THERE IS no chart to the Life and Literature of the Southwest. An attempt to put it all into an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia would be futile. All guides to knowledge are too long or too short. This one at the outset adds to its length—perhaps to its usefulness—by citing other general reference works and a few anthologies.
Books of the Southwest: A General Bibliography, by Mary Tucker, published by J. J. Augustin, New York, 1937, is better on Indians and the Spanish period than on Anglo-American culture. Southwest Heritage: A Literary History with Bibliography, by Mabel Major, Rebecca W. Smith, and T. M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1938, revised 1948, takes up the written material under the time-established heads of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, etc., with due respect to chronological development. A Treasury of Southern Folklore, 1949, and A Treasury of Western Folklore, 1951, both edited by B. A. Botkin and both published by Crown, New York, are so liberal in the extensions of folklore and so voluminous that they amount to literary anthologies.
Of possible use in working out certain phases of life and literature common to the Southwest as well as to the West and Middle West are the following academic treatises: The Frontier in American Literature, by Lucy Lockwood Hazard, New York, 1927; The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier, by Ralph Leslie Rusk, New York, 1925; The Prairie and the Making of Middle America, by Dorothy Anne Dondore, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1926; The Literature of the Rocky Mountain West 1803-1903, by L. J. Davidson and P. Bostwick, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939; and The Rediscovery of the Frontier, by Percy H. Boynton, Chicago, 1931. Anyone interested in vitality in any phase of American writing will find Vernon L. Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought (three vols.), New York, 1927-39, an opener-up of avenues.
Perhaps the best anthology of southwestern narratives is Golden Tales of the Southwest, selected by Mary L. Becker, New York, 1939. Two anthologies of southwestern writings are Southwesterners Write, edited by T. M. Pearce and A. P. Thomason, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946, and Roundup Time, edited by George Sessions Perry, Whittlesey House, New York, 1943. Themes common to the Southwest are represented in Western Prose and Poetry, an anthology put together by Rufus A. Coleman, New York, 1932, and in Mid Country: Writings from the Heart of America, edited by Lowry C. Wimberly, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1945.
For the southern tradition that has flowed into the Southwest Franklin J. Meine's Tall Tales of the Southwest, New York, 1930, OP, is the best anthology published. It is the best anthology of any kind that I know of. A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature, selected by Stark Young, New York, 1937, brings in Texas.
Anthologies of poetry are listed under the heading of "Poetry and Drama." The outstanding state bibliography of the region is A Bibliography of Texas, by C. W. Raines, Austin, 1896. Since this is half a century behind the times, its usefulness is limited. At that, it is more useful than the shiftless, hit-and-miss, ignorance-revealing South of Forty: From the Mississippi to the Rio Grande: A Bibliography, by Jesse L. Rader, Norman, Oklahoma, 1947. Henry R. Wagner's The Plains and the Rockies, "a contribution to the bibliography of original narratives of travel and adventure, 1800-1865," which came out 1920-21, was revised and extended by Charles L. Camp and reprinted in 1937. It is stronger on overland travel than on anything else, only in part covers the Southwest, and excludes a greater length of time than Raines's Bibliography. Now published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.
Mary G. Boyer's Arizona in Literature, Glendale, California, 1934, is an anthology that runs toward six hundred pages. Texas Prose Writings, by Sister M. Agatha, Dallas, 1936, OP, is a meaty, critical survey. L. W. Payne's handbook-sized A Survey of Texas Literature, Chicago, 1928, is complemented by a chapter entitled "Literature and Art in Texas" by J. Frank Dobie in The Book of Texas, New York, 1929. OP.
A Guide to Materials Bearing on Cultural Relations in New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1944, is so logical and liberal-minded that in some respects it amounts to a bibliography of the whole Southwest; it recognizes the overriding of political boundaries by ideas, human types, and other forms of culture. The New Mexico Quarterly, published by the University of New Mexico, furnishes periodically a bibliographical record of contemporary literature of the Southwest. New Mexico's Own Chronicle, edited by Maurice G. Fulton and Paul Horgan (Dallas, 1937, OP), is an anthology strong on the historical side.
In the lists that follow, the symbol OP indicates that the book is out of print. Many old books obviously out of print are not so tagged.
THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and ubiquitous that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it, he may find it more troublesome to avoid than to get hold of. The average old-timer has for generations regarded Indian scares and fights as the most important theme for reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs, ceremonies, mythology, and other folklore in hundreds of tomes; laborious, literal-minded scholars of other institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore and tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally been dried out.
