The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 97, July 1993 - April, 1994 Page: 162
754 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
lished as a souvenir volume for the cattle raisers themselves, only ninety-four
copies were printed for cattlemen who pledged $100oo per copy in advance. Since
sixty sketches grace its pages, readers may assume that each of those ranching
families subscribed. No editor or compiler is identified.
The fifty-nine men and one woman cited in the volume definitely represent
prominent members of the Cattle Raisers Association, now the Texas and South-
western Cattle Raisers Association. These include Richard King, C. C. Slaughter,
George T. Reynolds, Isaac Thomas Pryor, George W. Saunders, and Samuel B.
Burnett. Johanna Carolyn Wilhelm, a widow from Menard, was the one woman
represented. Some prominent ranchers were omitted, however: Ed Lasater, Dan
Waggoner, A. H. "Shanghai" Pierce, Winfield Scott, Marion Sansom, J. C. Lov-
ing, the Driskills, and the Hittsons. No sketch appeared on J. B. Mathews, the
grandfather of Watt Matthews of Lambshead, subject of several recent books.
A valuable aspect of the book is that it portrays these Texas ranchers as busi-
nesspeople, not rough cowboys, as Easterners probably still imagined them in
1914. Rough trailing days had existed in the background of many of these
ranchers, but those days had passed.
In reprinting the book, the Texas State Historical Association has produced
an exact reproduction of the original, with its occasional misspellings, mistakes,
and some sketches out of alphabetical order. A welcome addition to the new is-
sue, however, is the twelve-page introduction by Harwood Hinton. He has made
an excellent analysis of the writing of the rare 1914 volume and its relationship
to similar turn-of-the-century books that incorporate cattlemen's biographies. In
addition, he describes the Texas ranching situation, which in 1913-1914 was
changing as many wealthy rancher-bankers invested in "real estate, high rise
buildings and insurance companies" (p. ix). Hinton's compilation of an index
for the volume and his introduction are welcome additions which make the
book easier to use as a resource tool for Texas ranching history.
The unknown author of the sketches stressed the integrity of the men, calling
them "a type of men now rapidly passing away" (p. 308). The volume has al-
lowed the names of respected ordinary ranchers to survive whose contributions
might otherwise be forgotten except by their own families.
Tarrant County Junior College, Fort Worth J'NELL L. PATE
Cowboy Spurs and Their Makers. By Jane Pattie. (College Station: Texas A&M Uni-
versity Press, 1991. Pp. xvii+172. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $39.95.)
In 1891, a journalist wrote of the Texas cowboy and the "large Mexican spurs"
that dangled from his heels: "Next to his six-shooter, the cowboy considers his
spurs a necessary appendage to his 'makeup,' and will not part with them even
at dances and social occasions" (p. 3). Though used by late nineteenth- and
twentieth-century American cowboys to motivate, signal, and control their
mounts, the spur dates back to the ancient Greek and Middle Eastern civiliza-
tions. Spurs adorned and assisted medieval knights and English gentry well be-162
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 97, July 1993 - April, 1994, periodical, 1994; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117154/m1/190/?rotate=270: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.