The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 444
616 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
producing the volume, he utilized that tremendous body of notebooks
and correspondence, which cover Prescott's day-by-day thoughts. Gar-
diner has succeeded, however, in evaluating Prescott's great books and
he sums up his life in human and social terms. He gives Prescott the
stature he so rightly earned. Now this reviewer realizes why he too
became fascinated with Prescott when he first read him as a freshman
in college.
San Diego State College A. P. NASATIR
Cowboy Life on the Llano Estacado. By V. H. Whitlock. (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. Pp. xviii + 278. Illustra-
tions, index. $6.95.)
An often overlooked period in southwestern ranch life, the years
around the turn of the century, receives merited attention in the
reminiscences of Vivian H. Whitlock, who died in 1967 at the age of
eighty. In that period fences had cut up the once-open range and
windmills pumped water for herds in the more arid pastures; yet
cowboys retained their enthusiasm for riding and roping, and some
of them still went on wild sprees in the dusty towns.
The part of the Staked Plains that Whitlock knew best was on the
New Mexico side, between the Texas line and the Pecos. He was only
a baby when, in 1887, his recently widowed mother took him and his
older brother to live with her brother, George Causey, who had
hunted buffalo in Kansas and Texas before establishing a ranch, with
a stone house, near the future New Mexican town of Hobbs.
Whitlock devotes the early part of his narrative to his uncle George,
who deserves a full-length biography. Briefly summarized are the ex-
citing years of slaughtering buffalo for their hides and of resisting
Indian opposition. With the buffalo herds gone, like many other
hunters, Causey looked for suitable cattle range. At the isolated Causey
ranch young Whitlock learned the cowboy arts and heard stories of
open-range days.
At sixteen Whitlock began as a cowpuncher on the nearby Little-
field ranch, where he helped to brand calves, scoured parts of the
range at roundup time, and rode line in the winter, sometimes braving
stinging blizzards. He saw gunsmoke in the cow towns, witnessed early
rodeos, and attended barbecues and dances where ranchmen and
nesters momentarily forgot their differences.444
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971, periodical, 1971; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101200/m1/456/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.