Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas: An
Argumentative Historical Treatise with Reference to the
Verification of the True Limits of the Provinces of Louis -
iana and Texas; Written oy Father Jose Antonio Pichardo
. . . to Disprove the Claim of the United States that
Texas Was Included in the Louisiana, Purchase of 1803.
Published for the first time from a transcript of the orig-
inal manuscript in the Mexican Archives; translated into
English by Charles Wilson Hackett, Ph. D., and Charmion
Claire Shelby, M. A., and annotated by Charles Wilson
Hackett, Ph. D., Professor of Latin-American History in
the University of Texas. (Austin: The University of
Texas Press. 1934. Volume II. Pp. xv, 618.)

The long title page of this book tells the story about as well
as it can be briefly told. Pichardo was the second of two scho-
larly priests appointed to compile evidence combating the claim
of the United States to Texas through the Louisiana Purchase.
The first was Father Melchor de Talamantes, who did little more
than formulate a plan of procedure before becoming involved in
a nationalist political movement and being deposed. Pichardo
was chosen to carry on the task. He worked from October, 1808,
to the beginning of 1812. He compiled a truly stupendous mass
of material, digested it, and made a report of some two million
words in which he incorporated the substance of all that he had
collected. Pichardo's Treatise is, therefore, a library of source
materials on Spanish explorations and missionary settlements in
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Volume I of Professor Hackett's translation is concerned
largely with Spanish and French rivalry along the Atlantic and
Gulf coast. This volume is given wholly to the interior extend-
ing from the Mississippi River to the Colorado of the West.
Chiefly, however, it deals with the Plains country of New Mex-
ico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, describing the Spanish ex-
plorations, the geography of the region, and the Indian tribes
who occupied it.

Professor Hackett brought to the labor of translating and edit-
ing Pichardo's Treatise an exhaustive knowledge of Spanish ac-
tivities in the Southwest, and his work is a model of erudition
and patient industry. It was a task that needed to be done, and
Professor Hackett has accomplished it so thoroughly that no
other scholar need ever be tempted to re-thresh his old straw, or
even to winnow his good grain. Therefore, though the sugges-
tion may fall ungratefully upon Professor Hackett's ears, it is
to be hoped that, before settling down to a well earned rest when
the remaining two volumes are published, he will write his own
digest of Pichardo's memoir. For it must be confessed that
Pichardo is hard reading. One loses the thread of his argument
in a multitude of details--ethnic, geographical, and historical.
To one who accepts his thesis, as this reviewer does, that the
Louisiana Purchase did not include Texas, the argument is con-
vincing and needs no great elucidation; but one who believes the
contrary will be tempted to consult his own ease and remain of
the same opinion still without reading the fruit of Pichardo's
labor. The spacious leisure of the early nineteenth century was
conducive to such studies. Moreover, there was a little matter
of some four hundred thousand square miles of territory involved
in the controversy. Today it is only an academic question of
history. The study requires briefing, and Professor Hackett is
nominated for that service.

Eugene C. Barker.

How to cite:
"Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas", Volume 39, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n2/review_DIVL2052.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 21:38:09 CST 2009]