The Golden Hoof. By Winifred Kupper. New York (Alfred A.
Knopf), 1945. Pp. xi+203. $2.75.

The Cattle Kingdom and the Sheep Empire occupied the same
geographical territory. They were historically contemporaneous.
The Cattle Kingdom very early attracted the attention of all
types of writers--historians, fiction writers, essayists, romanc-
ers, poets. Theirs was an intriguing subject and they attacked
it from all angles. Not so was the Sheep Empire. It had no
protagonists. Its subject matter remained neglected. Nobody
wrote about sheep except the agronomist, and his interest ex-
tended no farther than breeds and types. Nobody realized that
sheep had a history and a most romantic and, many times,
tragic history at that. It remained for Winifred Kupper to
pioneer the field.

The Golden Hoof is the story of sheep in West Texas and
New Mexico. It is a slender book. And one could wish that the
author had taken sufficient time for the research and had told
the entire story of sheep as charmingly as she has that part
in her brief two hundred pages. Hers is a good beginning and
the volume will find a ready welcome from historians interested
in frontier history. The general reader will relish The Golden
Hoof as something new and refreshing in American literature,
and that peculiar and unpredictable tribe of Texans--the col-
lectors of Texana--will, upon reading it, discover another link
in the chain that binds them to their treasures.

Like a good historian the author begins at the beginning. Her
chronicle starts with the first herds brought over by the Span-
iards. This chronicle she continues into New Mexico with the
conquistadores. The Mexican pastores become idyllic under the
author's skillful pen. The long drives, the range war, predators,
blizzards, drouths, and grass fires all come in for brief but lucid
treatment. But why go on? The best insight into the book will
be had in reading it.

A half-dozen typographical errors occur that could have been
avoided with a little closer reading of the proof.

Howard Payne College

T. R. Havins

How to cite:
"Golden Hoof", Volume 49, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v049/n4/review_DIVL10252.html
[Accessed Sun Mar 21 6:19:05 CDT 2010]