At Home in Texas: Early Views of the Land by Robin W. Doughty (review)

188 Western American Literature plant collecting and processing, while again considering such topics as the organization of gathering parties, the implements used, principles of owner­ ship, etc. Chapter 5 focuses on foods, including their preparation, dietary content, and menus, as well as food preferences, and foods associated with ritual. Chapter 6, the summary, draws conclusions from the above as to the cul­ tural position of the Western Apache vis a vis their neighbors in the Southwest. Although the volume is principally data oriented, it is well written and should be informative to people with a genuine interest in the cultures, environ­ ment, and environmental concerns of the Western Apache and the peoples of the Southwest. The University of Oklahoma Press should be congratulated for selecting an older but excellent manuscript for publication. CATHERINE S. FOWLER University of Nevada, Reno At Home in Texas: Early Views of the Land. By Robin W. Doughty. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987. 163 pages, $17.95.) What this geographer-writer strives for in his survey of accounts written by Texas “settlers, chroniclers, and promoters” is both to define sense of place and analyze development of the tie between settler and his new land. Stephen F. Austin, best-known of the early colonizers, foresaw that estab­ lishing a home on the Texas frontier would occur in three stages: clearing, plowing and sowing, and harvesting. The author explores the philosophical implications of these three stages in their effect on the “community-consciousness ” of the settlers. He points out that as the Texas frontier moved westward, settlers began to value wilderness as hunting grounds. Some began to want to preserve the beauty of the woodlands. Others praised the sharp contrasts in Texas terrain and environment as important to their individual feelings of kinship to the land where they chose to build their homes. Research has been thorough for this work, sothat one of the mostvaluable sections of the book for compulsive readers and researchers in Texana is the bibliography. The final chapter, however, “Texas as Home and Place,” may disappoint. In a hurried survey of classic narratives of life in Texas, the author assesses the quality of early Texas women’s lives, the adjustments required of early foreign settlers, the connections between a Texan’s identity and his home place, and the images of Texas depicted in literary works by Texans. To gen­ eralize with confidence on these topics would require considerably more knowl­ edge of Texas’s literary tradition than source citations indicate. Despite the insufficient development of this chapter, however, Professor Doughty realizes his intention “to reconstruct and understand the development of attachment to place by a particular group of people in a specific time and space.” LOU RODENBERGER McMurry College ...