In chapter one, the author Martha Menchaca discusses the racial foundations and history of Mexican-American Indians, Whites, and Blacks. Menchaca begins her chapter discussing how archeologists and anthropologists in the past before the 1960s had little interest in recovering Mexican-American prehistory. It was not until the 1970s Mexican-American anthropologists began to recover their culture’s prehistory. Menchaca also shares that Mexican-American indigenous past is both in Mexico and the Southwest and have roots tracing back to Aztlán. She argues that Aztlán may not have been the true site of the origins of many Indians. She believes that Indians historic roots trace back to a history of conquest and not migration. She also discusses a brief
