The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967 Page: 669
728 p. : maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
Nevertheless, American Indian specialists of all kinds will find
much of interest and value if they are willing to analyze all of
the documents.
Although it seems obvious enough from the title, perhaps it
should be emphasized that these documents cover the declining
years of the Indian in Texas and thus represent a period of social
and political disorganization, rapid acculturation, and physical
removal or extinction. This period is also marked by the appear-
ance of numerous refugee Indian groups from various parts of
the eastern United States. Documents that pertain to earlier
periods must be sought elsewhere.
The most important point that needs to, be made about these
documents is that they are now available in printed form, and
for this all interested scholars must acknowledge indebtedness to
the editors and sponsoring agencies. However, at the risk of ap-
pearing ungrateful, I feel compelled to register a complaint. Not
enough was done to make it easier for the scholar to use these
documents. Shortage of funds for printing probably explains
why they are not annotated. But none of the five volumes has
a table of contents, which means that one must flip through
nearly 2,000 pages to see the titles of 1,614 documents. The titles
of letters indicate who wrote to whom but do not identify the
nature of the contents. A short abstract for each letter would be
very helpful. Since the volumes in this series appeared one at
a time, each has a separate index, which is a conventional name
index (people and places) that often has limited value. For ex-
ample, in the combined indices of all five volumes there are 388
page citations to the Comanche Indians and only four subhead-
ings with one citation each. Hence those who seek certain kinds
of information on the Comanche must perform at least 388 sep-
arate hand-and-eye operations. In these days of voluminous pub-
lication the detailed analytical index is essential.
The editors could also have taken pity on those who do not
know their Indians. The fifth volume might have contained
a cross-referenced alphabetical guide to the Indian groups whose
names appear so frequently in the documents. Such a guide
would permit the uninformed reader to distinguish Indian groups
native to Texas from those who, entered as refugees in the nine-669
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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/m1/701/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.