Galgano, Robert C. 1970- (Robert Galgano)

PERSONAL:

Born 1970. Education: College of William and Mary, M.A., 1996, Ph.D., 2003.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Richmond, Department of History, 319 Ryland Hall, 28 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173; fax: 804-287-1992. E-mail—rgalgano@richmond.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, archaeologist, and educator. University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, adjunct instructor of history. Taught fourth grade in Gallup, NM. Served as an instructor at the College of William and Mary and at James Madison University. Archaeologist in Williams, Jamestown, and Yorktown, VA.

WRITINGS:

Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert C. Galgano is a writer, historian, and adjunct professor of history at the University of Richmond, in Richmond, Virginia. He specializes in ethnic history and colonial America. As an archaeologist, Galgano has conducted excavations in some of the country's best-known colonial sites, including Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, Virginia, according to a biographer on the University of Richmond School of Arts & Sciences Web site. The biographer also noted that Galgano conducts scholarly research in areas such as colonial America, native America, general U.S. history, and the Spanish-American frontier.

In his first book, Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico, Galgano "provides a glimpse of the results of the meetings between Indians and Spaniards in those two diverse areas in the seventeenth century," noted John H. Hann in the Catholic Historical Review. "The stated purpose of this volume is to compare the two earliest Spanish frontiers in North America, Florida and New Mexico, putting Indians at the center of the story," remarked reviewer Amy Turner Bushnell, writing in the Journal of Southern History. Galgano delves deeply into the published literature to find his story, "has done a workmanlike job of extracting information from his sources to present a very readable and enlightening account of the Indians' and Spaniards' seventeenth-century encounters in both Florida and New Mexico," commented Hann.

"The first part of the book is a fine ethnohistorical study of Indian and Spanish religions and spiritual conquests" on the sometimes wild and harsh frontiers where the missions were established, Bushnell reported. He covers Native groups such as the Guale, Apalache, and Timucua in Florida, and the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico. In the book's other chapters, he discusses the interactions between the Native American groups and the Spanish missionaries. Interactions between the groups were often tense, and the missionaries sometimes found themselves at odds not only with the natives but with their own people. "The task of the missionaries was difficult because of the contending interests of Spanish settlers, soldiers, and, particularly, civil/military officials," observed H-Net Review Web site critic Robert H. Jackson. Galgano looks carefully at later developments, such as rebellions, controversies and conflicts between the church and state, and the eventual collapse of the seventeenth-century missions, comparing these types of events as they occurred in Florida and New Mexico. Bushnell called the book "well organized and well written," while Jackson concluded that "Galgano presents a useful summary and synthesis of the historical processes during the seventeenth century in the Florida and New Mexico missions."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, spring, 2006, James A. Lewis, review of Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico, p. 156.

Catholic Historical Review, July, 2006, John H. Hann, review of Feast of Souls, p. 347.

Hispanic American Historical Review, November, 2006, John L. Kessell, review of Feast of Souls, p. 825.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2007, Amy Turner Bushnell, review of Feast of Souls, p. 145.

Journal of the West, spring, 2006, Adrea Lawrence, review of Feast of Souls, p. 86.

Roundup Magazine, August, 2006, James A. Crutch-field, review of Feast of Souls, p. 25.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January, 2007, Cynthia Radding Murrieta, review of Feast of Souls, p. 411.

ONLINE

H-Net Review,http://www.h-net.msu.edu/ (February 19, 2008), Robert H. Jackson, review of Feast of Souls.

University of Richmond School of Arts & Sciences History Department Web site,http://history.richmond.edu/ (February 19, 2008), biography of Robert Galgano.