The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 577

Book Reviews

diate aspects goes back to the Juirez reforms and the Diaz period.
Viewed in this light and in the light of what happened after
Madero, the role of Emiliano Zapata and the Indian movements
of the south would require more consideration than Cumberland
gives them. The same is true with regard to labor; likewise the
church would require a different treatment than the bare men-
tion it receives here. Genesis is too big a word for the Madero
period. Prelude would better describe the materials of this book.
ALFRED B. THOMAS
The University of Alabama
Soldiers, Indians and Silver: The Northward Advance of New
Spain, 1550-z6oo. By Philip Wayne Powell. Berkeley and
Los Angeles (University of California Press), 1952. Pp.
ix + 31,7. $4.50.
The change of pace and of methods that took place when
advancing Spaniards left the territory of sedentary tribes in Cen-
tral Mexico and entered that of the hostile and nomadic peoples
has been noted and described by historians. The present work
traces certain of the new departures in military, fiscal, and
colonizing practices that followed discovery of the great Zacatecas
silver deposits in 1546 and the subsequent rush of settlers to that
frontier. The next four decades were years of fierce contention
between Spaniards and the group of native peoples known collec-
tively as Chichimecas. Their determined resistance to the in-
vaders influenced decisively the development of frontier military
organization, fiscal procedures, systems of transportation, and
the pattern of colonization. It was not until near the end of the
century that the viceregal government gave up attempts to sub-
jugate the hostile tribes by force. The authorities resorted instead
to buying off the enemy by systematic gifts of food, clothing, and
cattle and sent missionaries among them with a small military
guard. From these beginnings arose the mission-presidio pattern
of expansion later used generally on the northern frontier.
The book is based upon an important body of material from
Spanish and Mexican archives, much of which was used in the
author's doctoral dissertation (Berkeley, 1941) and in several
articles published in historical journals. Unfortunately, a diffuse

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