Steven G. Baker

The Colorado Encyclopedia describes Baker as an archaeologist and author based in Montrose, Colorado, whose work focuses on the early Spanish presence in what became Colorado. It lists his book on Juan Rivera, which it dates 2016 and describes as published by Western Reflections in Lake City, and credits him with its entry on Rivera and with articles on the Los Pinos Indian Agency and the White River Ute Indian Agency.

The Encyclopedia's Rivera entry also cites an earlier piece by Baker in its further reading, a 2008 article in Southwestern Lore on trails, trade and west-central Colorado's gateway tradition. That article shows the same interest in routes and exchange between peoples that runs through the Rivera book. We found no fuller biography, such as a birth date or schooling, and we are not going to supply one.

Baker's work, as far as we can see it, stays with one stretch of history: the Spanish and the native peoples of western Colorado before the American settlers came. His Rivera book combines the journals of the 1765 expeditions with trail study and ethnohistory of the Ute and Paiute peoples. The Encyclopedia pieces under his name add Ute agency sites, so the interest reaches beyond the colonial era. The Rivera book is a large volume, listed at 404 pages in our record, and carries most of what we can say about how he approaches a subject: with the journals in hand and the ground in view. My Name is Pacomio moves to a later and more personal subject, the life and carved art of the sheepherder Pacomio Chacon, whom Baker knew as a friend.