The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988 Page: 116

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

amusing eccentrics such as Lizzie "Texas Cattle Queen" Johnson and
the man-renouncing Martha W. McWhirter, just to name a few.
The book's chapters, eight in number, cover the whole range of women's
experiences in the state, focusing on Indian women; the pioneer and early
statehood periods; women's homemaking and entrepreneurial endeavors;
women's clubs, organizations, and civic activities; and women's long strug-
gle for civil, legal, and political rights. While a pictorial book of this kind
cannot be a definitive history, Texas Women is nevertheless well researched,
making good use of primary and secondary sources, and is liberally
sprinkled with quotes from diaries, letters, and reminiscences. In addi-
tion, the book has an extensive bibliography and a useful index. All scholars
who work in the field of Texas history would be well advised to secure
a copy of this handy reference book.
Austin, Texas LINDA VANCE
The Spanish Mustang: From the Plains of Andalusia to the Prairies of Texas. By
Don Worcester. (El Paso, Tex.: Texas Western Press, 1986. Pp. 97.
Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $12.)
Donald E. Worcester, Distinguished Emeritus Tutor at Texas Chris-
tian University, has written a short, interesting, and readable account
of the introduction of the Andalusian horse of southern Spain into the
New World, with particular attention to Texas and the American
Southwest. He has divided his story into four chapters: "The Coming
of the Spanish Horse and the Rise of the Mustang"; "Mustangs and
Anglos Meet"; "Texas Mustangs and Mustangers"; and "Cowponies
and Buffalo Runners." He finds it difficult, however, to keep the infor-
mation so classified.
The Andalusian horse descended from crosses between the Spanish
native horses and others from North Africa and Arabia, and was prized
for its versatility, being good for travel, hunting, and war. The reader
will find a brief discussion of the Near Eastern, North African, and Euro-
pean progenitors of the horses brought to Spanish North America and
will learn how the Spanish horse developed in its new environment. The
author begins with the introduction of the horse into the West India Islands
and into Florida, whence it spread eastward into Georgia and the Carolinas
and westward into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. More significant-
ly and at greater length, he tells of the loss of Spanish horses as the con-
quistadores spread northward from the Valley of Mexico with their min-
ing and ranching, explorations, and establishment of missions and set-
tlements. These lost or abandoned ancestors of the Texas wild horses