The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him and take his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide. The Spaniard's policy was to baptize him, take his land, enslave him, and appropriate his women. Any English-speaking frontiersman who took up with the Indians was dubbed "squaw man"—a term of sinister connotations. Despite pride in descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-Americans and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for instance, with the interdicted crosses between white men and black women. The Spaniards, on the other hand, crossed in battalions with the Indians, generating mestizo (mixed-blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.
As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have in general absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian culture—nothing at all comparable to the Uncle Remus stories and characters and the spiritual songs and the blues music from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his own grandpa saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing raid in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian arrowheads; every section of the country has a bluff called Lovers' Leap, where, according to legend, a pair of forlorn Indian lovers, or perhaps only one of the pair, dived to death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa Peak, Squaw Creek, Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County, Indian Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of Indian culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of America.
(1) The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated Indian lore about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human relationships with the land. Through the Mexican medium, with which he is becoming more sympathetic, the gringo is getting the ages-old Indian culture.
(2) The Pueblo and Navajo Indians in particular are impressing their arts, crafts, and ways of life upon special groups of Americans living near them, and these special groups are transmitting some of their acquisitions. The special groups incline to be arty and worshipful, but they express a salutary revolt against machined existence and they have done much to revive dignity in Indian life. Offsetting dilettantism, the Museum of New Mexico and associated institutions and artists and other individuals have fostered Indian pottery, weaving, silversmithing, dancing, painting, and other arts and crafts. Superior craftsmanship can now depend upon a fairly reliable market; the taste of American buyers has been somewhat elevated.
This is from "Navajo Holy Song," as rendered by Edith Hart Mason. It expresses a spiritual content in Indian life far removed from the We and God, Incorporated form of religion ordained by the National Association of Manufacturers.
(3) The wild freedom, mobility, and fierce love of liberty of the mounted Indians of the Plains will perhaps always stir imaginations—something like the charging Cossacks, the camping Arabs, and the migrating Tartars. There is no romance in Indian fights east of the Mississippi. The mounted Plains Indians always made a big hit in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Little boys still climb into their seats and cry out when red horsemen of the Plains ride across the screen.
See "Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians," "Mountain Men."
APPLEGATE, FRANK G. Indian Stories from the Pueblos, Philadelphia, 1929. Charming. OP.
ASTROV, MARGOT (editor), The Winged Serpent, John Day, New York, 1946. An anthology of prose and poetry by American Indians. Here are singular expressions of beauty and dignity.
AUSTIN, MARY. The Trail Book, 1918, OP; One-Smoke Stories, 1934, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Delightful folk tales, each leading to a vista.
BANDELIER, A. F. The Delight Makers, 1918, Dodd, Mead, New York. Historical fiction on ancient pueblo life.
COOLIDGE, DANE and MARY. The Navajo Indians, Boston, 1930. Readable; bibliography. OP.
COOLIDGE, MARY ROBERTS. The Rain-Makers, Boston, 1929. OP. This thorough treatment of the Indians of Arizona and New Mexico contains an excellent account of the Hopi snake ceremony for bringing rain. During any severe drought numbers of Christians in the Southwest pray without snakes. It always rains eventually—and the prayer-makers naturally take the credit. The Hopis put on a more spectacular show. See Dr. Walter Hough's The Hopi Indians, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1915. OP.
CUSHING, FRANK HAMILTON. Zuni Folk Tales, 1901; reprinted, 1931, by Knopf, New York. My Adventures in Zuni, Santa Fe, 1941. Zuni Breadstuff, Museum of the American Indian, New York, 1920. Cushing had rare imagination and sympathy. His retellings of tales are far superior to verbatim recordings. Zuni Breadstuff reveals more of Indian spirituality than any other book I can name. All OP.
DEHUFF, ELIZABETH. Tay Tay's Tales, 1922; Tay Tay's Memories, 1924. OP.
DOUGLAS, FREDERIC H., and D HARNONCOURT, RENE. Indian Art of the United States, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1941.
DYK, WALTER. Son of Old Man Hat, New York, 1938. OP.
FERGUSSON, ERNA. Dancing Gods, Knopf, New York, 1931. Erna Fergusson is always illuminating.
