Spanish Explorers Research Articles

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOBOTANY OF SOUTHERN PAIUTE HORTICULTURE IN THE ST. GEORGE BASIN, SOUTHWESTERN UTAH

Although ethnographic descriptions of the Southern Paiute usually portray them as hunter-gatherers who only dabbled with farming, historic records demonstrate that Paiutes were growing maize prior to the arrival of the first Spanish explorers. These records further suggest that in the St. George Basin of southwestern Utah, Southern Paiute farming was relatively intensive in the decades before the arrival of Mormon settlers. Numerous Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric archaeological sites have been excavated in the St. George Basin, but subsistence activities at most excavated sites appear to be centered around wild plant gathering and processing. This essay describes excavations of two Protohistoric features near the Santa Clara River that provide evidence for Southern Paiute horticulture, including wheat grains and abundant maize cob and kernel fragments. The evidence for Southern Paiute horticulture in the St. George Basin remains ambiguous, however, with apparent contradictions between the historic record and the bulk of the archaeological evidence. This may be because intensive farming only occurred in limited areas, and almost none of the archaeological research has been along the river margins.

Seasonal stability in Late Holocene shellfish harvesting on the central California coast

Oxygen isotope determinations from 92 California mussel ( Mytilus californianus) shells from ten archaeological sites in central coastal California show relatively stable seasonal harvesting patterns between 3600 CAL BP and historic contact (AD 1769). Coastal occupants harvested mussels nearly year-round and seem to have occupied individual residential bases throughout the seasonal cycle. Interior groups returned with mussels from the coast mostly in the spring and early summer, but almost never in the late summer/early fall when nut crops were harvested. These findings suggest two inter-dependent groups with distinct seasonal settlement strategies: inland people, reliant on acorns and other nut crops harvested in the fall, and coastal inhabitants who were less involved with acorns. This pattern is supported by accounts recorded by the first Spanish explorers in AD 1769. While some interior groups may have been seasonally migrating “collectors,” coastal populations were less mobile, inhabiting individual residential sites throughout the year, albeit not necessarily on a permanent basis. These findings highlight the strong influence of coastal environments and resources on hunter-gatherer mobility.

Tatham Mound and the bioarchaeology of European contact: disease and depopulation in central Gulf Coast Florida

This is the first systematic analysis of Tatham Mound, one of the most important archaeological sites in Central Gulf Coast Florida. Because it documents the earliest years of contact between the resident Native Americans of the area and European colonists, Tatham Mound has provided archaeologists and bioarchaeologists with a wealth of direct and indirect evidence from the early contact period - a rare occurrence in American archaeology. Hutchinson examines the skeletal remains of more than 350 burials as well as the European artifacts found within those burials. Comparing the bioarchaeological evidence and scientific data with the historic accounts of the early Spanish explorers, Hutchinson challenges the long-held theory that novel pathogens caused the immediate demographic collapse of native societies at the inception of the European colonial era. He argues that long-term political, social, economic, and biological changes - in addition to introduced epidemic disease - all contributed to the decline of Florida's native populations.

Images of Barbaric Spain in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Writing

