The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 529
566 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
to produce a detailed section-by-section description of the route and
of the lives and experiences of nineteenth-century men and women
who traversed it.
To historians of the West, the story will not be new. Stocking's
contributions lie more in the charm with which he reconstructs the
scene, artistically as well as verbally, and in his cartographic efforts.
He includes fifty-eight of his own drawings which range from mule
shoes and buffalo skulls to yucca blossoms and the church at Pecos
Village. Of special importance are his twenty-eight hand-drawn maps,
one encompassing the entire route, the other twenty-seven giving
specific local information and together forming the best composite
projection of the trail yet available.
While in many ways a captivating volume, The Road to Santa Fe
will disappoint scholarly readers. Occasionally it strays off the central
path to discuss topics that are irrelevant-the manufacture of cement,
the Sand Creek Massacre, or Jeff Davis' camel experiments. Its re-
search leaves something to be desired. In his sources, Stocking lists
112 items. One would not expect him to have exhausted the 718
entries in Jack Rittenhouse's monumental The Santa Fe Trail: A
Historical Bibliography, published too late for his use, but the dis-
cerning reader will look-in vain-for references to some of the more
recent studies touching upon the subject: for example, those by H.
Lamar, M. L. Moorhead, L. E. Atherton, O. E. Young, and J. E. Sunder.
To an inexact and inadequate footnoting system may be added an
exasperating overabundance of trivial errors, many of which might
have been eliminated by alert proofreading. In at least one instance
(Susan Magoffin's comments on her carriage driver in Las Vegas)
the author misconstrues his sources (p. 296). In others, quoted ma-
terials are carelessly handled: passages are omitted, words substituted,
punctuation and spelling changed. Where Spanish proper names are
concerned, the publisher seems completely unaware of diacritical
marks. Even in the "Chronology" at the volume's end, dates are
sometimes erroneous, if only by a year or two. There are misnomers
(artist Richard Kern is identified as Robert Kern, for example) and
far too many misspellings (including the names of David Lavender,
A. F. Favour, and LeRoy Hafen, to cite a few).
This is a pleasant, but not a major, book. If it endures, it will be
because of its charm and its maps-its most valuable contribution.529
University of Illinois
CLARK C. SPENCE
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972, periodical, 1972; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101201/m1/543/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.