KEARNEY is a professor of early European history at the University of Texas at
Brownsville, where he has taught for thirty years. His Ph.D. is from the University of
California at Berkeley. MANUEL MEDRANO, a professor of history at the University
of Texas at Brownsville, earned his Ed.D. at the University of Houston. He
specializes in Mexican American studies.

Number Six: Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Traditions

1-58544-132-5
cloth
$34.95s

6x9. 256 pp. Index.

Borderlands Studies.
Multicultural Topics.
Medieval History.
JANUARY 2001

by Richard Flint

The testimony taken in Mexico in 1544 regarding
treatment of Native Americans by the Coronado
expedition is as fresh and relevant as today's
news. These documents - in both modern English
and the original Spanish - raise issues and demonstrate
attitudes as timeless as revelations from My Lai or Kosovo.
No other documents come close to providing the wealth of
information about the Indian responses to the coming of
the Europeans or about the Europeans' attitudes toward the
native peoples they encountered. Under the influence of
powerful advocates for Indian rights, King Carlos I had
ordered the investigation. Despite the general brutality
of the sixteenth-century conquest of the Americas, there
was an energetic activism in a group of contemporary
Spaniards who led Europe in the first modern national
debates on human rights. It was their efforts that led
conquistadores like Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and
Garcia Lopez de Cardenas to be called to account.

In addition to transcribing and translating the testimony of various witnesses, Flint
analyzes and annotates it, providing an invaluable resource for researchers in
generations to come.

Born in South Dakota, RICHARD FLINT has lived for most of his life in northern New
Mexico. He received a Ph.D. in Colonial Latin American History and History of the
U.S. West from the University of New Mexico. Under a 1997-98 Fulbright grant,
Flint did research in Sevilla, Spain, which has culminated in this book.

Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest
Studies

0-87074-460-7 cloth
$29.95

8-1/2 x 11 000 pp. Index.

Southwest History.
Western History.
JUNE 2001

Robert Cavelier de La Salle: daring explorer, empire builder,
shaper of history and shameless schemer who abused his
followers and deceived his king. In The Wreck of the Belle,
the Ruin of La Salle, acclaimed historian Robert S. Weddle
reveals how La Salle and his closest associates spun a web of
secrecy and falsehood about their travels, dissembled their
objectives, and put their own spin on his exploits by suppressing
other would-be diarists. Weddle's study represents a major
revision of the story of La Salle and his times as they have been
traditionally understood, with few of the major characters in the
epic tale emerging unscathed. Even La Salle's death was
misreported by survivors of the French colony in Spanish-claimed
territory as they sought to save themselves.

This book evolved from the Texas Historical Commission's 1995 discovery in
Matagorda Bay, along the Texas coast, of the wreck of La Belle, the last of four
vessels that La Salle brought to America on his final mission. Artifacts salvaged
from the ship shed new light on the efforts of La Salle and his two hundred
colonists to establish the first European settlement between Florida and Mexico, a
settlement that has been erroneously labeled Fort-Saint-Louis.

As history provided the clues that led to this archaeological discovery, so
archaeology now fills in the blanks of history, raising a host of new questions about
the ill-starred colony. Weddle marshals the evidence to answer those questions,
reframing the old picture of one of France;s premier American explorers in the light
of new discovery.

Weddle's exhaustive research has resulted in a work not limited to La Salle's final
misadventures in Texas. Rather, he chronicles the explorer's activities throughout
his travels in North America, drawing on several unpublished sources to provide a
more accurate picture of La Salle as a private individual and as a legendary
explorer.

