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@@ -0,0 +1,6921 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Guide to Life and Literature of the +Southwest, by J. Frank Dobie + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest + +Author: J. Frank Dobie + +Release Date: August, 1995 [Etext #314] +Posting Date: November 10, 2009 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE SOUTHWEST *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Keller + + + + + +GUIDE TO LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE SOUTHWEST + +Revised And Enlarged In Both Knowledge And Wisdom + +By J. Frank Dobie + + +Dallas. 1952 + +Southern Methodist University Press + + +_Not copyright in 1942 Again not copyright in 1952_ + +Anybody is welcome to help himself to any of it in any way + + +LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 52-11834 + +S.M.U. PRESS + + + + +Contents + + A Preface with Some Revised Ideas + 1. A Declaration + 2. Interpreters of the Land + 3. General Helps + 4. Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos + 5. Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians + 6. Spanish-Mexican Strains + 7. Flavor of France + 8. Backwoods Life and Humor + 9. How the Early Settlers Lived + 10. Fighting Texians + 11. Texas Rangers + 12. Women Pioneers + 13. Circuit Riders and Missionaries + 14. Lawyers, Politicians, J.P.'s + 15. Pioneer Doctors + 16. Mountain Men + 17. Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail + 18. Stagecoaches, Freighting + 19. Pony Express + 20. Surge of Life in the West + 21. Range Life: Cowboys, Cattle, Sheep + 22. Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads + 23. Horses: Mustangs and Cow Ponies + 24. The Bad Man Tradition + 25. Mining and Oil + 26. Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists + 27. Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters + 28. Bears and Bear Hunters + 29. Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers + 30. Birds and Wild Flowers + 31. Negro Folk Songs and Tales + 32. Fiction-Including Folk Tales + 33. Poetry and Drama + 34. Miscellaneous Interpreters and Institutions + 35. Subjects for Themes + Index to Authors and Titles + + + Illustrations + Indian Head by Tom Lea, from _A Texas Cowboy_ + by Charles A. Siringo (1950 edition) + Comanche Horsemen by George Catlin, from + _North American Indians_ + Vaquero by Tom Lea, from _A Texas Cowboy_ + by Charles A. Siringo (1950 edition) + Fray Marcos de Niza by Jose Cisneros, from + The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza by + Cleve Hallenbeck + Horse by Gutzon Borglum, from Mustangs + and Cow Horses + Praxiteles Swan, fighting chaplain, by John W. + Thomason, from his Lone Star Preacher + Horse's Head by William R. Leigh, from The + Western Pony + Longhorn by Tom Lea, from The Longhorns + by J. Frank Dobie + Cowboy and Steer by Tom Lea, from The + Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie + Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The + Virginian by Owen Wister (1916 edition) + Mustangs by Charles Banks Wilson, from The + Mustangs by J. Frank Dobie + Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The + Untamed by George Pattullo + + + + Pancho Villa by Tom Lea, from Southwest + Review, Winter, 1951 + Frontispiece by Tom Lea, from Santa Rita by + Martin W. Schwettmann + Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The + Blazed Trail by Agnes C. Laut + Buffaloes by Harold D. Bugbee + Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from Fifteen + Thousand Miles by Stage by Carrie + Adell Strahorn + Coyote Head by Olaus J. Murie, from The + Voice of the Coyote by J. Frank Dobie + Paisano + + + + +A Preface With Some Revised Ideas + +IT HAS BEEN ten years since I wrote the prefatory "Declaration" to this +now enlarged and altered book. Not to my generation alone have many +things receded during that decade. To the intelligent young as well as +to the intelligent elderly, efforts in the present atmosphere to opiate +the public with mere pictures of frontier enterprise have a ghastly +unreality. The Texas Rangers have come to seem as remote as the +Foreign Legion in France fighting against the Kaiser. Yet this _Guide_, +extensively added to and revised, is mainly concerned, apart from the +land and its native life, with frontier backgrounds. If during a decade +a man does not change his mind on some things and develop new points of +view, it is a pretty good sign that his mind is petrified and need no +longer be accounted among the living. I have an inclination to rewrite +the "Declaration," but maybe I was just as wise on some matters ten +years ago as I am now; so I let it stand. + + Do I contradict myself? + Very well then I contradict myself. + + +I have heard so much silly bragging by Texans that I now think it would +be a blessing to themselves--and a relief to others--if the braggers did +not know they lived in Texas. Yet the time is not likely to come when +a human being will not be better adapted to his environments by knowing +their nature; on the other hand, to study a provincial setting from a +provincial point of view is restricting. Nobody should specialize on +provincial writings before he has the perspective that only a good deal +of good literature and wide history can give. I think it more important +that a dweller in the Southwest read _The Trial and Death of Socrates_ +than all the books extant on killings by Billy the Kid. I think this +dweller will fit his land better by understanding Thomas Jefferson's +oath ("I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against +every form of tyranny over the mind of man") than by reading all the +books that have been written on ranch lands and people. For any dweller +of the Southwest who would have the land soak into him, Wordsworth's +"Tintern Abbey," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "The Solitary +Reaper," "Expostulation and Reply," and a few other poems are more +conducive to a "wise passiveness" than any native writing. + +There are no substitutes for nobility, beauty, and wisdom. One of the +chief impediments to amplitude and intellectual freedom is provincial +inbreeding. I am sorry to see writings of the Southwest substituted for +noble and beautiful and wise literature to which all people everywhere +are inheritors. When I began teaching "Life and Literature of the +Southwest" I did not regard these writings as a substitute. To reread +most of them would be boresome, though _Hamlet_, Boswell's _Johnson_, +Lamb's _Essays_, and other genuine literature remain as quickening as +ever. + +Very likely I shall not teach the course again. I am positive I shall +never revise this _Guide_ again. It is in nowise a bibliography. I have +made more additions to the "Range Life" chapter than to any other. I +am a collector of such books. A collector is a person who gathers unto +himself the worthless as well as the worthy. Since I did not make a +nickel out of the original printing of the _Guide_ and hardly expect to +make enough to buy a California "ranch" out of the present printing, +I have added several items, with accompanying remarks, more for my own +pleasure than for benefit to society. + +Were the listings halved, made more selective, the book might serve +its purpose better. Anybody who wants to can slice it in any manner +he pleases. I am as much against forced literary swallowings as I am +against prohibitions on free tasting, chewing, and digestion. I rate +censors, particularly those of church and state, as low as I rate +character assassins; they often run together. + +I'd like to make a book on _Emancipators of the Human Mind_--Emerson, +Jefferson, Thoreau, Tom Paine, Newton, Arnold, Voltaire, Goethe.... When +I reflect how few writings connected with the wide open spaces of +the West and Southwest are wide enough to enter into such a volume, I +realize acutely how desirable is perspective in patriotism. + +Hundreds of the books listed in this _Guide_ have given me pleasure as +well as particles for the mosaic work of my own books; but, with minor +exceptions, they increasingly seem to me to explore only the exteriors +of life. There is in them much good humor but scant wit. The hunger for +something afar is absent or battened down. Drought blasts the turf, but +its unhealing blast to human hope is glossed over. The body's thirst for +water is a recurring theme, but human thirst for love and just thinking +is beyond consideration. Horses run with their riders to death or +victory, but fleeting beauty haunts no soul to the "doorway of the +dead." The land is often pictured as lonely, but the lone way of a human +being's essential self is not for this extravert world. The banners of +individualism are carried high, but the higher individualism that grows +out of long looking for meanings in the human drama is negligible. +Somebody is always riding around or into a "feudal domain." Nobody at +all penetrates it or penetrates democracy with the wisdom that came to +Lincoln in his loneliness: "As I would not be a SLAVE, so I would not +be a MASTER. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from +this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." The mountains, +the caves, the forests, the deserts have had no prophets to interpret +either their silences or their voices. In short, these books are mostly +only the stuff of literature, not literature itself, not the very stuff +of life, not the distillations of mankind's "agony and bloody sweat." + +An ignorant person attaches more importance to the chatter of small +voices around him than to the noble language of remote individuals. The +more he listens to the small, the smaller he grows. The hope of regional +literature lies in out-growing regionalism itself. On November 11, 1949, +I gave a talk to the Texas Institute of Letters that was published in +the Spring 1950 issue of the _Southwest Review_. The paragraphs that +follow are taken therefrom. + +Good writing about any region is good only to the extent that it +has universal appeal. Texans are the only "race of people" known to +anthropologists who do not depend upon breeding for propagation. Like +princes and lords, they can be made by "breath," plus a big white +hat--which comparatively few Texans wear. A beef stew by a cook in San +Antonio, Texas, may have a different flavor from that of a beef stew +cooked in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the essential substances of +potatoes and onions, with some suggestion of beef, are about the same, +and geography has no effect on their digestibility. + +A writer--a regional writer, if that term means anything--will whenever +he matures exercise the critical faculty. I mean in the Matthew Arnold +sense of appraisal rather than of praise, or, for that matter, of +absolute condemnation. Understanding and sympathy are not eulogy. Mere +glorification is on the same intellectual level as silver tongues and +juke box music. + +In using that word INTELLECTUAL, one lays himself liable to the +accusation of having forsaken democracy. For all that, "fundamental +brainwork" is behind every respect-worthy piece of writing, whether it +be a lightsome lyric that seems as careless as a redbird's flit or a +formal epic, an impressionistic essay or a great novel that measures the +depth of human destiny. Nonintellectual literature is as nonexistent +as education without mental discipline, or as "character building" in a +school that is slovenly in scholarship. Billboards along the highways of +Texas advertise certain towns and cities as "cultural centers." Yet no +chamber of commerce would consider advertising an intellectual center. +The culture of a nineteenth-century finishing school for young ladies +was divorced from intellect; genuine civilization is always informed +by intellect. The American populace has been taught to believe that +the more intellectual a professor is, the less common sense he has; +nevertheless, if American democracy is preserved it will be preserved by +thought and not by physics. + +Editors of all but a few magazines of the country and publishers of most +of the daily newspapers cry out for brightness and vitality and at the +same time shut out critical ideas. They want intellect, but want it +petrified. Happily, the publishers of books have not yet reached that +form of delusion. In an article entitled "What Ideas Are Safe?" in +the _Saturday Review of Literature_ for November 5, 1949, Henry Steele +Commager says: + +If we establish a standard of safe thinking, we will end up with no +thinking at all.... We cannot... have thought half slave and half +free.... A nation which, in the name of loyalty or of patriotism or of +any sincere and high-sounding ideal, discourages criticism and dissent, +and puts a premium on acquiescence and conformity, is headed for +disaster. + +Unless a writer feels free, things will not come to him, he cannot +burgeon on any subject whatsoever. + +In 1834 Davy Crockett's _Autobiography_ was published. It is one of +the primary social documents of America. It is as much Davy Crockett, +whether going ahead after bears in a Tennessee canebrake or going ahead +after General Andrew Jackson in Congress, as the equally plain but also +urbane _Autobiography_ of Franklin is Benjamin Franklin. It is undiluted +regionalism. It is provincial not only in subject but in point of view. + +No provincial mind of this day could possibly write an autobiography or +any other kind of book co-ordinate in value with Crockett's "classic in +homespun." In his time, Crockett could exercise intelligence and still +retain his provincial point of view. Provincialism was in the air over +his land. In these changed times, something in the ambient air prevents +any active intelligence from being unconscious of lands, peoples, +struggles far beyond any province. + +Not long after the Civil War, in Harris County, Texas, my father heard a +bayou-billy yell out: + + Whoopee! Raised in a canebrake and suckled by a she-bear! + The click of a six-shooter is music to my ear! + The further up the creek you go, the worse they git, + And I come from the head of it! Whoopee! + +If it were now possible to find some section of country so far up above +the forks of the creek that the owls mate there with the chickens, and +if this section could send to Congress one of its provincials untainted +by the outside world, he would, if at all intelligent, soon after +arriving on Capitol Hill become aware of interdependencies between his +remote province and the rest of the world. + + +Biographies of regional characters, stories turning on local customs, +novels based on an isolated society, books of history and fiction going +back to provincial simplicity will go on being written and published. +But I do not believe it possible that a good one will henceforth come +from a mind that does not in outlook transcend the region on which it +is focused. That is not to imply that the processes of evolution have +brought all parts of the world into such interrelationships that a +writer cannot depict the manners and morals of a community up Owl Hoot +Creek without enmeshing them with the complexities of the Atlantic +Pact. Awareness of other times and other wheres, not insistence on that +awareness, is the requisite. James M. Barrie said that he could not +write a play until he got his people off on a kind of island, but had he +not known about the mainland he could never have delighted us with the +islanders--islanders, after all, for the night only. Patriotism of the +right kind is still a fine thing; but, despite all gulfs, canyons, and +curtains that separate nations, those nations and their provinces are +all increasingly interrelated. + +No sharp line of time or space, like that separating one century from +another or the territory of one nation from that of another, can delimit +the boundaries of any region to which any regionalist lays claim. +Mastery, for instance, of certain locutions peculiar to the Southwest +will take their user to the Aztecs, to Spain, and to the border of +ballads and Sir Walter Scott's romances. I found that I could not +comprehend the coyote as animal hero of Pueblo and Plains Indians apart +from the Reynard of Aesop and Chaucer. + +In a noble opinion respecting censorship and freedom of the press, +handed down on March 18, 1949, Judge Curtis Bok of Pennsylvania said: + +It is no longer possible that free speech be guaranteed Federally and +denied locally; under modern methods of instantaneous communication +such a discrepancy makes no sense.... What is said in Pennsylvania may +clarify an issue in California, and what is suppressed in California may +leave us the worse in Pennsylvania. Unless a restriction on free speech +be of national validity, it can no longer have any local validity +whatever. + + +Among the qualities that any good regional writer has in common with +other good writers of all places and times is intellectual integrity. +Having it does not obligate him to speak out on all issues or, indeed, +on any issue. He alone is to judge whether he will sport with +Amaryllis in the shade or forsake her to write his own _Areopagitica_. +Intellectual integrity expresses itself in the tune as well as argument, +in choice of words--words honest and precise--as well as in ideas, in +fidelity to human nature and the flowers of the fields as well as to +principles, in facts reported more than in deductions proposed. Though a +writer write on something as innocuous as the white snails that crawl +up broomweed stalks and that roadrunners carry to certain rocks to +crack and eat, his intellectual integrity, if he has it, will infuse the +subject. + +Nothing is too trivial for art, but good art treats nothing in a trivial +way. Nothing is too provincial for the regional writer, but he cannot +be provincial-minded toward it. Being provincial-minded may make him a +typical provincial; it will prevent him from being a representative +or skilful interpreter. Horace Greeley said that when the rules of the +English language got in his way, they did not stand a chance. We may be +sure that if by violating the rules of syntax Horace Greeley sometimes +added forcefulness to his editorials, he violated them deliberately and +not in ignorance. Luminosity is not stumbled into. The richly savored +and deliciously unlettered speech of Thomas Hardy's rustics was the +creation of a master architect who had looked out over the ranges of +fated mankind and looked also into hell. Thomas Hardy's ashes were +placed in Westminster Abbey, but his heart, in accordance with a +provision of his will, was buried in the churchyard of his own village. + +I have never tried to define regionalism. Its blanket has been put +over a great deal of worthless writing. Robert Frost has approached a +satisfying conception. "The land is always in my bones," he said--the +land of rock fences. But, "I am not a regionalist. I am a realmist. I +write about realms of democracy and realms of the spirit." Those realms +include The Woodpile, The Grindstone, Blueberries, Birches, and many +other features of the land North of Boston. + +To an extent, any writer anywhere must make his own world, no matter +whether in fiction or nonfiction, prose or poetry. He must make +something out of his subject. What he makes depends upon his creative +power, integrated with a sense of form. The popular restriction of +creative writing to fiction and verse is illogical. Carl Sandburg's life +of Lincoln is immeasurably more creative in form and substance than his +fanciful _Potato Face_. Intense exercise of his creative power sets, +in a way, the writer apart from the life he is trying