FOREMAN, GRANT. Indians and Pioneers, 1930, and Advancing the Frontier, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1933. Grant Foreman is prime authority on the so-called "Civilized Tribes." University of Oklahoma Press has published a number of excellent volumes in "The Civilization of the American Indian" series.
GILLMOR, FRANCES, and WETHERILL, LOUISA WADE. Traders to the Navajos, Boston, 1936; reprinted by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1952. An account not only of the trading post Wetherills but of the Navajos as human beings, with emphasis on their spiritual qualities.
GODDARD, P. E. Indians of the Southwest, New York, 1921. Excellent outline of exterior facts. OP.
HAMILTON, CHARLES (editor). Cry of the Thunderbird, Macmillan, New York, 1951. An anthology of writings by Indians containing many interesting leads.
HEWETT, EDGAR L. Ancient Life in the American Southwest, Indianapolis, 1930. OP. A master work in both archeology and Indian nature. (With Bertha P. Dretton) The Pueblo Indian World, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1945.
HODGE, F. W. Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Washington, D. C., 1907. Indispensable encyclopedia, by a very great scholar and a very fine gentleman. OP.
LABARRE, WESTON. The Peyote Cult, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1938.
LAFARGE, OLIVER. Laughing Boy, Boston, 1929. The Navajo in fiction.
LUMMIS, C. F. Mesa, Canon, and Pueblo, New York, 1925; Pueblo Indian Folk Tales, New York, 1910. Lummis, though self-vaunting and opinionated, opens windows.
MATTHEWS, WASHINGTON. Navajo Legends, Boston, 1897; Navajo Myths, Prayers and Songs, Berkeley, California, 1907.
MOONEY, JAMES. Myths of the Cherokees, in Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1902. Outstanding writing.
NELSON, JOHN LOUW. Rhythm for Rain, Boston, 1937. Based on ten years spent with the Hopi Indians, this study of their life is a moving story of humanity. OP.
PEARCE, J. E. Tales That Dead Men Tell, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1935. Eloquent, liberating to the human mind; something rare for Texas scholarship. Pearce was professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, an emancipator from prejudices and ignorance. It is a pity that all the college students who are forced by the bureaucrats of Education—Education spelled with a capital E—"the unctuous elaboration of the obvious"—do not take anthropology instead. Collegians would then stand a chance of becoming educated.
PETRULLO, VICENZO. The Diabolic Root: A Study of Peyotism, the New Indian Religion, among the Delawares, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1934. The use of peyote has now spread northwest into Canada. See Milly Peacock Stenberg's The Peyote Culture among Wyoming Indians, University of Wyoming Publications, Laramie, 1946, for bibliography.
REICHARD, GLADYS A. Spider Woman, 1934, and Dezba Woman of the Desert, 1939. Both honest, both OP.
SIMMONS, LEO W. (editor). Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1942. The clearest view into the mind and living ways, including sex life, of an Indian that has been published. Few autobiographers have been clearer; not one has been franker. A singular human document.
{illust}
THE APACHES and the bareback Indians of the Plains were extraordinary hombres del campo—men of the outdoors, plainsmen, woodsmen, trailers, hunters, endurers. They knew some phases of nature with an intimacy that few civilized naturalists ever attain to. It is unfortunate that most of the literature about them is from their enemies. Yet an enemy often teaches a man more than his friends and makes him work harder.
See "Indian Culture," "Texas Rangers."
BOURKE, JOHN G. On the Border with Crook, London, 1892. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. A truly great book, on both Apaches and Arizona frontier. Bourke had amplitude, and he knew.
BUCKELEW, F. M. The Indian Captive, Bandera, Texas, 1925. Homely and realistic. OP.
CATLIN, GEORGE. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, Written during Eight Years' Travel, 1832-39, 1841. Despite many strictures, Catlin's two volumes remain standard. I am pleased to find Frank Roe, in The North American Buffalo, standing up for him. In Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of George Catlin, Painter and Recorder of the American Indian, New York, 1948, Loyd Haberly fails in evaluating evidence but brings out the man's career and character.
CLUM, WOODWORTH. Apache Agent, Boston, 1936. Worthy autobiography of a noble understander of the Apache people. OP.
COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON. Apache, Dutton, New York, 1931. Noble; vivid; semifiction.
DAVIS, BRITTON. The Truth about Geronimo, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1929. Davis helped run Geronimo down.
