The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 77, July 1973 - April, 1974 Page: 428
568 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
has provided an oasis that should prove very refreshing to students, though
scholars will discover that he has placed more than one mirage before their
eyes.
In keeping with the author's intention, the coverage of the book is selec-
tive rather than comprehensive, and one will look in vain for any reference
to such standard features of the West as the oil booms, the army forts, the
Civil War, the Klondike, or the Dust Bowl. But the topics Hine has se-
lected are significant and interesting and embrace more social, cultural, and
intellectual subjects than most western texts. We find considerable attention
to minorities, artists, scientists, and writers, and provocative treatment of
such subjects as violence, masculinity, and the myth of the West.
Hine makes no pretense at objectivity, and he has not failed in his aim,
for the book reveals considerable bias and even inaccuracy. His treatment
of Texas is a case in point. Hine has Narvaez's expedition wrecked on the
Florida coast, and somehow he loses two of De Vaca's three surviving com-
panions. The mirages grow as he describes East Texas as a land of "woods
and mountains" and even eastern Oklahoma is covered by the Great Plains,
"vast and dry as wind." He sees millions of cattle roaming the range be-
tween the Nueces and the Rio Grande as early as I835 and has Travis
rather than Austin spending eighteen months in jail in Mexico City. He
shaves three years off the Texas Rangers' history, dating them from 1826,
and he does not like the Rangers at all. Indeed, there are a lot of "bad guys"
in this volume, and every one is white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and pro-
Establishment. All Indians, blacks, Mexicans, and bandits wear "white
hats," and the Mormons are treated with kid gloves (the Mountain Mea-
dow Massacre is one slaughter Hine chooses to leave unmentioned). De-
spite its vulnerability, this well-written and exciting text is worth adopting
but needs a label, "Handle with Care."
Austin College EDWARD PHILLIPS
Shem, Ham, & Japheth. Edited by Eugene Current-Garcia with Dorothy
Hatfield. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973. Pp. 361. Ap-
pendices, index. $12.50.)
Many successful people, particularly unpublished writers, pass away and
are promptly forgotten by contemporaries and future generations. William
O. Tuggle was such a person, even though he was successful as a lawyer,
Indian legal agent, and lobbyist. Tuggle was born near McDonough, Geor-
gia, in 1841 and died forty-three years later in Thomasville, Georgia. How-
ever, during his short life, he accomplished much as a lawyer and as a re-428
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 77, July 1973 - April, 1974, periodical, 1973/1974; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117148/m1/478/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.