Inventing Texas: Early Historians of the Lone Star State

Bluebonnets and tumbleweeds, gunslingers and cattle barons all form part of the romanticized lore of the state of Texas. In this historiography of elghteenth- and nineteenth-century chronologies of the state, Laura Lyons McLemore traces the roots of the enduring Texas myths and tries to understand both the purposes and the methods of early historians. Two central findings emerge: first, what is generally referred to as the Texas myth was a reality to earlier historians, and second, myth has always been an integral part of Texas history. Myth provided the impetus for some of the earliest European interest in the land that became Texas, so it is perhaps natural that it entered historians’ perceptions as well. McLemore’s survey of early Texas historians reveals that they were by and large painstaking and discriminating researchers, from all walks of life, whose legacy includes documentary sources that can no longer be found elsewhere. Inventing Texas illuminates the intricate blend of nostalgia and narrative that created the state’s most enduring iconography.