"For several days the ship stayed at the same place, feeling the lack of water
more severely each day. . . . In danger of perishing, the crew at last weighed
anchor, intending to enter Lavaca Bay and sail toward the settlement. It was a
rash decision; there was not a skilled seaman among them, and all were
weakened by thirst. When the north wind arose, they could not manage the
rigging, and the vessel was carried across the bay. Approaching the strip of sand
now known as Matagorda Peninsula, the enfeebled men managed to put out
their single anchor, but it failed to hold. There was no thought of putting a
cannon over, for the few men were too weak for the task. Dragging the bow
anchor, La Belle plowed stern first into the bank a hundred yards off the
peninsula." -- from the book


ROBERT S. WEDDLE, a Fellow of the Texas Historical Association, is an
independent historian with a background in journalism and publishing. He is author
of La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents and
Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle, also published by Texas
A&M University Press. He lives in Bonham, Texas.

Number Eighty-eight: Centennial Series of the Association of Former
Students, Texas A&M University
The Wreck of the
Belle, the Ruin of La
Salle

1-58544-121-X
cloth
$29.95

6x9. 352 pp. LC
#00012164 12 b&w
photos. 8 maps. Bib.
Index.

Texas History. U.S.
History. Borderlands
Studies.
MAY 2001

by Jacques D. Bagur

A History of Navigation on Cypress Bayou and the Lakes
examines water transportatin and the natural and
socioeconomic factors that affected it in Northwest
Louisiana, East Texas, and the Red River. Jacques Bagur
explains how the natural logjam called The Great Raft, a
unique phenomenon on the Red River, formed a continuous
waterbody west of Shreveport. In the 1800s, enterprising
steamboat captains traveled east on the route - known as
Cypress Bayou and the Lakes - and developed a system of
ports and landings. Jefferson became the most important of
these, tapping market areas to the north, south, and far
to the west.


Bagur has analyzed old Corps reports, historic maps, early
travel accounts, and period newspapers to reveal the story
of the area from 1800 to the present. Farmers and ranchers
from as far as Dallas loaded goods onto Jefferson
steamboats bound for Shreveport and New Orleans. Despite
an expansion in commerce after the war, the steamboat's
heyday on Cypress Bayou was over by 1880, seemingly
because of the 1873 removal of the Great Raft by E. A.
Woodruff and the Corps of Engineers. Bagur's research,
however, confirms that the ports and landings fell victim
to the same source that helped extinguish many early
settlements: the railroad. Today, a dam prevents boats
from traveling between Shreveport and Jefferson, yet this
remarkable waterbody still offers much to contemporary
watercraft.

JACQUES D. BAGUR is a professional researcher living in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has spent the past twenty-seven
years in applied research in various public policy areas,
including programs for the Corps of Engineers.

1-57441-135-7
cloth
$55.00s

6x9. 752 pp. 136 photos.
73 illus. and maps. Bib.
Index. App.

Texas History. American
History. Business History.

APRIL 2001

by F. Todd Smith

When two Wichita traders first encountered Europeans visiting the Pecos Pueblo in 1540, the Wichita tribes dominated
the Southern Plains area, which stretched from Kansas to Central Texas. In the three centuries that followed, the
Wichitas would be forced to negotiate with competitors, both European and Indian, for land, resources, trade, and their
very survival.

The Wichita Indians presents a thorough narrative of these bands from their first contact with Europeans until 1845,
when the United States annexed Texas. Historian F. Todd Smith provides background information on the Wichita
Indians' provenance—the separate tribes of Taovayas, Tawakonis, Kichais, Wacos, and other bands whose shared
language and culture united them for survival when external pressures increased. Offering detailed descriptions of their
battles, negotiations, trading practices, and survival strategies, Smith traces the Wichitas' struggles to adapt to rapidly
changing circumstances and defend themselves from encroaching tribes and white settlers.

A companion to Smith's other works on the early Caddos and the post-1845 Wichita and Caddo peoples, The Wichita
Indians fills a gap in the history of Native Americans by focusing on this important tribe whose influence peaked on
the Southern Plains long before the United States came into being.

F. TODD SMITH is assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas in Denton. His previous books
include The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854 and The Caddos, the Wichitas, and
the United States, 1846–1901, both published by Texas A&M University Press.

