Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande (Canseco-Keck History)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 360 pages
• Published by: Texas A&M University Press February 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 160344016X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1603440165
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 1.8 pounds

Arnoldo De León, Angelo State University
"The book is destined to become the definitive treatment of the subject."

Paula Mitchell Marks, St. Edward's University
"This is an authoritative and important work by a gifted scholar."

Reader Reviews
Although not as resonant in American borderland history as the Alamo or San Jacinto, the El Paso Salt War left a lasting imprint in Anglo-Hispanic relations, especially in western Texas and New Mexico. With this first full-length study of the Paseņo insurrection in El Paso and environs, borderlands historian Paul Cool has advanced both our knowledge of history and our understanding of the roots of present-day borderland issues. Cool, with prodigious research and use of a myriad of untapped primary source material, has shed new light on this 1877 insurgency that saw murderous clashes between Mexican-Americans, known as Paseņos, and newly arrived Anglo-Americans. Hispanic settlers had apparently been communally utilizing and selling nearby salt deposits as a cash crop for generations. With the coming of Anglos and a differing concept of resource ownership, a culture clash and an ensuing clash of arms was inevitable. Paseņos thought the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo guaranteed their unfettered access to the salt even as the region was ceded by Mexico to the U.S., but the Anglo-dominated Texas legislature had other notions. Mix in the personal tragedy of putative manager of the salt lakes and provocateur of Paseņos, Charles H. Howard, his angst explained by Cool's insightful analysis of his humiliation and his southern notions of honor and gratitude, and the triumph of violence over diplomacy was unavoidable. And triumph it did, for three deadly months. Neither institutions nor individuals come off particularly well- the Texas Rangers, the U. S. Army, local law officers, the main protagonists or antagonists- although the author probes the motives and depths of each and makes it all compelling. Most on the Anglo side are incompetent or craven to one degree or another, several are plain cowardly. Others, notably a Silver City contingent of hardcases masquerading as a peace force, led by Dan Tucker and John Kinney and including killer Jim McDaniels, are worse, functioning as little more than a gang of robbers, rapists and murderers. An especially valuable section for the reader's closure is a follow-up on the key participants in the Salt War drama, tracing their later, post-insurrection, years, often with poignancy. This overdue study is beautifully written, and is a significant achievement in the scholarship of southwestern history. Comment | | (Report this)