THE FRIENDS UPCOMING
LECTURES
WINTER 2026
All Friends' Lectures are held at the Martha Liebert Public Library,
126 Calle Malinche, Bernalillo, NM. Refreshments are served afterwards.
All lectures are free to the Public. Masks are optional.
Spain Mesoamerican Allies:
The Hidden Story
of the Tlaxcalans
Oliver Horn, Ph.D.
Sunday - Jan 25 - 2:00pm​
If you’ve taken a tour at the Coronado Historic Site you probably heard the term “Indios amigos” or “friendly Indians.” The Mesoamerican Indians that helped Cortez defeat the Aztecs, accompanied the Spanish expansion into central Mexico, Central America and ultimately the American Southwest with Coronado in 1540 and later with Onate in 1598 were the Tlaxcalans. They were among the first indigenous peoples converted to Christianity and continued to rule themselves until the early 1600s. This lecture will reveal their often-overlooked role in the establishment of New Spain.
​
Oliver Horn, a native of Albuquerque, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in U.S. International History from Georgetown University. He taught Latin American History and International Affairs at Western Caroline University before returning to New Mexico in 2020. Founding Sunmount Consulting in Santa Fe, he made significant contributions to New Mexico’s approach to historic preservation and coauthored the “New Mexico Preservation Plan 2022 – 2031.” Horn has been the manager of Lincoln Historic Site and Fort Stanton Historic Site since 2023.
Cultural & Natural History
Stories from the
Southern Jemez Plateau
Tom Swetnam, Ph.D.
Sunday - Feb 22 - 2:00pm​
The Jemez Mountains, a quintessential New Mexico landscape, tell many stories. Pueblo, Spanish and Anglo cultures have mixed and melded here across the mesas and in the canons below the Valles Caldera, the crater of a giant, slumbering volcano. The landscape tells tales of eruptions, lava flows, droughts, floods, forest fires, and hot springs. People tell stories of battles for land and water between conquistadores, pueblos and priests while farming and sheep herder have tales of disruptions by raiders and rustlers. This talk will summarize these stories with photographs, maps and voices from the past.
​
Dr. Swetnam, a resident of Jemez Springs, is Regents Professor and Director Emeritus at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. He has studied human land-uses, climate history and forest fire ecology around the world and testified to the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions. He was appointed to the first Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. A recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tree-Ring Society and the Association for Fire Ecology, he is the author of The Jemez Mountains, A Cultural and Natural History.