| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Conquest of the Karankawas and the Tonkawas, 1821–1859. By Kelly F. Himmel. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. xviii, 192 pp. $32.95, isbn 0-89096-867-5.)

This is an interesting book, one that combines historical materials and sociological theory in the reconstruction of a short but dramatic period in the Texas past. What the author, Kelly F. Himmel, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas–Pan American, does for Native American–Anglo relations in the state might be applied elsewhere in the United States. There are some fresh insights in this book, which represents a thoughtful case study of the geopolitical and sociological processes of conquest. 1

In brief, Himmel shows that the early Anglo pioneers of Texas "dehumanized" Karankawas, whose land they wanted, but accommodated the Tonkawas, whose presence they saw as a buffer against Wichita and Comanche attacks. He argues that international trade patterns and geopolitical locations together with land acquisitions predisposed Anglo pioneers to judge Karankawas as unremitting savages and cannibals and to characterize Tonkawas, in the colonist Stephen F. Austin's words, as "great beggars" and of little threat to Anglo settlement. . . .

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