Oklahoma Books

Matt Field, a middling actor down on his luck, sickly, rejected twice by two different women when he proposed marriage, decided in 1839 to take a trip to Santa Fe with one of the trading caravans headed to that city from Independence, Missouri. Accompanied by a few friends, he steamboated from St. Louis to Independence, where in July he joined a small (18 men) caravan and set out across the plains. Going through Council Grove on to Bent's Fort, he continued over Raton Pass after which he left the main caravan and followed a trail to Taos and then down to Santa Fe. Thoroughly enjoying his stay in Santa Fe, but fearing a winter crossing of the plains, he left the capital late in September, took the Cimarron Cutoff, and made it back to Independence by the last day in October.

Fortunately for posterity, Field kept a journal of his trip, which is included here; he was also later hired by the New Orleans Picayune to write a number of articles based on his travels and experiences (they also are included here and make up the main portion of the book). A budding poet as well as an actor, Field turned his outward-bound journal into a long epic poem (the return leg remained in typical diary form). Though his poetic skills are not very good, this poem remains a unique document in the annals of western literature. The newspaper articles are another matter; they are superbly written and fascinating to read. The articles were meant to entertain readers, and hearsay and embellishment abound, but their bases are in fact and in what Field experienced. Everything seemed to be worthy of his attention and subsequent relating, from sights along the trail to humorous anecdotes related to him by others he met along the way. There is the obligatory grizzly bear story and thunderstorm-on-the-prairie story, but also more personal items such as a funeral in Taos and a wedding in Santa Fe. The articles ran for two years in the Picayune and as they still do today must have brought much enthusiasm to their first readers. The trade along the Santa Fe Trail was in decline by 1839, and to have Field's first-hand impressions of what it was like then is remarkable. It's among the half-dozen most important original works regarding the trail and the trade and the people who were involved with both, and it's a delight to read. Highly recommended.

This book was written by my great uncle. I never knew him, as he died in 1974 and I was born in 1971. I have the original copies of his books as well as many of his original paintings. This is a great read even given my personal bias. Have fun reading a great book!

He was a poet primarily, part of a brilliant pre-war class at UC Berkeley,and his real name was Frederick Faust. As Faust he made a small name for himself in the middle of a tumultuous period for American poetry, but it wasn't until a dime-novel pulp publisher literally locked him in an office for four hours, with a precis for a plot no more than a few sentences long, that he became a fiction writer--for he stepped out of that room with a novel of 74,000 words and a contract to write twenty more. And a new name, Max Brand, one of dozens of pseudonyms he came up with to disguise his own production. People thought there were a hundred Western writers, but really, Faust was nearly all of them. The aging Zane Grey was no competition, for after a flow start "Max Brand" wound up writing what Robert Easton claims was 30,000,000 million words--so many manuscripts that publishers kept bringing out new ones for 30 years after his death!

Faust died at D-Day, of all places, a true American war hero, and he even gave up his claim to medical treatment, urging the docs to treat other soldiers with wounds worse than his own.

He created Dr. Kildare, once a famous icon of the movies and TV, now not so widely known, but wait till the DVD revolution catches up with Kildare (and his gruff old boss with the kindly heart, Dr. Gillespie). I've heard that the MGM series will be released within the next 18 months, the 60s TV show with Richard Chamberlain too! I can't wait because those shows were always worth staying up late for. And such unusual guest stars, everyone from Basil Rathbone to Fred Astaire, Angie Dickinson to Valli.

Easton was a contemporary of Brand and knows his story inside out. He does his best to strip the obfuscations from his Byronic hero's life, and to show how, after all, he might have been a trying husband to loyal, prim Dorothy, with his demands for continual intercourse and claiming the right to have sex with other women, while she was forced to balance the budget and keep a nice home for him. The book came out in 1970, and has a few pruderies typical of the period, but not many. It was a great time for University of Oklahome Press, they just couldn't put out a bad book, and several of the books advertised on the back jacket as "Also of Interest" remain of interest today--Louis Mertins' invaluable record of Robert Frost's "table talk" (really his walking talk); Bruce Kellner's early biography of Carl Van Vechten, still the best account of that puzzling man; and Born In a Bookshop, the memoirs of Vincent Starrett, okay, this last one all charm and no substance. But still a fine roll call, no?

