LPD Press & Rio Grande Books

Voices From the Past: The Comanche Raid of 1776 & Other Tales of New Mexico
History is an exploration of the vast treasure of untold and forgotten stories
found in New Mexico’s Spanish, Mexican, and Territorial period archives. Based
on a monthly column the author has published since 1992, the stories in this
volume will examine some of the accomplishments, triumphs, and tragedies
experienced by individuals we probably did not learn about in history class.
Learn about the Comanche raid of 1776 and what the historical record can tell
us about victims of the raid; read about the devastation inflicted by the dreaded
virguela, the smallpox epidemics that swept though entire communities in the
eighteenth century and of how the smallpox vaccine was introduced to New
Mexico in 1805; of Apache captives sold into slavery in the early eighteenth
century; of New Mexican’s struggle to prove their loyalty to the United States
during the Spanish American War; of a stern frontier judge who could condemn
a convicted murderer to hang and then write romantic letters to his wife; of the
devastating Las Vegas fire of 1880; and of a “Chicago gangster” who hid out in
northern New Mexico. These and four dozen additional “voices from the past”
provide the reader with fascinating and little-known details about New Mexico
history.
Robert J. Tórrez was born and raised in the northern New Mexico community of
Los Ojos and received his undergraduate and graduate education at Highlands
University in Las Vegas and the University of New Mexico. He served as the
New Mexico State Historian from 1987 until his retirement in December 2000.
In addition to his monthly column Voices From the Past on New Mexico history,
he is the author of five books on various aspects of New Mexico history and has
contributed chapters to more than twenty books and anthologies, including a
recent textbook for use in New Mexico schools.