A veteran of the Mexican War, W. W. H. Davis returned to New Mexico in 1853 to become United States Attorney for the territory. He soon thought of himself as El Gringo, the stranger, who had much to learn about his new home and its people. Equipped with a few changes of clothes, a two-book law library, and a ravenous curiosity, Davis recorded in his diary all that impressed him on his thousand-mile trip to Santa Fe and his thousand-mile court circuit. In 1856 he ransacked the diary to write El Gringo, selecting those features of custom, language, landscape, and history most likely to interest...