For the southern tradition that has flowed into the Southwest Franklin J. Meine's Tall Tales of the Southwest, New York, 1930, OP, is the best anthology published. It is the best anthology of any kind that I know of. A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature, selected by Stark Young, New York, 1937, brings in Texas.
Anthologies of poetry are listed under the heading of "Poetry and Drama." The outstanding state bibliography of the region is A Bibliography of Texas, by C. W. Raines, Austin, 1896. Since this is half a century behind the times, its usefulness is limited. At that, it is more useful than the shiftless, hit-and-miss, ignorance-revealing South of Forty: From the Mississippi to the Rio Grande: A Bibliography, by Jesse L. Rader, Norman, Oklahoma, 1947. Henry R. Wagner's The Plains and the Rockies, "a contribution to the bibliography of original narratives of travel and adventure, 1800-1865," which came out 1920-21, was revised and extended by Charles L. Camp and reprinted in 1937. It is stronger on overland travel than on anything else, only in part covers the Southwest, and excludes a greater length of time than Raines's Bibliography. Now published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.
Mary G. Boyer's Arizona in Literature, Glendale, California, 1934, is an anthology that runs toward six hundred pages. Texas Prose Writings, by Sister M. Agatha, Dallas, 1936, OP, is a meaty, critical survey. L. W. Payne's handbook-sized A Survey of Texas Literature, Chicago, 1928, is complemented by a chapter entitled "Literature and Art in Texas" by J. Frank Dobie in The Book of Texas, New York, 1929. OP.
A Guide to Materials Bearing on Cultural Relations in New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1944, is so logical and liberal-minded that in some respects it amounts to a bibliography of the whole Southwest; it recognizes the overriding of political boundaries by ideas, human types, and other forms of culture. The New Mexico Quarterly, published by the University of New Mexico, furnishes periodically a bibliographical record of contemporary literature of the Southwest. New Mexico's Own Chronicle, edited by Maurice G. Fulton and Paul Horgan (Dallas, 1937, OP), is an anthology strong on the historical side.
In the lists that follow, the symbol OP indicates that the book is out of print. Many old books obviously out of print are not so tagged.
4. Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos
THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and ubiquitous that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it, he may find it more troublesome to avoid than to get hold of. The average old-timer has for generations regarded Indian scares and fights as the most important theme for reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs, ceremonies, mythology, and other folklore in hundreds of tomes; laborious, literal-minded scholars of other institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore and tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally been dried out.
The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him and take his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide. The Spaniard's policy was to baptize him, take his land, enslave him, and appropriate his women. Any English-speaking frontiersman who took up with the Indians was dubbed "squaw man"—a term of sinister connotations. Despite pride in descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-Americans and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for instance, with the interdicted crosses between white men and black women. The Spaniards, on the other hand, crossed in battalions with the Indians, generating mestizo (mixed-blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.
As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have in general absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian culture—nothing at all comparable to the Uncle Remus stories and characters and the spiritual songs and the blues music from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his own grandpa saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing raid in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian arrowheads; every section of the country has a bluff called Lovers' Leap, where, according to legend, a pair of forlorn Indian lovers, or perhaps only one of the pair, dived to death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa Peak, Squaw Creek, Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County, Indian Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of Indian culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of America.