"This history tells the story of an idea, "The Southwest," through the development of American anthropology and archaeology. For eighty years following the end of the Mexican-American War, anthropology more than any other discipline described the people, culture, and land of the American Southwest to cultural tastemakers and consumers on the East Coast.

Digging deeply into primary public and private historical records, the author uses biographical vignettes to recreate the men and women who pioneered American anthropology and archaeology in the Southwest and explores institutions such as the Smithsonian, University of Pennsylvania Museum, School of American Research, and American Museum of Natural History that influenced southwestern research agenda, published results, and exhibited artifacts. Equally influential in this popular movement were the "Yearners" - novelists, poets, painters, photographers, and others - such as Alice Corbin, Oliver La Farge, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Laura Adams Armer whose literature and art incorporated southwestern ethnography, sought the essence of the Indian and Hispano world, and substantially shaped the cultural impression of "The Southwest" to the American public.

Fowler brings this history to a close on the eve of the New Deal, which dramatically restructured the practice of anthropology and archaeology in the United States."--BOOK JACKET.