The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967 Page: 511
728 p. : maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
ficially contrived panoramas, and various kinds of landform maps.
Most of these were prepared by artists accompanying exploring
expeditions, to be included in official reports to the federal gov-
ernment. The final portfolio, introduced by a striking essay on
pioneer photography in the West, includes some of the best
pictures by the early masters.
The book obviously is a massive compendium of information.
However, it is a great deal more as a result of the skillful
organization and meaningful interpretations of the author. Unity
is achieved by viewing exploration not as a sequence of dis-
coveries, but rather as a continuum in terms of concept of mission.
The purposes, goals, and evaluation of each accomplishment are
related to previous achievements, to the kinds and categories of
existing knowledge before and after, and to current objectives
of the center of civilization from which the explorer started out.
The well-known explorers of the romantic period are, of course,
included in the story, but the important thing is that Goetzmann
makes fresh comments on their roles and contributions. For
example, he suggests that the mountain man was not the primi-
tive, social outcast, nor the romantic banditti of the wilds, but
that he was another "Jacksonian man," a hard-working, expectant
capitalist of the era in which he lived. The author also provides
adequate biographical detail on each of his explorer-scientists and
never loses sight of them as men.
Contrary to the hypothesis of Frederick Jackson Turner that
the western experience brought its distinctiveness to bear on the
rest of the country, it is the author's basic contention that the
West served instead as an area where previous American patterns
of culture could be endlessly superimposed. He suggests further
that exploration provided a major clue to the inter-relationship
between regional and national culture.
In the section dealing with the years between the Mexican and
Civil wars, the explorations of Charles Wilkes, John C. Fremont,
various topographical engineers, and those associated with the
Pacific railroad surveys all loom large. The final division is in-
troduced by a discussion of the California Geological Survey led
by J. D. Whitney. a story often overlooked by historians, where-
by a model was established for the later comprehensive national511
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967, periodical, 1967; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101199/m1/539/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.