Images of Barbaric Spain in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Writing Ana Hontanilla (bio) Europe has traditionally been studied as a political, economic and cultural unity that historically developed in connection with the ideas of Christianity, civilization, and empire. After the New World was "discovered," Europe's imperial and civilizing mission was no longer contained within its western boundaries but also occurred within an expanded sense of geography. This is to say that the status of civilized and civilizing Europe was not defined solely from within its geographical limits but also in contrast to its colonial world. Much of the work of describing the discovery, interpreting the exploration, and articulating the connection of the newly-found territories to the motherland in Europe was done through the writings of explorers, ambassadors, soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries. The recovery and analysis of these various kinds of travelers' narratives about foreign and exotic places where they went and lived have brought a new perspective to our understanding of the historical development of the imperialized world.1 Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spanish explorers and conquistadors in America predominantly produced the colonial discourse. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the imperial discourse was for the most part a British and French production, not only in America but [End Page 119] in Africa, Asia, and even Europe as well. In the process of examining the rise of British and French imperialism during the eighteenth century, it is crucial to acknowledge these nations' reaction to the 'Other' beyond their shores. But it is also of prime importance to investigate how they constructed the European 'other.' As Katherine Turner has argued, postcolonial studies that assume an undifferentiated European imperial center during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries presuppose homogeneity among European nations, which in practice did not exist.2 Enlightened notions of civilization and culture served to delineate the division between civil society and barbarism, between Europe and the rest of the world. However, the Enlightenment served to demarcate new ideological borders that not only operated in the overseas colonial world but also within the boundaries of Europe itself. Therefore, the initially uniform picture of imperial Europe or the assumption that modern Europeans defined themselves as a single people breaks down in the context of describing the literature of inter-European tourism, most visibly, perhaps, in British travel writing concerning Spain. In the following essay, I limit my exploration of British travel writing to accounts regarding Spain during the eighteenth century. I study how these narratives produced and disseminated a perception of Spain as an uncivilized and barbaric country, ruling it out as a member of "Enlightened Europe." Spaniards' religious practices were generally tied in with ancient paganism and therefore the population was commonly perceived by foreign visitors as pagan and primitive. In addition, the Spanish Inquisition provided the travelers with a dangerous, threatening ethos that promptly resolved any doubts of whether or not Spain was an enlightened civilized country. The seemingly outdated commercial and political institutions of Spain also contributed, in the minds of British explorers, to the formation of a nearly enslaved population in need of liberation from the tyranny of governmental tax control and its subsequent state of poverty. The local inhabitants too closely resembled the Indian or African savages and exhibited a state of personal and cultural corruption, as well as an economic dependence only potentially alleviated by adopting British institutions. A postcolonial analysis of British inter-European travel accounts shows how differential forms of religious, political, scientific, economic, and social progress in eighteenth-century Spain highlighted discrepancies in the stage of the same civilizing path that all European societies should attain.3 As the idea of civilization emphasized the movement towards political, economic, and scientific progress, demanding an accumulation of spiritual, technical, economic, and political values in the evolution of a nation, not all countries, and particularly not the Iberian countries, matched up with eighteenth-century [End Page 120] British standards of commercial and political reforms. Therefore, the location of Spain as a civilized country became extremely problematic. By referring to Spain's dramatic change of status from imperial power to a culturally-regressive and economically-dependent land, I do not intend to insinuate...

Producing the Pacific. Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567–1606)

Producing the Pacific. Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567–1606)

History and Process in Village Formation: Context and Contrasts from the Northern Southwest

Two processes characterize the later precontact history (twelfth-fourteenth centuries) of the northern part of the American Southwest: aggregation of people into large towns and depopulation of large regions. These processes have been explained as the result of environmental, economic, and social factors, including drought and warfare. Using a theoretical perspective based on Pauketat’s “historical processualism,” we argue that aggregation and depopulation are partly the result of historical developments surrounding the expansion and collapse of the Chaco regional system. We present our understanding of the Chaco regional system from the perspective of historical processualism; then, historical developments in the northern San Juan and Cibola regions-northern and southern frontiers of the Chaco world-are compared. The northern San Juan"s historically close ties with Chaco Canyon, the post-Chaco regional center at Aztec, and other factors ultimately resulted in the region’s depopulation. In the Cibola region, ties with Chaco were more tenuous and use of Chacoan ideology appears to have been strongest in the post-Chaco era, though no post-Chaco regional center emerged. Instead, large towns developed. Built on novel combinations of independent histories, ritual, and experience with Chaco, large towns enhanced stability. They were encountered by early Spanish explorers and some persist to the present day.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sentimental Savage: Native Americans in Representative Novels from the Spanish Enlightenment