DESHIELDS, JAMES T. Cynthia Ann Parker, St. Louis, 1886; reprinted 1934. Good narrative of noted woman captive. OP.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. The Mustangs, Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. The opening chapters of this book distil a great deal of research by scholars on Plains Indian acquisition of horses, riding, and raiding.
GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. The Cheyenne Indians, New Haven, 1923. This two-volume work supersedes The Fighting Cheyennes, 1915. It is noble, ample, among the most select books on Plains Indians. Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People, 1892, shows Grinnell's skill as storyteller at its best. Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales, 1893, is hardly an equal but it reveals the high values of life held by representatives of the original plainsmen. The Story of the Indian, 1895, is a general survey. All OP. Grinnell's knowledge and power as a writer on Indians and animals has not been sufficiently recognized. He combined in a rare manner scholarship, plainsmanship, and the worldliness of publishing.
{illust. caption = George Catlin, in North American Indians (1841)}
HALEY, J. EVETTS. Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier, San Angelo Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Mainly a history of military activities against Comanches and other tribes, laced with homilies on the free enterprise virtues of the conquerors.
LEE, NELSON. Three Years among the Comanches, 1859.
LEHMAN, HERMAN. Nine Years with the Indians, Bandera, Texas, 1927. Best captive narrative of the Southwest.
LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. The Apache Indians, Macmillan, New York, 1938. Factual history.
LONG LANCE, CHIEF BUFFALO CHILD. Long Lance, New York, 1928. OP. Long Lance was a Blackfoot only by adoption, but his imagination incorporated him into tribal life more powerfully than blood could have. He is said to have been a North Carolina mixture of Negro and Croatan Indian; he was a magnificent specimen of manhood with swart Indian complexion. He fought in the Canadian army during World War I and thus became acquainted with the Blackfeet. No matter what the facts of his life, he wrote a vivid and moving autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian in whom the spirit of the tribe and the natural life of the Plains during buffalo days were incorporated. In 1932 in the California home of Anita Baldwin, daughter of the spectacular "Lucky" Baldwin, he absented himself from this harsh world by a pistol shot.
LOWIE, ROBERT H. The Crow Indians, New York, 1935. This scholar and anthropologist lived with the Crow Indians to obtain intimate knowledge and then wrote this authoritative book. OP.
MCALLISTER, J. GILBERT. "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in The Sky Is My Tipi, edited by Mody C. Boatright (Texas Folklore Society Publication XXII), Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949. Wise in exposition; true-to-humanity and delightful in narrative.
MCGILLICUDDY, JULIA B. McGillicuddy Agent, Stanford University Press, California, 1941. Dr. Valentine T. McGillicuddy, Scotch in stubbornness, honesty, efficiency, and individualism, was U.S. Indian agent to the Sioux and knew them to the bottom. In the end he was defeated by the army mind and the bloodsuckers known as the "Indian Ring." The elements of nobility that distinguish the man distinguish his wife's biography of him.
MCLAUGHLIN, JAMES. My Friend the Indian, 1910, 1926. OP. McLaughlin was U.S. Indian agent and inspector for half a century. Despite priggishness, he had genuine sympathy for the Indians; he knew the Sioux, Nez Perces, and Cheyennes intimately, and few books on Indian plainsmen reveal so much as his.
MARRIOTT, ALICE. The Ten Grandmothers, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1945. Narratives of the Kiowas—a complement to James Mooney's Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, in Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1893. Alice Marriott, author of other books on Indians, combines ethnological science with the art of writing.
MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road, University of Oklahoma Press, 1932. This book of essays on the character of and certain noble characters among the Great Osages, including their upright agent Leban J. Miles, has profound spiritual qualities.
NEIHARDT, JOHN G. Black Elk Speaks, New York, 1932. OP. Black Elk was a holy man of the Ogalala Sioux. The story of his life as he told it to understanding John G. Neihardt is more of mysteries and spiritual matters than of mundane affairs.
RICHARDSON, R. N. The Comanche Barrier to the South Plains, Glendale, California, 1933. Factual history.
RISTER, CARL C. Border Captives, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1940.
RUXTON, GEORGE F. Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, London, 1847. Vivid on Comanche raids. See Ruxton in "Surge of Life in the West."
SCHULTZ, J. W. My Life as an Indian, 1907. OP. In this autobiographical narrative of the life of a white man with a Blackfoot woman, facts have probably been arranged, incidents added. Whatever his method, the author achieved a remarkable human document. It is true not only to Indian life in general but in particular to the life of a "squaw man" and his loved and loving mate. Among other authentic books by Schultz is With the Indians of the Rockies, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1912.
