Customer Reviews

The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Professor Anderson has written a highly detailed account of early Texas history. His research and relating of detail is superb! I have found details in his book never seen before anywhere. He does have a strong bias in his writing that leans toward the native American's point of view (which is fine), and against various "white" men and groups (Texas rangers mainly). Overlooking this minor complaint, his book is excellant, and I am glad to have it as a reference. Not a "light read" at all, very detailed, almost like reading a thesis. Congratulations to Prof. Anderson for a well documented, well researched book. (the only claim I found objectionable thus far on page 127 where he claims Plains Indian societies never shot down women and children among their own....not true...see the Harrell archaeological site in Texas)

I came to Texas in 2007 and it is, by any means, a great state with great people. Diversity in all areas is noted. Have read several books on Texas history but this one tops all others, as pertains to the 19th century events. One cannot read this incisive book without getting a painful gut feeling about the violence, humiliation and outright barbarian practices of both the Anglos, Native Americans and others. This book is not for the "faint-hearted" but for those who want to see the hard-core truth of what really happened. It is both revealing yet riveting and heart-breaking. It gets a big 5-star rating.

Professor Anderson tests the mythology of Texas Rangers battling depraved Indians against historical documents, and finds that it is built on nothing at all. The truth is, virtually all of the so called attacks by Native American tribes were created out of nothing, either by newspapers hungry to sell papers (an art form perfected by Hearst at the time of the Spanish American War), or by politicians seeking votes (reminding me of nothing so much as Bush's run-up to Iraq). The Rangers were basically in it for the plunder, and thus had a huge incentive to exaggerate every incident on the frontier, and in many cases, simply disguised themselves as tribal warriors as they raided fellow Texans.

Combine this with repeated promises made by those very same politicians to tribal chiefs of territory which various tribes would be able to occupy as "theirs" "forever," if they would only move off of whatever land Texans wanted at that moment. Most of these agreements never were implemented by Texans at all--and those that were implemented, were simply discarded as soon as population expansion put pressure on the "reserved" area.

As Professor Anderson points out at the end, the real problem was that Texas politicians never were willing to concede that Native Americans had any legitimate right to live in Texas at all. The prevailing idea from the outset was that they should simply leave...and they ultimately did.

The big flaw in this book is that the evidence Professor Anderson marshals is so detailed that a lay reader gets bogged down. There are only so many names (on all sides) that you can keep straight. None of the characters really come alive as feeling, dreaming people--all are simply cut-outs acting on a historical stage.

By the way, ethnic cleansing is exactly the right phrase. It was not genocide--the goal never was to kill every Native American--only to get them all out of Texas. It was also not a war--virtually every "battle" consisted of armed cavalry storming through undefended Native American villages, randomly shooting into tents as the occupants (mainly women and children) slept. The Rangers rarely attacked armed warrior groups, and when they did, they were often beaten.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants a detailed, serious history of the expansion of the anglo government control over what is now Texas. Not for the casual reader.

In line with toher new attempts to place ethic-cleansing, a modern concept, into history, such as Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, this book goes too far and is visciously biased. There may be much truth in what is written here, in the sense that the outcome was the virtual ethnic-cleansing, to use the modern term, of Indians from Texas. But this was not ethnic-cleansing from out of nowhere. Long before 1820 Spain had been the author of deprevations far worse than after 1820. Later Mexico would treat the natives no better.

The conquest of Texas may have resulted in the removal and destruction of native tribes. But that doesn't mean that it should be compared to a form of genocide. The tribespeople also died of sickness and they were not pawns in this conquest. The tribes were active players and the Kiowas and others had important leaders who made choices as well, and many times those choices were not for peaceful coexistence, many times they were for war. In the end that war proved catastrophic. It is too easy to cry 'ethnic-cleansing' and 'racism' rather than examine the context of the time and understand what actually happaned on both sides.

Seth J. Frantzman

Gary Anderson is in my opinion just another one of the modern day politically correct writers who are trying to rewrite history in such a manner as to cast Texas and indeed all of America in a bad light.
I wonder if Anderson would have felt the same way if he had been present with John Leeper in 1866 Parker County picking corn out of a cornfield.
Early one morning Mr Leeper went to his cornfield to pick a wagon load of corn to trade for provisions in Weatherford. He and one other man had only been picking for about an hour when they discovered themselves surrounded by Indians. His wife, Rosanna Martin Leeper heard their screams and watched in horror through a crack in their log cabin while her husband was murdered and then scalped. Mrs Leeper was then left alone on the Texas frontier with her small children.
According to Anderson, it would have been the Leeper's fault for trying to provide a home and a future for their children just seven miles from Weatherford which was then a major city on the Texas frontier.

An excellent reconsideration of the far too-often mythologized history of Texas. Anderson has applied a modern concept in order to examine the early stages of Texas history and in doing so pushes the historiographical envelope. Solidly grounded in archival research and primary sources, the author and his work do not force the past into a presentist framework, rather, they consider the evidence on its own grounds and on its own terms. Revisionist? Yes, but that's the nature of the discipline, always has been, and always should be. The Conquest of Texas will have to be considered by all serious students of Texas and frontier US history.

The term ethnic cleansing is widely misused today. The proper term in this title would be genocide. Ethnic cleansing was used by Serbs in Bosnia to define what they felt they were doing, getting rid of people of the same race who had converted to Islam and, in the eyes of the Serbs, gone over to the enemy side, committing racial treason. Whether or not one agrees with the Serbs, they had a specific meaning for the term. The adoption by so many today in the news media and academia of the term "ethnic cleansing" as a synonym for genocide shows, in my opinion, a lack of clear thinking about terms.

Gary Anderson's book is nothing more than a new "politically correct" view of Texas History. Totally biased against the "white settler". For example his treatment of the great document, "Indian Depredations in Texas" by Joseph Wilbarger is without any merit and the attacks on this book are all hearsay. Read the original Indian depredation claims and go to the areas and talk to the families of survivors and see the documentation they have and you will realize this book is garbage. Frontier families in Texas, from the east piney woods near Tyler all the way to LLano in the Hill Country were slaughtered and massacred by Indians on a weekly basis. Indians from Oklahoma raided Montague county and killed over 30. Indians near Tyler murdered and killed 18 men near Jacksonville. Indians in Llano killed and raped women. The Texian settlers weren't trying to destroy a "race of people", they were just trying to survive and live in peace.