The Good, the Bad, and the Sentimental Savage:Native Americans in Representative Novels from the Spanish Enlightenment Mark R. Malin (bio) Alluding to the critical interest in the theme of the Noble Savage, Ter Ellingson includes the following epigraph in The Myth of the Noble Savage: "Advice from a World Wide Web search engine, after finding more than 1,000 references to the 'Noble Savage': Refine your search."1 Apparently, the topic has not lost its allure despite Hayden White's contention that "the theme of the Noble Savage may be one of the few historical topics about which there is nothing new to say."2 While White maintained that there was little scholarly disagreement on the subject, the literary representation of natives continues to draw critical attention as the wide body of literature attests. Little, however, has been written about the depictions of natives in Spanish enlightenment prose fiction, either translations or original novels.3 Colonial accounts of actual encounters with New World inhabitants are major constituents of the canon, yet literary accounts from Spanish writers from the Enlightenment are less well known. Early Spanish explorers documented their encounters with natives in the literature of the Colonial era, some of which were more anthropologically accurate than others. Despite this colonial tradition, criticism of eighteenth-century texts in Spain in which the representation of natives was a major theme has not enjoyed the currency that it has in France and other nations. In his informative and compelling historical study of the relationship between [End Page 145] Spaniards and natives, David Weber, cites a personal communication with Joaquín Alvarez Barrientos, who assures Weber that the good Indian as literary protagonist in Spain "no tuvo tanto eco ni utilidad como en otras culturas."4 Weber goes on to explain this in part by stating that "Catholic Spain had rejected the deism that allowed some European intellectuals to believe in the natural virtue of pagans."5 While this is a very plausible explanation for a dearth of novels that reject Catholicism, it does not account for the conspicuous absence of the theme of the so-called Noble Savage in Hispanist criticism. The fact that the theme of the Noble Savage has not enjoyed greater currency does not necessarily mean that it does not bear further consideration. It may just mean that the search for texts may require patience and perseverance. At one point, it was thought that Spain's Enlightenment literati had ignored the epistolary novel, but Ana Rueda's Cartas sin lacrar and other studies clearly prove otherwise. In fact, studies such as Alvarez Barrientos' La novela del siglo XVIII (and Reginald Brown's work before that) have disproved conclusively the all too common assertion writers in eighteenth-century Spain did not cultivate the novel.6 It is true that the representation of natives was not as common a theme in Spanish literature as it was in French texts. However, natives do appear in some late eighteenth-century prose fiction in Spain, and this essay will explore three such works.7 One is a translation of a novel whose major theme is the portrayal of natives; the second is another translation in which the portrayal of natives is but a subplot or episode of the novel; and the third is an original Spanish novel. The question of the legitimacy of emphasizing translations is a valid one. While I do not agree with Juan Ignacio Ferreras that eighteenth-century Spanish literature is "poor," it is certain that the translation of novels was a significant activity during the time.8 Both Alvarez Barrientos and Joaquín Marco write that the moral didacticism of a novel, translated or original, and its influence on Spain's youth were considered more important than whether a work was original or not, so there was little distinction between translating and writing something new.9 However, in many cases, as Alvarez Barrientos notes, the translations could actually be considered original works in that the translators had to make omissions, adaptations, and changes when they rendered the foreign texts into Spanish to make them suitable for Spanish political or moral aesthetics.10 Because novels were popular in England and France...

Returning Navajo-Churro Sheep for Navajo Weaving

Navajo-Churro sheep provided a traditional fiber resource for handwoven textiles produced by Navajo people. Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers seeking riches in the American Southwest introduced their Spanish Churro sheep, a hardy desert variety whose descendants are the breed known today as Navajo-Churro. As a stable base for Navajo pastoralism, these sheep adapted to the harsh desert landscape of Navajo homelands and provided wealth, food, wool, and social cohesion for the Navajo people. After the mid-nineteenth century when more Anglo-Americans migrated into the Southwest, vast herds of Navajo-Churro sheep were reduced to near extinction through outright destruction and by crossbreeding with high-production breeds. During the 1970s, Navajo and non-Navajo herders and weavers joined in coordinated efforts to return the Navajo-Churro breed to Navajo lands and people. The contemporary Navajo organization Diné be' iiná (abbreviated to DBI and translated as The Navajo Life way) provided leadership for the return of Navajo-Churro sheep. In this article, we explore how the return of Navajo-Churro sheep and wool can strengthen cultural identity, rekindle ideological teachings, and revitalize material culture. The analysis provides an example of development intervention at the level of raw materials, as opposed to design, product development, or marketing intercession with textile traditions.

South of the Guadalupe: A History of Nixon and Southern Gonzales County (review)

242Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober ballads known as corridos have on Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and specifically, Mexican immigrants in the United States. The aim of the author is to examine the role of corridos in shaping the cultural memories and identities of transnational Mexican groups, focusing on transnational communities from northern Chihuahua dirough northern Texas and New Mexico. In proving her argument, Chew Sánchez begins by discussing and comparing certain details, such as the recorded history, characteristics, identities, immigration, and migration ofMexicans living in the American Southwest and in Mexico after the U.S.-Mexican War. The second chapter defines the corrido, focusing particularly on corridos about immigration and how those ballads impacted migrants culturally , socially, personally, and collectively. The author's third chapter analyzes how her interviewees of Mexican descent, whether migrants, songwriters, singers, disc jockeys, or others, understand the meaning oflife through the corrido. Chew Sánchez uses the fourth chapter of her study to describe how corridos are transmitted to the Mexican migrant populace in transnational communities. The last chapter focuses on the importance of Los Tigres del Norte, the most popular Mexican musical group, famous for performing corridos about immigration, in preserving the migrant memory through their music. The author's work is well organized and presented. She provides a Spanish phrase or sentence with almost each chapter tide and subtide that gives die Spanish reader an understanding of what to expect. Chew Sánchez also focuses on issues relevant to this study, such as migrant women, clothing, female singers ofcorridos, and narcocorridos (ballads about drug trafficking). There are some items in the work that need attention. Although the book focuses primarily on Texas and New Mexico, it would have been beneficial to add migrant viewpoints of corridos from Arizona and California to assure balance among all states that border Mexico in further proving the argument. The author might have interviewed adolescents of Mexican descent to see whether corridos are important to their migrant memory. Chew Sánchez might also have attempted to ascertain Anglo American perceptions ofcorridos, especially ofsome who understand Spanish or are acquaintances ofMexicans living in transnational communities. Despite these omissions, this historical analysis is a grand achievement because historians, particularly those focused in Chicano, Mexico, borderlands, Southwest, and/or immigration studies, have not previously ventured into this territory. Immigration is a timely issue, and reading Dr. Chew Sanchez's work will help Americans and Mexicans understand life for transnational migrants. What better way to understand a group of people than by listening to music that truly defines them. "Si con mi cantopudiera derrumbaría lasfronteraspara que el mundo viviera con una sola bandera en una misma nación. " University ofTexas-Pan AmericanJ°si A. P. Alaniz South ofthe Guadalupe: A History ofNixon and Southern Gonzales County. By Donald D. Hoffman. (Privately printed, 2006. Pp. 292. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 0978737008. $39.95, cloth.) 2oo7 Book Reviews243 Cattleman Donald D. Hoffman, a native of soutfiern Gonzales County and former teacher and principal at Nixon High School, succincdy states his South ofthe Guadalupe "is not a history of one generation of Anglo setders, or even two or three. Rather it is the history of a particular piece of land and die people who have lived on it since the beginning of time" (p. 3). True to his premise, the author traces the history of Gonzales County, placing emphasis on die southern portion, from the era of the dinosaurs to the present day by providing brief accounts of the area's relationship to Native Americans and their culture; Spanish explorers, missions, and presidios; the establishment of the Green DeWitt colony; the Texas Revolution and the Republic period; Texas's entry into the Union; and the major events in American history. The development of southern Gonzales County began in 1849 when Paul Murray, a migrant from Mississippi, established a general store and gristmill some thirty miles south of Gonzales where several trails leading to the interior and die coastal region crisscrossed. By the early 1850s, die community that emerged around Murray's business ventures became known as Rancho, and in 1855, a post office was opened in the settlement. Throughout the remainder of the century...

Ryff’s Six-factor Model of Psychological Well-being, A Spanish Exploration

This article aims to provide researchers interested in using Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Wellbeing with additional information to make an informed decision on the scales and items to use. It builds on the discussion in the literature on the six factor structure of this measure. An alternative shortened version of this wellbeing measure (Van Dierendonck 2004). Personality and Individual Differences, 36, 629–643) was analyzed in a combined Spanish language sample from Spain and Columbia. Using confirmatory factor analysis, one-, two-, three- and six-factor models were compared. The results showed that indeed four out the six dimensions overlapped considerably. Nevertheless, the model that fit the data best was the six factor model with one underlying second order well-being factor, hereby confirming Ryff’s model in a non-Anglo–Saxon culture.

