The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 414
605 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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414 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
but it seems strange that the editor did not question the statement
that the Indians traded for a food which their children could gather
in any field.
Carelessness accounts for other errors. Two examples taken from
a single page may suffice to illustrate the type of misleading trans-
lation which occurs throughout the book. The French original reads
"... sans aucun autre abri que celui que leur fournit leur industrie,
ils ne peuven,t souvent resister aux injures du tems [temps] .. ." Mrs.
Leclercq translates the last clause as "they often yield to an under-
standable temptation to damn the weather . . ." although the correct
translation should clearly be "often they cannot withstand the abuses
of the weather . . . ." Again, we are told that presidial troops "are
forbidden to marry," when the French version actually refers to the
troops as "la plupart marid"-"the greater number married." The
list of such major mistakes is almost endless. It is also regrettable that
Mrs. Leclercq was not more careful of her choice of words: in addition
to having sacrificed accuracy for readability, her style is entirely too
colloquial for a work of this nature. It is painfully obvious that no
particular care was taken with respect to the translation, no spot-
checking made, and little if any outside research done on most of it.
Ewers' annotations for the most part are excellent: both interesting
and useful. Furthermore, he made good use of outside sources to com-
ment on the details given by Berlandier; in particular, he used Hodge's
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, which, despite its
errors, is still a monumental work.
Therefore, since he did this portion of his editorial job so well,
Dr. Ewers' neglect of his responsibility for the overall work is all
the more to be deplored. The reader has a right to expect from John
C. Ewers and the Smithsonian Institution something far better than
this.
University of Texas at Austin SHEILA M. OHLENDORF
Beyond the Cimarron: Major Earl Van Dorn in Comanche Land. By
Thomas Robert Havins. (Brownwood, Texas: The Brown Press,
1968. Pp. i13. Illustrations and maps. $5.00.)
Professor Havins in another of his slender but excellent monographs
has pulled together a connected narrative of the exploits of Major
Earl Van Dorn and a contingent of the United States Second Cavalry
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/450/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.