New Mexico has an uneasy and complicated history. After joining the United States by conquest—through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848—its residents didn’t automatically become citizens until the area gained statehood in 1912. The legacy of this past—which includes Native American settlements that stretch back over a millennium and Spanish colonization in the late 16th century—was the subject of a Smithsonian/ASU “What It Means to Be American” event, titled “How Did the American Conquest …