Learning to Live with Nature: Colonial Historians and the Southern Environment

WHEN CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT GUIDED THREE SMALL SHIPS UP the James River in the spring of 1607, he and the hundred or so colonists on board had little reason to worry about the world. Virginia, they believed, was much like the Mediterranean coast, a notion based on the premise that the two regions lay in similar latitudes and therefore had similar climates. Balmy weather, leafy forests that sprouted from rich soils, plentiful fish and wildfowl, and the prospect of gold mined by submissive natives promised easy abundance in an Eden-like wilderness. It did not take long to disabuse Jamestown settlers of such notions. In less than a year two-thirds of their number died from disease and malnutrition. Experiments with exotic crops failed miserably; fish and wildfowl disappeared when the weather turned cold. The sandy soil yielded no gold, and the natives proved far from compliant. Adjusting to the southern environment took decades and cost thousands of lives. For colonial historians, as for Newport's settlers, learning to live with nature has presented significant challenges. The colonial South was a large and geographically varied region with an equally diverse human population. Any account of its environmental history must consider the ways in which three distinct cultures--Native American, European, and African--interacted with the world. Historians, perhaps more than other scholars, have also been hindered by their reluctance to ignore the denouement of European colonization. English and American institutions won out in the South, but for most of the colonial period, Spain and France wielded considerable influence in the region. Therefore, scholars interested in environmental questions must look well beyond Jamestown in both space and time. Most important, like Newport's colonists, historians have had to rethink some long-accepted theories and employ new strategies that allow better insights into the complicated relationship between people and nature. The initial challenge facing historians of the colonial South is to develop a meaningful understanding of how native people lived on the land the arrival of colonists and slaves. It is a scholarly endeavor fraught with potential pitfalls, one of which surfaced in the first history of Virginia, written by Robert Beverley in 1705. Beverley noted that before the English went thither, Indians had enjoyed the land's natural production ... without the Curse of Industry, their Diversion alone, and not their labor, supplying the Necessities. In one form or another, that notion--the idea that native people fulfilled their needs with little effort--has exerted a powerful influence on colonial history. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, some college-level texts still depicted Indians as primitive or, worse, savage people who made little use of America's resources. However, the most persistent image among both scholars and the general public has been that of a noble Indian who lived close to nature and maintained the land in a state of near pristine wilderness. (1) Only over the last thirty years have southern historians--with some crucial guidance from other disciplines--been able to offer a more realistic depiction of native life. In 1976 anthropologist Charles Hudson published The Southeastern Indians, a book that, in keeping with the tenor of the times, leans heavily toward the image of natives in harmony with nature. Even so, Hudson's work laid the foundation for a new generation of scholarship on the South's native people. For the first time in a highly readable volume, scholars got an anthropologist's view of Indian hunting and farming within the context of a powerful setting. The work also called attention to the forgotten century of southern history--the 1500s--during which contact with Spanish explorers and colonists began to transform native cultures. (2) Hudson's book was part of the relatively new but by then thriving genre of ethnohistory, a scholarly hybrid that employs methodology from both history and anthropology. …

The Native American world beyond Apalachee: west Florida and the Chattahoochee Valley

This is the first book-length study to use Spanish language sources in documenting the original Indian inhabitants of West Florida who, from the late 16th century to the 1740s, lived to the west and the north of the Apalachee. Previous authors who studied the forebears of Creeks and Seminoles from the Chattahoochee Valley have relied exclusively on English sources dating from the second half of the 18th century, with the exception of John R. Swanton, who had limited access to Spanish records for his classic works from 1922 to 1946. In this history of the region's Native Americans, Hann focuses on the small tribes of West Florida - Amacano, Chine, Chacato, Chisca and Pansacola - and their first contacts with Spanish explorers, colonists, and missionaries. He also gives significant perspective to the forebears of the Lower Creeks, with an emphasis on the late 17th century, when Spanish documents recorded the important events of the interior regions of the Southeast. As Hann's fifth study of Florida natives, this book includes chapters on the Yamasee War and its aftermath and the early 18th-century dissolution of many societies and withdrawal of Spaniards from the region.

How Do You Get from Jamestown to Santa Fe? A Colonial Sun Belt

Long ago, in 1541, western and eastern portions of southern regions of present-day United States were oh-so-briefly connected. That year, expeditions of two different Spanish explorers, one from southwestern reaches of continent, other from southeastern edges, came within three hundred miles of one another? separated by only expanse of northern Texas. Francisco V?zquez de Coronado moved northeast out of Pueblo territories?more than fifty years before region was claimed by Spain as province of New Mexico?in search of fabled lands of Quivira. At same time, Hernando de Soto led men westward out of Florida across Mississippi River?twenty-four years before it was claimed by Spain?in hopes of reaching Pacific Ocean. The link between two groups came in form of an enslaved Plains Indian woman, one who had been acquired by one of Coronado's men, slipped his clutches as they crossed Texas's Llano Estacado, and then fled east ward with amazingly bad luck into waiting arms of Soto's party. The story of this ill-fated woman suggests a striking notion?that greater South was first brought together, albeit momentarily, not by forebears of Confederate loyalists but by a slave, and an Indian one at that.1 If asked today where Spanish borderlands fit within histo riography of colonial most likely answer from either southern or borderlands historians would be, well, they don't. Until recently few scholars have seen two regions as kindred. Tradition ally North American history does not recognize existence of a domain called the South, with a capital S, until sectional tussles of nineteenth century that ultimately separated states into

