Coacoochee's Bones, A Seminole Saga (review)

2oo8 Book Reviews217 times ofJuan Bautista de Anza. The book might rub some historians the wrong way, as the author admits that this "biography is written in a 'story' form" (pp. xix), which includes recreating conversations and a story about the tears Anza's mother shed when he left for the New World (p. 53). While these narrative devices reach beyond typical historical analysis, Garate's work is well documented widi sources from archives in Mexico, Spain, the Basque Country, Britain, and the United States; transcriptions and facsimiles of documents in the text and appendices should prove useful for further research. As a biography, the story of Anza's life unfolds chronologically from his childhood in Guipúzcoa to his transAtlantic move to Sonora, where other members of the Anza family were well established by the late seventeenth century. The bulk of the book covers Anza's military career, both in Sonora and in the presidios ofJanos and Fronteras, through which he became involved in a series of campaigns against the Apaches, dating from the 1720s through the 1730s. Garate's is a well-documented account, and his knowledge of euskera, the Basque language, and the colonial Basque diaspora bring a fresh perspective to the history of a legendary family in eighteenth-century northern New Spain. Garate's work also poses interesting questions for further research. His study incorporates both Anza's early life in the Basque Country and his ethnic affiliations in the New World, demonstrating the simple fact that the Spanish were not a monolithic group. As anyone who has worked in colonial archives for the North can attest, the number of Basque surnames is overwhelming, while direct references to ethnic identity are uncommon at best. Garate illustrates the way those documents can be read to locate Basques beyond lists of surnames, to expose networks—but the significance of ethnicity still eludes analysis. First, we must be careful to delineate an early modern Basque identity, and not be confused by modern nationalist definitions of identity that emerged in the political and economic context of Europe in the 1890s. Second, comparative analysis, with works like Ida Airman's Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Century (University of California Press, 198g), should help to expose the similarities and differences between Basque and Iberian customs of familial, regional, and ethnic networks. University ofArizonaCatherine Tracy Goode Coacoochee's Bones, A Seminole Saga. By Susan A. Miller. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003. Pp. xix+264. Preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-7006-1 195-9. $34-95> cloth.) Susan Miller's work serves as a model for upcoming Native American scholars and writers in that it interprets indigenous history through the eyes of indigenous peoples. Miller decolonizes without being a revisionist. Her exceptionally instructive first chapter leads the reader into the Muscogee world out of which the Seminóles evolved, introducing the Seminole cosmos through vocabulary. The English word town has a singular meaning in the Anglo world but to the Seminole, the word has several meanings: Tolofa, "the physical place where the 2i8Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober people . . . live" and italwa, "the political and spiritual entity" that they comprise (p. 2). Throughout this chapter Miller introduces political, economic, familial, religious, and lineal phrases and explains their meanings in context. Miller, a full Seminole, raises the level of the indigenous world to that of the dominant Anglo world widiout insult. Regarding Black Seminóles (Maroons and Mascogos) she writes convincingly that earlier scholars addressed the SeminoleBlack relation but did so ethnocentrically. The idea that the Maroons were "'vassals and allies'" (p. 64) to the Seminóles is just as over-simplistic as saying they were slaves to the Seminóles or that they were equal in all ways to the Seminóles. Of particular interest is Miller's account of the forced Seminole migration from Florida to Oklahoma, in particular, the role of Coacooche, the Seminole who emerged as leader between 1837 and 1849. Born between 1808 and 1816, along with his twin sister, Coacooche was able to become a leader thanks to his mother's lineage. His accomplishments were many: he was skilled in politics and dealt...