Texas Roots: Agriculture and Rural Life before the Civil War

Through the generations, and over the expanse of centuries, Texans have forged an identity that stands unique among others. So much has been said and written about the distinctive character that defines the Lone Star State. It is a legacy unlike any other in the American story, a heritage that is as vast, diverse, and magnificent as the land itself. As author C. Allan Jones, director of the Texas Water Resources Institute explains, Texas roots run deep.

A readable survey of the state's rural and agricultural beginnings is long overdue. Jones should, therefore, be commended for offering a thorough examination of this much-neglected yet critically important chapter in the Texas experience. His aptly stated objective—"to bring alive a part of Texas history that is rarely addressed: the relationship of Texans to their land before the Civil War" (p. 3)—is one worthy of the scholar's serious attention, even if the topic is not one that lends itself to a more popular appeal.

Despite the fact that the wilderness world Jones explores has been largelylost to the present generation, the legacy of that rural society remains rele-vant and instructive. To be sure, it is a story worth telling. In its earliest stages of development Texas emerged as a fluid society of yeoman farmers, planters, herdsmen, and stockmen. Stretching from the Red River to the Rio Grande, sprawling from the waters of the Sabine to the grasslands of the Llano Estacado and beyond, the Texas heritage is presented in cultural layers. Beginning with the Caddoan-speaking gardeners and gatherers of East Texas and continuing with the Spanish missionaries and their neophyte converts in South Texas, the sediments of a new society were successfully laid long before the arrival of Anglo Texians in the 1820s. Then, by the time of the Texas Revolution and the foundation of an independent Republic, a herding and hunting culture from the Upper South complemented and altered the long-standing agricultural and ranching traditions that had endured for decades during Spanish colonial rule.

Jones takes the reader on a journey across the primitive landscape of antebellum Texas, cutting a broad swath across the development of a plantation economy, the role of slave labor, the prevalence of subsistence agriculture, the importance of river and road transportation, the evolution of farming tools, fencing techniques, and methods of cultivation. He offers a glimpse into the daily lives of people in remote, wooded river bottoms and isolated prairie regions. He even examines the routines of their domestic chores, their diet, the dwellings that they hewed from the wilds, and more.

But notably absent is a treatment of the separate set of challenges that faced women on the Texas frontier. Despite that flaw, however, Texas Roots is a welcome addition to our growing library of Texas historical literature—a library that still holds so many empty shelves, providing ample room for contributions that enhance our understanding of the Texas experience.