Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers (review)

Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers. By RICHARD W. SLATTA. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xvi, 320 pp. Cloth, $24.95.

Treating issues of cowboys and frontiers throughout the western hemisphere, this collection of essays builds on Richard Slatta's earlier work, including his excellent monograph on the social history of the gaucho in Argentina. Presented as a guide of how to do comparative research, the book serves as a vehicle for collecting scattered pieces. Some of these were published earlier, at times in places perhaps obscure to the readers of this journal. Others given as addresses appear in print for the first time. Written for different audiences, the essays exhibit a far from unified feel. As in Slatta's previous work, however, the writing is usually lively throughout, drawing the reader in. He makes heavy but effective use of vivid quotation from primary sources, especially from travel accounts.

This book appears to be aimed less at the Latin Americanist than at broadening the intellectual horizons of scholars of the American West. It opens an impressive breadth of material. Neophytes to the world of the cowboy can learn about a host of topics, including different cultural variants among Mexican horsemen and what cowboys drank from one end of the Americas to the other. Some of the essays work better than others, perhaps because the level of research involved appears uneven. The chapter on Indian equestrian economies introduces or synthesizes material that will be new to many readers. It provides a striking reminder of the richness and of the long history of human-environment relations on the pampas. A chapter on Spanish military policies succeeds in connecting bleak phases in the history of colonial attitudes toward the grassland Indians from south to north.

Some of the thematic chapters dealing with historiographical themes have a potential wide readership. An essay on Frederick Jackson Turner's influence in Canada and Latin America intrigues by finding precursors for his thought in South America, in such figures as Emilio Daireaux and João Capistrano de Abreu. A republished paper comparing social and economic change in parts of Buenos Aires Province with the Campanha of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, failed as a test of the demographic transition model but was a fascinating research exercise nevertheless. Slatta is astute in his discussion of the importance of political constraints on the development of ranching but loses sight of the importance of physical environmental factors in southern Brazil. Researchers will search in vain for hard evidence to support his assertion that "the inexorable advance of wheat" (p. 144) was displacing ranch labor in the Campanha. The final chapter on the dangers of frontier overrevisionism is in some ways the most interesting in the book. It takes a wide-ranging tour through debates on subjects as diverse as the roles of women in cowboy cultures, the supposed follies of deconstructionism, and the social history of labor on the pampas. Writing about "the bounds of sound historical method and good use of sources" (p. 182), Slatta has contributed earlier to many of the issues raised. More than a chapter, this material reads for me as the inchoate outline for a book dealing specifically with cowboy frontier historiography.

From the preface onward, Slatta convincingly argues that many historical processes benefit from comparison and that students of social and economic topics have much to gain from working at the hemispheric scale. Enjoyable though his essays often are, the book could have been strengthened in various ways. While Slatta mentions Herbert Bolton, Walter Prescott Webb and other more recent comparativists in setting up his study, he does not really show the reader how he is building on them. A formidable range of intellectual currents is touched on in the essays, yet the treatment of debates is very summary throughout the book. At the same time, there is considerable repetition of material, a trait especially marked in the two early chapters dealing with...