Colonial Southeastern Indian History

DESPITE GARY B. NASH'S 1974 INSISTENCE THAT DISCUSSIONS OF EARLY America include red, white, and black, for the next fifteen years early American history and the history of American Indians during the colonial period remained, for the most part, separate literatures. (1) A generation ago the historical literature on Indians also followed fairly stark regional differentiations based on both cultural/linguistic groups and colonial jurisdictions. Not only were Spanish Florida and French Louisiana historiographically separate from the southern English colonies, but the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry were as well, with each of those coastal regions separated from its backcountry. Such divisions reflected the fact that some colonial boundaries roughly followed political and cultural parameters of the Indian nations among whom the Europeans colonized. (2) French, Spanish, and English source materials lie in different countries' archives, written in different languages. English colonial sources are further dispersed into state and local archives. Despite the ready availability of Spanish accounts (in both Spanish and English) of sixteenth-century entradas--as well as of sources for late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century contact between English colonists and Algonquian Indians at Roanoke and in the Chesapeake--for much of the interior South and the Lowcountry, the period between the Spanish entradas of the sixteenth and the return of European explorers and traders in the late seventeenth constituted a lost century for historians. Clearly enormous changes took place during that century, but the nature of those changes remained obscure. The lack of European written sources to describe the interior of the continent during those hundred years left traditional historians at a loss to explain how the interior Southeast at the start of the eighteenth seemed completely transformed from the one described by sixteenth-century Spanish explorers. English writers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries trying to understand the shifting Indian demographic and political maps often found themselves baffled, which did nothing to help twentieth-century historians reading them. (3) During the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, early American Indian history (much of it focused on the Chesapeake and New England) emphasized the violence of Europeans in their encounter with Indians. Francis Jennings demanded in 1975 that we understand the colonial period as a story of conquest. (4) In 1983 Richard White argued in The Roots of Dependency that Euro-Indian relations in various parts of North America had in common the attempt ... by whites to bring Indian resources, land, and labor into the market. (5) Although White scrutinized Choctaw motives and agency, his argument, as his title suggests, stresses Indians' ultimate dependency on economic forces they did not control. Much of the work on southeastern Indians since then has continued grappling with the questions he raised. The separation of early American history from the history of American Indians (and early Americanists' inattention not only to American Indian historiography but also to Indians in their own source material) provoked calls during the late 1980s from James Axtell and James H. Merrell for colonial historians to recognize the central place of American Indians in the history of English colonies. (6) J. Frederick Fausz's work on the merging and emerging worlds of European colonists and Indians in the Chesapeake illustrates the integration of Indian and colonial politics. His 1988 article published in a volume aimed at colonial (rather than Indian) historians reinforces the point made by Axtell and Merrell. (7) Thereafter, armed with new techniques and questions, many historians in the last two decades have taken up the challenge to integrate American Indian and colonial American history and have done so more fully in the Southeast than elsewhere. …

Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas (review)

