Karen Vieira Powers's well-written and impeccably organized book focuses on migration as a colonial survival strategy. In the course of collecting and reviewing the historical data from archives in Spain and Ecuador, she explains the unusual patterns of Quito's demographic history. - American Historical Review ""Karen Powers examines Andean migration in the first two centuries of the Spanish colony.... Powers gives us a wealth of detail and valuable speculation. Quito's location on the frontier of Inca territory resulted in political relations between native peoples quite different from those characteristic of the southern Andeans and resulted in decades of low-intensity interethnic struggle."" - Colonial Latin American Historical Review