Number Eighty-seven: Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University

The Wichita Indians
0-89096-952-3 cloth $32.95

LC 00-021984. 6x9. 224 pp. 4 maps. Bib. Index.
Native American Studies. Western History.

SEPTEMBER 2000

Edited by David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt

Creolization, the process of cultural interchange—in this case, between peoples of the continents bordering the Atlantic
Ocean—is an important aspect of the American experience. Language, literature, food, dress, and social relations are all
affected by the interplay of cultures. Only recently, though, have scholars fully begun to understand creolization as a
mutual exchange rather than the acculturation of colonized peoples to a dominant culture.

Focusing on diverse settings and different aspects of culture, David Buisseret, Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Mary L. Galvin,
Richard Cullen Rath, and J. L. Dillard examine the process of creolization in Jamaica, Mississippi, South Carolina, and
Georgia, among other places. They focus on creolization's origins, historical and modern meanings of the term, and the
various manifestations of the complex, continuing process of cultural exchange and adaptation that began when Africans,
American Indians, and Europeans came into contact with each other.

Buisseret also contributes an introduction that places the other articles within the context of recent scholarship on
creolization.

Readers will find Creolization in the Americas a unique glimpse into how cultural interchange has contributed to the
American way of life.

DAVID BUISSERET is professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he holds the Jenkins and
Virginia Garrett Endowed Chair in Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography. STEVEN G. REINHARDT
is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington and formerly curator of French manuscripts at
the Louisiana State Museum.

Number Thirty-two: Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures

Creolization in the Americas
0-89096-949-3 cloth $29.95x
1-58544-101-5 paper $16.95s

6 1/8x9 1/4. 160 pp. 2 b&w photos. 1 line drawing.
Multicultural Topics. American History.

OCTOBER 2000

by James C. Martin and Robert Sidney Martin

"Maps of Texas and the Southwest is an engaging, instructive, essential opus for serious regional
study."—Oklahoma Historical Quarterly

"James C. Martin and Robert S. Martin have given us an excellent window on the past through which we can
see how successive groups of people have interpreted and reinterpreted the geography of a specific region. . .
.This is an important book, one that belongs on the shelf of anyone who is interested in maps and what they can
reveal about the past."—Southern California Quarterly

The almost simultaneous discovery of the New World and the art of printing has made maps among the most
faithful records of the exploration and settlement of the Americas. Printed maps proved indispensable to the
empire building of the great European powers, and today these same maps offer an incomparable panorama of
what was known about Texas and the Southwest between 1513 and 1900. The publication of this long
out-of-print classic, with a new introduction by the authors, makes this significant study with its colorful and
striking maps available once again.

Hoping to use geographic knowledge to gain political and economic advantage, voyagers to New Spain in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sought reliable maps of the Gulf of Mexico. Colonization efforts in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were organized around the fragmentary information the earlier explorers
brought back about landscape, rivers, Indians, and territorial claims.

Territorial rivalry was particularly intense for the land that became the American Southwest, resulting in a flurry
of map making. The fifty maps collected for this volume represent many of the most historically significant maps
of Texas and the Southwest from 1513 to 1900. The introductory text and the detailed descriptions of each map
provide the reader with a keen appreciation of the progress of exploration, the science of cartography, and the art
of printing. The products of skilled craftsmanship, these maps can be appreciated by modern readers for their
purely visual appeal, as well as for their historic value.

Closely read, the maps reveal the interests of map makers and patrons; broadly viewed, they present beautifully
designed records of man's changing knowledge of the world.

JAMES C. MARTIN is executive director of the San Jacinto Museum of History in Houston. ROBERT
SIDNEY MARTIN is the director and librarian of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Maps of Texas and the Southwest, 1513–1900
0-87611-169-X cloth $39.95

9x12. 190 pp. 9 color maps, 50 b&w maps. Bib. Index.
Texas History. Cartographic History.