BOOK REVIEWS
©Copyright 2000, Texas Catholic Historical Society.
Notice: No book review may be reprinted or otherwise published, in print or electronically, without written permission from Catholic Southwest.

Félix D. Almaráz, Jr. Knight Without Armor: Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 1896-1959. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999. Pp. xxi, 430. $39.95

Knight Without Armor adheres to high standards. The book itself is handsome. It is well designed, carefully proofread, with excellently reproduced photographs and a gracious introduction with six pages of thanks.

The contents hew to the same standards. Although the bibliography lists numerous books, articles, and published sources, the numerous footnotes indicate Almaráz consulted multiple archives, collected a variety of primary sources, conducted numerous interviews, and relied primarily on these. His outline adheres closely to his subject's life, in chronological order, in detail. It earns the accolade of "definitive biography."

Castañeda is not well known and Almaráz raises several possibilities as to why he should be. Castañeda ranked with Lewis Hanke and Herbert Eugene Bolton in his writing on the Spanish colonial period and Mexican American border. During his life, he was probably most rewarded for his work in American Catholic history: the book's title alludes to his knighthood in the Vatican's Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Readers who know these fields well will be able to determine Castañeda's role in them. Almaráz seldom forsakes biography for historiography.

The theme that really holds this narrative together is Castañeda the academic. Orphaned early, the Mexican-born Castañeda planned to become a civil engineer and support his sisters. A "dynamic adjunct" (12) led him to risk becoming a historian. After earning a master's degree from the University of Texas in 1923, he accepted a job at the College of William and Mary. He gained valuable teaching experience, but was too far from sources needed for his dissertation, so in 1927 he took a job at the University of Texas library. He finished his dissertation in the Depression year of 1932, when jobs were scarce

and foreigners were suspected of "stealing" what few there were. When in 1933, his salary was reduced in an attempt to drive him from academe, Castañeda took a job as superintendent of schools in an impoverished Hispanic neighborhood in Del Rio. In 1936, he returned to the University of Texas, leaving academe again during World War II to serve the Committee on Fair Employment Practice. Despite constant distractions, he produced over fifty articles and eighteen books, including seven volumes of Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519-1950. Anti-Hispanic and anti-Catholic discrimination reinforced his loyalty to those two identities, especially the latter. Catholicism rewarded him as a faithful son; besides the aforementioned knighthood he served as the president of the American Catholic Historical Association in 1939. In the one modern touch in this biography, Castañeda's career is placed in the context of his private family life. Over the years, discrimination and faculty infighting wore Castañeda down, making him irascible. He developed a heart condition, which led to his death in April 1958.

Those involved in Hispanic American, Catholic, or Texas local history may find this book interesting. Graduate students and young professors may wish to peruse it for career hints.

Mary Elizabeth Brown
Marymount Manhattan College

Virgilio P. Elizondo and Timothy M. Matovina. San Fernando Cathedral: Soul of the City. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998. Pp. xv, 123. $16.00 paper.

Meant as a congregational study, this work serves as an excellent contemporary chronicle of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio and the theology and practices of its leadership and parishioners. Elizondo served as rector of the cathedral from 1983 to 1995, and Matovina was a parishioner in 1992 while finishing his doctoral dissertation. Traditional practices such as the posadas (novena recalling Mary and Joseph's search for shelter), the "taking up of the [Christ] child," the "day of the death," and many more celebrations of

Mexican origin, are portrayed and explained as part of the living faith of the community. Thirty-eight full-page, historical and contemporary black and white photographs and two cover photos complement the text.

As the first native-born rector of San Fernando in over 140 years, Elizondo decided "to reclaim and recreate the religious traditions of my childhood and of my barrio as the basis of the pastoral life of the cathedral"(11). The result was what the authors call a mestizo cathedral. Elizondo lovingly describes the liturgical synthesis and the effect of the cathedral on the city. Ten million television viewers in the Americas are also exposed to the evolving, creative liturgy each Sunday and on other holy days.

