86 WesternAmerican Literature been shaped byhistory, heritage, music.Jazz, the love ofperformance, and the recognition of poetry’s bardic tradition challenge the reader to provide ambi ance and sound to complete an experience that happens outside ofthe poem. Too often, those poems remain muted on the page. Inada isathisbestin poems where keen metrics blend with language and his deep appreciation forjazz to explore “this desperate place/ofedges and wind.” JODI VARON GrandeRonde Valley, Oregon Stray Tales oftheBigBend. ByElton Miles. (College Station: TexasA&MUniver sityPress, 1993. 186 pages, $25.00/$12.50.) As in two previous volumes, TalesoftheBigBend (reviewed in WALAugust 1977) and More Tales oftheBig Bend, Elton Miles has rounded up the stories, myths, and yarns ofTexaswestofthe Pecos and showsus the land, people, and events that shaped what he fondly calls “an uneven place.” It is also a “mysterious,” “violent,” and “pious”place, terms Miles uses to identify his collection of “strays.”Mysteries include the inexplicablejingling of bells in the night, said to direct the hearer to buried treasure; and the BigBend tablet, a sixteen-hundred-year-old jigsaw puzzle of clay pieces, covered with script offour ancient languages. The storyofArthur E. Stilwell, “humanitarian tycoon ofthe GildedAge ... and self-styledpsychic,... said to havebeen inspired bythe spiritworld to build the Orient Railroad,”comprises Part II. These extensively researched chapters recount the near-fulfillment ofStilwell’sdream: a railroad from Kansas City to Topolobampo, Mexico, which would cut 400 miles off the route to the Pacific via California. Here Miles demonstrates the narrative skill of the earlier vol umes, smoothly blending documented historywith colorful personal accounts. PartIII, “RaidsAcrossthe Border,”revealsasometimesviolentplace.These storiesofshoot-outs, robberies, and kidnappings, togetherwith severalchapters ofMoreTalesoftheBigBend, “should provide the mostfullydetailed accountyet ofBig Bend border raids between 1910 and 1918.”The going is not as smooth here. Miles’s attempt to include multiple versions of some tales and to name each ofhis informants, though an honest practice, is at times confusing. “Cowboys and God,”the final chapter, contains the histories of “two ofthe most renowned camp meetings anywhere,” the Paisano Baptist Encampment and the Bloys Cowboy Camp Meeting. Plenty of lively detail and humor brighten the telling of ceremonies and conversions, but now and again these are overshadowed bysentimentality as Miles romanticizes his pious cowboys. The decision not to identify the ten splendid photographs byBillWright is puzzling, asare several editorial oversights, giventhe high qualitywehave come Reviews 87 to expectfrom the A&MPress. But strays are seldom flawless. It’shard, in spite of the flaws, not to love this new collection for the “uneven”texture it adds to that marvelous BigBend country. JANICE MILLER IdahoState University Wondrous Times on theFrontier. ByDee Brown. (NewYork: HarperCollins, 1992. 324 pages, $10.00.) Dee Brown, author ofBuryMyHeartat WoundedKnee, CreekMary’sBloodand more thattwentyotherworks ofresearched fact andfiction, has givenus a hefty collection offrontier humorfrom the lastcentury. From avastarchive ofnotes, this pre-eminent American historian has herded his boisterous material into chapters like “There’s a One-Eyed Man in the Game” (about saloons and gambling), “Making the Calico Crack” (about the role of dancing on the frontier), and “Lawyers as Entertainers.” Nineteen pages of references docu ment these letter excerpts, stories, yarns, and news and editorial items; there is also an eight-page index. The extensive notes and useful index signal that this work is intended as more than adiversion. One cangiveno better summaryofitspurpose than does the author himselfat the end ofhis introduction: Each generation revises its history to suit its attitudes, but the sources can never be revised. To know what the frontier past was like, one needs only to turn to the words of those who lived then. They left millions ofwords that tell why theywere there, what they believed in, how they endured, and how they used humor—both light and dark— to contend with the burdens oftheirworld. This book is made up of hundreds of anecdotes, each of which, taken singly, ishilarious; but the trend ofAmerican historyin the nineteenth century was not, especially from a Native American point ofview. Brown has brought together material from all sides, showing the pain and puzzlement oflife in an unaccomodating landscape. There are voices here—some famous, most of them unknown—from America’s most turbulent decades. Like that of...