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Review
| Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880, by Robert F. Pace and Donald S. Frazier. State House Press: Abilene, Texas, 2004. 272 pages. $19.95, cloth.
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| Robert Pace and Donald Frazier consider the sixty-six county area of west Texas the "crossroads of humanity for thousands of years" (page 13). In their book Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880, they recount how a variety of people have crossed, competed for, and environmentally changed the region. Using a series of vignettes that are both detailed and entertaining, they describe the ubiquitous conflict that afflicted the region as various groups competed for supremacy—the Spanish, Mexicans, Texicans, ultimately the Americans, engaged in almost incessant conflict with the native Jumanos, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Vignettes describe both large and small-scale encounters, mostly violent and often very personal, during the struggle. Beyond this conflict, the authors have shown how Anglo-American society found itself in conflict with nature as well. Though the effort to tame the environment is underemphasized by the authors, it is clearly important. Their analysis ends in 1880 when barbed wire "restricted the range" and west Texas "was no longer a frontier" (page 240). |
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This book has many applications in the classroom at different levels. The vignettes, many of which can almost stand by them selves, offer fodder for lecture anecdotes. High school teachers and college survey professors will find the lively, and sometimes gruesome, accounts a valuable way to keep students' attention. The easy prose of the book also makes it accessible enough to be assigned to a college survey audience as a case study example of how the American West was transformed over time. For upper-division college classes in the American West, the book can exemplify the interaction of many groups in the Southwest in addition to acting as an introduction to an environmental history of the West. For environmental studies, however, greater guidance to the students would be warranted because the authors do not provide much direct analysis, although the maps (eight maps spread throughout the book) are a great visual source to show man's interaction with and transformation of the region. |
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While the book is generally well written with colorful anecdotes, it is not necessarily for those with no background knowledge. The use of vignettes to tie together analysis requires the reader to either have some previous exposure to the time period or to be guided by an instructor. For instance, the Texas struggle for independence is covered in two brief sentences (page 41), while an isolated conflict of ten Anglo-Texans with Indians is given two pages which include a vivid description of almost every arrow wound and how "blood spilled on the rocks...indicating that at least one of them had been seriously wounded " (page 101–2). The emphasis on conflict also obscures the more peaceful history of this region. The authors might, but do not, explore how the succeeding economic and social influences of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States, and ultimately the United States transformed how people thought of themselves and with whom they closely identified. These minor criticisms aside, the book is one that has a wealth of information that could be used in many different ways in the classroom. |
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| Montana State University-Billings |
Thomas C. Rust |
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