Some Catholics will find certain beliefs and practices controversial. The idea that the poor, the simple, and the suffering "have much to teach the church and the theological academy about the God who is alive in their lives"(15) might raise a few eyebrows. The inclusion of Buddhist chants, Native American dances, and readings from the Muslim Koran in certain services could disturb others although the practices are carefully described as "diverse faith expressions"(41) which enrich Mexican Catholic traditions. The assertion that the parishioner's God is "much more a God of people than of church buildings, doctrines, rules, convents, or monasteries"(44) might, as Elizondo states, shock some, but inspire others. Elizondo feels that "Often, an emphasis on orthodoxy and ordained ministry has prevented the faithful from appreciating and developing the God-given talents that [parishioners] can contribute to the life of the church and society"(74). People, Elizondo insists, should not be criticized or castigated but rather be called "to the fullness of their being"(113).

Chapters 2 and 3 by Matovina give an excellent, if brief, historical background of the church which was built between 1738 and 1755 and was declared a cathedral in 1874 and a metropolitan cathedral in 1926. The parishioners' successful maintenance of their Mexican celebrations in spite of marginalization due to the influx of Euro-Americans after annexation to the United States in 1845 is well chronicled. The influx of exiles from Mexico due to the 1910 revolution and particularly after the 1926 persecution, revivified

traditions which had never died. One hopes that Matovina will soon provide a more detailed history.

José Roberto Juárez
Texas A& M International University

Jerald T. Milanich. Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 210. $26.95

From the ongoing excavations of Lord Baltimore's Avalon colony in modern Ferryland, Newfoundland, to the digs at his mid-Atlantic coast venture in Old Saint Mary City, Maryland, to the unearthing of what is left of Spanish enterprises in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, historians of the Catholic colonial experience in North America have benefitted over the last few decades from the field research of archeologists who are interested in the same period. This concise volume, penned by the curator in archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, has added to that growing body of knowledge.

Unlike the southwestern area of the United States, and unlike Mexico, Central America and South America, very little of cultural or historical significance has survived to remind us of the tremendous efforts expended by the Spanish over a span of two hundred and fifty years in the southeastern section of what became the United States of America. Dr. Milanich's work helps to compensate for that lacuna. The book covers Spanish-Native American interaction from 1513, when Ponce de León first encountered the Calusa Indians, to 1763, when the Spaniards left Florida for Cuba.

Some, if not all, of the eight chapters seem to have had previous incarnations, perhaps as lectures or workshops in some kind of academic setting. For that reason, they can be read independently of each other. The origins of the chapters might also account for the fact that there is quite a bit of repetition of information from earlier chapters in later chapters. Editing, however, has tried to massage some of this by referring the reader to what was mentioned in earlier chapters.

The historical overview found in the first chapter as well as the second chapter's treatment of the missions among the Guale Indians of the Georgia coast, the Timucua Indians of northern Florida and southern Georgia, and the Apalachee Indians of northwest Florida are particularly helpful in understanding the more detailed information found in subsequent chapters. The author's habit of siting archeological digs in terms of modern roads and other landmarks that can be easily recognized almost invites professionals and amateurs alike to use these directions in planning field trips or vacations. Excellent maps and time lines are also interspersed throughout the book.

Chapters three through eight delineate current received opinion concerning the roles of the Spanish missionaries, Spanish military and Spanish civilian authorities vis-a-vis the indigenous populations. Particular interest is paid to the Franciscan friars, native American conversions, epidemics, rebellions and demographic changes effected by Spanish administrative policies. In the early chapters, the term "friars" is loosely used. Not every friar is a priest, not in the Middle Ages when they came into existence, and not today; neither are the Jesuits "friars" (97, 98). The later chapters use the terminology correctly, however. Historical material in portions of these chapters has apparently been based on the excellent, up to date, bibliography at the back of the volume. Citing of individual sources is haphazard and, at times, frustrating when one wants to check the source of a particularly tantalizing piece of information. (John E. Worth's two volumes which were published last year and reviewed in volume ten of this journal can be of help in this regard.)