to sublimate. +Becoming a Philistine will not enable a man to interpret Philistinism, +though Philistines who own big presses think so. Sinclair Lewis knew +Babbitt as Babbitt could never know either himself or Sinclair Lewis. + + J. F. D. + +_The time of Mexican primroses_ 1952 + + + + +1. A Declaration + +IN THE UNIVERSITY of Texas I teach a course called "Life and Literature +of the Southwest." About 1929 I had a brief guide to books concerning +the Southwest mimeographed; in 1931 it was included by John William +Rogers in a booklet entitled _Finding Literature on the Texas Plains_. +After that I revised and extended the guide three or four times, during +the process distributing several thousand copies of the mimeographed +forms. Now the guide has grown too long, and I trust that this printing +of it will prevent my making further additions--though within a short +time new books will come out that should be added. + +Yet the guide is fragmentary, incomplete, and in no sense a +bibliography. Its emphases vary according to my own indifferences and +ignorance as well as according to my own sympathies and knowledge. It is +strong on the character and ways of life of the early settlers, on the +growth of the soil, and on everything pertaining to the range; it is +weak on information concerning politicians and on citations to studies +which, in the manner of orthodox Ph.D. theses, merely transfer bones +from one graveyard to another. + +It is designed primarily to help people of the Southwest see +significances in the features of the land to which they belong, to make +their environments more interesting to them, their past more alive, +to bring them to a realization of the values of their own cultural +inheritance, and to stimulate them to observe. It includes most of +the books about the Southwest that people in general would agree on as +making good reading. + +I have never had any idea of writing or teaching about my own section +of the country merely as a patriotic duty. Without apologies, I would +interpret it because I love it, because it interests me, talks to me, +appeals to my imagination, warms my emotions; also because it seems to +me that other people living in the Southwest will lead fuller and richer +lives if they become aware of what it holds. I once thought that, so +far as reading goes, I could live forever on the supernal beauty of +Shelley's "The Cloud" and his soaring lines "To a Skylark," on the rich +melancholy of Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," on Cyrano de Bergerac's +ideal of a free man, on Wordsworth's philosophy of nature--a philosophy +that has illuminated for me the mesquite flats and oak-studded hills of +Texas--on the adventures in Robert Louis Stevenson, the flavor and wit +of Lamb's essays, the eloquent wisdom of Hazlitt, the dark mysteries +of Conrad, the gaieties of Barrie, the melody of Sir Thomas Browne, the +urbanity of Addison, the dash in Kipling, the mobility, the mightiness, +the lightness, the humor, the humanity, the everything of Shakespeare, +and a world of other delicious, high, beautiful, and inspiring things +that English literature has bestowed upon us. That literature is still +the richest of heritages; but literature is not enough. + +Here I am living on a soil that my people have been living and working +and dying on for more than a hundred years--the soil, as it happens, +of Texas. My roots go down into this soil as deep as mesquite roots go. +This soil has nourished me as the banks of the lovely Guadalupe River +nourish cypress trees, as the Brazos bottoms nourish the wild peach, as +the gentle slopes of East Texas nourish the sweet-smelling pines, as the +barren, rocky ridges along the Pecos nourish the daggered lechuguilla. I +am at home here, and I want not only to know about my home land, I want +to live intelligently on it. I want certain data that will enable me to +accommodate myself to it. Knowledge helps sympathy to achieve harmony. +I am made more resolute by Arthur Hugh Clough's picture of the dripping +sailor on the reeling mast, "On stormy nights when wild northwesters +rave," but the winds that have bit into me have been dry Texas northers; +and fantastic yarns about them, along with a cowboy's story of a herd of +Longhorns drifting to death in front of one of them, come home to me and +illuminate those northers like forked lightning playing along the top of +black clouds in the night. + +No informed person would hold that the Southwest can claim any +considerable body of PURE LITERATURE as its own. At the same time, the +region has a distinct cultural inheritance, full of life and drama, told +variously in books so numerous that their very existence would surprise +many people who depend on the Book-of-the-Month Club for literary +guidance. Any people have a right to their own cultural inheritance, +though sheeplike makers of textbooks and sheeplike pedagogues of +American literature have until recently, either wilfully or ignorantly, +denied that right to the Southwest. Tens of thousands of students of the +Southwest have been assigned endless pages on and listened to dronings +over Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet, +and other dreary creatures of colonial New England who are utterly +foreign to the genius of the Southwest. If nothing in written form +pertaining to the Southwest existed at all, it would be more profitable +for an inhabitant to go out and listen to coyotes singing at night in +the prickly pear than to tolerate the Increase Mather kind of thing. It +is very profitable to listen to coyotes anyhow. I rebelled years ago +at having the tradition, the spirit, the meaning of the soil to which I +belong utterly disregarded by interpreters of literature and at the +same time having the Increase Mather kind of stuff taught as if it were +important to our part of America. Happily the disregard is disappearing, +and so is Increase Mather. + +If they had to be rigorously classified into hard and fast categories, +comparatively few of the books in the lists that follow would be rated +as pure literature. Fewer would be rated as history. A majority of them +are the stuff of history. The stuff out of which history is made is +generally more vital than formalized history, especially the histories +habitually forced on students in public schools, colleges, and +universities. There is no essential opposition between history and +literature. The attempt to study a people's literature apart from their +social and, to a less extent, their political history is as illogical +as the lady who said she had read Romeo but had not yet got to Juliet. +Nearly any kind of history is more important than formal literary +history showing how in a literary way Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac +begat Jacob. Any man of any time who has ever written with vigor has +been immeasurably nearer to the dunghill on which he sank his talons +while crowing than to all literary ancestors. + +A great deal of chronicle writing that makes no pretense at being +belles-lettres is really superior literature to much that is so +classified. I will vote three times a day and all night for John C. +Duval's _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, Charlie Siringo's _Riata and +Spurs_, James B. Gillett's _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, and +dozens of other straightaway chronicles of the Southwest in preference +to "The Culprit Fay" and much other watery "literature" with which +anthologies representing the earlier stages of American writing +are padded. Ike Fridge's pamphlet story of his ridings for John +Chisum--chief provider of cattle for Billy the Kid to steal--has more of +the juice of reality in it and, therefore, more of literary virtue than +some of James Fenimore Cooper's novels, and than some of James Russell +Lowell's odes. + +The one thing essential to writing if it is to be read, to art if it +is to be looked at, is vitality. No critic or professor can be hired +to pump vitality into any kind of human expression, but professors and +critics have taken it out of many a human being who in his attempts +to say something decided to be correct at the expense of being +himself--being natural, being alive. The priests of literary conformity +never had a chance at the homemade chronicles of the Southwest. + +The orderly way in which to study the Southwest would be to take up +first the land, its flora, fauna, climate, soils, rivers, etc., then +the aborigines, next the exploring and settling Spaniards, and finally, +after a hasty glance at the French, the English-speaking people who +brought the Southwest to what it is today. We cannot proceed in this +way, however. Neither the prairies nor the Indians who first hunted +deer on them have left any records, other than hieroglyphic, as to their +lives. Some late-coming men have written about them. Droughts and rains +have had far more influence on all forms of life in the Southwest and +on all forms of its development culturally and otherwise than all of the +Coronado expeditions put together. I have emphasized the literature that +reveals nature. My method has been to take up types and subjects rather +than to follow chronology. + +Chronology is often an impediment to the acquiring of useful knowledge. +I am not nearly so much interested in what happened in Abilene, Kansas, +in 1867--the year that the first herds of Texas Longhorns over the +Chisholm Trail found a market at that place--as I am in picking out of +Abilene in 1867 some thing that reveals the character of the men who +went up the trail, some thing that will illuminate certain phenomena +along the trail human beings of the Southwest are going up today, some +thing to awaken observation and to enrich with added meaning this corner +of the earth of which we are the temporary inheritors. + +By "literature of the Southwest" I mean writings that interpret the +region, whether they have been produced by the Southwest or not. Many of +them have not. What we are interested in is life in the Southwest, and +any interpreter of that life, foreign or domestic, ancient or modern, is +of value. + +The term Southwest is variable because the boundaries of the Southwest +are themselves fluid, expanding and contracting according to the point +of view from which the Southwest is viewed and according to whatever +common denominator is taken for defining it. The Spanish Southwest +includes California, but California regards itself as more closely akin +to the Pacific Northwest than to Texas; California is Southwest more in +an antiquarian way than other-wise. From the point of view of the most +picturesque and imagination-influencing occupation of the Southwest, +the occupation of ranching, the Southwest might be said to run up into +Montana. Certainly one will have to go up the trail to Montana to finish +out the story of the Texas cowboy. Early in the nineteenth century the +Southwest meant Tennessee, Georgia, and other frontier territory now +regarded as strictly South. The men and women who "redeemed Texas from +the wilderness" came principally from that region. The code of conduct +they gave Texas was largely the code of the booming West. Considering +the character of the Anglo-American people who took over the Southwest, +the region is closer to Missouri than to Kansas, which is not Southwest +in any sense but which has had a strong influence on Oklahoma. Chihuahua +is more southwestern than large parts of Oklahoma. In _Our Southwest_, +Erna Fergusson has a whole chapter on "What is the Southwest?" She finds +Fort Worth to be in the Southwest but Dallas, thirty miles east, to be +facing north and east. The principal areas of the Southwest are, to have +done with air-minded reservations, Arizona, New Mexico, most of Texas, +some of Oklahoma, and anything else north, south, east, or west that +anybody wants to bring in. The boundaries of cultures and rainfall never +follow survey lines. In talking about the Southwest I naturally incline +to emphasize the Texas part of it. + +Life is fluid, and definitions that would apprehend it must also be. Yet +I will venture one definition--not the only one--of an educated person. +An educated person is one who can view with interest and intelligence +the phenomena of life about him. Like people elsewhere, the people of +the Southwest find the features of the land on which they live blank or +full of pictures according to the amount of interest and intelligence +with which they view the features. Intelligence cannot be acquired, but +interest can; and data for interest and intelligence to act upon are +entirely acquirable. + +"Studies perfect nature," Bacon said. "Nature follows art" to the extent +that most of us see principally what our attention has been called to. +I might never have noticed rose-purple snow between shadows if I had +not seen a picture of that kind of snow. I had thought white the only +natural color of snow. I cannot think of yew trees, which I have never +seen, without thinking of Wordsworth's poem on three yew trees. + +Nobody has written a memorable poem on the mesquite. Yet the mesquite +has entered into the social, economic, and aesthetic life of the land; +it has made history and has been painted by artists. In the homely +chronicles of the Southwest its thorns stick, its roots burn into bright +coals, its trunks make fence posts, its lovely leaves wave. To live +beside this beautiful, often pernicious, always interesting and highly +characteristic tree--or bush--and to know nothing of its significance is +to be cheated out of a part of life. It is but one of a thousand factors +peculiar to the Southwest and to the land's cultural inheritance. + +For a long time, as he tells in his _Narrative_, Cabeza de Vaca was +a kind of prisoner to coastal Indians of Texas. Annually, during the +season when prickly pear apples (_tunas_, or Indian figs, as they are +called in books) were ripe, these Indians would go upland to feed on +the fruit. During his sojourn with them Cabeza de Vaca went along. He +describes how the Indians would dig a hole in the ground, squeeze the +fruit out of _tunas_ into the hole, and then swill up big drinks of it. +Long ago the Indians vanished, but prickly pears still flourish over +millions of acres of land. The prickly pear is one of the characteristic +growths of the Southwest. Strangers look at it and regard it as odd. +Painters look at it in bloom or in fruit and strive to capture the +colors. During the droughts ranchmen singe the thorns off its leaves, +using a flame-throwing machine, easily portable by a man on foot, fed +from a small gasoline tank. From Central Texas on down into Central +America prickly pear acts as host for the infinitesimal insect called +cochineal, which supplied the famous dyes of Aztec civilization. + +A long essay might be written on prickly pear. It weaves in and out +of many chronicles of the Southwest. A. J. Sowell, one of the best +chroniclers of Texas pioneer life, tells in his life of Bigfoot Wallace +how that picturesque ranger captain once took one of his wounded men +away from an army surgeon because the surgeon would not apply prickly +pear poultices to the wound. In _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, Sowell +narrates how rattlesnakes were so large and numerous in a great prickly +pear flat out from the Nueces River that rangers pursuing bandits had +to turn back. Nobody has written a better description of a prickly pear +flat than O. Henry in his story of "The Caballero's Way." + +People may look at prickly pear, and it will be just prickly pear and +nothing more. Or they may look at it and find it full of significances; +the mere sight of a prickly pear may call up a chain of incidents, +facts, associations. A mind that can thus look out on the common +phenomena of life is rich, and all of the years of the person whose mind +is thus stored will be more interesting and full. + +Cabeza de Vaca's _Narrative_, the chronicles of A. J. Sowell, and O. +Henry's story are just three samples of southwestern literature that +bring in prickly pear. No active-minded person who reads any one of +these three samples will ever again look at prickly pear in the same +light that he looked at it before he read. Yet prickly pear is just one +of hundreds of manifestations of life in the Southwest that writers have +commented on, told stories about, dignified with significance. + +Cotton no longer has the economic importance to Texas that it once had. +Still, it is mighty important. In the minds of millions of farm people +of the South, cotton and the boll weevil are associated. The boll weevil +was once a curse; then it came to be somewhat regarded as a disguised +blessing--in limiting production. + + De first time I seen de boll weevil, + He was a-settin' on de square. + Next time I seen him, he had all his family dere-- + Jest a-lookin' foh a home, jest a-lookin' foh a home. + +A man dependent on cotton for a living and having that living threatened +by the boll weevil will not be much interested in ballads, but for the +generality of people this boll weevil ballad--the entirety of which is +a kind of life history of the insect--is, while delightful in itself, +a veritable story-book on the weevil. Without the ballad, the weevil's +effect on economic history would be unchanged; but as respects mind and +imagination, the ballad gives the weevil all sorts of significances. The +ballad is a part of the literature of the Southwest. + +But I am assigning too many motives of self-improvement to reading. +People read for fun, for pleasure. The literature of the Southwest +affords bully reading. + +"If I had read as much as other men, I would know as little," Thomas +Hobbes is credited with having said. A student in the presence of Bishop +E. D. Mouzon was telling about the scores and scores of books he had +read. At a pause the bishop shook his long, wise head and remarked, "My +son, when DO you get time to think?" Two of the best educated men I have +ever had the fortune of talking with were neither schooled nor widely +read. They were extraordinary observers. One was a plainsman, Charles +Goodnight; the other was a borderer, Don Alberto Guajardo, in part +educated by an old Lipan Indian. + +But here are the books. I list them not so much to give knowledge as to +direct people with intellectual curiosity and with interest in their own +land to the sources of knowledge; not to create life directly, but to +point out where it has been created or copied. On some of the books I +have made brief observations. Those observations can never be nearly +so important to a reader as the development of his own powers of +observation. With something of an apologetic feeling I confess that I +have read, in my way, most of the books. I should probably have been +a wiser and better informed man had I spent more time out with the +grasshoppers, horned toads, and coyotes. November 5, 1942 J. FRANK DOBIE + + + + +2. Interpreters of the Land + +"HE'S FOR A JIG or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." Thought employs +ideas, but having an idea is not the same thing as thinking. A rooster +in a pen of hens has an idea. Thought has never been so popular with +mankind as horse opera, horse play, the main idea behind sheep's eyes. +Far be it from me to feel contempt for people who cannot and do not want +to think. The human species has not yet evolved to the stage at which +thought is natural. I am far more at ease lying in grass and gazing +without thought process at clouds than in sitting in a chair trying to +be logical. Just the same, free play of mind upon life is the essence +of good writing, and