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Texas | Features | Books

On History's Trail:
Speeches and Essays by the Texas State Historian

by Light Townsend Cummins

Foreword by Larry McNeill

(Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2014)
Illustrated. 225 pages. Paperback.
ISBN: 978-1-62511-023-7. $30.00

Review by Dr. Kirk Bane

Dr. Light Cummins served as State Historian of Texas from 2009-2012. A longtime professor at Austin College in Sherman, he is also a prolific scholar. Cummins' books include Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (LSU Press, 1991); Emily Austin of Texas, 1795-1851 (TCU Press, 2009); Discovering Texas History (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, with Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz); Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas (Texas A&M University Press, 2015); and Texan Identities: Moving Beyond Myth, Memory, and Fallacy in Texas History (UNT Press, 2016, with Mary Scheer).

He divides this book, an engaging collection of twenty-nine lectures and articles written and delivered during his tenure as State Historian, into six segments: "Essays on Historical Personalities and Places, Famous and Obscure;" "Speeches about Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Texas;" "The Texas Centennial of 1936;" "Far Afield for the State Historian;" "Talks on Texas Politics and Public Service;" and "The Nature of Texas History." Dr. Cummins discusses such diverse Texans as Lee Simmons; Emily Austin; John Nance Garner; Dolph Briscoe; Allie Victoria Tennant; Audie Murphy; and Sam Rayburn. Topics he examines include the empresario era; the Battle of San Jacinto; the Red River War; Bigfoot (yes, the cryptic wilderness-dwelling creature!); the state's first law school; and the role of myth in Texas history.

Cummins perceptively comments on the state's traditional myth and mystique, which, he correctly contends, is vanishing. "The old myth and mystique of Texas is dying and exists today only on life support. When was the last time you heard of a new elementary school being named for William B. Travis, James Butler Bonham, Stephen F. Austin, or Sam Houston?" Much of what lingers of the myth, Dr. Cummins asserts, "is now commercialized as a form of local color for purposes of retail marketing and popular entertainment, such as the tourism-oriented stockyards in Fort Worth. There is much money to be made in bluebonnet-themed mailboxes, jalapeno-flavored jelly, exotic hot sauces in flavors such as peach and chipotle, and various kinds of wrought-iron stars that can be hung on the exterior wall of your garage or house. That is what keeps the Texas myth alive on life support."

Still, Texas is changing, and the state's traditional icons (including heroes of the 1835-36 Revolution, ranchers and trail drivers, Lone Star law enforcers, and oil barons) will be supplanted by new ones. "Somehow, in the coming years," Professor Cummins declares, "I suspect things such as the Cowboys Stadium and the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington will become icons of a revised myth and mystique that will feature Texas Rangers running the bases, not pursuing outlaws."

This splendid collection of essays and addresses, written by one of the state's premier scholars, deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Texana enthusiast. Hopefully, Jesus F. de la Teja and Bill O'Neal, the other two State Historians, will follow Cummins' lead.

Review by Kirk Bane, Ph.D.
Managing Editor, Central Texas Studies
April 3, 2017

More Reviews by Dr. Kirk Bane | Texas Books
Related Topics: Columns | People | Texas History | Texas

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