Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas (review)

2oo7 Book Reviews97 so many of the newly arrived prisoners became ill within weeks of their arrival and some died. Second, he created a system whereby the confined men could organize their own policing force. With the success of this self-governing body, the Indians earned the right to visit nearby white communities, where they sold handicrafts, participated in social activities, and learned more about the outside world. Finally, Pratt worked toward the formal education of the prisoners by creating a prison school that operated on a regular basis with staffing by qualified teachers. Although most ofdie Indian prisoners responded warmly to Pratt's efforts, his blueprint for their future was paternalistic at the least and culturally genocidal at the worst. His well-remembered phrase, "kill the Indian in him and save the man," articulated his strong belief that Native American traditions had no future in the world. Only by destroying old values and lifeways could the indigenous people be acculturated into the "proper" white way ofliving. What may have seemed realistic and even altruistic to reformers ofPratt's day now seems to be the height ofcultural arrogance and planned cultural destruction. Yet, despite all the efforts to crush the traditional ways of these Southern Plains societies, Lookingbill correctly perceives the irony of this situation over the long run. Instead of bowing to pressure and completely turning their backs on traditional mores, the prisoners-of-war actually used the years between 1 875 and 1878 to devise methods for cultural revitalization. They, like other tribal peoples spread across the western United States, fused elements of Christianity with older ceremonies and spiritual understanding. They participated in some features ofthe capitalistic economy, while simultaneously preserving their communal orientation and responsibilities. And, above all, they freely rejected the parts of white society that they deemed to be most objectionable. The prisoners took these lessons back to their Indian Territory reservations, and today their descendents blend the often antithetical value systems into a hybrid that suits their twenty-first-century needs. Both Stan Hoig and Brad Lookingbill are to be commended for dieir fine works on two eras ofPlains history. Theirbooks deserve wide attention among both a scholarly audience and the larger group ofinterested lay readers. Lookingbill's work especially allows Indian voices to come alive and to speak to a modem generation ofAmericans who can never fully understand the depth ofchange that faced indigenous people in the late nineteenth century. Despite focusing on a period ofincarceration, he provides a hopeful message about future generations of Indians and their cultural resilience. University ofNebraska at OmahaMichael L. Tate Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Traih Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas. By Howard J. Erlichman. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. Pp. 296. Acknowledgments, maps, notes, index. ISBN 1585444731. $29.95 cloth.) Talk about narrowly focused topics—a history of Interstate 35 in Texas sounds like a recipe for padding. Pitfalls abound for a project like this: repetition ofvaguely related history; thrusting the topic to the center ofevents to which it is peripheral; 98Southwestern Historical Quarterly]u\y and a sandstorm of facts and statistics dry as the landscape through which most of the highway runs. Happily, Howard J. Erlichman, in Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, andDirt Trails Evolved into Interstate35 in Texas, manages to avoid these pitfalls, and the book turns out to be well-crafted and engaging, while making a convincing case for the central importance of I-35's development—a "towering achievement," as he calls it (p. ix)—to an understanding of trade and setdement patterns in the region. Erlichman begins with the prehistory of what would become Mexico and south-central Texas, and follows the development oftrade and transportation routes through Inca, Mayan, and Aztec cultures and up to the forbiddingwastes beyond the Rio Grande. Even this early in the history ofI-35, it becomes clear how strong the ties are and have always been between southwest Texas and Mexico compared to those between that region and the rest of the United States. After the Spanish conquest, we follow the struggles to extend and establish more permanent routes toward...