Professor Milanich paints a fairly comprehensive picture of the activities of the missionaries; but one sometimes wonders if it is a sympathetic portrait, given the title of the work. More than once the impression is given that the friars were simply tools or dupes of the state. At the risk of being accused of confessionalism, one is impelled to point out that it is a primary doctrine of Christianity that, in virtue of their baptism, all Christians have an obligation to go out "and preach the Gospel to the whole world." When one reads the accounts that sixteenth and seventeenth century missionaries, be they friars or Jesuits, have left us, it is abundantly clear that this final mandate of Christ was the fundamental reason for their burning faith and committed lives. It is interesting to note that Pope John Paul II was publically criticized for this same zeal when he called for the conversion of Asia to Christianity.

Problematic as well is what this reviewer perceived as the author's neo-colonialistic bias against the intelligence and sincerity of conversion of the Native Americans who accepted Christianity. (It will be recalled that this same bias surfaced in a number of pieces that were published prior to and during the celebration of the Columbian Quincentennial in 1992, as well as prior to the beatification of Fray Junípero Serra.) One finds it difficult to fathom how indigenous peoples who had used their wits so successfully to survive for thousands of years in what Europeans considered to be wilderness, and who used their intelligence to build well structured, smoothly functioning societies, could suddenly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have that gift of reasoning short circuit when it came to discerning the inherent validity and reasonableness of the fundamental claims of the Christ of Catholicism.

It is likewise difficult to accept that the majority of the natives in Florida who collaborated with the Spanish were simply being opportunistic or, worse, simple minded and childish. Were the Celts, Franks, Teutons, Angles, Saxons etc. intellectually superior to Guales, Timucuas and Apalachees? Archeologists and historians alike can certainly use the insights of anthropologists of religion in resolving this issue. In the meantime, one can join Dr. Milanich in decrying any Spanish abuses of the time, just as one condemns all the injustices in today's global village.

Kevin F. Dwyer, O.S.A.
Merrimack College

The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History. Volume 2, Parts One and Two. Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1997. Part One: The Californias and Sinaloa-Sonora, 1700-1765, eds. Charles W. Polzer, S.J., and Thomas E. Sheridan, pp. x, 513; Part Two: The Central Corridor and the Texas Corridor, 1700-1765, eds. Diana Hadley, Thomas H. Naylor, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller, pp. x, 555. $65.00 each volume.

As the new millennium approaches, historians and cultural critics ponder the meaning of America. Some ask for a more inclusive national story, one that gives historical voice to--and thus legitimates the experiences of--traditionally

marginalized groups. But where does one find the stuff from which to refashion the grand narrative? One impediment to re-imagining our history is that most Americans, even professional historians, are woefully underprepared to deal with any tongue but English. Foreign language documents may be appreciated for their potential, but they nevertheless lay beyond the linguistic grasp of those who would retell the story. In part to address this problem, the Documentary Relations of the Southwest has attempted for nearly twenty-five years to provide a documentary base to better understand the Hispanic heritage of the United States. Now from DRSW comes the long awaited, two-part second volume of The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain.

The editors emphasize regional distinctiveness on the northern frontier and, thus, divide the work into five discrete geographically defined sections-California, Sinaloa-Sonora, the "Central Corridor," New Mexico, and Texas. Succinct, well done introductions precede each collection of documents relative to a particular locale, which include descriptions of physical and social geography as well as a brief sketch of the historical evolution of the presidio up to the major reforms of the late eighteenth-century Bourbons. In highlighting regional variation, the introductions demonstrate well the flexible and adaptable qualities of the presidio as an institution. The transcribed and translated documents that follow serve to bolster the interpretations offered in the introductions.

As with past efforts from this team of scholars, the product is readable and generally accurate. Specialists will want to check the translations against the transcriptions, and they will find points over which to quibble (e.g., is "consultation" the best translation for consulta? Should not escribano be "notary," instead of "scribe"?). Some errors are more serious. The settlement of Tomé, New Mexico ("el puesto de Tome"), for example, becomes a "watering post." Purists will scurry to find the original documents or copies thereof. All this cogitation, however, can only lead to heightened historical consciousness. On balance, the volume succeeds in providing ready access to important primary sources and in offering a perspective on the development of the presidio in northern New Spain.