Wilson effectively blends a number of theorectical threads to create a moving and powerful image of Maya ethnicity in the late 20th century.

Holy man Pipe Bearer, a member of the southern people, starts having visions of a special horse that seems to be wearing a medicine hat on his head. When the special horse with the medicine hat top is born, Pipe Bearer realizes that he has a quest to accomplish. He does not know where he must go or what his mission is. He tosses the stones and learns that he must head north with medicine hat horse accompanying him. His wife Otter Woman joins him on his quest. They travel north under the guise of being traders, the only group of people who can safely journey among the various tribes.

For the first few days of their trek, nothing eventful occurs though they meet many people. Things dramatically change when an out of control prairie fire occurs. Pipe Bearer and Otter Woman manage to save themselves and help another couple fleeing the fire, Lone Walker and his wife Plum Flower. The foursome becomes friends and travels together in search of completing the unknown quest, knowing that more adventure awaits them before their journey is completed.

MEDICINE HAT is an exciting, insightful novel whose authenticity will thrill fans of Indian tales and historical fiction. The characters (primary and secondary) seem to be so life like and the trip so genuine, readers will believe they are along for the ride. This novel is not an action-packed, save the world thriller. Instead Don Coldsmith has painted a brilliant and charming story of Indian mysticism during the nineteenth century.

Harriet Klausner

"Mexican Game Trails" is a compendium of short stories written by Americans hunting in Mexico between 1866-1940. Almost all the stories are excellent. One of the memorable ones concerns a huge herd of buffalo in, I think, Chihuahua, a place bison didn't ordinarily occur. Apparently, the the buffalo herds in the north were being decimated and this herd migrated south to avoid the apocalypse. The local Mexicans decided to add a few bullets of their own but, when they discovered the body of an Apache hunter crushed by the thundering herd, they rushed, en masse and terrified, back to the safety of their town--such was their fear of the Apache.

Another great story involves the Seri Indians of Tiburon Island in the Sea of Cortez. Some American sportsmen from Yuma build a boat and sail down the Colorado into the Gulf. They have multiple trials and tribulations but nothing like what they would face on Tiburon. They meet the Indians and all seems well. One of the gringos is stupid enough to marry the chief's daughter. One guy goes hunting with the Seris killing a mule deer. His Indian guides become apoplectic with excitement--they fall to the ground and have something like epileptic fits. Now this would have been enough for me to have rapidly retreated to the boat but these guys, despite evidence that things were "going south", stick it out. The Seris stage an underhanded attack and kill two or three Americans. They then try to lure those who had remained in the boat into the shore. Fortunately for them, they stayed out of reach but their comrades were dead and possibly cannibalized.

This, and other murders, finally led to the Mexican Army going to war against the Seris. The Seri survivors were picked up, placed on a reservation on the mainland and carefully watched by Mexican soldiers. Now, many years later, the Seris are permitted back onto the island where they sell desert bighorn sheep hunts [released in the 1970s] for $100,000.00 each. They also go up to Arizona and sell handmade trinkets in southwestern art stores. As far as I know, they haven't eaten any Arizonans during the past few years.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Conquest of Mexico

