Book Notes

[Errata]

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Doug Hocking, Terror on the Santa Fe Trail: Kit Carson and the Jicarilla Apache (Gilford, Conn.: TwoDot, 2019. Pp, vii, 264. $28.50 hardcover)

Doug Hocking’s new book details the history of conflict on the Santa Fe Trail in the years leading up to the Civil War. Clashes between the small tribe of Jicarilla Apaches and the U.S. Army shaped the story of western expansion and influenced Indian policy for the last half of the nineteenth century. Conflicts increased in the late 1840s when the Jicarilla sided with the Mexican Army in the Battle of San Pasqual during the Mexican-American War. Then, in 1854, the Jicarilla defended themselves at Cieneguilla, in which the Apache soundly defeated the U.S. Army. It was the worst defeat the army had suffered up to that time. Hocking provides readers the opportunity to explore military history and western expansion across the borderlands.

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From the Cañada del Oro to the Tortolitas. By Robert S. Simpson. (Published by the author, 2019. Pp. 235. $20.00 paper)

A 144-square-mile area north of Tucson today contains Biosphere 2, Saddlebrooke and Saddlebrooke Ranch, the village of Catalina, and the important historic ranches of Mariano Samaniego, Pierre Charouleau, George Wilson, Sheriff John Nelson, William H. Sutherland, and other Tucson pioneers. The author provides the first-ever detailed biographies of these persons, some enriched by stories and albums provided by their descendants. A trip to France at the invitation of the current generation of Charouleaus, with whom he coordinated research, adds to the uniqueness of the author’s work. Extensively documented, the author takes his own photographs of old masonry dams and remnants of adobe walls and wells and reveals their lost origins. The appendix has contemporary maps from satellite imagery with color-coded locations of all federal patents issued in the study area, and details of each patent in accompanying tables. The author reveals that, surprisingly, many patents in the Tucson area stem from in-lieu lands granted to the antecedents of the Southern Pacific Railroad. A detailed examination of early stage routes north from Tucson, as well as a phantom railroad scheme, add geographic perspective. Finally, the author uncovered an outlandish scheme involving 1930s phantom placer gold claims under his own feet in Saddlebrooke. From the Cañada del Oro to the Catalinas is a welcome addition to the history of the greater Tucson area.

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Rousing Tales from the Line City (Book Two of the Line City Series). By Jose Ramon Garcia. (Published by the author, 2019. Pp. 337. $89.95 hardcover; $19.95 paperback)

In Rousing Tales from the Line City, Jose Ramon Garcia recounts stories from the history of Nogales, Arizona, the “Line City,” from the first half of the twentieth century. Garcia is a native of Nogales and president of the Pimería Alta Historical Society. He aims to preserve the stories of colorful and notable people from Nogales’s history who might otherwise be forgotten. In this volume, Garcia focuses on several individuals: Ralph A. O’Neill, a World War I U.S. Army pilot who served with the Mexican Air Force in the early 1920s; local female philanthropist Mamie Donahue, who was known as the “Angel of the Desert”; and Romano N. Trotzky, a reputed nephew of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who practiced medicine without a license in the 1930s. Leading figures in the produce-importing business also figure prominently in Garcia’s borderland history.

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Saints, Statues, and Stories: A Folklorist Looks at the Religious Art of Sonora. By James S. Griffith. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019. Pp. vii, 145. $16.95 paper)

In Saints, Statues, and Stories, James Griffith provides a glimpse of his travels through Sonora and shares the deep cultural traditions of the Catholic communities throughout the region. Griffith expertly demonstrates the religious and cultural importance that saints play in community identity and cohesion. Using folklore, the Sonoran Catholic community attached power to saints that protected their village from threats and nonbelievers. Through vivid color photographs obtained during his frequent travels, Griffith reveals the...