Part One begins with a treatment of the "California Corridor," an area that comprised modern-day Baja California. The editors rightfully point to the

importance of the Jesuit missionaries who established effective Spanish dominion in "the Californias," and they underscore the institutional predominance of the missions over the presidios in this corner of New Spain. Not surprisingly, then, the bulk of the documents in this section deal with administrative squabbles between Jesuits and civil authorities, as both sides argued for the proper relationship between mission and presidio. The next section, "The Pacific Slope Corridor: Sinaloa-Sonora," casts light on the inherent mobility of the presidio. Not to be confused with a fixed castillo or fortaleza, the presidio consisted of units of soldiers assigned to wherever the crown deemed it appropriate, a quality that allowed strategic and administrative flexibility in dealing with martial concerns.

Part Two continues the west-to-east examination of the historical presidio in the Borderlands. "The Central Corridor: Its Heartland," concerns Nueva Vizcaya, a huge and sparsely settled area that comprised parts of modern Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango. This excellent documentary selection provides a view of the land and its peoples through a variety of lenses to reveal the sentiments and concerns not only of clerics and crown officials but also those of wealthy hacendados and long-time vecinos. The next stop in Part Two is New Mexico. Modern scholarship on this province is abundant, so the editors' interpretive framework offers no surprises. Still, the documents themselves provide interesting details into presidial finances, Spanish-Indian relations, and military discipline. The final section of Part Two looks at Texas, the story of which, like New Mexico, is relatively well known. Selected documents deal with the early, failed attempts and later successful efforts to establish Spanish presence in Texas. Notable for its commentary on native inhabitants and their reception of the Spaniards is Juan Antonio de la Peña's account of the entrada of the Marqués de Aguayo (1720-1722).

This multi-part second volume of The Presidio and the Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain is a welcome addition to the growing number of translated primary sources dealing with our country's Spanish colonial period. If put to use by scholars and interested cultural critics, these documents should further the cultural conversation about the meaning of America and its past.

Charles Cutter
Purdue University

Ramón A. Gutiérrez, et al., Home Altars of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Pp. 138. $39.95 hardcover; $19.96 paperback.

In this beautifully-illustrated and finely-crafted volume, the growth of a wide-spread presence of home altars forming a visible aspect of worship--mostly Catholic--throughout Mexico is attractively presented. Published under the general editorship of Professor Ramón Gutiérrez of the University of California at San Diego, Home Altars of Mexico is an outstanding study. In his introduction to the work, Gutiérrez remarks that the story of the home altars represents "a visual cornucopia of Mexico's religious past and present."(l) Nowhere is the spirit of the tome more clearly enunciated than by one of its authors, Dana Salvo, who writes that "traveling through small rural hamlets in Mexico the past decade, I have witnessed the traditional lifestyles of its native people. In the midst of meager and humble conditions I have found an oasis of spiritual wealth and visual opulence"(1).

Home Altars of Mexico is structured in such a manner as to knead together, into substantive areas of discussion, topics treated in essays with photographic sections following each piece of writing. Dana Salvo, aided by his wife, Dawn, and his daughter, Jahna, took pictures beginning in the late 1980s of home altars throughout the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatan. Salvo's Preface is followed by a photographic section entitled "Altars of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan, Chiapas"; Gutiérrez's introduction precedes a series of photographs titled, "Everyday Altars"; three more essays with accompanying photographs and Amalia Mesa-Bains's Afterword, coming just before the final group of photographs identified as "A Curandero's Home" complete the volume.

The authors advocate a view that the home altars represent more than each household's devotion to the Church, though this in itself is quite important. More broadly, the home altars mirror a whole hierarchical scheme of familial religious fidelity--especially to Catholicism--which as well memorialized family members individually and collectively, with all meshed into a comprehensive picture. This theme very much underscores Salvatore Scalora's contribution, "Flowers and Sugar Skulls for the Spirits of the Dead."

