The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 107, July 2003 - April, 2004 Page: 138

138 Southwestern Historical Quarterly July
the Fort Griffin Fandangle, a yearly dramatized presentation of local lore and his-
tory. An appendix lists Lawrence's thirty-one books followed by an excellent
index.
The opening essay, "Place as a Source of Focus: Confessions of a Regional
Writer," is an excellent introduction to one the prevalent themes in the book.
Lawrence unabashedly classifies himself as a regionalist and a regionalist who
confines himself to a limited range-southern Throckmorton and northern
Shackelford counties in Northwest Texas.
The other essays of 31 are a treasure trove of facts about the people and
places of what Lawrence calls his "micro region" (p. 15). There are thirty-three
photographs scattered throughout 3 I, many of Lawrence and his sources.
I particularly liked Lawrence's definition of the term "ranch": "a piece of
property upon which livestock is raised-be it cattle, horses, sheep, or goats.
That operation constitutes a major portion of the work activity and is a principal
source of income for the individuals involved in the operation" (p. 156).
Few of us have a chance to make a final farewell, but in the concluding section
of 31, Lawrence makes reference to the words of Keith Wells, a U.S. Marine lieu-
tenant who fought at the battle of Iwo Jima. (I once heard Wells's riveting
description of the hell of close combat.) Lawrence says, "Wells made his decision
not to despair but instead to do what he had been trained to do up to the time
he could no longer do that. I made the same decision" (p. 256).
This fine book is an excellent tribute to a man who was a friend, a fellow folk-
lorist, and a fellow historian.
Midland College RUSSELL GOODYEAR
Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.
By James F. Brooks. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2oo2.
Pp. viii+419. Maps, illustrations, tables, epilogue, appendices, acknowledg-
ments, index. ISBN 0-8078-2714-2. $55.00, cloth.)
In Captzves and Cousins, historian James F. Brooks provides a captivatingly fresh
look at Borderlands history from Coronado's 1540 entrada to the dawn of the
twentieth century. Although his narrative focuses on New Mexico, he convinc-
ingly shows that Borderlands peoples--whether of Native American, European,
African, or mixed descent-formed trade networks extending far beyond the
Southwest Borderlands. As the author explains, a variety of Indian tribes along
with Spanish settlers desired women and children captives, making them an
exchangeable commodity. Far from an isolated corner of first colonial New
Spain, then Mexico, and, later, the United States, Brooks argues that the
Borderlands played a central role in what he terms "the great captive exchange
complex" reaching across the continent, from the Southwest to beyond the
Great Lakes (p. 14). Because captive exchange had long been a part of both
Native American and Spanish tradition, it provided a common ground for the
two groups as they encountered each other under the rubric of Spain's colonial
endeavors. Brooks explains that his study "is a story about how peoples of