The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 109

Book Reviews

ican frontiersmen do not appear so heroic and American western ex-
pansion is a threat that has to be countered rather than an adventure
to be admired. Most of the work is a straightforward narrative account
of men and events, but the author also inserts interesting comparisons
between the Spanish and the Anglo-American frontier.
In the large sweep of time and territory encompassed by this volume
it is not to be expected that everyone will agree with all of its points
of view. In the opinion of this reviewer, for example, the author un-
derestimates the possible Russian threat to California in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Also, the necessity for
compressing so much detailed information about conquests and ex-
plorations into the narrative tends to overload it with the names of
men and places and detracts from its readibility. It is hardly "brim-
ming with excitement," as Professor Ray Allen Billington, the editor
of the series of "Histories of the American Frontier," says of it in his
foreword. Nonetheless it is a thoroughly competent job by one of the
best-known historians of the borderlands today. It is equipped with
notes for each chapter and includes a useful 27-page bibliographical
essay. It is furnished with some 29 illustrations (which are not listed
in the table of contents) ; and it is well supplied with adequate, if not
very attractive, maps. It also contains a list of the viceroys of New
Spain and, in addition, has a checklist of some of the unpublished
doctoral dissertations and master's theses dealing with the borderlands,
some of which take up the period following 1821 not touched on in
the text itself. In sum, the book is a worthy successor to Bolton's
famous book on the same topic.
University of Virginia C. ALAN HUTCHINSON
General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy. By Richard N. Ellis. (Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970. Pp. x+287.
Notes, bibliography, index. $io.oo.)
This book is a study of federal relations with the Plains Indians as
experienced by General John Pope, the commander of a military de-
partment, or military division, from 1862 to 1884. During these years
Pope inundated his superiors with a steady stream of correspondence
in which he sharply criticized existing Indian policies and advocated
specific changes. This correspondence is the heart of Ellis' study.
In response to the frantic appeals of westerners for military assist-
ance after the Santee Sioux uprising in 1862, President Abraham

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