A different, but equally significant, historical focus is developed in William H. Beezley's "Home Altars: Private Reflections of Public Life." Here emerges

the idea that the home altars concept grew rapidly after Mexican independence in the early part of the nineteenth century and continued to mature through the 1880s, with major growth evident during the mid-century decades. Beezley suggests strongly that the construction of home altars surfaced as a way in which Catholic families could manifest their loyalty to their faith as the Church itself suffered increasingly intense anticlericalist assaults from the Mexican government. With a strong emphasis placed on the anti-Church years of 1858 through 1867, Beezley cites with special attention the "strident anticlerical policies" (97) of Benito Juárez. The argument to be made is that anyone hoping to come to a more in-depth understanding of Catholic worship in the lesser-known rural regions of Mexico cannot avoid studying the role that the home altars phenomenon plays in Catholic evangelization. And given this, Home Altars of Mexico is an excellent source with which to begin such an investigation.

Patrick Foley
Tarrant County College

Sam Howarth and Enrique R. Lamadrid; with photography by Sam Howarth, Miguel Gandert, Cary Herz, and Oscar Lozoya. Pilgrimage to Chimayó: Contemporary Portrait of a Living Tradition. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1999. Pp. [77]. $19.95 paperback.

With its 51 black-and-white photographs and two short introductory essays the little book Pilgrimage to Chimayó collects contemporary impressions of the Sanctuario de Chimayó in northern New Mexico. In his two short essays, "The road to Chimayó and "Santa Madre Tierra--The Holy Mother Earth of Chimayó" Enrique Lamadrid sketches the site's sacred history from pre-Christian through contemporary times. Ruins at the site date to the early thirteenth century. According to Tewa cosmology, the twin sons of the Sun slew a giant near Chimayó and thus prepared the earth for human beings. Fire, smoke and sacred water emerged from the ground. This site became a "healing wellspring of blessed earth," which provided an opening to the world of the spirit, a sipapu in Native American spirituality.

In 1696 the Spanish Mexicans, as they called themselves, settled in Chimayó. More than a hundred years later, in 1813, Bernardo Abeyta petitioned the vicar general of the diocese for permission to build a chapel in Chimayó. According to legend, he had a vision of the Christ of Esquipulas in Chimayó and was cured of an illness there. Abeyta then decided to build a chapel on the spot. According to another legend, Abeyta, the most successful businessman of the tiny community, witnessed while on a trip into Mexico and Guatemala the prosperity of pilgrimage shrines. Abeyta then decided to promote Chimayó as a pilgrimage site for financial reasons. This second legend seems to account for devotions in Chimayó to the Santo Niño de Atocha in Fresnillo and to Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas in Guatemala. By 1826 pilgrimages to Chimayó had become so popular that an official diocesan visitator ordered that the accumulation of offerings be removed. Today Chimayó is the most popular pilgrimage in the United States.

Howarth and his three fellow photographers wonderfully portray the diverse faces of Chimayó; a poor man and woman walking along a dark highway, children sitting around a campfire, bored teenagers watching the pilgrims, a young lame man in a wheelchair, men and women in prayer. Three themes emerge from the photos: human experience is wondrously varied, whether walking or not everyone seems to be on a journey, and the cross in one form or another figures in everyone's life.

Howarth and Lamadrid have made it clear that Chimayó means, and has meant, different things to different people. They have also presented the authentic faces of contemporary pilgrims to Chimayó. Like many a visitor to Chimayó, however, this reader is left with a question that goes beyond the historian's and artist's competence: What does it mean to say that God reveals himself and his power in a privileged manner in Chimayó, New Mexico?

Fr. Peter Verhalen, O.Cist.
Cistercian Abbey Our Lady of Dallas

Michael V. Namorato. The Catholic Church in Mississippi. 1911-1984: A History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. xxiv, 313. $59.95.

