The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915 Page: 219

Book Reviews and Notices

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Athanase de MIzicres and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-
1780. Documents Published for the First Time, from the
Original Spanish and French Manuscripts, chiefly in the
Archives of Mexico and Spain; Translated into English; Edited
and Annotated. By Herbert Eugene Bolton, Ph. D., Professor
of American History in the University of California. Two vol-
umes. (Cleveland : The Arthur H. Clark Company. 1914.
Pp. 351, 392. $10 net.)1
These volumes may be regarded as part of the first fruits of
the Carnegie Guides to foreign archives. Except for a few docu-
ments in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, the
Bexar archives of the University of Texas, and the Archives du
Ministere des Colonies at Paris, the material was all unearthed
by Professor Bolton's work in the Mexican archives and the sim-
ilar labor of Mr. Hill in Spain. Covering less than a dozen years
immediately following the transfer of Louisiana'to Spain, they
present in minute detail a picture of actual government on that
interesting frontier where French and Spanish influence had
struggled for supremacy since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, and where the French were now eliminated only to be
succeeded by the still more aggressive English. The activity and
the comprehensiveness of the administration will be a surprise to
those who are accustomed to the common estimate of Spain's
'stupid and slothful' colonial system.
The purpose of the work is thus stated by the compiler: "The
history of the French and Spanish regimes in Texas and Louisi-
ana is to a large extent the history of a.n Indian policy, in its
various aspects; and for light on the Indian affairs of what are
now Texas, western Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma during
the period between 1768 and 1780, and on the problems of Indian
control in that period, as well as on the establishment of Spanish
rule in western Louisiana, there is perhaps no other single group
'This review appears also in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review
for September, 1914.

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