Dec 2, 2020, the next Friends of History 1st Weds Lecture: Cathleen Cahill presents Recasting the Vote.

Graphic with details of Dr. Cathleen Cahill’s lecture.

Join us December 2nd at 12pm (MST) on our Youtube channel for December’s 1st Wednesday Lecture.

Will be joined by Dr. Cathleen Cahill, Associate Professor of History at Penn State University. Professor Cahill will tell the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights. Most suffrage stories are centered in the East and the Southwest as an afterthought at best. But Cahill asks what happens when we refocus the lens to center the stories in NM and the wider region? This talk reveals that suddenly our suffrage history is more diverse and more complicated than we anticipated. She will especially focus on New Mexico by exploring the important role of Spanish-speaking suffragists, the activism of African American women, and the debate over the Native American right to vote.  With suffragists of color in the foreground, Cahill will recast the suffrage movement as an unfinished struggle that extended beyond the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Cathleen D. Cahill, PHD is associate professor of history at Penn State University and the author of Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933, winner of the 2011 Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award and finalist for the 2012 David J. Weber-Clements Prize, Western History Association.

The bookcover for Recasting the Vote by Cathleen D. Cahill

Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfills its mission by offering high quality public history programs, including the First Wednesday Lecture Series. For more information, or to join the Friends of History, go to friends-of-history.org

You can find a playlist of previous 1st Wednesday Lectures on our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/nmmuseum and also on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NewMexicoHistoryMuseum

1st Wednesday Lecture: Blurred Borders: Apache Acculturation & Adaptation During the Last Decades of Spanish Rule

This month’s Friends of History 1st Wednesday Lecture was delivered by Dr. Matthew Babcock, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas at Dallas. The streaming of the video was followed by a livestreamed Q&A which is at the bottom of this post.


This lecture will focus on the forgotten Chihene Apache farming experiment at Sabinal, New Mexico from 1790-1795 by placing it in the context of Apache-Spanish relations and Spanish Indian policy. In response to drought and military pressure, thousands of Apaches de paz settled near Spanish presidios after 1786 in a system of reservation-like establecimientos, or settlements, stretching from Laredo to Tucson. On paper the establecimientos constituted the earliest and most extensive set of military-run reservations in the Americas. Yet, Apaches de paz typically exhibited mixed loyalties, sometimes serving Spanish interests, and other times subverting them, demonstrating the limits of indigenous assimilation into imperial states.

Matthew Babcock is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas at Dallas and the author of Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. He earned his Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University, his M.A. from the University of New Mexico, and his B.A. from Dartmouth College. His research focuses on the history of North American borderlands, American Indians, and the colonial Southwest. Dr Babcock can be reached at: Matthew.Babcock@untdallas.edu

Friends of History is a volunteer support group for the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its mission is to raise funds and public awareness for the Museum’s exhibitions and programs. Friends of History fulfills its mission by offering high quality public history programs, including the First Wednesday Lecture Series. For more information, or to join the Friends of History, go to friends-of-history.org or email us here.