The territories of the Southeastern United States were some of the earliest recipients of Catholicism, brought by the Spanish to North American in the mid-sixteenth century. Its growth hampered by years of Protestant English domination, geographical distance, and low population densities, the Church retained its missionary character well into the present. In this volume Mr. Namorato provides a far-reaching yet detailed history of the Mississippi Catholic Church's development in light of its missionary status and in relationship to the state's unique and often turbulent course through the twentieth century.

Designed to complete the work began by Father John Pillar's Catholic Church in Mississippi (1964) and a second as yet unpublished volume by Pillar and Charles Nolan, Nomorato's work is divided into two broad sections. The first, "The Hierarchy," is based upon earlier assessments of the character of the Catholic Church in the Southeast by historian Father James Hennessey. Heavily outnumbered by evangelical Protestant denominations, scattered in outlying communities, and less affected than the Northeast or Midwest by immigration, urban and ethnic concentration; missionary churches depended heavily for success on the strong leadership of individual bishops. From the inauspicious first greeting of Bishop John E. Gunn in 1911 by the rectory housekeeper who had "done buried three bishops" and hoped to bury yet a fourth (32), the tenures of three bishops of Natchez-Jackson are outlined. The personality of each bishop, as brought to bear in the areas so crucial to a missionary church, (e.g. the building and maintenance of facilities, the recruitment of clergy and religious, and the enhanced role of the laity in the Church), is documented with frequent reference to specific cases. Each bishop's focus of effort is highlighted, whether as the "chapel-builder" for an impoverished diocese, as the "southern gentleman" who guided the Church prudently through the thicket of early integration, or as "The Native Son" who rose to help the Church and his fellow bishops through the most trying times of Mississippi's (and the nation's) social and racial evolution.

The second portion, entitled "Clergy, Religious and Laity," focuses on the continual struggle in the Natchez/Jackson diocese to maintain and expand the clergy, often in the most primitive and isolated of surroundings, and the critical role played in the Church's development by numerous orders of religious (totaling several score) especially in education, healthcare and ministry to the African American and American Indian populations. Special attention in this section is devoted to the role of the laity in the Mississippi Catholic Church. Using personal interviews and recollections, the author demonstrates how the laity, often isolated and misunderstood by a majority Protestant population not infrequently hostile to its presence, became "the witness and living instruments of the mission of the Church itself' through necessity long before the Second Vatican Council identified its role as such (153). In this assessment he agrees with Jon Anderson and William Friend's The Culture of Bible Belt Catholics (1995) that southern Catholics primarily defined themselves through family and parish and individualizes this theory to the experiences of Catholic Mississippians. The final chapter of the second portion of this work describes how the Catholic Church, itself a minority religion in the State, evangelized (and continues to do so) with influence beyond its size through education, healthcare and charities.

Special mention must be made of the author's treatment of race during the period in question, a knowledge of which is instrumental to any understanding of the South in general and Mississippi in particular. The issue is treated separately for each bishop and group and illustrated, once again, by the use of specific incidents, from the founding of the St. Augustine's seminary for African American priests in 1921 to the struggles over school integration begun in the 1960s and continuing today. Namorato illustrates well (albeit briefly) the tension present in an institution ostensibly dedicated to spiritual equality among all men yet itself existing within the framework of an inherently unequal society. Although not addressed by the author in a specific chapter, this introduction hopefully will encourage further study in this particular area so integral to southern Catholicism.

As noted by the author in his preface, the study of southern Catholicism is a topic only recently and incompletely addressed by historians, despite the Church's unique position in southern society when compared with the

Northeast or Midwest. This volume is a worthy contribution to what is hoped will be an expanding body of knowledge of Catholicism in America.

Thomas E. LeGarde
University of Mississippi Medical School

Jeffrey M. Burns, San Francisco: A History of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Volume 1, 1776-1884. From Mission to Golden Frontier. Strasbourg, France: Editions du Signe, [1999], Pp. 48.

