1. Robert Epstein, "The Search for DeMille's Lost City," Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1993: F12.

2. Lew Wallace, Lew Wallace: An Autobiography (New York: Harper, 1906), 16. A summary of the war and its effect on Wallace appears here and in Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 5.

3. Wallace, Lew Wallace, 188.

4. Wallace's years with the Juáristas are dealt with in detail in Irving McKee, " Ben-Hur" Wallace: The Life of General Lew Wallace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), 90-110.

5. The Fair God, or, the Last of the 'Tzins: A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: James R. Osgood, 1873). My understanding of The Fair God is based on the reading of the novel given in Robert E. Morsberger and Katherine M. Morsberger, Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 224-37. For an account of the 1838 removal of the Potawatomi Indians, see ibid., 12.

6. Susan Wallace, The Land of the Pueblos (New York: Alden, 1890 rpt.), 16, 131.

7. Cited in Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 215.

8. Edward H. Spicer believes that, in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico, the U.S. "thought in terms of extermination or forcible isolation, rather than Christian conversion." The concept of the reservation, he claims, "developed out of the policy of isolation" and offered a practical alternative to killing the Indians. See Cy cles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962), 344-45, 347. At the same time, the religious conversion and political containment of the Indians in the southwestern U.S. have been seen as equally controlling strategies designed to cope with the "other." One western historian argues, for instance, that General Kearney's 1846 triumphal march into New Mexico and Bishop Lamy's 1852 arrival in Santa Fe both constituted invasions, although one was sponsored by the U.S. government and one was decreed by the Church. See Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest 1846-1912: A Territorial History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 102-03. For information on Jean Baptiste Lamy, who was appointed to reform the Catholic Church in New Mexico, see Paul Horgan, Lamy of Santa Fe: His Life and Times (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975). Willa Cather's novel Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is a thinly disguised account of his career in New Mexico.

9. The war against Victorio is chronicled in C. L. Sonnichsen, The Mescalero Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 160-64; Dan L. Thrapp, Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974); McKee, " Ben-Hur" Wallace, 155-56; and Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 282-87.

10. Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 916, 918.

11. As one would imagine, there have been numerous works written on the Lincoln County War and on Billy the Kid. For the best account of Billy's role in the feud, see Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 15-34; for an explanation of Wallace's role, see Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 257-81.

12. Wallace's emphasis. The complete correspondence between the two men is traced in Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 274-77.

13. John G. Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1971), 35. Subsequent references to this edition appear in the text.

14. Lew Wallace made this observation in a letter that he wrote, quoted in Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 291. Susan Wallace commented on the western landscape in The Land of the Pueblos, 51.

15. Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1922 rpt.), 319. Subsequent references to this edition appear in the text.

16. Will Wright, Six-Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 69.

17. Some critics feel that Ben-Hur is a revenge tragedy disguised as a historical religious romance. These critics, including Carl Van Doren, argue that Ben-Hur's thirst for revenge overpowers his hunger for Christ and that his thirst lingers at the end of the book, even after Christ dies. See The American Novel 1789-1939 (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 114.

18. Wright, Six-Guns and Society, 156.

19. In addition, the chariot race scene, as it has been staged in the theater and later on screen, has involved a number of western directors, actors, and props. In the popular 1899 stage version, the future "cowboy" movie star William S. Hart played Messala. His expertise with horses enabled him to prevent a serious mishap in the theater on opening night, when the horses veered out of control and almost ran off the stage. In MGM's 1925 silent film version, directed by Fred Niblo and starring Ramon Novarro, the race scene was directed, not by Niblo, but by the second unit director, B. Reaves Eason, who later directed the land rush scene in Cimarron (1930) and the stallion scenes in Duel in the Sun (1946). In MGM's follow-up 1959 film version, directed by William Wyler, Charlton Heston (Ben-Hur) and Stephen Boyd (Messala)—amazingly—raced their own chariots. Professional rodeo riders drove the rest of them. For more information, see William S. Hart, My Life East and West (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), 149; Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 464-66,475-76, 483.

20. For a discussion of the relationship between the historical romance and the dime novel, see Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid, 43. In a retrospective review of Ben-Hur, written twenty-five years after the book first appeared, Hammond Lamont claimed that the book's characters and incidents "make a dime novel about bandits and beauties seem dull and lifeless. . . . Jesse James is a divinity student in a white choker when compared with Messala. . . . And for your high-souled, dauntless hero, we back Ben Hur against any combination of Old Sleuth and Crimson Dick yet presented to the world." In "The Winner in the Chariot Race," The Nation 80 (February 23, 1905): 148.

21. Writing from Crawfordsville, Indiana, on May 6, 1890, Wallace informed A. J. Wissler that he composed the last three books of Ben-Hur while he lived in New Mexico. Wallace Papers, New Mexico Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe.

22. Wallace, "How I Came to Write Ben-Hur," Youth's Companion 66 (February 2, 1893): 57. Later the essay was reprinted in Wallace's autobiography, where it was placed near the end.

23. Wallace, Lew Wallace, 938.

24. It is an indication of the de-emphasis of the hero's quest for revenge in the second half of Ben-Hur that in the 1959 film no mention is made of the hero's attempt to gather and train Jewish troops. After the race the film concerns itself only with Ben-Hur's reunion with his mother and sister and with his conversion to Christianity.

25. Wallace, Lew Wallace, 1-2.

26. Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 296.

27. As quoted in ibid., 267.

28. Morsberger and Morsberger, Lew Wallace, 450. Noting that the subject of religion was "one of perennial importance in the making of best sellers" in America. in the middle and late nineteenth century, James D. Hart claims that Wallace's novel "combined the historical values of Scott and the moral worth of Mrs. Stowe, the two previous novelists who had battered down almost the last prejudices against fiction. Ben-Hur was endorsed on all sides by clergymen and leaders of public opinion." See The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 163-64.