intellectual activity is synonymous with critical +interpretations. + +To the constant disregard of thought, Americans of the mid-twentieth +century have added positive opposition. Critical ideas are apt to +make any critic suspected of being subversive. The Southwest, Texas +especially, is more articulately aware of its land spaces than of any +other feature pertaining to itself. Yet in the realm of government, +the Southwest has not produced a single spacious thinker. So far as the +cultural ancestry of the region goes, the South has been arid of thought +since the time of Thomas Jefferson, the much talked-of mind of John C. +Calhoun being principally casuistic; on another side, derivatives from +the Spanish Inquisition could contribute to thought little more than +tribal medicine men have contributed. + +Among historians of the Southwest the general rule has been to be +careful with facts and equally careful in avoiding thought-provoking +interpretations. In the multitudinous studies on Spanish-American +history all padres are "good" and all conquistadores are "intrepid," and +that is about as far as interpretation goes. The one state book of +the Southwest that does not chloroform ideas is Erna Fergusson's _New +Mexico: A Pageant of Three Peoples_ (Knopf, New York, 1952). Essayical +in form, it treats only of the consequential. It evaluates from the +point of view of good taste, good sense, and an urbane comprehension of +democracy. The subject is provincial, but the historian transcends all +provincialism. Her sympathy does not stifle conclusions unusable in +church or chamber of commerce propaganda. In brief, a cultivated mind +can take pleasure in this interpretation of New Mexico--and that marks +it as a solitary among the histories of neighboring states. + +The outstanding historical interpreter of the Southwest is Walter +Prescott Webb, of the University of Texas. _The Great Plains_ utilizes +chronology to explain the presence of man on the plains; it is primarily +a study in cause and effect, of water and drought, of adaptations and +lack of adaptations, of the land's growth into human imagination as well +as economic institutions. Webb uses facts to get at meanings. He fulfils +Emerson's definition of Scholar: "Man Thinking." In _Divided We Stand_ +he goes into machinery, the feudalism of corporation-dominated economy, +the economic supremacy of the North over the South and the West. In +_The Great Frontier_ (Houghton Mifilin, Boston, 1952) he considers the +Western Hemisphere as a frontier for Europe--a frontier that brought +about the rise of democracy and capitalism and that, now vanished as a +frontier, foreshadows the vanishment of democracy and capitalism. + +In _Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and a Myth_ (Harvard +University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950) Henry Nash Smith plows +deep. But the tools of this humanistic historian are of delicate finish +rather than of horsepower. To him, thinking is a joyful process and +lucidity out of complexity is natural. He compasses Parrington's _Main +Currents in American Thought_ and Beadle's Dime Novels along with +agriculture and manufacturing. Excepting the powerful books by Walter +Prescott Webb, not since Frederick Jackson Turner, in 1893, presented +his famous thesis on "The Significance of the Frontier in American +History" has such a revealing evaluation of frontier movements appeared +As a matter of fact, Henry Nash Smith leaves Turner's ideas on the +dependence of democracy upon farmers without more than one leg to stand +upon. Not being a King Canute, he does not take sides for or against +social evolution. With the clearest eyes imaginable, he looks into it. +Turner's _The Frontier in American History_ (1920) has been a fertile +begetter of interpretations of history. + +Instead of being the usual kind of jokesmith book or concatenation +of tall tales, _Folk Laughter on the American Frontier_ by Mody C. +Boatright (Macmillan, New York, 1949) goes into the human and social +significances of humor. Of boastings, anecdotal exaggerations, +hide-and-hair metaphors, stump and pulpit parables, tenderfoot baitings, +and the like there is plenty, but thought plays upon them and arranges +them into patterns of social history. + +Mary Austin (1868-1934) is an interpreter of nature, which for her +includes naturally placed human beings as much as naturally placed +antelopes and cacti. She wrote _The American Rhythm_ on the theory that +authentic poetry expresses the rhythms of that patch of earth to which +the poet is rooted. Rhythm is experience passed into the subconscious +and is "distinct from our intellectual perception of it." Before they +can make true poetry, English-speaking Americans will be in accord +with "the run of wind in tall grass" as were the Pueblo Indians when +Europeans discovered them. But Mary Austin's primary importance is not +as a theorist. Her spiritual depth is greater than her intellectual. She +is a translator of nature through concrete observations. She interprets +through character sketches, folk tales, novels. "Anybody can write facts +about a country," she said. She infuses fact with understanding and +imagination. In _Lost Borders_, _The Land of Little Rain_, _The Land of +Journey's Ending_, and _The Flock_ the land itself often seems to speak, +but often she gets in its way. She sees "with an eye made quiet by the +power of harmony." _Earth Horizons_, a stubborn book, is Mary Austin's +inner autobiography. _The Beloved House_, by T. M. Pearce (Caxton, +Caldwell, Idaho, 1940), is an understanding biography. + +Joseph Wood Krutch of Columbia University spent a year in Arizona, near +Tucson. Instead of talking about his _The Desert Year_ (Sloane, New +York, 1952), I quote a representative paragraph: + +In New England the struggle for existence is visibly the struggle of +plant with plant, each battling his neighbor for sunlight and for the +spot of ground which, so far as moisture and nourishment are concerned, +would support them all. Here, the contest is not so much of plant +against plant as of plant against inanimate nature. The limiting factor +is not the neighbor but water; and I wonder if this is, perhaps, one of +the things which makes this country seem to enjoy a kind of peace one +does not find elsewhere. The struggle of living thing against living +thing can be distressing in a way that a mere battle with the elements +is not. If some great clump of cactus dies this summer it will be +because the cactus has grown beyond the capacity of its roots to get +water, not because one green fellow creature has bested it in some +limb-to-limb struggle. In my more familiar East the crowding of the +countryside seems almost to parallel the crowding of the cities. Out +here there is, even in nature, no congestion. + + +_Southwest_, by Laura Adams Armer (New York, 1935, OP) came from long +living and brooding in desert land. It says something beautiful. + +_Talking to the Moon_, by John Joseph Mathews (University of Chicago +Press, 1945) is set in the blackjack country of eastern Oklahoma. This +Oxford scholar of Osage blood built his ranch house around a fireplace, +flanked by shelves of books. His observations are of the outside, +but they are informed by reflections made beside a fire. They are not +bookish at all, but the spirits of great writers mingle with echoes of +coyote wailing and wood-thrush singing. + +_Sky Determines: An Interpretation of the Southwest_, by Ross Calvin +(New York, 1934; republished by the University of New Mexico Press) +lives up to its striking title. The introductory words suggest the +essence of the book: + +In New Mexico whatever is both old and peculiar appears upon examination +to have a connection with the arid climate. Peculiarities range from the +striking adaptations of the flora onward to those of fauna, and on up +to those of the human animal. Sky determines. And the writer once +having picked up the trail followed it with certainty, and indeed almost +inevitably, as it led from ecology to anthropology and economics. + + +Cultivated intellect is the highest form of civilization. It is +inseparable from the arts, literature, architecture. In any civilized +land, birds, trees, flowers, animals, places, human contributors to +life out of the past, all are richer and more significant because of +representations through literature and art. No literate person can +listen to a skylark over an English meadow without hearing in its +notes the melodies of Chaucer and Shelley. As the Southwest advances +in maturity of mind and civilization, the features of the land take on +accretions from varied interpreters. + +It is not necessary for an interpreter to write a whole book about +a feature to bring out its significance. We need more gossipy +books--something in the manner of _Pinon Country_ by Haniel Long (Duell, +Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1941), in which one can get a swift slant on +Billy the Kid, smell the pinon trees, feel the deeply religious attitude +toward his corn patch of a Zuni Indian. Roy Bedichek's chapters on the +mockingbird, in _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, are like rich talk +under a tree on a pleasant patch of ground staked out for his claim by +an April-voiced mockingbird. In _The Voice of the Coyote_ I tried +to compass the whole animal, and I should think that the "Father +of Song-Making" chapter might make coyote music and the night more +interesting and beautiful for any listener. Intelligent writers often +interpret without set purpose, and many books under various categories +in this _Guide_ are interpretative. + + + + +3. General Helps + +THERE IS no chart to the Life and Literature of the Southwest. An +attempt to put it all into an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia would +be futile. All guides to knowledge are too long or too short. This one +at the outset adds to its length--perhaps to its usefulness--by citing +other general reference works and a few anthologies. + +_Books of the Southwest: A General Bibliography_, by Mary Tucker, +published by J. J. Augustin, New York, 1937, is better on Indians and +the Spanish period than on Anglo-American culture. _Southwest Heritage: +A Literary History with Bibliography_, by Mabel Major, Rebecca W. Smith, +and T. M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1938, +revised 1948, takes up the written material under the time-established +heads of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, etc., with due respect to chronological +development. _A Treasury of Southern Folklore_, 1949, and _A Treasury of +Western Folklore_, 1951, both edited by B. A. Botkin and both published +by Crown, New York, are so liberal in the extensions of folklore and so +voluminous that they amount to literary anthologies. + +Of possible use in working out certain phases of life and literature +common to the Southwest as well as to the West and Middle West are the +following academic treatises: _The Frontier in American Literature_, +by Lucy Lockwood Hazard, New York, 1927; _The Literature of the Middle +Western Frontier_, by Ralph Leslie Rusk, New York, 1925; _The Prairie +and the Making of Middle America_, by Dorothy Anne Dondore, Cedar +Rapids, Iowa, 1926; _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain West +1803-1903_, by L. J. Davidson and P. Bostwick, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939; +and _The Rediscovery of the Frontier_, by Percy H. Boynton, Chicago, +1931. Anyone interested in vitality in any phase of American writing +will find Vernon L. Parrington's _Main Currents in American Thought_ +(three vols.), New York, 1927-39, an opener-up of avenues. + +Perhaps the best anthology of southwestern narratives is _Golden Tales +of the Southwest_, selected by Mary L. Becker, New York, 1939. Two +anthologies of southwestern writings are _Southwesterners Write_, edited +by T. M. Pearce and A. P. Thomason, University of New Mexico Press, +Albuquerque, 1946, and _Roundup Time_, edited by George Sessions Perry, +Whittlesey House, New York, 1943. Themes common to the Southwest are +represented in _Western Prose and Poetry_, an anthology put together by +Rufus A. Coleman, New York, 1932, and in _Mid Country: Writings from the +Heart of America_, edited by Lowry C. Wimberly, University of Nebraska +Press, Lincoln, 1945. + +For the southern tradition that has flowed into the Southwest Franklin +J. Meine's _Tall Tales of the Southwest_, New York, 1930, OP, is the +best anthology published. It is the best anthology of any kind that I +know of. _A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature_, selected by Stark +Young, New York, 1937, brings in Texas. + +Anthologies of poetry are listed under the heading of "Poetry and +Drama." The outstanding state bibliography of the region is _A +Bibliography of Texas_, by C. W. Raines, Austin, 1896. Since this is +half a century behind the times, its usefulness is limited. At that, +it is more useful than the shiftless, hit-and-miss, ignorance-revealing +_South of Forty: From the Mississippi to the Rio Grande: A +Bibliography_, by Jesse L. Rader, Norman, Oklahoma, 1947. Henry +R. Wagner's _The Plains and the Rockies_, "a contribution to the +bibliography of original narratives of travel and adventure, 1800-1865," +which came out 1920-21, was revised and extended by Charles L. Camp and +reprinted in 1937. It is stronger on overland travel than on anything +else, only in part covers the Southwest, and excludes a greater length +of time than Raines's _Bibliography_. Now published by Long's College +Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. + +Mary G. Boyer's _Arizona in Literature_, Glendale, California, 1934, is +an anthology that runs toward six hundred pages. _Texas Prose Writings_, +by Sister M. Agatha, Dallas, 1936, OP, is a meaty, critical survey. L. +W. Payne's handbook-sized _A Survey of Texas Literature_, Chicago, 1928, +is complemented by a chapter entitled "Literature and Art in Texas" by +J. Frank Dobie in _The Book of Texas_, New York, 1929. OP. + +_A Guide to Materials Bearing on Cultural Relations in New Mexico_, +University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1944, is so logical and +liberal-minded that in some respects it amounts to a bibliography of the +whole Southwest; it recognizes the overriding of political boundaries +by ideas, human types, and other forms of culture. The _New Mexico +Quarterly_, published by the University of New Mexico, furnishes +periodically a bibliographical record of contemporary literature of the +Southwest. _New Mexico's Own Chronicle_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton and +Paul Horgan (Dallas, 1937, OP), is an anthology strong on the historical +side. + +In the lists that follow, the symbol OP indicates that the book is out +of print. Many old books obviously out of print are not so tagged. + + + + + +4. Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos + +THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and ubiquitous +that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it, he may find it more +troublesome to avoid than to get hold of. The average old-timer has +for generations regarded Indian scares and fights as the most important +theme for reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same +point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian +Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs, ceremonies, mythology, +and other folklore in hundreds of tomes; laborious, literal-minded +scholars of other institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore +and tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally been +dried out. + +The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him and take +his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide. The Spaniard's +policy was to baptize him, take his land, enslave him, and appropriate +his women. Any English-speaking frontiersman who took up with the +Indians was dubbed "squaw man"--a term of sinister connotations. Despite +pride in descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of +such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-Americans +and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for instance, with the +interdicted crosses between white men and black women. The Spaniards, +on the other hand, crossed in battalions with the Indians, generating +_mestizo_ (mixed-blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example. + +As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have in general +absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian culture--nothing at all +comparable to the Uncle Remus stories and characters and the spiritual +songs and the blues music from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his +own grandpa saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing +raid in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian arrowheads; +every section of the country has a bluff called Lovers' Leap, where, +according to legend, a pair of forlorn Indian lovers, or perhaps only +one of the pair, dived to death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa +Peak, Squaw Creek, Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County, +Indian Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All +such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of Indian +culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of America. + +(1) The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated Indian lore +about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human relationships with +the land. Through the Mexican medium, with which he is becoming more +sympathetic, the gringo is getting the ages-old Indian culture. + +(2) The Pueblo and Navajo Indians in particular are impressing their +arts, crafts, and ways of life upon special groups of Americans living +near them, and these special groups are transmitting some of their +acquisitions. The special groups incline to be arty and worshipful, but +they express a salutary revolt against machined existence and they have +done much to revive dignity in Indian life. Offsetting dilettantism, the +Museum of New Mexico and associated institutions and artists and other +individuals have fostered Indian pottery, weaving, silversmithing, +dancing, painting, and other arts and crafts. Superior craftsmanship can +now depend upon a fairly reliable market; the taste of American buyers +has been somewhat elevated. + + O mountains, pure and holy, give me + a song, a strong and holy song to bless + my flock and bring the rain! + +This is from "Navajo Holy Song," as rendered by Edith Hart Mason. It +expresses a spiritual content in Indian life far removed from the We and +God, Incorporated form of religion ordained by the National Association +of Manufacturers. + +(3) The wild freedom, mobility, and fierce love of liberty of +the mounted Indians of the Plains will perhaps always stir +imaginations--something like the charging Cossacks, the camping Arabs, +and the migrating Tartars. There is no romance in Indian fights east +of the Mississippi. The mounted Plains Indians always made a big hit in +Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Little boys still climb into their seats +and cry out when red horsemen of the Plains ride across the screen. + +See "Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians," "Mountain Men." + + +APPLEGATE, FRANK G. _Indian Stories from the Pueblos_, Philadelphia, +1929. Charming. OP. + +ASTROV, MARGOT (editor), _The Winged Serpent_, John Day, New York, 1946. +An anthology of prose and poetry by