The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 80, July 1976 - April, 1977 Page: 236
492 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
mystery of the Kickapoos" (p. xix). Their book was released last February,
and it sold out almost immediately. It is now in its second printing.
Austin, Texas GAINES KINCAID
The Plains Apache. By John Upton Terrell. (New York: Thomas Y. Cro-
well Company, I975. Pp. xii+244. Maps, notes, bibliography, index.
$7.95.)
According to the author, this book represents a "conscientious effort"
to fill a noticeable gap in the history of American Indians. That is, he has
attempted to cover, in 244 pages, the history of the Plains Apaches. It is
difficult for even the specialist to define and discuss "plains" Apaches,
because their linguistic status and their geographical situation were not
coterminous. But Terrell blunders through the centuries from Coronado to
Calhoun, unaware of or unconcerned by the errors he leaves in his wake.
The factual errors are numerous enough, but even worse is the author's
obvious failure to grasp the basic complexity of his problem. The more than
four centuries of history bearing on the Southwest has sometimes been a
mixed blessing, for, along with the advantage of great time depth, it pro-
vides much latitude for confusion of historical sequences. Terrell, like
some others with more scholarly backgrounds, has projected the "ethnol-
ogical present" into the past, and vice versa.
If Terrell had actually read the items listed in his "Selected" Biblio-
graphy, some of the confusion could have been averted. For example, J. P.
Harrington makes it clear that in his linguistic nomenclature the term
"Lipanan" includes all the speakers of "Eastern" dialects of Apachean,
namely, the Kiowa Apaches, the Jicarillas, and the Lipans. Harrington's
use of a tribal name as a basis for a more inclusive linguistic designation
has plenty of precedents (for example, Caddo, Caddoan; or Shoshone,
Shoshonean). But Terrell confuses the tribal name "Lipan" with "Lip-
anan," and also, without qualification, identifies the Lipans with the Que-
rechos encountered by Coronado's army in i541, this in spite of Harring-
ton's evidence that Eastern Apacheans were Teyas. Again, Terrell (p. 19)
suggests that the Teyas of I541 were a branch of the Lipans (whose name
does not appear in known records before i732), only to say later (p. 20)
"no scholar can dispute that from 'Teyas' came the word 'Texas.' " It
did not.
Nor did the Kiowa spring (p. 24) from "two distinct linguistic stocks."
Students of animal behavior would reject the description of wolves, or
even coyotes as "cowardly" (p. 32). Bison bison occidentalis was not the236
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 80, July 1976 - April, 1977, periodical, 1976/1977; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101204/m1/268/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.