The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976 Page: 362
528 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
for the most part, thoroughly conventional chapters on these two tribes,
each of which is then followed by two intensely detailed chapters analyzing
similar problems among a host of other "nomadic" and "reservation"
Indians. The book concludes with one of those highly simplistic chapters
which editors mistakenly, but all too often, insist upon in which we are
told how the Indian problem might have been "solved" during this period.
Danziger's book contains a wealth of information based on the archival
records of no less than eleven Indian superintendencies, nineteen agencies,
the voluminous correspondence of the Indian Office with its agents and
superintendents, and what appears to be every conceivable secondary
source published prior to 1968. Unfortunately, it is flawed by a lack of
meaningful focus and organization and by the author's failure to understand
the artificiality of the Civil War period in the history of federal Indian
policy. The reader will have to provide his own method for making the
material useful.
North Texas State University LAWRENCE C. KELLY
The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands. By Max L. Moorhead.
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975. Pp. v+288. Maps,
index. $9-95.)
Unlike earlier valuable, but narrower, studies of the presidial system
which concentrated on particular periods, sites and/or geographic areas,
Moorhead's The Presidio is a synthesis which combines previous scholar-
ship with more recent research and interprets the material in new and
suggestive ways. Working from a generally Boltonian interpretation, Moor-
head views the presidio not merely as a military installation but as a
frontier institution which "came to exert a pervasive influence on the
political, economic, social, and even demographic development of its
environment" (p. 3).
Moorhead attempts to define "precisely what the presidio was and how
fully it influenced the course of regional history" (p. v). He has done an
admirable job. The book is divided into two sections. The five chapters in
Part I, "Historical Evolution," are chronological in arrangement and
examine the origins, establishment, development, and policies of the presidial
system in the geographic area known as the Provincias Internas. The five
chapters in Part II, "Descriptive Analysis," are topical in arrangement and
provide an analysis of the presidio's "five most significant functions: as a
military fort, as a company of troops, as a sizeable government payroll, as a
nucleus for a civilian community, and as an agency for an Indian reserva-362
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976, periodical, 1975/1976; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101203/m1/407/?rotate=0: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.