American Indians. Here are singular +expressions of beauty and dignity. + +AUSTIN, MARY. _The Trail Book_, 1918, OP; _One-Smoke Stories_, 1934, +Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Delightful folk tales, each leading to a +vista. + +BANDELIER, A. F. _The Delight Makers_, 1918, Dodd, Mead, New York. +Historical fiction on ancient pueblo life. + +COOLIDGE, DANE and MARY. _The Navajo Indians_, Boston, 1930. Readable; +bibliography. OP. + +COOLIDGE, MARY ROBERTS. _The Rain-Makers_, Boston, 1929. OP. This +thorough treatment of the Indians of Arizona and New Mexico contains an +excellent account of the Hopi snake ceremony for bringing rain. During +any severe drought numbers of Christians in the Southwest pray without +snakes. It always rains eventually--and the prayer-makers naturally take +the credit. The Hopis put on a more spectacular show. See Dr. Walter +Hough's _The Hopi Indians_, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1915. OP. + +CUSHING, FRANK HAMILTON. _Zuni Folk Tales_, 1901; reprinted, 1931, +by Knopf, New York. _My Adventures in Zuni_, Santa Fe, 1941. _Zuni +Breadstuff_, Museum of the American Indian, New York, 1920. Cushing had +rare imagination and sympathy. His retellings of tales are far superior +to verbatim recordings. _Zuni Breadstuff_ reveals more of Indian +spirituality than any other book I can name. All OP. + +DEHUFF, ELIZABETH. _Tay Tay's Tales_, 1922; _Tay Tay's Memories_, 1924. +OP. + +DOUGLAS, FREDERIC H., and D HARNONCOURT, RENE. _Indian Art of the United +States_, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1941. + +DYK, WALTER. _Son of Old Man Hat_, New York, 1938. OP. + +FERGUSSON, ERNA. _Dancing Gods_, Knopf, New York, 1931. Erna Fergusson +is always illuminating. + +FOREMAN, GRANT. _Indians and Pioneers_, 1930, and _Advancing the +Frontier_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1933. Grant Foreman +is prime authority on the so-called "Civilized Tribes." University +of Oklahoma Press has published a number of excellent volumes in "The +Civilization of the American Indian" series. + +GILLMOR, FRANCES, and WETHERILL, LOUISA WADE. _Traders to the Navajos_, +Boston, 1936; reprinted by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, +1952. An account not only of the trading post Wetherills but of the +Navajos as human beings, with emphasis on their spiritual qualities. + +GODDARD, P. E. _Indians of the Southwest_, New York, 1921. Excellent +outline of exterior facts. OP. + +HAMILTON, CHARLES (editor). _Cry of the Thunderbird_, Macmillan, +New York, 1951. An anthology of writings by Indians containing many +interesting leads. + +HEWETT, EDGAR L. _Ancient Life in the American Southwest_, Indianapolis, +1930. OP. A master work in both archeology and Indian nature. (With +Bertha P. Dretton) _The Pueblo Indian World_, University of New Mexico +Press, Albuquerque, 1945. + +HODGE, F. W. _Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico_, Washington, +D. C., 1907. Indispensable encyclopedia, by a very great scholar and a +very fine gentleman. OP. + +LABARRE, WESTON. _The Peyote Cult_, Yale University Press, New Haven, +1938. + +LAFARGE, OLIVER. _Laughing Boy_, Boston, 1929. The Navajo in fiction. + +LUMMIS, C. F. _Mesa, Canon, and Pueblo_, New York, 1925; _Pueblo +Indian Folk Tales_, New York, 1910. Lummis, though self-vaunting and +opinionated, opens windows. + +MATTHEWS, WASHINGTON. _Navajo Legends_, Boston, 1897; _Navajo Myths, +Prayers and Songs_, Berkeley, California, 1907. + +MOONEY, JAMES. _Myths of the Cherokees_, in Nineteenth Annual Report of +the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1902. Outstanding writing. + +NELSON, JOHN LOUW. _Rhythm for Rain_, Boston, 1937. Based on ten years +spent with the Hopi Indians, this study of their life is a moving story +of humanity. OP. + +PEARCE, J. E. _Tales That Dead Men Tell_, University of Texas Press, +Austin, 1935. Eloquent, liberating to the human mind; something rare +for Texas scholarship. Pearce was professor of anthropology at the +University of Texas, an emancipator from prejudices and ignorance. It is +a pity that all the college students who are forced by the bureaucrats +of Education--Education spelled with a capital E--"the unctuous +elaboration of the obvious"--do not take anthropology instead. +Collegians would then stand a chance of becoming educated. + +PETRULLO, VICENZO. _The Diabolic Root: A Study of Peyotism, the New +Indian Religion, among the Delawares_, University of Pennsylvania Press, +Philadelphia, 1934. The use of peyote has now spread northwest into +Canada. See Milly Peacock Stenberg's _The Peyote Culture among Wyoming +Indians_, University of Wyoming Publications, Laramie, 1946, for +bibliography. + +REICHARD, GLADYS A. _Spider Woman_, 1934, and _Dezba Woman of the +Desert_, 1939. Both honest, both OP. + +SIMMONS, LEO W. (editor). _Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi +Indian_, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1942. The clearest view into +the mind and living ways, including sex life, of an Indian that has +been published. Few autobiographers have been clearer; not one has been +franker. A singular human document. + +{illust} + + + + + +5. Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians + +THE APACHES and the bareback Indians of the Plains were extraordinary +_hombres del campo--_men of the outdoors, plainsmen, woodsmen, trailers, +hunters, endurers. They knew some phases of nature with an intimacy that +few civilized naturalists ever attain to. It is unfortunate that most +of the literature about them is from their enemies. Yet an enemy often +teaches a man more than his friends and makes him work harder. + +See "Indian Culture," "Texas Rangers." + + +BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, London, 1892. Reprinted by +Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. A truly great book, on both +Apaches and Arizona frontier. Bourke had amplitude, and he knew. + +BUCKELEW, F. M. _The Indian Captive_, Bandera, Texas, 1925. Homely and +realistic. OP. + +CATLIN, GEORGE. _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and +Conditions of the North American Indians, Written during Eight Years' +Travel, 1832-39_, 1841. Despite many strictures, Catlin's two volumes +remain standard. I am pleased to find Frank Roe, in _The North American +Buffalo_, standing up for him. In _Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of +George Catlin, Painter and Recorder of the American Indian_, New York, +1948, Loyd Haberly fails in evaluating evidence but brings out the man's +career and character. + +CLUM, WOODWORTH. _Apache Agent_, Boston, 1936. Worthy autobiography of a +noble understander of the Apache people. OP. + +COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON. _Apache_, Dutton, New York, 1931. Noble; vivid; +semifiction. + +DAVIS, BRITTON. _The Truth about Geronimo_, Yale University Press, New +Haven, 1929. Davis helped run Geronimo down. + +DESHIELDS, JAMES T. _Cynthia Ann Parker_, St. Louis, 1886; reprinted +1934. Good narrative of noted woman captive. OP. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. The +opening chapters of this book distil a great deal of research by +scholars on Plains Indian acquisition of horses, riding, and raiding. + +GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. _The Cheyenne Indians_, New Haven, 1923. This +two-volume work supersedes _The Fighting Cheyennes_, 1915. It is noble, +ample, among the most select books on Plains Indians. _Blackfoot Lodge +Tales: The Story of a Prairie People_, 1892, shows Grinnell's skill as +storyteller at its best. _Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales_, 1893, +is hardly an equal but it reveals the high values of life held by +representatives of the original plainsmen. _The Story of the Indian_, +1895, is a general survey. All OP. Grinnell's knowledge and power as a +writer on Indians and animals has not been sufficiently recognized. +He combined in a rare manner scholarship, plainsmanship, and the +worldliness of publishing. + + +{illust. caption = George Catlin, in _North American Indians_ (1841)} + + + +HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier_, San Angelo +Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Mainly a history of military +activities against Comanches and other tribes, laced with homilies on +the free enterprise virtues of the conquerors. + +LEE, NELSON. _Three Years among the Comanches_, 1859. + +LEHMAN, HERMAN. _Nine Years with the Indians_, Bandera, Texas, 1927. +Best captive narrative of the Southwest. + +LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _The Apache Indians_, Macmillan, New York, 1938. +Factual history. + +LONG LANCE, CHIEF BUFFALO CHILD. _Long Lance_, New York, 1928. OP. Long +Lance was a Blackfoot only by adoption, but his imagination incorporated +him into tribal life more powerfully than blood could have. He is said +to have been a North Carolina mixture of Negro and Croatan Indian; he +was a magnificent specimen of manhood with swart Indian complexion. +He fought in the Canadian army during World War I and thus became +acquainted with the Blackfeet. No matter what the facts of his life, he +wrote a vivid and moving autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian in whom the +spirit of the tribe and the natural life of the Plains during buffalo +days were incorporated. In 1932 in the California home of Anita Baldwin, +daughter of the spectacular "Lucky" Baldwin, he absented himself from +this harsh world by a pistol shot. + +LOWIE, ROBERT H. _The Crow Indians_, New York, 1935. This scholar and +anthropologist lived with the Crow Indians to obtain intimate knowledge +and then wrote this authoritative book. OP. + +MCALLISTER, J. GILBERT. "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in _The Sky Is My Tipi_, +edited by Mody C. Boatright (Texas Folklore Society Publication XXII), +Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949. Wise in exposition; +true-to-humanity and delightful in narrative. + +MCGILLICUDDY, JULIA B. _McGillicuddy Agent_, Stanford University Press, +California, 1941. Dr. Valentine T. McGillicuddy, Scotch in stubbornness, +honesty, efficiency, and individualism, was U.S. Indian agent to the +Sioux and knew them to the bottom. In the end he was defeated by the +army mind and the bloodsuckers known as the "Indian Ring." The elements +of nobility that distinguish the man distinguish his wife's biography of +him. + +MCLAUGHLIN, JAMES. My _Friend the Indian_, 1910, 1926. OP. McLaughlin +was U.S. Indian agent and inspector for half a century. Despite +priggishness, he had genuine sympathy for the Indians; he knew the +Sioux, Nez Perces, and Cheyennes intimately, and few books on Indian +plainsmen reveal so much as his. + +MARRIOTT, ALICE. _The Ten Grandmothers_, University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, 1945. Narratives of the Kiowas--a complement to James Mooney's +_Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians_, in Seventeenth Annual Report +of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1893. Alice Marriott, author of +other books on Indians, combines ethnological science with the art of +writing. + +MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road_, +University of Oklahoma Press, 1932. This book of essays on the character +of and certain noble characters among the Great Osages, including their +upright agent Leban J. Miles, has profound spiritual qualities. + +NEIHARDT, JOHN G. _Black Elk Speaks_, New York, 1932. OP. Black Elk was +a holy man of the Ogalala Sioux. The story of his life as he told it +to understanding John G. Neihardt is more of mysteries and spiritual +matters than of mundane affairs. + +RICHARDSON, R. N. _The Comanche Barrier to the South Plains_, Glendale, +California, 1933. Factual history. + +RISTER, CARL C. _Border Captives_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, +1940. + +RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_, +London, 1847. Vivid on Comanche raids. See Ruxton in "Surge of Life in +the West." + +SCHULTZ, J. W. _My Life as an Indian_, 1907. OP. In this +autobiographical narrative of the life of a white man with a Blackfoot +woman, facts have probably been arranged, incidents added. Whatever his +method, the author achieved a remarkable human document. It is true not +only to Indian life in general but in particular to the life of a "squaw +man" and his loved and loving mate. Among other authentic books by +Schultz is _With the Indians of the Rockies_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1912. + +SMITH, C. L. and J. D. _The Boy Captives_, Bandera, Texas, 1927. A kind +of classic in homeliness. OP. + +VESTAL, STANLEY. _Sitting Bull_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1932. +Excellent biography. OP. + +WALLACE, ERNEST, and HOEBEL, E. ADAMSON. _The Comanches: Lords of +the South Plains_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. A +wide-compassing and interesting book on a powerful and interesting +people. + +WELLMAN, PAUL I. _Death on the Prairie_ (1934), _Death in the Desert_ +(1935); both reprinted in _Death on Horseback_, 1947. All OP. Graphic +history, mostly in narrative, of the struggle of Plains and Apache +Indians to hold their homelands against the whites. + +WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted by +Steck, Austin, 1936. Its stirring narratives made this a household book +among Texans of the late nineteenth century. + + + + + +6. Spanish-Mexican Strains + +THE MEXICAN Revolution that began in 1910 resulted in a rich development +of the native cultural elements of Mexico, the art of Diego Rivera being +one of the highlights of this development. The native culture is closer +to the Mexican earth and to the indigenes than to Spain, notwithstanding +modern insistence on the Latin in Latin-American culture. + +The Spaniards, through Mexico, have had an abiding influence on the +architecture and language of the Southwest. They gave us our most +distinctive occupation, ranching on the open range. They influenced +mining greatly, and our land titles and irrigation laws still go back +to Spanish and Mexican sources. After more than a hundred years of +occupation of Texas and almost that length of time in other parts of +the Southwest, the English-speaking Americans still have the rich +accumulations of lore pertaining to coyotes, mesquites, prickly pear, +and many other plants and animals to learn from the Mexicans, who got +their lore partly from intimate living with nature but largely through +Indian ancestry. + +See "Fighting Texians," "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail." + +AIKEN, RILEY. "A Pack Load of Mexican Tales," in _Puro Mexicano_, +published by Texas Folklore Society, 1935. Now published by Southern +Methodist University Press, Dallas. Delightful. + +ALEXANDER, FRANCES (and others). _Mother Goose on the Rio Grande_, Banks +Upshaw, Dallas, 1944. Charming rhymes in both Spanish and English in +charming form. + +APPLEGATE, FRANK G. _Native Tales of New Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1932. +Delicious; the real thing. OP. + +ATHERTON, GERTRUDE. _The Splendid Idle Forties_, New York, 1902. Romance +of Mexican California. + +AUSTIN, MARY. _One-Smoke Stories_, Boston, 1934. Short tales of +Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, also of Indians. + +BANDELIER, A. F. _The Gilded Man_, New York, 1873. The dream of El +Dorado. + +BARCA, MADAM CALDERON DE LA. _Life in Mexico_, 1843; reprinted by Dutton +about 1930. Among books on Mexican life to be ranked first both in +readability and revealing qualities. + +BELL, HORACE. _On the Old West Coast_, New York, 1930. A golden treasury +of anecdotes. OP. + +BENTLEY, HAROLD W. _A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English_, New York, +1932. In a special way this book reveals the Spanish-Mexican influence +on life in the Southwest; it also guides to books in English that +reflect this influence. OP. + +BISHOP, MORRIS. _The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca_, New York, 1933. Better +written than Cabeza de Vaca's own narrative. OP. + +BLANCO, ANTONIO FIERRO DE. _The Journey of the Flame_, Boston, 1933. +Bully and flavorsome; the Californias. OP. + +BOLTON, HERBERT E. _Spanish Exploration in the Southwest_, 1916. The +cream of explorer narratives, well edited. _Coronado on the Turquoise +Trail_ (originally published in New York, 1949, under the title +_Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains_; now issued by University of +New Mexico Press, Albuquerque). By his own work and by directing other +scholars, Dr. Bolton has surpassed all other American historians of his +time in output on Spanish-American history. _Coronado_ is the climax +of his many volumes. Its fault is being too worshipful of everything +Spanish and too uncritical. A little essay on Coronado in Haniel Long's +_Pinon Country_ goes a good way to put this belegended figure into +proper perspective. + +BRENNER, ANITA. _Idols Behind Altars_, 1929. OP. The pagan worship that +endures among Mexican Indians. _The Wind that Swept Mexico: The History +of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1942_, 1943, OP. _Your Mexican Holiday_, +revised 1947. No writer on modern Mexico has a clearer eye or clearer +intellect than Anita Brenner; she maintains good humor in her realism +and never lapses into phony romance. + +CABEZA DE VACA'S _Narrative_. Any translation procurable. One is +included in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States_, edited by +F. W. Hodge and T. H. Lewis, now published by Barnes & Noble, New York. + +The most dramatic and important aftermath of Cabeza de Vaca's twisted +walk across the continent was Coronado's search for the Seven Cities of +Cibola. Coronado's precursor was Fray Marcos de Niza. _The Journey +of Fray Marcos de Niza_, by Cleve Hallenbeck, with illustrations and +decorations by Jose Cisneros, is one of the most beautiful books in +format published in America. It was designed and printed by Carl Hertzog +of El Paso, printer without peer between the Atlantic and the Pacific, +and is issued by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. + +CASTANEDA'S narrative of Coronado's expedition. Winship's translation is +preferred. It is included in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United +States_, cited above. + +CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New York, 1927. +Classical historical fiction on New Mexico. + +CUMBERLAND, CHARLES C. _Mexican Revolution: Genesis under Madero_, +University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. Bibliography. To know Mexico +and Mexicans without knowing anything about Mexican revolutions is like +knowing the United States in ignorance of frontiers, constitutions, and +corporations. The Madero revolution that began in 1910 is still going +on. Mr. Cumberland's solid book, independent in itself, is to be +followed by two other volumes. + +DE SOTO. Hernando de Soto made his expedition from Florida north and +west at the time Coronado was exploring north and east. _The Florida +of the Inca_, by Garcilaso de la Vega, translated by John and Jeannette +Varner, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951, is the first complete +publishing in English of this absorbing narrative. + +DIAZ, BERNAL. _History of the Conquest_. There are several translations. +A book of gusto and humanity as enduring as the results of the Conquest +itself. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _Coronado's Children_, 1930. Legendary tales of the +Southwest, many of them derived from Mexican sources. _Tongues of the +Monte_, 1935. A pattern of the soil of northern Mexico and its folk. +_Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, 1939. Lost mines and money in Mexico and +New Mexico. Last two books published by Little, Brown, Boston. + +DOMENECH, ABBE. _Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico_, London, +1858. Delightful folklore, though Domenech would not have so designated +his accounts. + +FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Blood of the Conquerors_, 1921. Fiction. OP. _Rio +Grande_, Knopf, New York, 1933. Best interpretations yet written of +upper Mexican class. + +FLANDRAU, CHARLES M. _Viva Mexico!_ New York, 1909; reissued, 1951. +Delicious autobiographic narrative of life in Mexico. + +FULTON, MAURICE G., and HORGAN, PAUL (editors). _New Mexico's Own +Chronicle_, Dallas, 1937. OP. Selections from writers about the New +Mexico scene. + +GILPATRICK, WALLACE. _The Man Who Likes Mexico_, New York, 1911. OP. +Bully reading. + +GONZALEZ, JOVITA. Tales about Texas-Mexican vaquero folk in _Texas and +Southwestern Lore_, in _Man, Bird, and Beast_, and in _Mustangs and Cow +Horses_, Publications VI, VIII, and XVI of Texas Folklore Society. + + +{illust. caption = Jose Cisneros: Fray Marcos, in _The Journey of Fray +Marcos de Niza_ by Cleve Hallenbeck (1949)} + + + +GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. _Hernando De Soto_, London, 1912. Biography. +OP. + +HARTE, BRET. _The Bell Ringer of Angels_ and other legendary tales of +California. + +LAUGHLIN, RUTH. _Caballeros_. When the book was published in 1931, the +author was named Ruth Laughlin Barker; after she discarded the Barker +part, it was reissued, in 1946, by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. Delightful +picturings of Mexican--or Spanish, as many New Mexicans prefer--life +around Santa Fe. + +LEA, TOM. _The Brave Bulls_. See under "Fiction." + +LUMMIS, C. F. _Flowers of Our Lost Romance_, Boston, 1929. Humanistic +essays on Spanish contributions to southwestern civilization. OP. _The +Land of Poco Tiempo_, New York, 1913 (reissued by University of New +Mexico Press, 1952), in an easier style. _A New Mexico David_, 1891, +1930. Folk tales and sketches. OP. + +MERRIAM, CHARLES. _Machete_, Dallas, 1932. Plain and true to the +_gente_. OP. + +NIGGLI, JOSEPHINA. _Mexican Village_, University of North Carolina +Press, Chapel Hill, 1945. A collection of skilfully told stories that +reveal Mexican life. + +O'SHAUGHNESSY, EDITH. _A Diplomat s Wife in Mexico_, New York, 1916; +_Diplomatic Days_, 1917; _Intimate Pages of Mexican History_, 1920. +Books of passion and power and high literary merit, interpretative of +revolutionary Mexico. OP. + +OTERO, NINA. _Old Spain in Our Southwest_, New York, 1936. Genuine. OP. + +PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE. _Flowering Judas_. See under "Fiction." + +PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. _Conquest of Mexico_. History that is literature. + +REMINGTON, FREDERIC W. _Pony Tracks_, New York, 1895. Includes sketches +of Mexican ranch life. + +ROSS, PATRICIA FENT. _Made in Mexico: The Story of a Country's Arts +and Crafts_, Knopf, New York, 1952. Picturesquely and instructively +illustrated by Carlos Merida. + +TANNENBAUM, FRANK. _Peace by Revolution_, Columbia University Press, New +York, 1933; _Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread_, Knopf, New York, +1950. Tannenbaum dodges nothing, not even the church. + +_Terry's Guide to Mexico_. It has everything. + +Texas Folklore Society. Its publications are a storehouse of Mexican +folklore in the Southwest and in Mexico also. Especially recommended +are _Texas and Southwestern Lore_ (VI), _Man, Bird, and Beast_ (VIII), +_Southwestern Lore_ (IX), _Spur-of-the-Cock_ (XI), _Puro Mexicano_ +(XII), _Texian Stomping Grounds_ (XVII), _Mexican Border Ballads and +Other Lore_ (XXI), _The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore_ +(XXIV, 1951). All published by Southern Methodist University Press, +Dallas. + +TOOR, FRANCES. A _Treasury of Mexican Folkways_, Crown, New York, 1947. +An anthology of life. + +TURNER, TIMOTHY G._ Bullets, Bottles and Gardenias_, Dallas, 1935. +Obscurely published but one of the best books on Mexican life. OP. + + + + + +7. Flavor of France + +THERE IS little justification for including Louisiana as a part of the +Southwest. Despite the fact that the French flag--tied to a pole in +Louisiana--once waved over Texas, French influence on it and other parts +of the Southwest has been minor. + + +ARTHUR, STANLEY CLISBY. _Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover_ (1952) and +_Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman_ (1937), both +published by Harmanson--Publisher and Bookseller, 333 Royal St., New +Orleans. + +CABLE, GEORGE W. _Old Creole Days: Strange True Stories of Louisiana_. + +CHOPIN, KATE. _Bayou Folk_. + +FORTIER, ALCEE. Any of his work on Louisiana. + +HEARN, LAFCADIO. _Chita_. A lovely story. + +JOUTEL. _Journal_ of La Salle's career in Texas. + +KANE, HARNETT T. _Plantation Parade: The Grand Manner in Louisiana_ +(1945), _Natchez on the Mississippi_ (1947), _Queen New Orleans_ (1949), +all published by Morrow, New York. + +KING, GRACE. _New Orleans: The Place and the People; Balcony Stories._ + +MCVOY, LIZZIE CARTER. _Louisiana in the Short Story_, Louisiana State +University Press, 1940. + +SAXON, LYLE. _Fabulous New Orleans; Old Louisiana; Lafitte the Pirate_. + + + + +8. Backwoods Life and Humor + +THE SETTLERS who put their stamp on Texas were predominantly from the +southern states--and far more of them came to Texas to work out of debt +than came with riches in the form of slaves. The plantation owner came +too, but the go-ahead Crockett kind of backwoodsman was typical. The +southern type never became so prominent in New Mexico, Arizona, and +California as in Texas. Nevertheless, the fact glares out that the code +of conduct--the riding and shooting tradition, the eagerness to stand up +and fight for one's rights, the readiness to back one's judgment with +a gun, a bowie knife, money, life itself--that characterized the whole +West as well as the Southwest was southern, hardly at all New England. + +The very qualities that made many of the Texas pioneers rebels to +society and forced not a few of them to quit it between sun and +sun without leaving new addresses fitted them to conquer the +wilderness--qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy +self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust +for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious +politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models +of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society--a society +shockingly tame--may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman +is one who never gives offense." Under this definition a shaded violet, +a butterfly, and a floating summer cloud are all gentlemen. "The art of +war," said Napoleon, "is to make offense." Conquering the hostile Texas +wilderness meant war with nature and against savages as well as against +Mexicans. Go-ahead Crockett's ideal of a gentleman was one who looked +in another direction while a visitor was pouring himself out a horn of +whiskey. + +Laying aside climatic influences on occupations and manners, certain +Spanish influences, and minor Pueblo Indian touches, the Southwest from +the point of view of the bedrock Anglo-Saxon character that has made it +might well include Arkansas and Missouri. The realism of southern folk +and of a very considerable body of indigenous literature representing +them has been too much overshadowed by a kind of _So Red the Rose_ +idealization of slave-holding aristocrats. + + +ALLSOPP, FRED W. _Folklore of Romantic Arkansas_, 2 vols., Grolier +Society, 1931. Allsopp assembled a rich and varied collection of +materials in the tone of "The Arkansas Traveler." OP. + +ARRINGTON, ALFRED W. _The Rangers and Regulators of the Tanaha_, 18 56. +East Texas bloodletting. + +BALDWIN, JOSEPH G. _The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi_, 1853. + +BLAIR, WALTER. _Horse Sense in American Humor from Benjamin Franklin +to Ogden Nash_, 1942. OP. _Native American Humor_, 1937. OP. _Tall Tale +America_, Coward-McCann, New York, 1944. Orderly analyses with many +concrete examples. With Franklin J. Meine as co-author, _Mike Fink, +King of Mississippi River Keelboatmen_, 1933. Biography of a folk type +against pioneer and frontier background. OP. + +BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Folk Laughter on the American Frontier_. See under +"Interpreters." + +CLARK, THOMAS D. _The Rampaging Frontier_, 1939. OP. Historical +picturization and analysis, fortified by incidents and tales of +"Varmints," "Liars," "Quarter Horses," "Fiddlin'," "Foolin' with the +Gals," etc. + +CROCKETT, DAVID. _Autobiography_. Reprinted many times. Scribner's +edition in the "Modern Students' Library" includes _Colonel Crockett's +Exploits and Adventures in_ _Texas_. Crockett set the backwoods +type. See treatment of him in Parrington's _Main Currents in American +Thought_. Richard M. Dorson's _Davy Crockett, American Comic Legend_, +1939, is a summation of the Crockett tradition. + +FEATHERSTONHAUGH, G. W. _Excursion through the Slave States_, London, +1866. Refreshing on manners and characters. + +FLACK, CAPTAIN. _The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods_, +London, 1866. + +GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_. Nothing better on +backwoods life in the Mississippi Valley. + +HAMMETT, SAMUEL ADAMS (who wrote under the name of Philip Paxton), +_Piney Woods Tavern; or Sam Slick in Texas_ and _A Stray Yankee in +Texas_. Humor on the roughneck element. For treatment of Hammett as man +and writer see _Sam Slick in Texas_, by W. Stanley Hoole, Naylor, San +Antonio, 1945. + +HARRIS, GEORGE W. _Sut Lovingood_, New York, 1867. Prerealism. + +HOGUE, WAYMAN. _Back Yonder_. Minton, Balch, New York, 1932. Ozark life. +OP. + +HOOPER, J. J. _Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs_, 1845. OP. Downright +realism. Like Longstreet, Hooper in maturity wanted his realism +forgotten. An Alabama journalist, he got into the camp of respectable +slave-holders and spent the later years of his life shouting against +the "enemies of the institution of African slavery." His life partly +explains the lack of intellectual honesty in most southern spokesmen +today. _Alias Simon Suggs: The Life and Times of Johnson Jones Hooper_, +by W. Stanley Hoole, University of Alabama Press, 1952, is a careful +study of Hooper's career. + +HUDSON, A. P. _Humor of the Old Deep South_, New York, 1936. An +anthology. OP. + +LONGSTREET, A. B. _Georgia Scenes_, 1835. Numerous reprints. Realism. + +MASTERSON, JAMES R. _Tall Tales of Arkansas_, Boston, 1943. OP. The +title belies this excellent social history--by a scholar. It has become +quite scarce on account of the fact that it contains unexpurgated +versions of the notorious speech on "Change the Name of Arkansas"--which +in 1919 in officers' barracks at Bordeaux, France, I heard a lusty +individual recite with as many variations as Roxane of _Cyrano de +Bergerac_ wanted in love-making. When Fred W. Allsopp, newspaper +publisher and pillar of Arkansas respectability, found that this book of +unexpurgations had been dedicated to him by the author--a Harvard Ph.D. +teaching in Michigan--he almost "had a colt." + +MEINE, FRANKLIN J. (editor). _Tall Tales of the Southwest_, Knopf, +New York, 1930. A superbly edited and superbly selected anthology with +appendices affording a guide to the whole field of early southern humor +and realism. No cavalier idealism. The "Southwest" of this excellent +book is South. + +OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States_, 1856. +_A Journey Through Texas_, 1857. Invaluable books on social history. + +POSTL, KARL ANTON (Charles Sealsfield or Francis Hardman, pseudonyms). +_The Cabin Book; Frontier Life_. Translations all OP. + +RANDOLPH, VANCE. _We Always Lie to Strangers_, Columbia University +Press, New York, 1951. A collection of tall tales of the adding machine +variety. Fertile in invention but devoid of any yearning for the +beautiful or suggestion that the human spirit hungers for something +beyond horse play; in short, typical of American humor. + +ROURKE, CONSTANCE. _American Humor_, 1931; _Davy Crockett_, 1934; _Roots +of American Culture and Other Essays_, 1942, all published by Harcourt, +Brace, New York. + +THOMPSON, WILLIAM T. _Major Jones's Courtship_, Philadelphia, 1844. +Realism. + +THORPE, T. B. _The Hive of the Bee-Hunter_, New York, 1854. This +excellent book should be reprinted. + +WATTERSON, HENRY. _Oddities in Southern Life and Character_, Boston, +1882. An anthology with interpretative notes. + +WILSON, CHARLES MORROW. _Backwoods America_. University of North +Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1935. Well ordered survey with excellent +samplings. + +WOOD, RAY. _The American Mother Goose_, 1940; _Fun in American Folk +Rhymes_, 1952; both published by Lippincott, Philadelphia. + + + + + +9. How the Early Settlers Lived + +DESPITE THE FACT that the tendency of a majority of early day +rememberers has been to emphasize Indian fights, killings, and other +sensational episodes, chronicles rich in the everyday manners and +customs of the folk are plentiful. The classic of them all is Noah +Smithwick's _The Evolution of a State_, listed below. + +See also "Backwoods Life and Humor," "Pioneer Doctors," "Women +Pioneers," "Fighting Texians." + + +BARKER, E. C. _The Austin Papers_. Four volumes of sources for any theme +in social history connected with colonial Texans. + +BATES, ED. F. _History and Reminiscences of Denton County_, Denton, +Texas, 1918. A sample of much folk life found in county histories. + +BELL, HORACE. _On the Old West Coast_, New York, 1930. Social history by +anecdote. California. OP. + +BRACHT, VIKTOR. _Texas in 1848_, translated from the German by C. F. +Schmidt, San Antonio, 1931. Better on natural resources than on human +inhabitants. OP. + +CARL, PRINCE OF SOLMS-BRAUNFELS. _Texas, 1844-1845_. Translation, +Houston, 1936. OP. + +COX, C. C. "Reminiscences," in Vol. VI of _Southwestern Historical +Quarterly_. One of the best of many pioneer recollections published by +the Texas State Historical Association. + +CROCKETT, DAVID. Anything about him. + +DICK, EVERETT. _The Sod House Frontier_ (1937) and _Vanguards of +the Frontier_ (1941). Both OP. Life on north-ern Plains into Rocky +Mountains, but applicable to life southward. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Flavor of Texas_, 1936. OP. Considerable social +history. + +FENLEY, FLORENCE. _Oldtimers: Their Own Stories_, Uvalde, Texas, 1939. +OP. Faithful reporting of realistic detail. Southwest Texas, mostly +ranch life. + +FRANTZ, JOE B. _Gail Borden, Dairyman to a Nation_. University of +Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. This biography of a newspaperman and +inventor brings out sides of pioneer life that emphasis on fighting, +farming, and ranching generally overlooks. + +GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_, 1860. Dances are +among the sports. + +HARRIS, MRS. DILUE. "Reminiscences," edited by Mrs. A. B. Looscan, in +Vols. IV and VII of _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_. + +HART, JOHN A. _History of Pioneer Days in Texas and Oklahoma_; no +date. Extended and republished under the title of _Pioneer Days in the +Southwest_, 1909. Much on frontier ways of living. + +HOFF, CAROL _Johnny Texas_, Wilcox and Follett, Chicago, 1950. Juvenile, +historical fiction. Delightful in both text and illustrations. + +HOGAN, WILLIAM R. _The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History_, +University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Long on facts, short on intellectual +activity; that is, on interpretations from the perspective of time and +civilization. + +HOLDEN, W. C. _Alkali Trails_, Dallas, 1930. Pioneer life in West Texas. +OP. + +HOLLEY, MARY AUSTIN. _Texas... in a Series of Letters_, Baltimore, 1833; +reprinted under the title of _Letters of an American Traveler_, edited +by Mattie Austin Hatcher, Dallas, 1933. First good book on Texas to be +printed. OP. + +_Lamar Papers_. Six volumes of scrappy source material on Texas history +and life, issued by Texas State Library, Austin. OP. + +LEWIS, WILLIE NEWBURY. _Between Sun and Sod_, Clarendon, Texas, 1938. +OP. Again, want of perspective. + +LUBBOCK, F. R. Six _Decades in Texas_, Austin, 1900. + +MCCONNELL, H. H. _Five Years a Cavalryman_, Jacksboro, Texas, 1889. +Bully. + +McDANFIELD, H. F., and TAYLOR, NATHANIEL A. _The Coming Empire, or 2000 +Miles in Texas on Horseback_, New York, 1878; privately reprinted, 1937. +Delightful travel narrative. OP. + +MCNEAL, T. A. _When Kansas Was Young_, New York, 1922. Episodes and +characters of Plains country. OP. + +OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. _A Journey Through Texas_, New York, 1857. +Olmsted journeyed in order to see. He saw. + +READ, OPIE. _An Arkansas Planter_, 1896. Pleasant fiction. + +RICHARDSON, ALBERT D. _Beyond the Mississippi_, Hartford, 1867. What a +traveling journalist saw. + +RISTER, CARL C. _Southern Plainsmen_, University of Oklahoma Press, +1938. Though pedestrian in style, good social data. Bibliography. + +ROEMER, DR. FERDINAND. _Texas_, translated from the German by Oswald +Mueller, San Antonio, 1935. OP. Roemer, a geologist, rode through Texas +in the forties and made acute observations on the land, its plants and +animals, and the settlers. + +SCHMITZ, JOSEPH WILLIAM. _Thus They Lived_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1935. +This would have been a good social history of Texas had the writer +devoted ten more years to the subject. Unsatisfactory bibliography. + +SHIPMAN, DANIEL. _Frontier Life, 58 Years in Texas_, n.p., 1879. One of +the pioneer reminiscences that should be reprinted. + +SMITH, HENRY. "Reminiscences," in _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, +Vol. XIV. Telling details. + +SMITHWICK, NOAH. _The Evolution of a State_, Austin, 1900. Reprinted by +Steck, Austin, 1935. Best of all books dealing with life in early Texas. +Bully reading. + +_Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, published since 1897 by Texas State +Historical Association, Austin. A depository of all kinds of history; +the first twenty-five or thirty volumes are the more interesting. + +SWEET, ALEXANDER E., and KNOX, J. ARMOY. _On a Mexican Mustang Through +Texas_, Hartford, 1883. Humorous satire, often penetrating and ruddy +with actuality. + +WALLIS, JONNIE LOCKHART. _Sixty Years on the Brazos: The Life and +Letters of Dr. John Washington Lockhart_, privately printed, Los +Angeles, 1930. In notebook style, but as rare in essence as it is among +dealers in out-of-print books. + +WAUGH, JULIA NOTT. _Castroville and Henry Castro_, San Antonio, 1934. +OP. Best-written monograph dealing with any aspect of Texas history that +I have read. + +WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in _Straight Texas_, Texas Folklore +Society Publication XIII, 1937. + + + + + +10. Fighting Texians + +THE TEXAS PEOPLE belong to a fighting tradition that the majority of +them are proud of. The footholds that the Spaniards and Mexicans held in +Texas were maintained by virtue of fighting, irrespective of missionary +baptizing. The purpose of the Anglo-American colonizer Stephen F. Austin +to "redeem Texas from the wilderness" was accomplished only by fighting. +The Texans bought their liberty with blood and maintained it for nine +years as a republic with blood. It was fighting men who pushed back the +frontiers and blazed trails. + +The fighting tradition is now giving way to the oil tradition. The Texas +myth as imagined by non-Texans is coming to embody oil millionaires in +airplanes instead of horsemen with six-shooters and rifles. See Edna +Ferber's Giant (1952 novel). Nevertheless, many Texans who never rode +a horse over three miles at a stretch wear cowboy boots, and a lot of +Texans are under the delusion that bullets and atomic bombs can settle +complexities that demand informed intelligence and the power to think. + +As I have pointed out in _The Flavor of Texas_, the chronicles of men +who fought the Mexicans and were prisoners to them comprise a unique +unit in the personal narratives and annals of America. + +Many of the books listed under the headings of "Texas Rangers," "How the +Early Settlers Lived," and "Range Life" specify the fighting tradition. + + +BEAN, PETER ELLIS. _Memoir_, published first in Vol. I of Yoakum's +_History of Texas_; in 1930 printed as a small book by the Book Club of +Texas, Dallas, now OP. A fascinating narrative. + +BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924. +Forceful retelling of the story of the Mier Expedition and of other +activities of the "fighting Texans." OP. + +CHABOT, FREDERICK C. _The Perote Prisoners_, San Antonio, 1934. +Annotated diaries of Texas prisoners in Mexico. OP. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Flavor of Texas_, Dallas, 1936. OP. Chapters on +Bean, Green, Duval, Kendall, and other representers of the fighting +Texans. + +DUVAL, JOHN C. _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, 1870; _Early Times +in Texas_, 1892. Both books are kept in print by Steck, Austin. For +biography and critical estimate, see _John C. Duval: First Texas Man of +Letters_, by J. Frank Dobie (illustrated by Tom Lea), Dallas, 1939. +OP. _Early Times in Texas_, called "the _Robinson Crusoe_ of Texas," is +Duval's story of the Goliad Massacre and of his escape from it. Duval +served as a Texas Ranger with Bigfoot Wallace, who was in the Mier +Expedition. His narrative of Bigfoot's _Adventures_ is the rollickiest +and the most flavorsome that any American frontiersman has yet inspired. +The tiresome thumping on the hero theme present in many biographies of +frontiersmen is entirely absent. Stanley Vestal wrote _Bigfoot Wallace_ +also, Boston, 1942. OP. + +ERATH, MAJOR GEORGE G. _Memoirs_, Texas State Historical Association, +Austin, 1923. Erath understood his fellow Texians. OP. + +GILLETT, JAMES B. _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, 1921. OP. + +GREEN, THOMAS JEFFERSON. _Journal of the Texan Expedition against Mier_, +1845; reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Green was one of the leaders +of the Mier Expedition. He lived in wrath and wrote with fire. For +information on Green see _Recollections and Reflections_ by his son, +Wharton J. Green, 1906. OP. + +HOUSTON, SAM. _The Raven_, by Marquis James, 1929, is not the only +biography of the Texan general, but it is the best, and embodies most +of what has been written on Houston excepting the multivolumed _Houston +Papers_ issued by the University of Texas Press, Austin, under the +editorship of E. C. Barker. Houston was an original character even after +he became a respectable Baptist. + +KENDALL, GEORGE W. _Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition_, 1844; +reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Two volumes. Kendall, a New Orleans +journalist in search of copy, joined the Santa Fe Expedition sent by +the Republic of Texas to annex New Mexico. Lost on the Staked Plains and +then marched afoot as a prisoner to Mexico City, he found plenty of copy +and wrote a narrative that if it were not so journalistically verbose +might rank alongside Dana's _Two Years Before the Mast_. Fayette +Copeland's _Kendall of the Picayune_, 1943 but OP, is a biography. An +interesting parallel to Kendall's _Narrative is Letters and Notes on the +Texan Santa Fe Expedition, 1841-1842_, by Thomas Falconer, with Notes +and Introduction by F. W. Hodge, New York, 1930. OP. The route of the +expedition is logged and otherwise illuminated in _The Texan Santa +Fe Trail_, by H. Bailey Carroll, Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, +Canyon, Texas, 1951. + +LEACH, JOSEPH. _The Typical Texan: Biography of an American Myth_, +Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1952. At the time Texas +was emerging, the three main types of Americans were Yankees, southern +aristocrats, Kentucky westerners embodied by Daniel Boone. Texas took +over the Kentucky tradition. It was enlarged by Crockett, who stayed in +Texas only long enough to get killed, Sam Houston, and Bigfoot Wallace. +Novels, plays, stories, travel books, and the Texans themselves have +kept the tradition going. This is the main thesis of the book. Mr. Leach +fails to note that the best books concerning Texas have done little to +keep the typical Texan alive and that a great part of the present Texas +Brags spirit is as absurdly unrealistic as Mussolini's splurge at making +twentieth-century Italians imagine themselves a {illust. caption = John +W. Thomason, in his _Lone Star Preacher_ (1941)} reincarnation of +Caesar's Roman legions. Mr. Leach dissects the myth and then swallows +it. + +LINN, JOHN J. _Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas_, 1883; reprinted +by Steck, Austin, 1936. Mixture of personal narrative and historical +notes, written with energy and prejudice. + +MAVERICK, MARY A. _Memoirs_, 1921. OP. Mrs. Maverick's husband, Sam +Maverick, was among the citizens of San Antonio haled off to Mexico as +prisoners in 1842. + +MORRELL, Z. N. _Fruits and Flowers in the Wilderness_, 1872. OP. +Morrell, a circuit-riding Baptist preacher, fought the Indians and the +Mexicans. See other books of this kind listed under "Circuit Riders and +Missionaries." + +PERRY, GEORGE SESSIONS. Texas, A _World in Itself_, McGraw-Hill, New +York, 1942. Especially good chapter on the Alamo. + +SMYTHE, H. _Historical Sketch of Parker County, Texas_, 1877. One +of various good county histories of Texas replete with fighting. For +bibliography of this extensive class of literature consult _Texas County +Histories_, by H. Bailey Carroll, Texas State Historical Association, +Austin, 1943. OP. + +SONNICHSEN, C. L. _I'll Die Before I'll Run: The Story of the Great +Feuds of Texas_--and of some not great. Harper, New York, 1951. + +SOWELL, A. J. _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, 1884; _Life of Bigfoot +Wallace_, 1899; _Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest +Texas_, 1900. All OP; all meaty with the character of ready-to-fight but +peace-seeking Texas pioneers. Sowell will some day be recognized as an +extraordinary chronicler. + +STAPP, WILLIAM P. _The Prisoners of Perote_, 1845; reprinted by Steck, +Austin, 1936. Journal of one of the Mier men who drew a white bean. + +THOMASON, JOHN W. _Lone Star Preacher_, Scribner's, New York, 1941. The +cream, the essence, the spirit, and the body of the fighting tradition +of Texas. Historical novel of Civil War. + +WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Texas Rangers_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1935. See under "Texas Rangers." + +WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted +by Steck, Austin, 1936. Narratives that have for generations been a +household heritage among Texas families who fought for their land. + + + + + +11. Texas Rangers + +THE TEXAS RANGERS were never more than a handful in number, but they +were picked men who knew how to ride, shoot, and tell the truth. On the +Mexican border and on the Indian frontier, a few rangers time and again +proved themselves more effective than battalions of soldiers. + + Oh, pray for the ranger, you kind-hearted stranger, + He has roamed over the prairies for many a year; + He has kept the Comanches from off your ranches, + And chased them far over the Texas frontier. + + +BANTA, WILLIAM. _Twenty-seven Years on the Texas Frontier_, 1893; +reprinted, 1933. OP. + +GAY, BEATRICE GRADY. _Into the Setting Sun_, Santa Anna, Texas, 1936. +Coleman County scenes and characters, dominated by ranger character. OP. + +GILLETT, JAMES B. _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, printed for the +author at Austin, Texas, 1921. He paid the printer cash for either one +or two thousand copies, as he told me, and sold them personally. Edited +by Milo M. Quaife, the book was published by Yale University Press in +1925. This edition was reprinted, 1943, by the Lakeside Press, +Chicago, in its "Lakeside Classics" series, which are given away by the +publishers at Christmas annually and are not for sale--except through +second-hand dealers. Meantime, in 1927, the narrative had appeared under +title of _The Texas Ranger_, "in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs," +a professional neutralizer for school readers of any writing not +standardized, published by World Book Co., Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York. +All editions OP. I regard Gillett as the strongest and straightest of +all ranger narrators. He combined in his nature wild restlessness and +loyal gentleness. He wrote in sunlight. + +GREER, JAMES K. _Buck Barry_, Dallas, 1932. OP. _Colonel Jack Hays, +Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder_, Dutton, New York, 1952. +Hays achieved more vividness in reputation than narratives about him +have attained to. + +JENNINGS, N. A. _The Texas Ranger_, New York, 1899; reprinted 1930, with +foreword by J. Frank Dobie. OP. Good narrative. + +MALTBY, W. JEFF. _Captain Jeff_, Colorado, Texas, 1906. Amorphous. OP. + +MARTIN, JACK. _Border Boss_, San Antonio, 1942. Mediocre biography of +Captain John R. Hughes. OP. + +PAINE, ALBERT BIGELOW. _Captain Bill McDonald_, New York, 1909. Paine +did not do so well by "Captain Bill" as he did in his rich biography of +Mark Twain. OP. + +PIKE, JAMES. _Scout and Ranger_, 1865, reprinted 1932 by Princeton +University Press. Pike drew a long bow; interesting. OP. + +RAYMOND, DORA NEILL. _Captain Lee Hall of Texas_, Norman, Oklahoma, +1940. OP. + +REID, SAMUEL C. _Scouting Expeditions of the Texas Rangers_, 1859; +reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Texas Rangers in Mexican War. + +ROBERTS, DAN W. _Rangers and Sovereignty_, 1914. OP. Roberts was better +as ranger than as writer. + +ROBERTS, MRS. D. W. (wife of Captain Dan W. Roberts). A _Woman's +Reminiscences of Six Years in Camp with The Texas Rangers_, Austin, +1928. OP. Mrs. Roberts was a sensible and charming woman with a seeing +eye. + +SOWELL, A. J. _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, San Antonio, 1884. A +graphic book down to bedrock. OP. + +WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Texas Rangers_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1935. The beginning, middle, and end of the subject. Bibliography. + + + + + +12. Women Pioneers + +ONE REASON for the ebullience of life and rollicky carelessness on the +frontiers of the West was the lack--temporary--of women. The men, mostly +young, had given no hostages to fortune. They were generally as free +from family cares as the buccaneers. This was especially true of the +first ranches on the Great Plains, of cattle trails, of mining camps, +logging camps, and of trapping expeditions. It was not true of the +colonial days in Texas, of ranch life in the southern part of Texas, +of homesteading all over the West, of emigrant trails to California and +Oregon, of backwoods life. + +Various items listed under "How the Early Settlers Lived" contain +material on pioneer women. + + +ALDERSON, NANNIE T., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. A _Bride Goes West_, +New York, 1942. Montana in the eighties. OP. + +BAKER, D. W. C. A _Texas Scrapbook_, 1875; reprinted, 1936, by Steck, +Austin. + +BROTHERS, MARY HUDSON. A _Pecos Pioneer_, 1943. OP. The best part of +this book is not about the writer's brother, who cowboyed with Chisum's +Jinglebob outfit and ran into Billy the Kid, but is Mary Hudson's own +life. Only Ross Santee has equaled her in description of drought +and rain. The last chapters reveal a girl's inner life, amid outward +experiences, as no other woman's chronicle of ranch ways--sheep ranch +here. + +CALL, HUGHIE. _Golden Fleece_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1942. Hughie +Call became wife of a Montana sheepman early in this century. OP. + +CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. _No Life for a Lady_, Houghton Mifflin, +Boston, 1941. Bright, witty, penetrating; anecdotal. Best account of +frontier life from woman's point of view yet published. New Mexico +is the setting, toward turn of the century. People who wished Mrs. +Cleaveland would write another book were disappointed when her _Satan's +Paradise_ appeared in 1952. + +ELLIS, ANNE. _The Life of An Ordinary Woman_, 1929, and _Plain Anne +Ellis_, 1931, both OP. Colorado country and town. Books of disillusioned +observations, wit, and wisdom by a frank woman. + +FAUNCE, HILDA. _Desert Wife_, 1934. OP. Desert loneliness at a Navajo +trading post. + +HARRIS, MRS. DILUE. Reminiscences, in _Southwestern Historical +Quarterly_, Vols. IV and VII. + +KLEBERG, ROSA. "Early Experiences in Texas," in _Quarterly of the +Texas State Historical Association_ (initial title for _Southwestern +Historical Quarterly_), Vols. I and II. + +MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, 1926. OP. She was +juicy and a bride, and all life was bright to her. + +MATTHEWS, SALLIE REYNOLDS. _Interwoven_, Houston, 1936. Ranch life in +the Texas frontier as a refined and intelligent woman saw it. OP. + +MAVERICK, MARY A. _Memoirs_, San Antonio, 1921. OP. Essential. + +PICKRELL, ANNIE DOOM. _Pioneer Women in Texas_, Austin, 1929. Too much +lady business but valuable. OP. + +POE, SOPHIE A. _Buckboard Days_, edited by Eugene Cunningham, Caldwell, +Idaho, 1936. Mrs. Poe was there--New Mexico. + +RAK, MARY KIDDER. _A Cowman's Wife_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934. The +external experiences of an ex-teacher on a small Arizona ranch. + +RHODES, MAY D. _The Hired Man on Horseback_, 1938. Biography of Eugene +Manlove Rhodes, but also warm-natured autobiography of the woman who +ranched with "Gene" in New Mexico. OP. + +RICHARDS, CLARICE E. _A Tenderfoot Bride_, Garden City, N. Y., 1920. OP. +Charming. + +STEWART, ELINOR P. _Letters of a Woman Homesteader_, Boston, 1914. OP. + +WHITE, OWEN P. _A Frontier Mother_, New York, 1929. OP. Overdone, as +White overdid every subject he touched. + +WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted by +Steck, Austin, 1936. A glimpse into the lives led by families that gave +many women to savages--for death or for Cynthia Ann Parker captivity. + +WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in _Straight Texas_, Texas Folklore +Society Publication XIII, 1937. Excellent. + + + + + +13. Circuit Riders and Missionaries + +NOTWITHSTANDING both the tradition and the facts of hardshooting, +hard-riding cowboys, of bad men, of border lawlessness, of inhabitants +who had left some other place under a cloud, of frontier towns +"west of God," hard layouts and conscienceless "courthouse +crowds"--notwithstanding all this, the Southwest has been and is +religious-minded. This is not to say that it is spiritual-natured. +It belongs to H. L. Mencken's "Bible Belt." "Pass-the-Biscuits" +Pappy O'Daniel got to be governor of Texas and then U.S. senator by +advertising his piety. A politician as "ignorant as a Mexican hog" on +foreign affairs and the complexities of political economy can run in +favor of what he and the voters call religion and leave an informed man +of intellect and sincerity in the shade. The biggest campmeeting in the +Southwest, the Bloys Campmeeting near Fort Davis, Texas, is in the midst +of an enormous range country away from all factories and farmers. + +Since about 1933 the United States Indian Service has not only allowed +but rather encouraged the Indians to revert to their own religious +ceremonies. They have always been religious. The Spanish colonists +of the Southwest, as elsewhere, were zealously Catholic, and their +descendants have generally remained Catholic. The first English-speaking +settlers of the region--the colonists led by Stephen F. Austin to +Texas--were overwhelmingly Protestant, though in order to establish +Mexican citizenship and get titles to homestead land they had, +technically, to declare themselves Catholics. One of the causes of the +Texas Revolution as set forth by the Texans in their Declaration of +Independence was the Mexican government's denial of "the right +of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own +conscience." A history of southwestern society that left out the +Bible would be as badly gapped as one leaving out the horse or the +six-shooter. + +See chapter entitled "On the Lord's Side" in Dobie's _The Flavor of +Texas_. Most of the books listed under "How the Early Settlers Lived" +contain information on religion and preachers. Church histories are +about as numerous as state histories. Virtually all county histories +take into account church development. The books listed below are strong +on personal experiences. + + +ASBURY, FRANCIS. Three or more lives have been written of this +representative pioneer bishop. + +BOLTON, HERBERT E. _The Padre on Horseback_, 1932. Life of the Jesuit +missionary Kino. OP. + +BROWNLOW, W. G. _Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, the +Tennessee Patriot_, 1862. Brownlow was a very representative figure. +Under the title of _William G Brownlow, Fighting Parson of the Southern +Highland_, E. M Coulter has brought out a thorough life of him, +published by University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1937. + +BURLESON, RUFUS C. _Life and Writings_, 1901. OP. The autobiographical +part of this amorphously arranged volume is a social document of the +first rank. + +CARTWRIGHT, PETER. _Autobiography_, 1857. Out of Kentucky, into Indiana +and then into Illinois, where he ran against Lincoln for Congress, +Cartwright rode with saddlebags and Bible. Sandburg characterizes him +as "an enemy of whisky, gambling, jewelry, fine clothes, and higher +learning." He seems to me more unlovely in his intolerance and +sectarianism than most circuit riders of the Southwest, but as +a militant, rough-and-ready "soldier of the Lord" he represented +southwestern frontiers as well as his own. + +CRANFILL, J. B. _Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas_, 1916. Cranfill +was a lot of things besides a Baptist preacher--trail driver, fiddler, +publisher, always an observer. OP. + +DEVILBISS, JOHN WESLEY. _Reminiscences and Events_ (compiled by H. A. +Graves), 1886. The very essence of pioneering, + +DOMENECH, ABBE. _Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico_ (translated +from the French), London, 1858. OP. The Abbe always had eyes open for +wonders. He saw them. Delicious narrative. + +EVANS, WILL G. _Border Skylines_, published in Dallas, 1940, for Bloys +Campmeeting Association, Fort Davis, Texas. Chronicles of the men +and women--cow people--and cow country responsible for the best known +campmeeting, held annually, Texas has ever had. OP. + +GRAVIS, PETER W. _25 Years on the Outside Row of the Northwest Texas +Annual Conference_, Comanche, Texas, 1892. Another one of those small +personal records, privately printed but full of juice. OP. + +LIDE, ANNA A. _Robert Alexander and the Early Methodist Church in +Texas_, La Grange, Texas, 