Book Reviews Jesús F. de la Teja, Editor PassionateNation: TheEpicHistory ofTexas. ByJames L. Haley. (NewYork: Free Press, 2006. Pp. 654. Acknowledgments, illustrations, selected sources, index. ISBN 0684862913. $35.00, cloth.) This volume is a general history ofTexas bya popularwriter-historian who hopes readers will conclude "it is accurate as far as it goes, and that they enjoyed reading it" (p. xviii). It is presented in five parts, each divided into several short chapters. An opening section that ranges from the early 1500s to 182 1 is devoted primarily to Spanish explorers and settlers. Their interactions with Indians, French explorers and traders, Anglo American frontiersmen; and the Mexican war ofindependence provide the major themes. The second part focuses on the short but complex era from the early colonies of empresarios in the 1820s to the successful revolution against Mexico in 1836. Growing tensions, primarily between Anglo setders and the Mexican government; important leaders; and military events dominate these pages. Following in a third grouping are chapters considering the Republic ofTexas, early statehood, and the Civil War and Reconstruction from 1 836 to 1 874. Political conflicts, diplomacy, military clashes, and struggles over economic and social changes fill these pages. The next section recounts the removal of the Plains Indians and the buffalo; the expansion of ranching; new political patterns; and cultural changes from 1875 to 1900. The twentieth century is encompassed in a final collection of chapters that describe the oil industry and economic changes; political battles and ethnic tensions ; world wars; and social trends. Devoting two-thirds of the pages to the nineteendi century, which is more than in any other recent history ofTexas, seems an overemphasis. Haley, the author ofan award-winning biography ofSam Houston and earlier volumes on Texas history, has taken on a daunting task. Histories of a state or nation often are written by a group ofauthors because the range oftopics and sources is monumental. He has read widely and presents a better-balanced picture than earlier popular histories of Texas regarding the diverse ethnic groups, economic interests, and political viewpoints that have shaped the state. Along with its strengths, this volume has some limitations. It includes wellchosen illustrations, but the volume lacks maps. The decision not to include an opening chapter on Texas Indians that would present their cultures and beliefs 88Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly more fully opens the way for some misunderstanding. A colorful narrative, for example, leads to several mentions of cannibalism that exaggerate its frequency without a clear explanation ofits ritual nature. The economic importance ofslavery is noted, and its significance as a political issue is discussed.Yet the lives ofslaves and their diverse responses to their enslavement receive little attention, although they formed 30 percent of the population in i860. The views of Plains Indians as they were forced onto reservations in the 1870s are more fully explored, however, as are African American efforts to overcome discrimination in post-Reconstruction years. Occasionally uiere are confusing statements; for example a sick Bowie is described as "not a factor thereafter" at the Alamo on p. 145. Yet when the Mexican army arrived at San Antonio, Bowie sent a message to Santa Anna asking about a parley on p. 154. Some overstatements also appear, such as die casualties of the Mexican army at the Alamo. Social life and culture receive attention in each section of the volume, but discussion of social life seems more limited in the twentieth century with little comment on music. For these reasons readers seeking more analyses of some events may also wish to see other recent histories ofTexas. Haley's writing is lively and filled with colorful stories as well as sharply drawn biographical sketches. The tone of his volume is usually informal and sometimes irreverent. Thus Passionate Nation is likely to attract a wide audience. Texas Tech UniversityAlwyn Barr Empires oftheAtlantic World: Britain and Spain inAmerica, 1492-1830. ByJ. H. Elliott. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 568. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 03001 1431 1. $35.00, clotfi.) Contingency and serendipity are some of the words that first come to mind to describeJohn Elliott's Empires oftheAtlantic World, the latest in a long list of...

Benjamin Franklin and the American Turkey

Franklin and the turkey, both American icons, are far more complicated than most people realize. The early Spanish explorers took the New World bird to Europe where it quickly spread. By the early 16th century this domesticated bird made its way back again to Virginia and Massachusetts and onto the colonists' tables. As early as 1776 the growth in human population threatened that of wild turkeys. When Franklin was exploring the properties of electricity, he experimented on turkeys and found that electrocution tenderized their flesh. Later, his famous letter to his daughter, expressing his preference for the turkey to be the national bird rather than the eagle, was more polemical than genuine. In the last fifty years, efforts to restore the nearly extinct wild turkey have succeeded. The quality of the turkey on the American Thanksgiving table, over-bred and industrialized, needs to be restored as well.

:Producing the Pacific: Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567-1606)

:<i>Producing the Pacific: Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567-1606)</i>

Miami Beach: ASHA’s 2006 Convention

Miami Beach: ASHA’s 2006 Convention

AMP kinase gene mutation is consistent with a thrifty phenotype (metabolic syndrome) in a population of feral swine