SMITH, C. L. and J. D. The Boy Captives, Bandera, Texas, 1927. A kind of classic in homeliness. OP.
VESTAL, STANLEY. Sitting Bull, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1932. Excellent biography. OP.
WALLACE, ERNEST, and HOEBEL, E. ADAMSON. The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. A wide-compassing and interesting book on a powerful and interesting people.
WELLMAN, PAUL I. Death on the Prairie (1934), Death in the Desert (1935); both reprinted in Death on Horseback, 1947. All OP. Graphic history, mostly in narrative, of the struggle of Plains and Apache Indians to hold their homelands against the whites.
WILBARGER, J. W. Indian Depredations in Texas, 1889; reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Its stirring narratives made this a household book among Texans of the late nineteenth century.
THE MEXICAN Revolution that began in 1910 resulted in a rich development of the native cultural elements of Mexico, the art of Diego Rivera being one of the highlights of this development. The native culture is closer to the Mexican earth and to the indigenes than to Spain, notwithstanding modern insistence on the Latin in Latin-American culture.
The Spaniards, through Mexico, have had an abiding influence on the architecture and language of the Southwest. They gave us our most distinctive occupation, ranching on the open range. They influenced mining greatly, and our land titles and irrigation laws still go back to Spanish and Mexican sources. After more than a hundred years of occupation of Texas and almost that length of time in other parts of the Southwest, the English-speaking Americans still have the rich accumulations of lore pertaining to coyotes, mesquites, prickly pear, and many other plants and animals to learn from the Mexicans, who got their lore partly from intimate living with nature but largely through Indian ancestry.
See "Fighting Texians," "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."
AIKEN, RILEY. "A Pack Load of Mexican Tales," in Puro Mexicano, published by Texas Folklore Society, 1935. Now published by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. Delightful.
ALEXANDER, FRANCES (and others). Mother Goose on the Rio Grande, Banks Upshaw, Dallas, 1944. Charming rhymes in both Spanish and English in charming form.
APPLEGATE, FRANK G. Native Tales of New Mexico, Philadelphia, 1932. Delicious; the real thing. OP.
ATHERTON, GERTRUDE. The Splendid Idle Forties, New York, 1902. Romance of Mexican California.
AUSTIN, MARY. One-Smoke Stories, Boston, 1934. Short tales of Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, also of Indians.
BANDELIER, A. F. The Gilded Man, New York, 1873. The dream of El Dorado.
BARCA, MADAM CALDERON DE LA. Life in Mexico, 1843; reprinted by Dutton about 1930. Among books on Mexican life to be ranked first both in readability and revealing qualities.
BELL, HORACE. On the Old West Coast, New York, 1930. A golden treasury of anecdotes. OP.
BENTLEY, HAROLD W. A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English, New York, 1932. In a special way this book reveals the Spanish-Mexican influence on life in the Southwest; it also guides to books in English that reflect this influence. OP.
BISHOP, MORRIS. The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca, New York, 1933. Better written than Cabeza de Vaca's own narrative. OP.
BLANCO, ANTONIO FIERRO DE. The Journey of the Flame, Boston, 1933. Bully and flavorsome; the Californias. OP.
BOLTON, HERBERT E. Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1916. The cream of explorer narratives, well edited. Coronado on the Turquoise Trail (originally published in New York, 1949, under the title Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains; now issued by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque). By his own work and by directing other scholars, Dr. Bolton has surpassed all other American historians of his time in output on Spanish-American history. Coronado is the climax of his many volumes. Its fault is being too worshipful of everything Spanish and too uncritical. A little essay on Coronado in Haniel Long's Pinon Country goes a good way to put this belegended figure into proper perspective.
BRENNER, ANITA. Idols Behind Altars, 1929. OP. The pagan worship that endures among Mexican Indians. The Wind that Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1942, 1943, OP. Your Mexican Holiday, revised 1947. No writer on modern Mexico has a clearer eye or clearer intellect than Anita Brenner; she maintains good humor in her realism and never lapses into phony romance.
CABEZA DE VACA'S Narrative. Any translation procurable. One is included in Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, edited by F. W. Hodge and T. H. Lewis, now published by Barnes & Noble, New York.
