The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 136

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

ill-fated La Salle settlement on Matagorda Bay, he examines the
Spanish reaction to the French incursion, the Anglo-American coloni-
zation of Texas, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican and Civil wars,
the rise of the cattle industry, and twentieth-century developments,
with specific references to Victoria County and its environs. Each
chapter provides the vignettes that bring history to life for the reader.
Here, for example, we read the tragic story of Mexican citizens such
as the De Leon family who cast their lot with the American colonists
during the struggle for independence from Mexico. The present-day
concept of frontier law and justice is seen in a different light in the
long and bloody Taylor-Sutton feud. It is of such stories, as well
as chronicles of wars and revolutions, that history is made.
The book, unfortunately, exhibits an unevenness in style and con-
tinuity. The scholar would prefer specific citation of sources rather
than general bibliographical references. Also, the reader might in-
correctly conclude that other than World Wars I and II, Victoria
County residents neither participated in nor felt the impact of the
great social, economic, and political developments of the twentieth
century. These defects do not, however, prevent us from profiting
from this exploration in local history.
Texas Education Agency Louis GRIGAR
Western Words: A Dictionary of the American West. By Ramon F.
Adams. (Revised edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1968. Pp. xviii+355. $7.95.)
This is the book that originally made Ramon Adams the Noah
Webster of the West. With this new edition his dictionary has almost
doubled in size. The first Western Words, published in 1944, was lim-
ited to words of the range, cow camp, and trail. This new work,
which it seems unjust to call merely a new edition, includes those
cowman words but also offers rodeo terminology (which seems to
have achieved a de facto respectability among cattlemen), some In-
dian words, and the working phrases and jargon of sheepmen,
freighters, packers, buffalo hunters, stagecoach drivers, western river-
boatmen, loggers, sawmill workers, miners, and western gamblers.
The new additions include several French terms, mainly from the
trapper, and some realistic western expressions formerly under a
scholarly taboo (and we never did hold with that gentlemanly "gol-
dern" put in the cowhand's mouth, did we?).

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