The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990 Page: 131

Book Revzews

the neglected Spanish past of the United States and resolved to be the
Francis Parkman of what he called the Spanish Borderlands-the
American Southwest.
His first monograph in this new field explored the Hasinai Indians of
East Texas. Before submitting it for publication, he moved to Stanford
and Berkeley and temporarily shifted his attention to the Far West.
Although repeatedly urged by publishers and colleagues to release
the Hasinai study, he always found a reason to delay. This curious
nonpublication history is ably traced by Russell M. Magnaghi, a self-
described "third-generation Boltonian" (book jacket), who has finally
brought the volume to light.
The Hasinais holds up well and speaks favorably for early academic
historians in the United States. Bolton ranged widely in geography, ar-
chaeology, linguistics, mythology, and anthropology. His accounts of
Caddoan agriculture, sex roles, and technology seem as sophisticated
as ethnological research done today. However, he twice uses the word
"childish" to describe the ornamentation of the natives and their cre-
ation myth (pp. 134, 144). That one word alone speaks volumes about
the time that elapsed between the writing and the printing of the book.
Keenly aware that he was depicting Indians as they were perceived
by whites, Bolton doubted that the latter understood them well (p. 138).
One wishes there was more background on the sources to help the
reader understand the lens through which the evidence was refracted.
In Spanish eyes, Indian ceremonial houses were "mosques" (p. 12o).
The volume is far more than an antiquarian artifact. Magnaghi's in-
formative introduction, notes, index, and bibliography, photographs of
Oklahoma Caddos taken by James Mooney, and illustrations of native
pottery, excavated in Texas farm fields, and now preserved by the
Texas Archeological Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin,
make this rewarding scholarship.
Why did Bolton fail to publish this work in his lifetime? With due
respect to other reasons, perhaps this was not quite his metier. The
study did not call forth the dramatic narrative and the sweeping syn-
thesis that marked Bolton's famous works on the clash of cultures and
the rise and fall of empires. By withholding this work, Bolton defined
himself not as an ethnographer but as a historian.
The Oakwood School STEVEN J. NOVAK
North Hollywood, California
The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925- 950o. By
Mark V. Tushnet. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1987. Pp. xiv+222. Acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibli-
ography, index. $29.95, cloth; $9.95, paper.)

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