The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 85, July 1981 - April, 1982 Page: 97

Book Reviews

ness of the Mexican military in colonial Texas is made all too clear.
In Volume VII military records continue, but the emphasis shifts
to other developments. Among these are documents relating to the
arrival of Sam Houston in Texas, the arrival of Sterling Robertson in
Texas (after a period of imprisonment in Tennessee), the rise to power
of Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna, and more records on the Robertson-
Austin dispute. Many documents deal with land titles and surveys and
are good reminders that land was what brought most people to Texas
and what occupied much of the time and energy of the colonial
leaders.
In these two volumes McLean maintains the standard of careful
scholarship established in the first five. There are more maps here
than there were in earlier volumes, and many readers will appreciate
their inclusion. McLean continues to write with a point of view, and
many readers, no doubt, await with interest the volumes yet to come.
Lamar University ADRIAN ANDERSON
Kingdom Come! Kingdom Go! By M. Jourdan Atkinson and Eugene
V. Giles. (Burnet, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1980. Pp. ix +261. Illustra-
tions, epilogue, appendix, index. $11.95.)
The kingdom denoted by this book's rather enigmatic title is the
cotton kingdom and, specifically, the cotton kingdom as it arose, flour-
ished, and fell on the blackland prairies of northern Travis County,
Texas. However, this is not an agricultural history or a regional eco-
nomic study; it is the raw material that such studies are based on.
M. Jourdan Atkinson, a distinguished Texas folklorist, has annotated
and amplified a long, discursive memoir left by her cousin, Eugene V.
Giles. Giles operated the store and cotton gin at Sprinkle, just a few
miles north of Austin, in the late 189os and early i 900s. His narrative
deals with the fortunes of the Jourdan and Giles families and their
innumerable offspring, in-laws, and cousins, from their arrival in
Texas in 1839 until the mid-192os. Most of the activity centers on their
cotton farms along Walnut and Gilliland creeks, in what is now sub-
urban Austin, but various members of the family also drove cattle to
Kansas, went to Virginia with Terry's Rangers, or worked on the
XIT Ranch.
Atkinson is an indulgent and uncritical editor, and tells us frankly
that "where factual material was lacking ... it has been necessary to
fill in imaginatively" (p. v). She has added "interludes," poems, and
family anecdotes to the basic narrative; at the same time she has an-