Book Notices

The Trans-Mississippi West, 1804-1912; Part I: A Guide to Records of the Department of State for the Territorial Period.

Compiled by ROBERT M. KVASNICKA (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1993 x+131pp Paper, $8.00.)

The genuinely American process of state-making constitutes part of the fascinating and complex political and administrative history of the American west. This history isdocumented in the records of dozens of U.S. government agencies. The documents illustrate a similarly confused story of how the federal bureaucracy has historically exercised control over the territories Mining the records held by the National Archives, organized as they are by the agency responsible for their creation, requires a knowledge of the administrative history of the bureaucracies.

This guide, one of a series of finding aids published by the National Archives, will help a scholar navigate the maze of records The introduction describes the history of the territorial papers project It tells how this guide is a logical and practical alternative to the older practices of producing letter press (and later microfilm) editions of the territorial papers.

Part I, this volume, describes the records of the Department of State, which maintained records related to treaties as well as exercised authority over the territories at various times.All the records described in the guide are located at facilities in Washington, D.C.Although Part I implies that there will be at least a Part II, it is not clear what subsequent guides will cover.

Life and Manners in the Frontier Army.

By OLIVER KNIGHT (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978 +280 pp Paper, $13.95.)

This fine treatise on the cultural fabric of the Old Army is built largely on the novels of Charles King. It was out of print for many years until this reissue in 1993, ten years after the author's death. Enhanced with a foreword by Paul Hedren, this handsomely packaged reprint will delight readers and collectors for many years to come.

Oklahombres, Particularly the Wilder Ones.

By EVETT DUMAS NIX as told to GORDON HINES. (1929; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 xxxi + 280 pp Paper, $12.95.)

Nix's memoir of his years as U.S marshal in Oklahoma Territory, beginning in 1893, may help to put late twentieth-century criminal activity into historical perspective Like today's urban jungles, O.T was a violent place populated bygangs, including the Dalton brothers, as well as large numbers of crooks, cattle thieves, counterfeiters, and whiskey peddlers. A man of integrity, Nix was determined to clean things up with the help of 150 deputies—men like Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen, and Heck Thomas. In less than four years they made 60,000 arrests A high point of a different kind came on September 16, 1893, when Nix "fired the gun that sent homesteaders rushing into the Cherokee Strip," a scene he "described with cinematic vividness."

The Story of the Latter-day Saints.

By JAMES B. ALLEN and GLEN M. LEONARD 2d ed. (1976; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1992 xiv +802 pp. $25.00.)

The second edition of this standard work incorporates the latest scholarship and interpretations of Mormon history, revises the bibliography, and updates the final chapters in order to extend the scope into the 1990s.

Views from the Apache Frontier: Report on the Northern Provinces of New Spain by Jose Cortes, Lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Engineers, 1799.

Edited by ELIZABETH A H JOHN and translated by JOHN WHEAT ( 1989; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. xx + 162 pp. Paper, $12.95.)

A keen observer of the Apaches, Cortes's report provides the most informed, well organized understanding of them available at the end of the eighteenth century The document, archived in the British Library, is enhanced by an excellent translation and extensive annotations.

A Road from El Dorado: The 1848 Trail Journal of Ephraim Green.

Edited by WILL BAGLEY (Salt Lake City: Prairie Dog Press, 1991 58 pp Cloth, $24.50; paper, $11.00.)

Mormon Battalion veteran Ephraim Green served as a captain of ten in the Samuel Thompson company that left the California goldfields inJune 1848 and headed east to join the Mormon settlement in the Great Basin He and his forty-five cohorts blazed a new wagon trail on the California road, opened the Carson Pass trail, and brought the first wagons across the Salt Lake Cutoff Green'sjournal may not rank as one of the great trail diaries, but it is certainly a worthy and entertaining account of high adventure in the unexplored American West.