Pavie in the Borderlands: the Journey of Theodore Pavie to Louisiana and Texas, 1829-1830, Including Portions of His Souvenirs atlantiques.

By Betje Black Klier. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Pp. xviii, 280. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8071-2530-X; cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2414-1.)

In 1829 seventeen-year-old Theodore Pavie left his native France to visit relatives in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He sailed to New York and visited Canada and areas of the Northeast before traveling down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, then up the Red River to Natchitoches. From there he made several trips to nearby areas and a longer trip, along the San Antonio Road (almost impassable in spots), to Nacogdoches, Texas. He returned to France in 1830. Articulate and well educated, Pavie kept travel journals and sketchbooks that formed the basis for Souvenirs atlantiques, his first book. He later became a well-known writer and linguist, visiting and writing about South America, Egypt, and India.

Klier, a major Pavie scholar, discusses not only Theodore and his travels, but also the large Pavie family, some of whom settled in frontier Louisiana, where they became traders, planters, business leaders, and priests. Basing her work on several decades of thorough research in France and America, Klier connects the story of the Pavies on both sides of the Atlantic and also provides an English translation of the last third of Souvenirs atlantiques, in which Pavie describes his river travels and his winter in Louisiana and Texas.

Klier divides her work into several distinct parts, beginning with a history of the Pavie family in Louisiana and France, which is framed by a discussion of key events in Louisiana, especially Natchitoches and the borderlands, and France. Three Pavie brothers moved to Louisiana in the mid-1760s, forming the family base there, while Pavies in France kept the family printing business going for three generations in spite of imprisonment and destruction of their presses during the French Revolution. Klier also describes Theodore Pavie's life in France, where he was born in 1811, and the social, cultural, literary, and political influences that shaped his attitudes, writing, and career. Klier includes English translations of several of the descriptive letters that Pavie wrote to his father, brother, and other relatives in France, and she briefly describes Pavie's life after he returned to France.

The translation of significant sections of Souvenirs atlantiques, which forms about half of the book, offers a unique glimpse of borderland cultures--Indian, French, Spanish, and Mexican--in the period shortly before Texas became independent. Pavie's vivid descriptions bring alive his travels on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Red Rivers, encounters with Indians, overland trips, life in Natchitoches, hunting expeditions, and the visit to Nacogdoches. He wrote of flora and fauna, natural beauty, and a terrifying forest fire, and he included his uncle's version of the 1814 battle of New Orleans. His interesting, almost lyrical, descriptions are a pleasure to read. Klier has done a valuable service by making them available in English translation.

SYLVIA W. MCGRATH
Stephen F. Austin State University