In the first installment of his projected three-part history, Jeffrey M. Burns, archivist of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, provides a brief and very accessible narrative, complemented by an abundance of photographs, of the beginnings of the Catholic presence in San Francisco. Although primarily an institutional history, by focusing on people trying to bring their faith to bear on a turbulent society, Burns's book is really an exploration of the perennial tension between faith and culture.

Burns begins with the establishment of San Francisco's missions, which served the dual functions of converting Indians and introducing Spanish culture; functions that, often as not, coexisted in uneasy tension. With the decline of California's missions and the discovery of gold, Catholicism encountered institutional and moral challenges in confronting a tumultuous frontier culture plagued with rampant materialism. Burns traces the creation of churches, seminaries, and educational institutions, which flourished despite a shortage of clergy and funds. California's Bishop Joseph Alemany was confronted also by the challenge of San Francisco's ethnic diversity. Sympathetic to immigrants, Alemany fostered the growth of national churches alongside territorial parishes and attempted to minister to immigrant populations boasting few Catholics, particularly the Chinese. In Burns's portrait, Alemany is a courageously counter-cultural figure seeking, despite the scorn of his contemporaries, to conform the world around him to the ideals of faith. Burns concludes with the efforts of women religious and their influence on society.

Burns tends to be quite positive in his consideration of California's Catholic past, often giving little attention to conflict, either in the past or in

historiography. Nativism, for example, appears only momentarily. With such brevity, Burns's account is necessarily narrowly focused on institutional development. His treatment of the missions, however, is a notable exception. Burns argues that while California's missions were not idyllic institutions, they were hardly the oppressive and dehumanizing institutions portrayed in scholarship attacking missions. Burns is quick to assert, for example, that there is little evidence to suggest that Indians were forced to convert involuntarily. His portrait of Mission San Francisco de Asis, commonly (and, he suggests, aptly) called Mission Dolores, does not entirely exonerate the missionaries, however, and suggests that the missionaries were often too demanding and sometimes abusive. Likewise, while he argues for the sincerity of the missionaries' intentions, Burns suggests that the consequences for native life and culture were not always sanguine. Nevertheless, dismantling the missions effectively worsened the plight of local Indians.

Most interesting, however, is his assessment of what attracted Indians to the missions. While admitting the reality of non-spiritual inducements, Burns is willing to take seriously the spiritual sincerity of Indian conversions. He suggests that religious symbols and music, for example, held deep spiritual appeal. While acknowledging that accepting Christianity was often conflated with accepting Spanish culture, he finds a place for the relative autonomy of faith. His account recognizes the fundamental centrality and dynamism of the religious character of the missions and avoids collapsing faith into culture. Here, as throughout his book, faith becomes a potent force transforming culture.

Margaret N. Abruzzo
University of Notre Dame

Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith. Spirited Lives--How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 327. $49.95 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.

In significant ways, Spirited Lives is a remarkable book--indeed, a revolutionary one. To this historian's knowledge, there is no monograph on American

Catholicism or American culture, apropos to its Catholic dimension, that does not concentrate on the deeds and designs of men. But Spirited Lives argues that it was actually women religious who shaped both the U.S. Catholic Church and American culture. Ironically, the authors contend, this was done with the encouragement of priests and bishops. Thus, women religious were called upon to become the backbone of the growing network of institutions that American bishops deemed necessary if "souls" were to be rescued from the threat of Protestant dominance. Moreover, nuns were asked to assume responsibility, along with clergy, as missionaries of the frontier church.

Proving that women played such an essential role in the creation of the American Catholic church is, indeed, a tall order; but the book delivers in both delightful and provocative ways. What is even more amazing about this well-written narrative is that the authors limit their argumentation to the story of one congregation of women, the Sisters of St. Joseph, who established their first U.S. motherhouse in Carondelet (St. Louis, Missouri) in 1836. If just one congregation accomplished what these women did in the first ninety years of their existence (over 3,000 women joined the congregation during these years), one can correctly assume that many other congregations that were founded during the same period also successfully achieved similar results.

