Western American Literature

Texas is a storied state with a legendary past, but, surprisingly, there has not been a comparative, in-depth study that examines early narratives about the state. Astrid Haas does just that in her cogent and detailed examination of travel narratives about Texas from Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Haas brings together Mexican, American, and German travelogues in order to explore early constructions of Texas as a state and as an idea.

Haas divides her book into three sections that focus on types of encounters with the place: exploration, colonization, and work. From the early writings of explorers to narratives that either promote or, in some cases, discourage immigration to the accounts of [End Page 209] professionals whose work brought them to Texas, the diversity of narratives belies the surprising consistency of some of the ideas presented about the state and its people, particularly intercultural encounters between Mexican, Anglo, and Native inhabitants of the state. Subjects that thread throughout Haas’s work include the interactions with and depiction of the Native groups, cross-cultural encounters between Anglo and Mexican inhabitants, and the role slavery would play in the state. Haas’s readers will likely have a few “aha moments” as they see the genesis of ideas that still hold sway in state political and social environments: writers weighing in on Native inhabitants’ various degrees of “civilization”; critiques of Anglo Texans for their perceived materialism and the coarseness of their manners and living conditions; the idea that land is best used for the economic benefit of its inhabitants. In fact, settlers’ industry, particularly as it related to cultivation of the land, is frequently cited in the narratives as a measure of fitness of a group’s suitability to colonize Texas.

In the first part of Lone Star Vistas, Haas reviews early accounts of military and scientific exploration. In 1827 The Mexican Comisión de Límites was tasked with investigating the geography of the border regions and making recommendations for border policy. These accounts, written in the 1820s and 1830s, were meant to help increase Mexican settlement of Texas, a venture that ultimately (and obviously) failed. Using the narratives and reports of Jean Louis Berlandier, Manuel de Mier Y Terán, José María Sánchez, and Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, Haas details their concerns about the proliferation of Anglo settlement in Texas, the Mexicans’ desire to entice Mexican settlers to come to Texas, and the ultimate failure of this endeavor.

Haas contrasts these earlier Mexican narratives with Anglo American reports of exploration from the 1850s. With Texas’s independence in 1836 and its joining the United States in 1845, the narratives of Randolph B. Marcy and William B. Parker helped to shape visions of American settlement in Texas that were consistent with the larger westward impulse. Marcy’s promotion of Texas particularly downplayed concerns about the hardships of settlement, and “in doing so, Marcy’s travel reports contributed to [End Page 210] the American colonial discourse of westward expansion that framed the North American West as an economic and spiritual promise” (40).

Parts 2 and 3 focus on accounts of settlement and work and show how these narratives helped to establish the “Texas Creation Myth.” Haas argues that the writers used the geography and boundary of the state (the Rio Grande, which separated Mexico and Texas) coupled with Anglo American perceptions of Mexicans as inferior “as seen in their poor economic development of the territory” to support Anglo American colonization of the state (59). Citing the narratives of Mary Austin Holley and Stephen F. Austin, Haas reveals the origins of the mythologizing of the state on the part of Anglo American residents. While a few naysayers cautioned against immigration, the narratives of Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and Ferdinand Roemer invited German settlement to Texas. Missionaries, army officers’ wives, and journalists—people that Haas calls “itinerant professionals”—also depict a fertile ground for...