Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande - a Review

Synopsis:
Salt Warriors chronicles a twelve-week uprising in 1877 El Paso, Texas. At stake was the ownership of the dry salt lakes located at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains. Local Mexican-Americans had been allowed to use these lakes freely since the time of Spanish rule and both the Mexican government and the Republic of Texas have continued this practice. To the locals, the salt lakes were considered a commonwealth. Locals assumed this free use practice would continue despite the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which established the border between Mexico and the United States. Due to the chaos of post-Civil War America and the region's own national ambiguity, this was not to be.

Salt Warriors describes the uprising itself, and the events leading up to one of the bloodiest civil conflicts of the 19th century American West. Key players in the conflict included American entrepreneurs, the infamous Texas Rangers, local Pasenos, Buffalo Soldiers, and New Mexican outlaws. Cool's excellent and detailed research has drawn upon first-person accounts from newspapers and previously unused resources. He has even included the location of the Texas Rangers' battle positions. As Cool himself describes, Salt Warriors is "a tale of community, corruption, courage, cowardice, and chaos that features Gilded Age greed,

Genre & Subject: Texas/Mexican American/Borderlands History
ISBN: 978-1-60344-016-5
Format: Hardcover, 384 pgs
Photographs: 21 B &W illustrations, 2 maps
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Price: $24.95
Salt Warriors webpage: www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2008/cool.htm
Publisher URL: www.tamu.edu/upress

Author Bio:
Paul Cool earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of San Francisco, and received his Captain's bars in the U.S. Army Reserve. His previous work has appeared in Wild West magazine, Texas Rangers' Dispatch, Journal of Big Bend Studies, and True West magazine. Cool is a member of Western Writers of America, Wild West History Association, and Texas State Historical Association. Salt Warriors is his first book.

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

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

"... an exceptionally well researched piece of scholarship that goes way beyond what has previously been written. It is obvious from the first page that Cool has made great efforts to uncover every piece of evidence that might in any way shed any new facts on his dramatic but bloody event."
-Dr. Jerry Thompson, author of Cortina; Civil War to the Bloody End

"An exemplary model of scholarly research and historical writing of the sort that other researchers and writers would be well-advised to both learn from and aspire to, it even-handedly covers all of its historical bases, is written in solid prose that is both clear and to the point.... It also is chockfull of just the sort of eye-opening, enviable intellectual insight, penetrating factual analysis, and probing interpretive facility, the exercise of which any of us would give our eye-teeth--while thanking our lucky stars--to be capable of. Cool's a serious and gifted historian. This book proves it."
-Bruce Olds, author of Raising Holy Hell & Bucking the Tiger

"...beautifully written...a significant achievement in the scholarship of southwestern history."
-Mark Dworkin, author of Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas: Mysteries of Ancient Civilizations of Central and South America

"Well-documented and chronologically well-organized, the narrative keeps who's who and what's what foremost in the reader's mind."
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/5834198.html
-Clay Reynolds, Houston Chronicle

"fascinating and well-researched study"
www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/books/stories/DN-bk_tswrdp_0525gl.ART.State.Bulldog.45fd36d.html
-Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News

"...undoubtedly, the last word on the subject."
www.westernwriters.org/Aug_2008_Bookshelf.pdf
-Nancy Hamilton, RoundupMagazine