tate in the Southwest has a state historical organization
that publishes. The oldest and most productive of these, outside of
California, is the Texas State Historical Association, with headquarters
at Austin.

HISTORIES

A majority of the state histories of the Southwest have been written
with the hope of securing an adoption for school use. It would require
a blacksnake whip to make most juve-niles, or adults either, read these
productions, as devoid of picturesqueness, life-blood, and intellectual
content as so many concrete slabs. No genuinely humanistic history
of the Southwest has ever been printed. There are good factual
histories--and a history not based on facts can't possibly be good--but
the lack of synthesis, of intelligent evaluations, of imagination, of
the seeing eye and portraying hand is too evident. The stuff out of
which history is woven--diaries, personal narratives, county histories,
chronicles of ranches and trails, etc.--has been better done than
history itself.

FOLKLORE

Considered scientifically, folklore belongs to science and not to the
humanities. When folk and fun are not scienced out of it, it is song and
story and in literature is mingled with other ingredients of life and
art, as exampled by the folklore in _Hamlet_ and _A Midsummer Night's
Dream_. In "Indian Culture," "Spanish-Mexican Strains," "Backwoods Life
and Humor," "Cowboy Songs," "The Bad Man Tradition," "Bears," "Coyotes,"
"Negro Folk Songs and Tales," and other chapters of this _Guide_
numerous books charged with folklore have been listed.

The most active state society of its kind in America has been the Texas
Folklore Society, with headquarters at the University of Texas, Austin.
Volume XXIV of its Publications appeared in 1951, and it has published
and distributed other books. Its Publications are now distributed by
Southern Methodist University Press in Dallas. J. Frank Dobie, with
constant help, was editor from 1922 to 1943, when he resigned. Since
1943 Mody C. Boatright has been editor.

In 1947 the New Mexico Folklore Society began publishing yearly the _New
Mexico Folklore Record_. It is printed by the University of New Mexico
Press. The University of Arizona, Tucson, has published several folklore
bulletins. The California Folklore Society publishes, through the
University of California Press, Berkeley, _Western Folklore_, a
quarterly. In co-operation with the Southeastern Folklore Society, the
Univers