The genetically obese Ossabaw Island feral pig (OIP) has a “thrifty” phenotype and is an excellent model for studying the metabolic syndrome. Sequencing of the hypervariable D-loop of mtDNA (with the cytochrome B gene) of 6 OIP’s revealed an Asian mtDNA sequence in all individuals. This haplotype was similar to that of pigs from the Canary Islands, which are known to have been the source of most pigs brought to the New World by Spanish explorers of the late 1500s. Examination of genes related to the obese OIP phenotype revealed 5/6 pigs to be homozygous for a Val199→Ile mutation (“IR”) in the PRKAG3 gene (the γ 3 isoform of AMP-activated protein kinase). The sixth animal was heterozygous for IR and the wt allele (“VR”). The IR allele is associated with low muscle glycogen and increased intramuscular fat, consistent with the obese OIP phenotype. In the mid-1970’s a Hampshire boar was introduced to Ossabaw I., and persistence of the belted coat color phenotype attests to its continuing genetic impact. However the “VQ” mutation (Arg200→Gln), which is associated with high muscle glycogen and low intramuscular fat (and is found in high frequency in Hampshires) was not found in any of the OIP sampled. This finding suggests selection for the IR mutation as a result of an unpredictable food supply. Leanness in pigs has been traced to an intron 3 mutation in the IGF2 gene. All 6 OIPs were homozygous for the wild type allele at this locus, as expected. These studies provide novel insights into the historical origins and selection for a “thrifty” phenotype in this unique population of feral swine. Support: HL62552, RR13223, ADA (MS), US DOE DE-FRC09-96SR18546 (ILB).

Gifts of the Great River: Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection

Gifts of the Great River: Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection. By John H. House. (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, 2003. Pp. xii, 108. Foreword, acknowledgments, illustrations, color plates, notes, suggested readings. $21.95, paper.) The St. Francis River runs from the Ozarks in Missouri south along the east side of Crowley's Ridge until it flows into the Mississippi River just above Helena. With the Black and White Rivers at the Ozark Escarpment to the west and the Mississippi River to the east, the St. Francis is the major drainage system of northeast Arkansas. The banks of this beautiful and placid river were thickly inhabited by people long before Europeans arrived, and archaeologists have learned a great deal about their lives and culture. The final archaeological manifestation before Europeans made contact is known as Late Mississippian, roughly dating from 1350 to 1650 A.D. Even though ethnic identities cannot be agreed upon for these ancestors of historic Native American peoples, the details of their daily lives and even some of the broad historical circumstances of their times are known, since they were visited by Spanish explorers who kept records. The St. Francis River was home to three major cultural clusters: Kent Phase around the mouth, Parkin Phase in the middle range, and Nodena Phase from the headwaters over to the Mississippi. Hernando de Solo's touring Spanish army got pulled into an ongoing conflict between little Parkin (introduced to the Spanish as Casqui) and giant Nodena (known as Pacaha), more than three times Parkin's size and, probably, population. Their observations and a large amount of archaeology in the area have permitted a surprising amount of cultural reconstruction of the lives and histories of these prehistoric peoples. The result for modern peoples is that both the Parkin site and museum and the Nodena museum in Wilson are Arkansas state parks, outstanding must-sees for anyone passing through the Central Mississippi Valley. Despite the excellent museums and their educational programs as well as their artifact displays, however, there is a sense of incompleteness. The fact is that the visible collections, even including the artifacts stored at the Arkansas Archeological Survey headquarters in Fayetteville, are only a small portion of what has come from the ground in the last two centuries. No one knows how many tens of thousands of pots have been dug from graves during the past century and a half in this area, survey archaeologists have noted (Dan F. Morse and Phyllis A. Morse, Northeast in Pre-history of the Central Mississippi Valley, ed. Charles H. McNutt [1996], p. 128). Many of those were taken by treasure-seekers; they are in private collections and scattered widely, unavailable for viewing. In addition, northeast Arkansas, known early as a important region for archaeological sites, has been visited throughout the decades by many institutional explorers, surveyors, and archaeologists. Their resulting collections are in many cases in significant repositories, well cared for but far away. One example of this latter type of diffusion is the collection dug by Edwin Curtiss in 1879-1880. Sponsored by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Curtiss was an active learner and practitioner in the early development of archaeology as a scientific way of recovering knowledge and reconstructing culture. He focused on the middle area of the St. Francis, digging at least seven sites of what is now known as the Parkin Phase but then known only as Indian sites. The artifacts he recovered were shipped, along with his research notes, back to the Peabody for curation, a process that continues unabated to the present (it should be remembered that Arkansas would have no museums or repositories for such things for many more decades). Many of the artifacts have been illustrated in various archaeological studies through the years, and the collection has been available for study in Cambridge upon request. …