Review of 'Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta,' Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB

Abstract

Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–70) was the eldest son of a prosperous and well-connected merchant family in Charleston, SC. After attending Yale and studying law in Virginia, he embarked on a number of adventures that brought him to Texas in 1835, just in time for the Texas War of Independence, in which he briefly fought against Mexico. He was present at the Alamo, but was absent as a delegate to the constitutional convention of the Republic of Texas at the time it fell. He fought against the Comanches and rose to become a major political figure and landholder in Texas. At his death he owned more than 300,000 acres of land, mostly in the county named for him and his family. In the 1840s he had left a herd of cattle with slave caretakers on the Matagorda Peninsula, but, unlike other ranchers in the area, he refused to have his animals branded. His neighbours, perhaps ironically, began to refer to unbranded animals as ‘Maverick’s.’ Perhaps he augmented the herd’s natural increase by this method, laying claim to all unbranded cattle, perhaps he thought branding was cruel, but in any event the term maverick entered English to mean an unbranded cow and with a connotation of independence and aversion to herd mentalities. The Glenbow exhibition ‘Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta,’ based on novelist, critic, and professor of English at the University of Calgary Aritha van Herk’s book of the same title, 1 refers to this latter meaning of maverick. The exhibition, which opened in March 2007, replaces the earlier generic Alberta history gallery with a permanent show based largely on the artifacts of a number of colourful Alberta figures, focusing on the period of roughly 1850–1990. It shares the third floor of the Glenbow with the ‘Nitsitapiisinni’ galleries, devoted to Alberta’s Blackfoot peoples, and with ‘Native Cultures from the Four Directions.’ ‘Mavericks’ includes many hands-on exhibits, and 1 Aritha van Herk, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta (Toronto: Viking