Through Our Unknown Southwest

From the doorway of a cliff dwelling, Agnes C. Laut looks across ruined rooms, stone stairways and a canyon alive with birds and distant animal calls. Her 1913 travel account approaches the American Southwest through its landscapes, settlements and traces of earlier habitation. Details such as grinding stones, pottery fragments, irrigation channels and ceremonial chambers give the opening its close attention to place. Its chapters range across national forests, Acoma, the Painted Desert, Santa Fe and Taos.

The account also considers the people living in the region. Laut challenges official portrayals of the Navajo and draws on conversations with traders and missionaries to describe failures of government administration. Readers interested in travel writing and American regional history will find a personal voice that moves between scenic observation, accounts of local life and arguments about how the Southwest's inhabitants are treated.