A FEW months ago the Board of Directors of the Historical Society of New Mexico agreed that the Society should, from time to time, recognize outstanding men and women who have worked toward the same goals as the Society: to increase public understanding and knowledge of history, and, in particular, the history of New Mexico. Tonight we are honoring the distinguished historian Dr. France Vinton Scholes, whom I have known for more than thirty-five years, since the autumn day when I first walked past the shrunken heads on the fifth floor of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University to the end of a crooked office corridor–and, all unsuspecting, into my life work. Into the profession of history by the back door! This short journey into a long future led not only to many satisfying years of collaboration with Dr. Scholes, but to an abiding interest in New Mexico and the Spanish Southwest.