The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 146

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

of both is transformation, whether of the landscape or of the people who en-
countered one another in the American West. That transformation was depicted
in art and transcribed in legend largely by Euroamericans. The exhibition
opened at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, traveled to Yale in the fall of 1992
to coincide with the New Haven meeting of the Western History Association,
and completed its run at the Gilcrease Museum in the spring of 1993.
Although it is a companion volume to the exhibition, the book nevertheless
stands on its own. It is as much intellectual history as art history, inspired by a re-
freshing revisionism that puts to flight notions of Anglo-American superiority
and triumphalism. Jules David Prown, an art historian at Yale, discusses the need
for interdisciplinary approaches to broaden the study of western American art.
Nancy K. Anderson makes a persuasive case for western art as art rather than
documentation. William Cronon explores the ways in which images of the West
have reflected the changes in American culture. He also imaginatively explores
what is missing or veiled in those images. Brian Dippie examines history trans-
formed into nostalgia. Martha Sandweiss looks at the public that viewed the im-
ages. Susan Prendergast Schoelwer concentrates on gender, the "missing"
element in the story. In an epilogue, Howard Lamar catalogs the transforma-
tions in the twentieth century that reflect increasing appreciation for western
lands and indigenous cultures. This handsome volume is a treat for the eye and
the imagination.
Kiowa Memories evocatively expresses an American Indian viewpoint, absent
from Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts. Artist Julian Scott collected the fifty ledger-
book drawings, the work of possibly three Kiowa artists from about 1880, repro-
duced here. McCoy, in a masterful narrative and analysis of each drawing, brings
these "documents" to life as art and as Native American testimony.
Readers interested in Southwestern themes will find much to recommend
both volumes, but they should be especially fascinated by the unique, colorful
records of Kiowa life. One hopes that McCoy's rare and valuable work may soon
be reprinted in a format other than that of a limited edition. Although its pro-
duction value as an art book is extraordinary, it deserves wider dissemination.
Read in conjunction with Joyce M. Szabo's Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger
Art (University of New Mexico Press, 1994) and David W. Penney's Art of the
American Indian Frontier (University of Washington Press, 1992), Kiowa Memories
adds appreciably to an understanding of Native American history from a Native
American perspective.
Oklahoma State University L. G. MOSES
Journal of the Texian Expedition Against Mier. By Gen. Thomas J. Green. (Austin:
W. Thomas Taylor, 1993. Pp. xxvi+293. Illustrations, introduction, notes,
bibliography, index. ISBN 0-93507-222-5. $45.00.)
In his foreword to Al Loman's Printing Arts in Texas, Stanley Marcus observes
that "the maker of a fine book is in fact aspiring to create something quite un-
common: a work of art which, by the subtle and harmonious combination of a

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