Coburn and Smith make their case largely through narratives. These highlight the spiritual motivation that attracted young women to join the Sisters of St. Joseph; demonstrate the common-sense flexibility that allowed founders to adapt to the American environment; provide amazing stories never before available to the general public of creative initiatives that often pitted vowed women against Goliaths of patriarchy, prejudice, and Protestant suspicion; and illustrate how the sisters pursued missionary life, willingly facing hazardous, even death-defying adventures. What other American organization, one must ask, could make the claim that their members gave faithful service in such a variety of roles including that of teacher, nurse, healthcare worker, fund donor, fund-raiser, sponsor for religious organizations, choir director, coach, or social worker? What other group did this on the national level within the setting of a hierarchical church that often devalued their contributions and in a society that feared their influence?

Spirited Lives gains in momentum as the authors narrate sisters' struggles to begin new establishments and institutions. Thus, by the epilogue, one is

overwhelmed with the sheer weight of vivid example. Just as at Cana, when Mary told the stewards to do what Jesus said, American women religious prompted each generation to produce miraculous, new wine. By their prayer, activity, and example, sisters fashioned the heart of the church we know today. Yet, as the prologue reminds us, the post-1920s overly confined sisters to the structures they had founded, while the call for renewal prompted by Vatican II all too quickly released them from the same burden.

Sr. Dolores Liptak, R.S.M.
Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, CT

Andrés Tijerina. Tejano Empire: Life on the South Texas Ranchos. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1998. Pp. xxx, 159. $29.95.

Focusing on Texas' Mexican and Mexican American settlers, their society, and ethos, Tejano Empire: Life on the South Texas Ranchos takes up where author Andrés Tijerina left off in his first, award-winning book, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 1821-1836 (Texas A & M University Press, 1994).

Tijerina sets the stage for his new study in Chapter One, examining the initial conflicts between the merchant newcomers from the United States and the old landed families and the "the Peace Structure" they worked out, which included intermarriage and acculturation of Anglo Americans. But as the newcomers consolidated their control over the land, trade, and political leadership, the unspoken agreement fell apart, and violence erupted. This ground has been covered extensively before-perhaps to the exclusion of other developments--so Tijerina opts to look at the stuff of everyday life.

Tijerina proceeds to detail the construction of a casa de sillar (the fortress-like stone or caliche-block flagstone dwellings). Workers' homes were often jacales, wood and mud thatched-roof huts. There were variations of these, with different braces and grasses, many of them described by Tijerina, who bases his study on research carried out by Professor Joe S. Graham of Texas A&M University, Kingsville. Tijerina also provides descriptions of the presas or clay

reservoirs that provided water for all living creatures, and of the norias, wells or watering holes, that dotted the ranches.

In some instances, the rancho, rather than the town, became the heart of the community, the meeting place for religious festivals and social events. Rancho El Capote near Reynosa-McAllen, for example, had several houses, a store, a cemetery, and a chapel. Two hundred twenty-nine individuals, grouped in forty-seven families, lived on this ranch and worked as ranch hands, farmers, and tradesmen.

The high chaparral and the Rio Grande presented both blessing and threats and barriers. The tall grasses, or chaparral (also called sacate de bestia--feed grass) became a disorienting sea for newcomers. As for the Rio Grande, Tejanos could wade or ride across at various crossings, but in deeper sections, they employed chalanes (ferries). Tejanos selected river high points or ridges (bordos) for town settlements.

Tejanos did not have the capital, Tijerina explains, to build large corporate ranches, but the ranchos were usually profitable enterprises. Some of them dominated an area and became the centers of life and culture.

The ranch patriarch commanded the respect of all, particularly his sons. The matriarch established the social rules and set the religious values and tenor of the household. Matriarchs, too, were instrumental in the construction of schools and churches. Parental roles were shared with compadres and comadres (the godparents).

"Tejano ranch life," Tijerina concludes in this refreshing look at the nineteenth century South Texas culture, "provided a repository of Tejano culture and a reference as they (Tejanos) and their children became urbanized in the twentieth century"(136).

Gilberto M. Hinojosa
University of the Incarnate Word