Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721–1821 by Jack Jackson (review)

78 Western American Literature In addition to their considerable ethnographic value (even though Eells was primarily a missionary with little training in the science), the material presented has a special significance in that it is a record of American Indian peoples in the midst of radical change. The text presented here is as Myron Eells wrote it, with a minimum amount of altering on the part of the editor. Only two chapters have been omitted from the original, one on “Languages” and one entitled, “The Stone Age of Oregon.” The University of Washington Press is to be commended on the visual and physical quality of this book. It is well-designed, well-printed, and sturdily bound. The numerous photographic illustrations and the Eells line drawings that are used are all high quality reproductions, and form a valuable historical compilation in themselves. The book should be of great interest and value to all students of western Indian history, political science, and anthropologyethnography . GEORGE H. TWENEY Seattle, Washington Los Mestenos: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721-1821. ByJack Jackson. (Col­ lege Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986. 704 pages, $34.50.) Owen Wister, author of The Virginian, in “The Evolution of the CowPuncher ” acknowledges that “our sons of Kentucky and Tennessee” when they moved to Texas took from the Mexican “his saddle, his bridle, his spurs, his rope, his methods of branding and herding—indeed, most of his customs and accoutrements.” Nevertheless, Wister calls the Mexican a “small, deceit­ ful alien” and pays tribute to the “grittier qualities” of the “Saxon.” The failure to recognize the full importance of the Hispanic influence upon the development of the cattle industry in the West, or the denigration of that influence, illustrated by the quotation from Wister, is a long-standing injustice now being corrected by such scholarly studies as Los Mestenos. Jackson’s purpose is to show that the early settlers of Texas “faced many of the same problems, challenges, and triumphs as the subsequent Anglo cul­ ture.” The hundred years he meticulously traces is a tempestuous era marked by the constant threat of Indian depredations, struggles between the cattlemen and Spanish civil and military authorities, and conflicts between the missions with their sometimes enormous cattle herds and the secular ranches. In his final chapter Jackson records how the Americans, while concealing their indebtedness to the Mexicans, appropriated both the property and much of the way of life of their predecessors. Throughout the book Jackson’s exhaus­ tive scholarship is evident in the numerous footnote references to both primary and secondary sources. The greatest value of this work may lie in those questions it implies which are not specifically answered. Jackson describes the courage, pride, resource­ fulness, and independence of the Spanish cattlemen. Did, then, the Spanish Reviews 79 pioneers, despite their caste society ruled by a distant sovereign, develop the same characteristics which Turner ascribed to American frontiersmen? A panel of writers at the 1985 Western Literature Association convention cred­ ited Scottish tradition with the origin of “the code of the West.” Could it not equally have been derived from Hispanic customs? One minor criticism: while Mr. Jackson’s drawings are delightful, the maps are hard to read. LARRY McDONALD Arizona Western College The Forgotten Cattle King. By Benton R. White. (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University, 1986. 138 pages, $14.95.) If the name F. G. Oxsheer doesn’t ring any bells, don’t feel bad; it’s not supposed to. That’s why Benton R. White entitled his biography The For­ gotten Cattle King. It is surprising to discover that a man who once owned 18 ranches in Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico could have been so thoroughly forgotten within so short a time after his death. In White’s skillful hands, Oxsheer’s biography becomes nearly a tragedy in that those traits in his character which made him one of the great cattle barons of the Southwest were also partly responsible for his downfall. For example, Oxsheer doted on his children, especially his three sons, and wanted them to continue after him in the cattle business. But he learned to his sorrow that they did not have his drive, his perseverence, or his independence...