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This book is a richly detailed examination of social interaction in the city of Chihuahua, a major silver mining center of colonial Mexico. Founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the city attracted people from all over New Spain, all summoned "by the voices of the mines of Chihuahua." These included aspiring miners and merchants, mestizo and mulato workers and drifters, Tarahumara Indians indigenous to the area, Yaquis from Sonora, and Apaches from New Mexico. Several hundred Spaniards, principally from northern Spain, also arrived, hoping to make their fortunes in the New World. The author shows how abstract relationships of class, political subordination, ethnicity, and gender took concrete form in the daily life of the diverse people of Chihuahua. The book challenges the common view of colonial Chihuahua as a remote area peripheral to the historical development of Mexico. Though conditions unique to the frontier left their mark, as drought and distance often made life difficult, the author demonstrates how Chihuahua is an instructive laboratory in which to observe features of social organization operative throughout Mexico. The social history of colonial Mexico was everywhere marked by the constant renegotiation of social boundaries, but especially so in Chihuahua, where everyone at first was a newcomer, and "Mexican" and "Spaniard" confronted together the task of creating a new community.