Texas through 1845: A Survey of the Historical Literature of Recent Decades

"Incident on the Prairies" from Narrative ofthe Texan Santa Fé Expedition, comprising a description ofa tour through Texas, and across the great southwestern prairies, the Camanche and Caygüa hunting-grounds, with an account ofthe sufferingsfrom want offood, lossesfrom hostile Indians, and final capture ofthe Texans, and their march, as prisoners, to the tity ofMexico (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844) by Geo. Willems Kendall. This image shows a party ofwhite travelers surprised by Comanche buffalo hunters. Many current scholars argue that the Comanches were the dominant political entity in Texas around 1845, refuting the idea that Anglo Americans such as the travelers in this image easily hegemonized the region after Texas won its independence from Mexico. Image courtesy ofthe Rare Book and Texana Collections, University of North Texas Libraries. Texas through 1845: A Survey ofthe Historical Literature ofRecent Decades By F. Todd Smith* BETWEEN THE 1Q20S AND îgÔOS, HISTORIANS, WITH VERY FEW exceptions, explained the era prior to 1846 in terms of the triumphant conquest of Anglo-American civilization over supposedly inferior races. Despite the fact that Indians had inhabited the region for at least 1 5,000 years, and that Texas was a Spanish colony for over a century, most historians—as well as most of the public— believed that Texas history did not begin until the appearance of Stephen F. Austin in the early 1820s. Even though Mexico controlled Texas at the time, scholars of the period were only interested in how the Anglos inevitably wrested the region from the Hispanics, defeated the Native Americans, and rightfully attached it to the United States.1 During the last two decades, however, the writing ofTexas history to 1 846 has undergone a dramatic transformation. During the 1 990s and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, many scholars, reflecting historiographical trends concerning other parts of the Americas and the Atlantic World, have portrayed early Texas as a frontier region inhabited by various groups of people—none more intrinsically more important than the other—who competed for resources in a relatively equal manner. Rather than seeing Texas as a savage frontier that was civilized bywestward movingAngloAmericans, the newscholarship has sought to present a much fuller picture of the region, demonstrating how dynamic groups of Native Americans, Téjanos, and Anglos *F. Todd Smidi is a professor of history at die University of Nordi Texas. He received his Ph.D. in history from Tulane University in 1989. He has written four books on Texas Indians and is a fellow of the TSHA. The audior would like to thank Walter Buenger, Sophie Burton, Mike Campbell, Gregg Cantrell, Don Chipman,Jesus F. De la Teja, and Amoldo De Léon for their comments on diis article. 1 See, for example, Eugene C. Barker, Life ofStephen F. Austin, FounderofTexas, 1793-1836: A Chapter in the Westward Movement oftheAnglo-American People (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1925); Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century ofFrontierDefense (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935); and Rupert N. Richardson, Texas: The Lone Star Slate (New York: Prentice-Hall,ig43). Vol. CXIII, No. 3 Southwestern Historical Quarterly January 2010 312Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary competed and interacted with one another until the latter group finally—but not inevitably—established hegemony at the end of the period. Although these historians have made great strides in the last twenty years—particularly in terms of research concerning previously neglected Indians and Mexican's—much scholarship remains to be done on the blacks, women, and (ironically) the common-folk Anglos who resided in Texas prior to statehood. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, scholars produced a number of groundbreaking studies concerning colonial Texas. Much of the research, like most works on American history written at the time, was influenced by FrederickJackson Turner's 1893 thesis that placed an emphasis on the frontier, which he defined as being the line between civilization and savagery. According to Turner, United States history was primarily the story ofEnglish-speaking White Anglo-Saxon Protestants using their superior forms of government, economy, and religion to push the frontier westward across North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, triumphing over inferior groups ofNative Americans and Latin Catholics along the way...