The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott, edited and annotated by Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, xi + 292 pgs. The book consists of what the title says it does, plus some useful material written later by Elliott but appropriately inserted by the editors. Elliott was an elected Lieutenant in the Laclede Rangers which was a unit from St. Louis and a part of the Missouri Volunteers, in turn a part of Kearny1s Army of the West during the Mexican War. Irregularly, from May 1846 to July of the next year, Elliott sent dispatches back to the St. Louis Daily Reveille, writing as John Brown. In brief, Lt. Elliott with his outfit went from his home to Santa Fe, where with few exceptions, he remained throughout his term of enlistment. Compared to many other soldiers of that time, he led an easy life. (After all, many of us pay to live in Santa Fe, although arguably the amenities may be somewhat better than they were 150 years ago.) However, Elliott's descriptions of the marches, Bent's Fort, Santa Fe and its inhabitants including the native ladies, are most interesting, as are his opinions of some of his associates and high-ranking commanders. The Introduction is helpful and the notes, we think, are the main achievement of the editors: erudite, expansive as need be, and interesting on their own ‹ as you might expect from those two well-known historians. Notes are what turns diaries or dispatches into histories; in this case a valuable piece of New Mexico history and an excellent view of a minuscule part of the Mexican War.

The ambitious agenda of Lopez Austin and Lopez Lujan is to both write a comprehensive historical review of preconquest Mexico and to present a series of debates about the important topics related to the history, archaeology, and art history of the indigenous peoples. Though they leave some room for improvement, these authors are clearly successful in their endeavor, and I heartily recommend this book, both for those looking for a primer on preconquest Mexico and for those looking for a text to use in the classroom.

This book, a translation of _El pasado indgena_, provides scholars and students with an important synthesis. The book, in an effort to preserve readability, lacks endnotes (an unfortunate decision in this reviewer's mind). The authors provide the first such overview book which goes beyond the boundaries of Mesoamerica. They argue that the three great culture areas (Aridamerica, Oasisamerica, and Mesoamerica) must be understood in relation to each other. It is a solid argument indeed. Even Mesoamerica cannot be understood without an analysis of shifting boundaries and its relationships with the other cultural areas. Yet, the problem that Lopez Austin and Lopez Lujan face is endemic to all such studies: the information on Aridamerica and Oasisamerica pales in comparison to that of Mesoamerica. Hence the book is primarily about Mesoamerica, as the other two culture areas really only influence the first chapter.

This book is well worth reading and provides some fascinating commentary. However, the authors' analyses would be helped by consulting the more recent colonial ethnohistories, which provide some more systematic analysis which could be useful, particularly in analyzing the late Postclassic societies. Certainly a consultation of recent works could allow the authors to engage in more of a critique of indigenous social structures on the eve of the Spanish conquest. The book also largely ignores gender differentiation (except for a very brief discussion of gender within religion). As recent works have shown, placing gender within historical analysis is always extremely relevant and useful. These considerations aside, the methodology used here, allowing students access to archaeological and historiographical debates while also providing a historical overview, is sound, and the authors present a highly readable and well reasoned account of indigenous Mexico before the Spanish conquest.

As a small child, I remember my grandparents, parents, and Aunts and Uncles telling me these stories that are now written in this book. I enjoyed listening to the different stories of various tribes from Oklahoma. I shared the stories in this book with my children as they were growing up, and now want to share these stories, not only with my grandchild, but other children in grade schools that are interested in Native American storytelling. The pictures are great! My husband amazingly had kept this same book as he was growing up! Now we can both enjoy it together.

I saw Blackhorse Mitchell (he has dropped the "Emerson" that was attached to him by the school) speak at the Cortez cultural center and immediately picked up the book. I read most of it in one night and finished it the next day. After coming home from vacation, I loaned it to a friend who speaks some Navajo, and I can't wait to discuss it with him.
This book is part autobiography and part epic poem. Blackhorse Mitchell describes a life that every child dreams of living - but may not appreciate the reality of. He leads us through a generation of dramatic change in the Navajo lifestyle, revealing things in his beautiful poetic meter that often appear to come through right between the words. Mr Mitchell has stripped his soul bare for his reader and yet, as a young man, appears to be unaware of it.
Currently having secured the rights (he never recieved any royalties!!!), Mr. Mitchell is currently working on a revised edition to be published by the University of Arizona. Godspeed, Blackhorse Mitchell, godspeed.