Herbert Eugene Bolton

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Bolton is considered as the father of the field of Borderlands History. His work in the 1920s and 1930s drew attention to the history of Spanish colonialism in the U.S. Southwest. Although his perspective was generally limited to a celebratory look at the efforts of Spanish explorers, priests, and conquistadores, his work emphasized the reality that U.S. History included the stories of people who had inhabited the region surrounding New Mexico at a time when the Spanish past was largely ignored.