The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969 Page: 112

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

of 1841 state that no assessments were made in 1840 in several counties.
Day has shown that the counties of Liberty and Shelby did not file
their 1840 tax returns until 1841.
The editor has included, without identification as to source, a map
of "Texas Counties 1840," which does more to distort our knowledge
of Texas history than it does to improve it. Milam County, created in
1836 and very much in existence in 1840, is omitted from the map.
Wharton County, which he claims existed in 1840, fortunately was
not included on the map since its existence dates from 1846. The
Nueces River is shown as "Claimed by Mexico as the boundary of
Texas," and the area lying between the Nueces and the Rio Grande
is depicted as "Disputed Territory." I believe that one will find that
Mexico, until 1848, claimed to the Sabine and Red rivers and vigor-
ously denied the existence of Texas as an independent republic. Fay-
ette County is shown as "La Fayette" on the map; yet, the tax return
is given as being from "Fayette County."
The editor has included on the map the counties of Matagorda and
Milam, but he gives no explanation, as he has done for Goliad, Refu-
gio, San Patricio, and Wharton, for the lack of tax rolls from these
two counties.
One regrets that the usefulness of this publication has been marred
by an obviously hasty effort to present it to the public.
Texas A&M University JOSEPH MILTON NANCE
Sam Houston With the Cherokees, 1829-1833. By Jack Gregory and
Rennard Strickland. Austin (University of Texas Press), 1967.
Pp. xx+2o6. Introduction, bibliographical note, illustrations,
maps, appendix, bibliography, index. $6.oo.
Sam Houston's exile among the Western Cherokees, 1829-1833, is an-
alyzed under such subjects as Houston the frontier merchant, the
border pamphleteer and peacemaker, and Houston the Indian policy
reformer. The authors claim that writers have "ignored or romanti-
cized" this period with the result that it has "become a 'mysterious'
interlude in Houston's life." They justify the need for more attention
to this period by pointing to the more than fifty biographies and hun-
dreds of articles on Houston which contain only slight reference to
the exile years.
It is possible that the authors have developed an inflated notion of

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