The most dramatic and important aftermath of Cabeza de Vaca's twisted walk across the continent was Coronado's search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado's precursor was Fray Marcos de Niza. The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza, by Cleve Hallenbeck, with illustrations and decorations by Jose Cisneros, is one of the most beautiful books in format published in America. It was designed and printed by Carl Hertzog of El Paso, printer without peer between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and is issued by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas.
CASTANEDA'S narrative of Coronado's expedition. Winship's translation is preferred. It is included in Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, cited above.
CATHER, WILLA. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Knopf, New York, 1927. Classical historical fiction on New Mexico.
CUMBERLAND, CHARLES C. Mexican Revolution: Genesis under Madero, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. Bibliography. To know Mexico and Mexicans without knowing anything about Mexican revolutions is like knowing the United States in ignorance of frontiers, constitutions, and corporations. The Madero revolution that began in 1910 is still going on. Mr. Cumberland's solid book, independent in itself, is to be followed by two other volumes.
DE SOTO. Hernando de Soto made his expedition from Florida north and west at the time Coronado was exploring north and east. The Florida of the Inca, by Garcilaso de la Vega, translated by John and Jeannette Varner, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951, is the first complete publishing in English of this absorbing narrative.
DIAZ, BERNAL. History of the Conquest. There are several translations. A book of gusto and humanity as enduring as the results of the Conquest itself.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. Coronado's Children, 1930. Legendary tales of the Southwest, many of them derived from Mexican sources. Tongues of the Monte, 1935. A pattern of the soil of northern Mexico and its folk. Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver, 1939. Lost mines and money in Mexico and New Mexico. Last two books published by Little, Brown, Boston.
DOMENECH, ABBE. Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico, London, 1858. Delightful folklore, though Domenech would not have so designated his accounts.
FERGUSSON, HARVEY. Blood of the Conquerors, 1921. Fiction. OP. Rio Grande, Knopf, New York, 1933. Best interpretations yet written of upper Mexican class.
FLANDRAU, CHARLES M. Viva Mexico! New York, 1909; reissued, 1951. Delicious autobiographic narrative of life in Mexico.
FULTON, MAURICE G., and HORGAN, PAUL (editors). New Mexico's Own Chronicle, Dallas, 1937. OP. Selections from writers about the New Mexico scene.
GILPATRICK, WALLACE. The Man Who Likes Mexico, New York, 1911. OP. Bully reading.
GONZALEZ, JOVITA. Tales about Texas-Mexican vaquero folk in Texas and Southwestern Lore, in Man, Bird, and Beast, and in Mustangs and Cow Horses, Publications VI, VIII, and XVI of Texas Folklore Society.
{illust. caption = Jose Cisneros: Fray Marcos, in The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza by Cleve Hallenbeck (1949)}
GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. Hernando De Soto, London, 1912. Biography. OP.
HARTE, BRET. The Bell Ringer of Angels and other legendary tales of California.
LAUGHLIN, RUTH. Caballeros. When the book was published in 1931, the author was named Ruth Laughlin Barker; after she discarded the Barker part, it was reissued, in 1946, by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. Delightful picturings of Mexican—or Spanish, as many New Mexicans prefer—life around Santa Fe.
LEA, TOM. The Brave Bulls. See under "Fiction."
LUMMIS, C. F. Flowers of Our Lost Romance, Boston, 1929. Humanistic essays on Spanish contributions to southwestern civilization. OP. The Land of Poco Tiempo, New York, 1913 (reissued by University of New Mexico Press, 1952), in an easier style. A New Mexico David, 1891, 1930. Folk tales and sketches. OP.
MERRIAM, CHARLES. Machete, Dallas, 1932. Plain and true to the gente. OP.
NIGGLI, JOSEPHINA. Mexican Village, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1945. A collection of skilfully told stories that reveal Mexican life.
O'SHAUGHNESSY, EDITH. A Diplomat s Wife in Mexico, New York, 1916; Diplomatic Days, 1917; Intimate Pages of Mexican History, 1920. Books of passion and power and high literary merit, interpretative of revolutionary Mexico. OP.
OTERO, NINA. Old Spain in Our Southwest, New York, 1936. Genuine. OP.
PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE. Flowering Judas. See under "Fiction."
PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. Conquest of Mexico. History that is literature.
REMINGTON, FREDERIC W. Pony Tracks, New York, 1895. Includes sketches of Mexican ranch life.
