The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 103, July 1999 - April, 2000 Page: 520

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Characters and Biographical Elements," which precede each story, might be
more meaningful for the reader if placed after the stories. The translations are
pleasantly readable but, no fault of the translators, they do not support the book
jacket's description of the stories being "treasures of historical detail."
Some minor factual errors appear: on the first page of the introduction, the
editor referenced "the old Spanish presidio, Nacogdoches" and, on the following
page, "Gen. Sim6n de Herrera" is mentioned. The Spaniards never established a
presidio at Nacogdoches and Hererra, formerly governor of the Mexican state of
Nuevo Leon, attained the military rank of lieutenant colonel in which capacity he
served as commander of Spanish forces on the Louisiana frontier.
Despite these shortcomings, the editor's passion for Pavie and his work is evi-
dent, her enthusiasm is commendable, and Pavie's stories provide a sampling of
nineteenth-century fictional literature about this region then published in France.
Austin PATRICIA R. LEMAE
Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture zn Old Calforna. By Albert L. Hurtado.
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Pp. xxi+173. List of
illustrations, list of tables, foreword, preface, introduction, notes, index.
ISBN 0-82631-954-8. $17.95, paper.)
Intimate Frontiers is a slim volume but one packed with information about the
sexual practices of "Old California," roughly covering the period 1770-1860.
Thus author Albert L. Hurtado, formerly at Arizona State University and now a
professor of modern American history at the University of Oklahoma, deals with
intimacy during the Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo American (gold rush) years.
In the process, he reveals a startling picture of morality in this society where
widely different cultures collided for a century--what went on behind closed
doors, the seamier side of life that earlier historians such as Hubert Howe
Bancroft viewed through rose-colored glasses, if at all.
Concerning the mission era, Texans will find many similarities between regi-
mens that Franciscan fathers attempted to impose on their Indian neophytes in
these two distant provinces of the Spanish realm in North America. Hurtado
describes how the missionaries tried to regulate Indian sexual behavior in con-
formance with their religious agenda and particularly how they struggled to con-
trol the lust exhibited by soldiers toward the scantily clad Indian women of
California. Time and again we find the same dynamics playing out in Spanish
Texas, the Franciscans being equally frustrated in both places on all scores.
Next Hurtado addresses mixed marriage in Mexican California between
women of the elite families and Anglos who came early to exploit the hide-and-
tallow trade. These fair-skinned suitors were much preferred by the Californio
patriarchs to Indian spouses for their daughters, as an examination of marriage
records reveals. For the Spanish scions who were encumbered with a complex
code of racial pedigree, "Indians were not attractive marriage partners; Anglo
Americans were" (p. 25), and so was set in motion a pattern that continued in
California past the Mexican period. Again, Texas readers will find some striking
parallels with the marriages that occurred here between Anglo men and daugh-
ters of the Tejano landed aristocracy.

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