeping Secrets from the Russians, and Mr. Luna's Lazarus Act.