ROSS, PATRICIA FENT. Made in Mexico: The Story of a Country's Arts and Crafts, Knopf, New York, 1952. Picturesquely and instructively illustrated by Carlos Merida.
TANNENBAUM, FRANK. Peace by Revolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1933; Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread, Knopf, New York, 1950. Tannenbaum dodges nothing, not even the church.
Terry's Guide to Mexico. It has everything.
Texas Folklore Society. Its publications are a storehouse of Mexican folklore in the Southwest and in Mexico also. Especially recommended are Texas and Southwestern Lore (VI), Man, Bird, and Beast (VIII), Southwestern Lore (IX), Spur-of-the-Cock (XI), Puro Mexicano (XII), Texian Stomping Grounds (XVII), Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore (XXI), The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore (XXIV, 1951). All published by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas.
TOOR, FRANCES. A Treasury of Mexican Folkways, Crown, New York, 1947. An anthology of life.
TURNER, TIMOTHY G. Bullets, Bottles and Gardenias, Dallas, 1935. Obscurely published but one of the best books on Mexican life. OP.
THERE IS little justification for including Louisiana as a part of the Southwest. Despite the fact that the French flag—tied to a pole in Louisiana—once waved over Texas, French influence on it and other parts of the Southwest has been minor.
ARTHUR, STANLEY CLISBY. Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover (1952) and Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman (1937), both published by Harmanson—Publisher and Bookseller, 333 Royal St., New Orleans.
CABLE, GEORGE W. Old Creole Days: Strange True Stories of Louisiana.
CHOPIN, KATE. Bayou Folk.
FORTIER, ALCEE. Any of his work on Louisiana.
HEARN, LAFCADIO. Chita. A lovely story.
JOUTEL. Journal of La Salle's career in Texas.
KANE, HARNETT T. Plantation Parade: The Grand Manner in Louisiana (1945), Natchez on the Mississippi (1947), Queen New Orleans (1949), all published by Morrow, New York.
KING, GRACE. New Orleans: The Place and the People; Balcony Stories.
MCVOY, LIZZIE CARTER. Louisiana in the Short Story, Louisiana State University Press, 1940.
SAXON, LYLE. Fabulous New Orleans; Old Louisiana; Lafitte the Pirate.
THE SETTLERS who put their stamp on Texas were predominantly from the southern states—and far more of them came to Texas to work out of debt than came with riches in the form of slaves. The plantation owner came too, but the go-ahead Crockett kind of backwoodsman was typical. The southern type never became so prominent in New Mexico, Arizona, and California as in Texas. Nevertheless, the fact glares out that the code of conduct—the riding and shooting tradition, the eagerness to stand up and fight for one's rights, the readiness to back one's judgment with a gun, a bowie knife, money, life itself—that characterized the whole West as well as the Southwest was southern, hardly at all New England.
The very qualities that made many of the Texas pioneers rebels to society and forced not a few of them to quit it between sun and sun without leaving new addresses fitted them to conquer the wilderness—qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society—a society shockingly tame—may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman is one who never gives offense." Under this definition a shaded violet, a butterfly, and a floating summer cloud are all gentlemen. "The art of war," said Napoleon, "is to make offense." Conquering the hostile Texas wilderness meant war with nature and against savages as well as against Mexicans. Go-ahead Crockett's ideal of a gentleman was one who looked in another direction while a visitor was pouring himself out a horn of whiskey.
Laying aside climatic influences on occupations and manners, certain Spanish influences, and minor Pueblo Indian touches, the Southwest from the point of view of the bedrock Anglo-Saxon character that has made it might well include Arkansas and Missouri. The realism of southern folk and of a very considerable body of indigenous literature representing them has been too much overshadowed by a kind of So Red the Rose idealization of slave-holding aristocrats.
ALLSOPP, FRED W. Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, 2 vols., Grolier Society, 1931. Allsopp assembled a rich and varied collection of materials in the tone of "The Arkansas Traveler." OP.
ARRINGTON, ALFRED W. The Rangers and Regulators of the Tanaha, 18 56. East Texas bloodletting.
BALDWIN, JOSEPH G. The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi, 1853.
BLAIR, WALTER. Horse Sense in American Humor from Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash, 1942. OP. Native American Humor, 1937. OP. Tall Tale America, Coward-McCann, New York, 1944. Orderly analyses with many concrete examples. With Franklin J. Meine as co-author, Mike Fink, King of Mississippi River Keelboatmen, 1933. Biography of a folk type against pioneer and frontier background. OP.
