Women and the Texas Revolution

Abstract

Women and the Texas Edited by Mary L. Scheer. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2012. Pp. x, 244. $24.95, ISBN 978-1 57441-469-1.) Historians have traditionally presented the Texas Revolution from the male perspective, which places women at the periphery. Despite occasional efforts to include women in the narrative, the conventional account has persevered. The continual omission of the female perspective inspired the publication of Women and the Texas which explores how the insurrection affected women. While all of the essays represent important additions to the historiography of Texas, the contributions by Lindy Eakin, Jean A. Stuntz, Angela Boswell, and Dora Elizondo Guerra are particularly outstanding. Texas narratives in general display an Anglocentric slant minimizing or ignoring the ethnic and racial diversity of Texas. Eakin, Stuntz, and Boswell address this oversight by examining the war's impact on female minority populations. In Continuity, Change, and Removal: Native Women and the Texas Revolution, Eakin chronicles the impact Anglo immigration had on the lives of Native American women. Native women tended the crops and had overall responsibility for the land that was central to the tribe's stability and survival. Using the Cherokee, Caddo, and Comanche experiences, Eakin shows how encroachment, often violent in nature, disrupted women's roles as providers and threatened the agricultural economy of tribes. While Eakin explores the native experience, Stuntz focuses on women of Mexican heritage in Tejanas: Hispanic Women on the Losing Side of the Texas Revolution. Stuntz first details the everyday responsibilities and activities of these women, which included hours spent preparing food and making articles of clothing. She then discusses the loss of status and rights Tejanas suffered as a result of the rebellion's success. While English common law deprived women of their property after marriage and failed to bestow on them a legal identity, Spanish legal tradition allowed married women to retain their property, conduct business, and sue and be sued. Under Spanish law, women had greater privileges than their American counterparts. Tejana wives saw their legal privileges vanish under English common law. The success of the revolution proved to be legally devastating for women. Like Eakin and Stuntz, Boswell explores the rebellion's impact on ethnic women in Traveling the Wrong Way Down Freedom's Trail: Black Women and the Texas …