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'Contested Terrains' exhibit recalls how U.S. appropriated Mexican lands

The Mexican War, which began in 1845 when the United States annexed Texas and ended in 1848 with the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, reshaped the political geography of North America. Convinced of its "manifest destiny," the United States appropriated not only Texas, but also the areas that are now Arizona, western Colorado, Nevada, Utah, southern California and New Mexico -- territories that had been under the rule of the Republic of Mexico since the 1820s.

As a new exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library demonstrates, however, the military struggles of the late 1840s were embedded in political, ethnic, social, and economic conflicts that stretch back to the 16th century and continue into modern times.

Titled "Contested Terrain," the exhibit was organized by George A. Miles, curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana. It will continue through Dec. 23.

The first section of the exhibit focuses on the exploration and mapping of the Southwest, beginning with maps by 17th-century cartographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli. It was, however, the maps of Zebulon Pike (for whom Pike's Peak was named) that made Anglo-Americans aware of the region. The exhibit includes a manuscript map of east Texas (1827) drawn by Stephen Austin for use in a campaign against the Comanche, as well as maps, sketches and journals compiled by the French botanist Jean Louis Berlandier, who emigrated to Mexico in 1826 and served on the Mexican government's survey of its northern frontier in the late 1820s.

The handwritten documents, letters, broadsides and rare pamphlets that make up the second section of the display explore the social, economic and political forces at work in the Southwest in the 18th and early 19th centuries -- including the activities of missionaries, the conflict between Native Americans and Spanish settlers, trade and commerce, the settlement of Texas, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, and the ultimate annexation of Texas, New Mexico and California by the United States. These items include Stephen Austin's broadside confirming his land grant in Texas, the Texas declaration of independence, accounts of political unrest in New Mexico and California, and the original draft of the armistice that ended the Mexican War in 1848.

The 1847 treaty map, which is featured in the third part of the exhibition, had a fatal flaw, however: The cartographer placed El Paso, an important boundary marker of the agreement, at a latitude some 40 miles north of its actual location. The error initiated years of controversy, represented in the exhibit by the papers of William H. Emory, a major in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, who emerged in the 1850s as a key figure in the border survey. As late as the 1890s, a joint United States/Mexican commission collaborated in re-marking the border from El Paso to the Pacific coast, with the added documentation of photographs. This section of the exhibit includes a set of picture postcards depicting the events around General John Pershing's 1916 expedition in pursuit of the Mexican revolutionary Pacho Villa.

Twentieth-century documents in the display show how the contests of the Southwest extend into modern times. From the Warner Ranch Indian Advisory Commission of 1902 to the "Indian New Deal" of the 1930s, the exhibit explores issues concerning Native American land claims as the Southwest became more developed. A selection from the Jacques Levy/Cesar Chavez Collection, acquired by the Beinecke this year, forms the last section of the display. A journalist from Santa Rosa, California, Levy set out in the 1960s and 1970s to document the career of Cesar Chavez. Levy's papers, now at Yale, include over 200 hours of tape recorded interviews with Chavez, as well as journals, notes, government reports and publications, and ephemera relating to the noted political activist, as well as the United Farm Workers of America and its forerunner, the National Farm Workers Association.

The Beinecke Library, located at 121 Wall St., is open for exhibition viewing Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.- 5 p.m., and Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. The library will be closed Thanksgiving weekend. Admission is free.