This book makes a major contribution to knowledge about early exploration and settlement along the Gulf of Mexico from Pensacola through what is now northern Mexico. Written by an independent scholar, it is obviously a product of many years of research into unpublished documents and maps from Spain, France, and Mexico. Its fruitful approach includes study of the environment; the Indian population; the evolution of geographical knowledge, cartography, and navigation; and detailed reports of voyages of discovery and attempts at settlement by France and Spain. It illuminates the extremely difficult geographic and human environment and the limited cartographic knowledge of the rival colonizers, which kept the area a no-man’s-land for Europeans.
The most impressive new research is into Mexican sources, including interrogations of survivors of several French expeditions. The material about early contact between Europeans and Indians, especially the saga of the Talon children—survivors of the La Salle expedition who were adopted by Indians and later became informers and interpreters, first for Spain and then for France—is quite fascinating.
Several interesting and persuasive interpretive points are made. A number of early expeditions, including that of La Salle, failed mainly because of widely believed misinformation about the location and configuration of the mouth of the Mississippi, which was thought to empty into a large lake. Spain’s interest and activities in the area were motivated entirely by French incursions and were essentially reactive. France’s reliance on boats and inland waterways for exploration and settlement provided a great advantage over Spain, which sought out deep harbors for ships, then stressed overland expeditions of soldiers and settlers burdened with large flocks of horses and cattle, which in turn became bogged down in swollen streams. Although French cartographers were credited for their publication of revised and more accurate maps, manuscript maps in Mexican archives reveal real advances resulting from several important exploratory expeditions.
The story is told clearly and with impressive detail. It is surely the best researched and most comprehensive study of this neglected but important aspect of encounters between Europeans and Indians in this region, which contrast sharply with contact patterns in Mesoamerica and the Andes.