BOATRIGHT, MODY C. Folk Laughter on the American Frontier. See under "Interpreters."
CLARK, THOMAS D. The Rampaging Frontier, 1939. OP. Historical picturization and analysis, fortified by incidents and tales of "Varmints," "Liars," "Quarter Horses," "Fiddlin'," "Foolin' with the Gals," etc.
CROCKETT, DAVID. Autobiography. Reprinted many times. Scribner's edition in the "Modern Students' Library" includes Colonel Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas. Crockett set the backwoods type. See treatment of him in Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought. Richard M. Dorson's Davy Crockett, American Comic Legend, 1939, is a summation of the Crockett tradition.
FEATHERSTONHAUGH, G. W. Excursion through the Slave States, London, 1866. Refreshing on manners and characters.
FLACK, CAPTAIN. The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods, London, 1866.
GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. Wild Sports in the Far West. Nothing better on backwoods life in the Mississippi Valley.
HAMMETT, SAMUEL ADAMS (who wrote under the name of Philip Paxton), Piney Woods Tavern; or Sam Slick in Texas and A Stray Yankee in Texas. Humor on the roughneck element. For treatment of Hammett as man and writer see Sam Slick in Texas, by W. Stanley Hoole, Naylor, San Antonio, 1945.
HARRIS, GEORGE W. Sut Lovingood, New York, 1867. Prerealism.
HOGUE, WAYMAN. Back Yonder. Minton, Balch, New York, 1932. Ozark life. OP.
HOOPER, J. J. Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, 1845. OP. Downright realism. Like Longstreet, Hooper in maturity wanted his realism forgotten. An Alabama journalist, he got into the camp of respectable slave-holders and spent the later years of his life shouting against the "enemies of the institution of African slavery." His life partly explains the lack of intellectual honesty in most southern spokesmen today. Alias Simon Suggs: The Life and Times of Johnson Jones Hooper, by W. Stanley Hoole, University of Alabama Press, 1952, is a careful study of Hooper's career.
HUDSON, A. P. Humor of the Old Deep South, New York, 1936. An anthology. OP.
LONGSTREET, A. B. Georgia Scenes, 1835. Numerous reprints. Realism.
MASTERSON, JAMES R. Tall Tales of Arkansas, Boston, 1943. OP. The title belies this excellent social history—by a scholar. It has become quite scarce on account of the fact that it contains unexpurgated versions of the notorious speech on "Change the Name of Arkansas"—which in 1919 in officers' barracks at Bordeaux, France, I heard a lusty individual recite with as many variations as Roxane of Cyrano de Bergerac wanted in love-making. When Fred W. Allsopp, newspaper publisher and pillar of Arkansas respectability, found that this book of unexpurgations had been dedicated to him by the author—a Harvard Ph.D. teaching in Michigan—he almost "had a colt."
MEINE, FRANKLIN J. (editor). Tall Tales of the Southwest, Knopf, New York, 1930. A superbly edited and superbly selected anthology with appendices affording a guide to the whole field of early southern humor and realism. No cavalier idealism. The "Southwest" of this excellent book is South.
OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1856. A Journey Through Texas, 1857. Invaluable books on social history.
POSTL, KARL ANTON (Charles Sealsfield or Francis Hardman, pseudonyms). The Cabin Book; Frontier Life. Translations all OP.
RANDOLPH, VANCE. We Always Lie to Strangers, Columbia University Press, New York, 1951. A collection of tall tales of the adding machine variety. Fertile in invention but devoid of any yearning for the beautiful or suggestion that the human spirit hungers for something beyond horse play; in short, typical of American humor.
ROURKE, CONSTANCE. American Humor, 1931; Davy Crockett, 1934; Roots of American Culture and Other Essays, 1942, all published by Harcourt, Brace, New York.
THOMPSON, WILLIAM T. Major Jones's Courtship, Philadelphia, 1844. Realism.
THORPE, T. B. The Hive of the Bee-Hunter, New York, 1854. This excellent book should be reprinted.
WATTERSON, HENRY. Oddities in Southern Life and Character, Boston, 1882. An anthology with interpretative notes.
WILSON, CHARLES MORROW. Backwoods America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1935. Well ordered survey with excellent samplings.
WOOD, RAY. The American Mother Goose, 1940; Fun in American Folk Rhymes, 1952; both published by Lippincott, Philadelphia.