1935. OP. + +MORRELL, Z. N. _Fruits and Flowers in the Wilderness_, 1872. Though +reprinted three times, last in 1886, long OP. In many ways the best +circuit rider's chronicle of the Southwest that has been published. +Morrell fought Indians and Mexicans in Texas and was rich in other +experiences. + +MORRIS, T. A. _Miscellany_, 1884. The "Notes of Travel"--particularly +to Texas in 1841--are what makes this book interesting. + +PARISOT, P. F. _Reminiscences of a Texas Missionary_, 1899. Mostly the +Texas-Mexican border. + +POTTER, ANDREW JACKSON, commonly called the Fighting Parson. _Life_ of +him by H. A. Graves, 1890, not nearly so good as Potter was himself. + +THOMASON, JOHN W. _Lone Star Preacher_, Scribner's, New York, 1941. +Fiction, true to humanity. The moving story of a Texas chaplain who +carried a Bible in one hand and a captain's sword in the other through +the Civil War. + + + + + +14. Lawyers, Politicians, J. P.'s + +STEPHEN F. AUSTIN wanted to exclude lawyers, along with roving +frontiersmen, from his colonies in Texas, and hoped thus to promote a +utopian society. The lawyers got in, however. Their wit, the anecdotes +of which they were both subject and author, and the political stories +they made traditional from the stump, have not been adequately set down. +As criminal lawyers they stood as high in society as corporation lawyers +stand now and were a good deal more popular, though less wealthy. The +code of independence that fostered personal violence and justified +killings--in contradistinction to murders--and that ran to excess +in outlaws naturally fostered the criminal lawyer. His type is now +virtually obsolete. + +Keen observers, richly stored in experience and delightful in talk, as +many lawyers of the Southwest have been and are, very few of them have +written on other than legal subjects. James D. Lynch's _The Bench +and the Bar of Texas_ (1885) is confined to the eminence of "eminent +jurists" and to the mastery of "masters of jurisprudence." What we +want is the flavor of life as represented by such characters as witty +Three-Legged Willie (Judge R. M. Williamson) and mysterious Jonas +Harrison. It takes a self-lover to write good autobiography. Lawyers are +certainly as good at self-loving as preachers, but we have far better +autobiographic records of circuit riders than of early-day lawyers. + +Like them, the pioneer justice of peace resides more in folk anecdotes +than in chroniclings. Horace Bell's expansive _On the Old West Coast_ +so represents him. A continent away, David Crockett, in his +_Autobiography_, confessed, "I was afraid some one would ask me what the +judiciary was. If I knowed I wish I may be shot." Before this, however, +Crockett had been a J. P. "I gave my decisions on the principles of +common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural +born sense, and not on law learning to guide me; for I had never read a +page in a law book in all my life." + + +COOMBES, CHARLES E. _The Prairie Dog Lawyer_, Dallas, 1945. OP. +Experiences and anecdotes by a lawyer better read in rough-and-ready +humanity than in law. The prairie dogs have all been poisoned out from +the West Texas country over which he ranged from court to court. + +HAWKINS, WALACE. _The Case of John C. Watrous, United States Judge for +Texas: A Political Story of High Crimes and Misdemeanors_, Southern +Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1950. More technical than social. + +KITTRELL, NORMAN G. _Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of +Texas_, Houston, 1921. OP. Best collection of lawyer anecdotes of the +Southwest. + +ROBINSON, DUNCAN W. _Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, Texas' +Three-Legged Willie_, Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1948. +This was the Republic of Texas judge who laid a Colt revolver across a +Bowie knife and said: "Here is the constitution that overrides the law." + +SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos_, Macmillan, New +York, 1943. Roy Bean (1830-1903), justice of peace at Langtry, Texas, +advertised himself as "Law West of the Pecos." He was more picaresque +than picturesque; folk imagination gave him notoriety. The Texas State +Highway Department maintains for popular edification the beer joint +wherein he held court. Three books have been written about him, besides +scores of newspaper and magazine articles. The only biography of +validity is Sonnichsen's. + +SLOAN, RICHARD E. _Memories of an Arizona Judge_, Stanford, California, +1932. Full of humanity. OP. + +SMITH, E. F. _A Saga of Texas Law: A Factual Story of Texas Law, +Lawyers, Judges and Famous Lawsuits_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1940. +Interesting. + + + + + +15. Pioneer Doctors + +BEFORE the family doctors came, frontiersmen sawed off legs with +handsaws, tied up arteries with horsetail hair, cauterized them with +branding irons. Before homemade surgery with steel tools was practiced, +Mexican _curanderas_ (herb women) supplied _remedios_, and they still +know the medicinal properties of every weed and bush. Herb stores in +San Antonio, Brownsville, and El Paso do a thriving business. Behind the +_curanderas_ were the medicine men of the tribes. Not all their lore +was superstition, as any one who reads the delectable autobiography +of Gideon Lincecum, published by the Mississippi Historical Society +in 1904, will agree. Lincecum, learned in botany, a sharply-edged +individual who later moved to Texas, went out to live with a Choctaw +medicine man and wrote down all his lore about the virtues of native +plants. The treatise has never been printed. + +The extraordinary life of Lincecum has, however, been interestingly +delineated in Samuel Wood Geiser's _Naturalists of the Frontier_, +Southern Methodist University Press, 1937, 1948, and in Pat Ireland +Nixon's _The Medical Story of Early Texas_, listed below. No historical +novelist could ask for a richer theme than Gideon Lincecum or Edmund +Montgomery, the subject of I. K. Stephens' biography listed below. + +BUSH, I. J. _Gringo Doctor_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. OP. Dr. Bush +represented frontier medicine and surgery on both sides of the Rio +Grande. Living at El Paso, he was for a time with the Maderistas in the +revolution against Diaz. + +COE, URLING C. _Frontier Doctor_, New York, 1939. OP. Not of the +Southwest but representing other frontier doctors. Lusty autobiography +full of characters and anecdotes. + +DODSON, RUTH. "Don Pedrito Jaramillo: The Curandero of Los Olmos," in +_The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore_ (Publication of the +Texas Folklore Society XXIV), edited by Wilson M. Hudson, Southern +Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1951. Don Pedrito was no more of a +fraud than many an accredited psychiatrist, and he was the opposite of +offensive. + +NIXON, PAT IRELAND. _A Century of Medicine in San Antonio_, published +by the author, San Antonio, 1936. Rich in information, diverting in +anecdote, and tonic in philosophy. Bibliography. _The Medical Story +of Early Texas, 1528-1835_ [San Antonio], 1946. Lightness of life with +scholarly thoroughness; many character sketches. + +RED, MRS. GEORGE P. _The Medicine Man in Texas_, Houston, 1930. +Biographical. OP. + +STEPHENS, I. K. _The Hermit Philosopher of Liendo_, Southern Methodist +University Press, Dallas, 1951. Well-conceived and well-written +biography of Edmund Montgomery--illegitimate son of a Scottish lord, +husband of the sculptress Elisabet Ney--who, after being educated in +Germany and becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians of +London, came to Texas with his wife and sons and settled on Liendo +Plantation, near Hempstead, once known as Sixshooter Junction. Here, in +utter isolation from people of cultivated minds, he conducted scientific +experiments in his inadequate laboratory and thought out a philosophy +said to be half a century ahead of his time. He died in 1911. His life +was the drama of an elevated soul of complexities, far more tragic than +any life associated with the lurid "killings" around him. + +WOODHULL, FROST. "Ranch Remedios," in _Man, Bird, and Beast_, Texas +Folklore Society Publication VIII, 1930. The richest and most readable +collection of pioneer remedies yet published. + + + + + +16. Mountain Men + +AS USED HERE, the term "Mountain Men" applies to those trappers and +traders who went into the Rocky Mountains before emigrants had even +sought a pass through them to the west or cattle had beat out a trail +on the plains east of them. Beaver fur was the lodestar for the Mountain +Men. Their span of activity was brief, their number insignificant. +Yet hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or +permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain +Men. The books are not nearly so numerous as those connected with range +life, but when one considers the writings of Stanley Vestal, Sabin, +Ruxton, Fer gusson, Chittenden, Favour, Garrard, Inman, Irving, Reid, +and White in this Seld, one doubts whether any other form of American +life at all has been so well covered in ballad, fiction, biography, +history. + +See James Hobbs, James O. Pattie, and Reuben Gold Thwaites under "Surge +of Life in the West," also "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail." + + +ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1925. A hogshead +of life. Bibliography. OP. Republished by Long's College Book Co., +Columbus, Ohio. + +BONNER, T. D. _The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, 1856_; +reprinted in 1931, with an illuminating introduction by Bernard DeVoto. +OP. Beckwourth was the champion of all western liars. + +BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. Good +narrative. OP. + +CHITTENDEN, _H. M. The American Fur Trade of the_ _Far West_, New York, +1902. OP. Basic work. Bibliography. + +CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and Fur +Traders of the Southwest_, Knopf, New York, 1950. Fresh emphasis on the +California-Arizona-New Mexico region by a knowing scholar. Economical in +style without loss of either humanity or history. Bibliography. + +CONRAD, HOWARD L. _Uncle Dick Wootton_, 1890. Primary source. OP. + +COYNER, D. H. _The Lost Trappers_, 1847. + +DAVIDSON, L. J., and BOSTWICK, P. _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain +West 1803-1903_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. Davidson and Forrester +Blake, editors. _Rocky Mountain Tales_, University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, 1947. + +DEVOTO, BERNARD. _Across the Wide Missouri_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1947. Superbly illustrated by reproductions of Alfred Jacob Miller. +DeVoto has amplitude and is a master of his subject as well as of the +craft of writing. + +FAVOUR, ALPHEUS H. _Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man_, University of +North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1936. Flavor and facts both. Full +bibliography. + +FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Rio Grande_, 1933, republished by Tudor, New York. +The drama and evolution of human life in New Mexico, written out of +knowledge and with power. _Wolf Song_, New York, 1927. OP. Graphic +historical novel of Mountain Men. It sings with life. + +GARRARD, LEWIS H. _Wah-toyah and the Taos Trail_, 1850. One of the basic +works. + +GRANT, BLANCHE C. _When Old Trails Were New--The Story of Taos_, New +York, 1934. OP. Taos was rendezvous town for the free trappers. + +GUTHRIE, A. B., JR. _The Big Sky_, Sloane, New York, 1947 (now published +by Houghton Mifflin, Boston). "An unusually original novel, superb as +historical fiction."--Bernard DeVoto. I still prefer Harvey Fergusson's +_Wolf Song_. + +HAMILTON, W. T. _My Sixty Years on the Plains_, New York, 1905. Now +published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. + +INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897. + +IRVING, WASHINGTON. _The Adventures of Captain Bonneville_ and +_Astoria_. The latter book was founded on Robert Stuart's Narratives. In +1935 these were prepared for the press, with much illuminative material, +by Philip Ashton Rollins and issued under the title of _The Discovery of +the Oregon Trail_. + +LARPENTEUR, CHARLES. _Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri_, +edited by Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. As Milo Milton Quaife shows in +an edition of the narrative issued by the Lakeside Press, Chicago, +1933, the indefatigable Coues just about rewrote the old fur trader's +narrative. It is immediate and vigorous. + +LAUT, A. C. _The Story of the Trapper_, New York, 1902. A popular +survey, emphasizing types and characters. + +LEONARD, ZENAS. _Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard_, +Clearfield, Pa., 1839. In 1833 the Leonard trappers reached San +Francisco Bay, boarded a Boston ship anchored near shore, and for the +first time in two years varied their meat diet by eating bread and +drinking "Coneac." One of the trappers had a gun named Knock-him-stiff. +Such earthy details abound in this narrative of adventures in a brand +new world. + +LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Very +readable biographic sketches. OP. + +MILLER, ALFRED JACOB. _The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_, with an account +of the artist by Marvin C. Ross, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, +1950. Although Miller painted the West during 1837-38, only now is he +being discovered by the public. This is mainly a picture book, in the +top rank. + +PATTIE, JAMES OHIO. _The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of +Kentucky_, Cincinnati, 1831. Pattie and his small party went west in +1824. For grizzlies, thirst, and other features of primitive adventure +the narrative is primary. + +REID, MAYNE. _The Scalp Hunters_. An antiquated novel, but it has some +deep-dyed pictures of Mountain Men. + +ROSS, ALEXANDER. _Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or +Columbia River_ (1849) and _The Fur Hunters of the Far West_ (1855). The +trappers of the Southwest can no more be divorced from the trappers of +the Hudson's Bay Company than can Texas cowboys from those of Montana. + +RUSSELL, OSBORNE. _Journal of a Trapper_, Boise, Idaho, 1921. In the +winter of 1839, at Fort Hall on Snake River, Russell and three other +trappers "had some few books to read, such as Byron, Shakespeare and +Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's Commentary on it, and some small +works on geology, chemistry and philosophy." Russell was wont to +speculate on Life and Nature. In perspective he approaches Ruxton. + +RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Life in the Far West_, 1848; reprinted by the +University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen. +No other contemporary of the Mountain Men has been so much quoted as +Ruxton. He remains supremely readable. + +SABIN, EDWIN L. _Kit Carson Days_, 1914. A work long standard, rich on +rendezvous, bears, and many other associated subjects. Bibliography. +Republished in rewritten form, 1935. OP. + +VESTAL, STANLEY (pseudonym for Walter S. Campbell). _Kit Carson_, +1928. As a clean-running biographic narrative, it is not likely to be +superseded. _Mountain Men_, 1937, OP; _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1939. +Vestal's "Fandango," a tale of the Mountain Men in Taos, is among the +most spirited ballads America has produced. It and a few other Mountain +Men ballads are contained in the slight collection, _Fandango_, 1927. +Houghton Mifflin, Boston, published the aforementioned titles. _James +Bridger, Mountain Man_, Morrow, New York, 1946, is smoother than J. +Cecil Alter's biography but not so savory. _Joe Meek, the Merry Mountain +Man_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1952. + +WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _The Long Rifle_, 1932, and _Ranchero_, 1933, +Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, N. Y. Historical fiction. + + + + + +17. Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail + +THERE WAS Independence on the Missouri River, then eight hundred miles +of twisting trail across hills, plains, and mountains, all uninhabited +save by a few wandering Indians and uncountable buffaloes. Then there +was Santa Fe. On west of it lay nearly a thousand miles of wild broken +lands before one came to the village of Los Angeles. But there was +no trail to Los Angeles. At Santa Fe the trail turned south and after +crawling over the Jornada del Muerto--Journey of the Dead Man--threading +the great Pass of the North (El Paso) and crossing a vast desert, +reached Chihuahua City. + +Looked at in one way, Santa Fe was a mud village. In another way, it was +the solitary oasis of human picturesqueness in a continent of vacancy. +Like that of Athens, though of an entirely different quality, its fame +was out of all proportion to its size. In a strong chapter, entitled "A +Caravan Enters Santa Fe," R. L. Duffus _(The Santa Fe Trail)_ elaborates +on how for all travelers the town always had "the lure of adventure." +Josiah Gregg doubted whether "the first sight of the walls of Jerusalem +were beheld with much more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy" than +Santa Fe was by a caravan topping the last rise and, eight hundred miles +of solitude behind it, looking down on the town's shining walls and +cottonwoods. + +No other town of its size in America has been the subject of and focus +for as much good literature as Santa Fe. Pittsburgh and dozens of +other big cities all put together have not inspired one tenth of +the imaginative play that Santa Fe has inspired. Some of the +transcontinental railroads probably carry as much freight in a day as +went over the Santa Fe Trail in all the wagons in all the years they +pulled over the Santa Fe Trail. But the Santa Fe Trail is one of the +three great trails of America that, though plowed under, fenced across, +and cemented over, seem destined for perennial travel--by those happily +able to go without tourist guides. To quote Robert Louis Stevenson, "The +greatest adventures are not those we go to seek." The other two trails +comparable to the Santa Fe are also of the West--the Oregon Trail for +emigrants and the Chisholm Trail for cattle. + +For additional literature see "Mountain Men," "Stagecoaches, +Freighting," "Surge of Life in the West." + +CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New York, 1927. +Historical novel. + +CONNELLEY, W. E. (editor). _Donithan's Expedition_, 1907. Saga of the +Mexican War. OP. + +DAVIS, W. W. H. _El Gringo, or New Mexico and Her People_, 1856; +reprinted by Rydal, Santa Fe, 1938. OP. Excellent on manners and +customs. + +DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1930. OP. Bibliography. +Best book of this century on the subject. + +DUNBAR, SEYMOUR. _History of Travel in America_, 1915; revised edition +issued by Tudor, New York, 1937. + +GREGG, JOSIAH. _Commerce of the Prairies_, two vols., 1844. Reprinted, +but all OP. Gregg wrote as a man of experience and not as a professional +writer. He wrote not only the classic of the Santa Fe trade and trail +but one of the classics of bedrock Americana. It is a commentary on +civilization in the Southwest that his work is not kept in print. Harvey +Fergusson, in _Rio Grande_, has written a penetrating criticism of the +man and his subject. In 1941 and 1944 the University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, issued two volumes of the _Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg_, +edited by Maurice G. Fulton with Introductions by Paul Horgan. These +volumes, interesting in themselves, are a valuable complement to Gregg's +major work. + +INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897. A mine of lore. + +LAUGHLIN, RUTH (formerly Ruth Laughlin Barker). _Caballeros_, New York, +1931; republished by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1946. Essayical goings +into the life of things. Especially delightful on burros. A book to be +starred. _The Wind Leaves No Shadow_, New York, 1948; Caxton, 1951. A +novel around Dona Tules Barcelo, the powerful, beautiful, and silvered +mistress of Santa Fe's gambling _sala_ in the 1830's and '40's. + +MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, Yale University +Press, New Haven, 1926. Delectable diary. + +PILLSBURY, DOROTHY L. _No High Adobe_, University of New Mexico Press, +Albuquerque, 1950. Sketches, pleasant to read, that make the _gente_ +very real. + +RUXTON, GEORGE FREDERICK. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky +Mountains_, London, 1847. In 1924 the second half of this book was +reprinted under title of _Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains_. In 1950, +with additional Ruxton writings discovered by Clyde and Mae Reed Porter, +the book, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, was reissued under title of _Ruxton +of the Rockies_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Santa Fe is only +one incident in it. Ruxton illuminates whatever he touches. He was in +love with the wilderness and had a fire in his belly. Other writers add +details, but Ruxton and Gregg embodied the whole Santa Fe world. + +VESTAL, STANLEY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1939. + + + + + +18. Stagecoaches, Freighting + +A GOOD INTRODUCTION to a treatment of the stagecoach of the West would +be Thomas De Quincey's "The English Mail-Coach." The proper place to +read about the coaches would be in Doctor Lyon's Pony Express Museum, +out from Pasadena, California. May it never perish! Old Monte drives up +now and then in Alfred Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ tales, and Bret Harte +made Yuba Bill crack the Whip; but, somehow, considering all the +excellent expositions and reminiscing of stage-coaching in western +America, the proud, insolent, glorious figure of the driver has not been +adequately pictured. + +Literature on "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail" is pertinent. See also +under "Pony Express." + + +BANNING, WILLIAM, and BANNING, GEORGE HUGH. _Six Horses_, New York, +1930. A combination of history and autobiography. Routes to and in +California; much of Texas. Enjoyable reading. Excellent on drivers, +travelers, stations, "pass the mustard, please." Bibliography. OP. + +CONKLING, ROSCOE P. and MARGARET B. _The Butterfield Overland Trail, +1857-1869_, Arthur H. Clark Co., Glendage, California. Three volumes +replete with facts from politics in Washington over mail contracts to +Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. + +DOBBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter entitled "Pistols, Poker and the Petit +Mademoiselle in a Stagecoach," in _The Flavor of Texas_ 1936. OP. + +DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_ New York, 1930. Swift reading. Well +selected bibliography. OP. + +FREDERICK, J. V. _Ben Holladay, the Stage Coach King_, Clark, Glendale, +California, 1940. Bibliography. + +HALEY, J. EVETTS. Chapter v, "The Stage-Coach Mail," in _Fort Concho +and the Texas Frontier_, illustrated by Harold Bugbee, San Angelo +Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Strong on frontier crossed by +stage line. + +HUNGERFORD, EDWARD. _Wells Fargo: Advancing the Frontier_, Random House, +New York, 1949. Written without regard for the human beings that the +all-swallowing corporation crushed. Facts on highwaymen. + +INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1897. OP. _The Great +Salt Lake Trail_, 1898. OP. Many first-hand incidents and characters. + +MAJORS, ALEXANDER. _Seventy Years on the Frontier_, Chicago, 1893. +Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Majors was the +lead steer of all freighters. + +ORMSBY, W. L. _The Butterfield Overland Mail_, edited by Lyle H. Wright +and Josephine M. Bynum, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, +1942. Ormsby rode the stage from St. Louis to San Francisco in 1858 and +contributed to the New York _Herald_ the lively articles now made into +this book. + +ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to California_, +Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, +Ohio. A full storehouse. Basic. + +SANTLEBEN, AUGUST. _A Texas Pioneer_, edited by I. D. Affleck, New York, +1910. OP. Best treatise available on freighting on Chihuahua Trail. + +TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1871. Mark Twain went west by stage. + +WINTHER, O. O. _Express and Stagecoach Days in California_, Stanford +University Press, 1926. Compact, with bibliography. OP. + + + + + + +19. Pony Express + +"PRESENTLY the driver exclaims, `Here he comes!' + +"Every neck is stretched and every eye strained. Away across the endless +dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky. In a +second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising +and falling sweeping towards us nearer and nearer--growing more and more +distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still nearer, and +the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another instant a +whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck [of the stagecoach], a wave of +the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited +faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm."--Mark +Twain, _Roughing It_. + +A word cannot be defined in its own terms; nor can a region, or a +feature of that region. Analogy and perspective are necessary for +comprehension. The sense of horseback motion has never been better +realized than by Kipling in "The Ballad of East and West." See "Horses." + + +BRADLEY, GLENN D._ The Story of the Pony Express_, Chicago, 1913. +Nothing extra. OP. + +BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. +Bibliography on West in general. + +CHAPMAN, ARTHUR. _The Pony Express_, Putnam's, New York, 1932. Good +reading and bibliography. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter on "Rides and Riders," in _On the Open Range_, +published in 1931; reprinted by Banks Up shaw, Dallas. Chapter on "Under +the Saddle" in _The Mustangs_. + +HAPEN, LEROY. _The Overland Mail_, Cleveland, 1926. Factual, +bibliography. OP. + +ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to California_, +Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, +Ohio. Basic work. + +VISSCHER, FRANK J. _A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony +Express_, Chicago, 1908. OP. Not excessively "thrilling." + + + + + +20. Surge of Life in the West + +THE WANDERINGS of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, De Soto, and La Salle had +long been chronicled, although the chronicles had not been popularized +in English, when in 1804 Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William +Clark set out to explore not only the Louisiana Territory, which had +just been purchased for the United States by President Thomas Jefferson, +but on west to the Pacific. Their _Journals_, published in 1814, +initiated a series of chronicles comparable in scope, vitality, and +manhood adventure to the great collection known as _Hakluyt's Voyages_. + +Between 1904 and 1907 Reuben Gold Thwaites, one of the outstanding +editors of the English-speaking world, brought out in thirty-two volumes +his epic _Early Western Travels_. This work includes the Lewis and Clark +_Journals_, every student of the West, whether Northwest or Southwest, +goes to the collection sooner or later. It is a commentary on the +values of life held by big rich boasters of patriotism in the West that +virtually all the chronicles in the collection remain out of print. + +An important addendum to the Thwaites collection of _Early Western +Travels_ is "The Southwest Historical Series," edited by Ralph +P. Bieber--twelve volumes, published 1931-43, by Clark, Glendale, +California. + +The stampede to California that began in 1849 climaxed all migration +orgies of the world in its lust for gold; but the lust for gold was +merely one manifestation of a mighty population's lust for life. +Railroads raced each other to cross the continent. Ten million Longhorns +were going up the trails; from Texas while the last of a hundred million +buffaloes, killed in herds--the greatest slaughter in history--were +being skinned. Dodge City was the Cowboy Capital of the world, and +Chicago was becoming "hog butcher of the world." Miller and Lux were +expanding their ranges so that, as others boasted, their herds could +trail from Oregon to Baja California and bed down every night on Miller +and Lux's own grass. + +Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) was massing in San Francisco at his +own expense the greatest assemblage of historical documents any one +individual ever assembled. While his interviewers and note-takers sorted +down tons of manuscript, he was employing a corps of historians to write +what, at first designed as a history of the Pacific states, grew in +twenty-eight volumes to embrace also Alaska, British Columbia, Texas, +Mexico, and Central America, aside from five volumes on the Native Races +and six volumes of essays. Meantime he was printing these volumes +in sets of thousands and selling them through an army of agents that +covered America. + +Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900) was building the Southern Pacific +Railroad into a network, interlocked with other systems and steamship +lines, not only enveloping California land but also the whole economic +and political life of that and other states, with headquarters in the +U.S. Congress. Then his nephew, Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927), +taking over his wealth and power, was building gardens at San Marino, +California, collecting art, books, and manuscripts to make, without +benefit of any institution of learning and in defiance of all the slow +processes of tradition found at Oxford and Harvard, a Huntington +Library and a Huntington Art Gallery that, set down amid the most costly +botanical profusion imaginable, now rival the world's finest. + +The dreams were of empire. Old men and young toiled as "terribly" as +mighty Raleigh. The "spacious times" of Queen Elizabeth seemed, indeed, +to be translated to another sphere, though here the elements that went +into the mixture were less diverse. Boom methods of Gargantuan scale +were applied to cultural factors as well as to the physical. Few men +stopped to reflect that while objects of art may be bought by the +wholesale, the development of genuine culture is too intimately personal +and too chemically blended with the spiritual to be bartered for. The +Huntingtons paid a quarter of a million dollars for Gainsborough's "The +Blue Boy." It is very beautiful. Meanwhile the mustang grapevine waits +for some artist to paint the strong and lovely grace of its drapery and +thereby to enrich for land-dwellers every valley where it hangs over elm +or oak. + +Most of the books in this section could be placed in other sections. +Many have been. They represent the vigor, vitality, energy, and daring +characteristic of our frontiers. To quote Harvey Fergusson's phrase, the +adventures of mettle have always had "a tension that would not let them +rest." + + +BARKER, EUGENE C. _The Life of Stephen F. Austin_, Dallas, 1925. +Republished by Texas State Historical Association, Austin. Iron-wrought +biography of the leader in making Texas Anglo-American. + +BELL, HORACE. _Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in California_, +Los Angeles, 1881; reprinted, but OP. In this book and in _On the Old +West Coast_, Bell caught the lift and spiritedness of life-hungry men. + +BIDWELL, JOHN (1819-1900). _Echoes of the Past_, Chico, California +(about 1900). Bidwell got to California several years before gold was +discovered. He became foremost citizen and entertained scientists, +writers, scholars, and artists at his ranch home. His brief accounts +of the trip across the plains and of pioneer society in California are +graphic, charming, telling. The book goes in and out of print but is not +likely to die. + +BILLINGTON, RAY ALLEN. _Westward Expansion: A History of the American +Frontier_, Macmillan, New York, 1949. This Alpha to Omega treatise +concludes with a seventy-five-page, double-column, fine-print +bibliography which not only lists but comments upon most books and +articles of any consequence that have been published on frontier +history. + +BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, New York, 1891. Now +published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Bourke had an +eager, disciplined mind, at once scientific and humanistic; he had +imagination and loyalty to truth and justice; he had a strong body +and joyed in frontier exploring. He was a captain in the army but had +nothing of the littleness of the army mind exhibited by Generals Nelson +Miles and O. O. Howard in their egocentric reminiscences. I rank his +book as the meatiest and richest of all books dealing with campaigns +against Indians. In its amplitude it includes the whole frontier. +General George Crook was a wise, generous, and noble man, but his +_Autobiography_ (edited by Martin F. Schmitt; University of Oklahoma +Press) lacks that power in writing necessary to turn the best subject +on earth into a good book and capable also, as Darwin demonstrated, of +turning earthworms into a classic. + +BURNHAM, FREDERICK RUSSELL. _Scouting on Two Continents_, New York, +1926; reprinted, Los Angeles, 1942. A brave book of enthralling +interest. The technique of scouting in the Apache Country is illuminated +by that of South Africa in the Boer War. Hunting for life, Major Burnham +carried it with him. OP. + +DEVOTO, BERNARD. _The Year of Decision 1846_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, +1943. Critical interpretation as well as depiction. The Mexican War, +New Mexico, California, Mountain Men, etc. DeVoto's _Across the Wide +Missouri_ is wider in spirit, less bound to political complexities. See +under "Mountain Men." + +EMORY, LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM H. _Notes of a Military Reconnaissance +from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, +including Part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers_, Washington, +1848. Emory's own vivid report is only one item in _Executive Document +No. 41_, 30th Congress, 1st Session, with which it is bound. Lieutenant +J. W. Albert's _Journal_ and additional _Report on New Mexico_, St. +George Cooke's Odyssey of his march from Santa Fe to San Diego, another +_Journal_ by Captain A. R. Johnson, the Torrey-Englemann report on +botany, illustrated with engravings, all go to make this one of the +meatiest of a number of meaty government publications. The Emory part of +it has been reprinted by the University of New Mexico Press, under title +of _Lieutenant Emory Reports_, Introduction and Notes by Ross Calvin, +Albuquerque, 1951. + +Emory's great two-volume _Report on United States and Mexican Boundary +Survey_, Washington 1857 and 1859, is, aside from descriptions of +borderlands and their inhabitants, a veritable encyclopedia, wonderfully +illustrated, on western flora and fauna. United States Commissioner +on this Boundary Survey (following the Mexican War) was John Russell +Bartlett. While exploring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and +far down into Mexico, he wrote _Personal Narrative of Explorations +and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua_. +published in two volumes, New York, 1854. For me very little rewritten +history has the freshness and fascination of these strong, firsthand +personal narratives, though I recognize many of them as being the stuff +of literature rather than literature itself. + +FOWLER, JACOB. _The Journal of Jacob Fowler, 1821-1822_, edited by +Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. Hardly another chronicle of the West is +so Defoe-like in homemade realism, whether on Indians and Indian horses +or Negro Paul's experience with the Mexican "Lady" at San Fernando de +Taos. Should be reprinted. + +GAMBRELL, HERBERT. _Anson Jones: The Last President of Texas_, Garden +City, New York, 1948; now distributed by Southern Methodist University +Press, Dallas, Texas. Anson Jones was more surged over than surgent. +Infused with a larger comprehension than that behind many a world +figure, this biography of a provincial figure is perhaps the most +artfully written that Texas has produced. It goes into the soul of the +man. + +HOBBS, JAMES. _Wild Life in the Far West_, Hartford, 1872. Hobbs saw +just about all the elephants and heard just about all the owls to be +seen and heard in the Far West including western Mexico. Should be +reprinted. + +HULBERT, ARCHER BUTLER. _Forty-Niners: The Chronicle of the California +Trail_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1931. Hulbert read exhaustively in +the exhausting literature by and about the gold hunters rushing to +California. Then he wove into a synthetic diary the most interesting +and illuminating records on happenings, characters, ambitions, talk, +singing, the whole life of the emigrants. + +IRVING, WASHINGTON. Irving made his ride into what is now Oklahoma in +1832. He had recently returned from a seventeen-year stay in Europe and +was a mature literary man--as mature as a conforming romanticist could +become Prairie life refreshed him. A _Tour on the Prairies_, published +in 1835, remains refreshing. It is illuminated by _Washington Irving +on the Prairie; or, A Narrative of the Southwest in the Year 1832_, by +Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (who accompanied Irving), edited by Stanley +T. Williams and Barbara D. Simison, New York, 1937; by _The Western +Journals of Washington Irving_, excellently edited by John Francis +McDermott, Norman, Oklahoma, 1944; and by Charles J. Latrobe's _The +Rambler in North America, 1832-1833_, New York, 1835. + +JAMES, MARQUIS. _The Raven_, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1929. Graphic +life of Sam Houston. + +KURZ, RUDOLPH FRIEDERICH. _Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz: ... His +Experiences among Fur Traders and American Indians on the Mississippi +and Upper Missouri Rivers, during the Years of 1846-1852_, U.S. Bureau +of Ethnology Bulletin 115, Washington, 1937. The public has not had a +chance at this book, which was printed rather than published. Kurz both +saw and recorded with remarkable vitality. He was an artist and the +volume contains many reproductions of his paintings and drawings. One of +the most readable and illuminating of western journals. + +LEWIS, OSCAR. _The Big Four_, New York, 1938. Railroad magnates. + +LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, California, 1928. +Fresh sketches of representative men. The book deserves to be better +known than it is. OP. + +LYMAN, GEORGE D. _John Marsh Pioneer_, New York, 1930. Prime biography +and prime romance. Laid mostly in California. This book almost heads the +list of all biographies of western men. OP. + +PARKMAN, FRANCIS. _The Oregon Trail_, 1849. Parkman knew how to write +but some other penetrators of the West put down about as much. School +assignments have made his book a recognized classic. + +PATTIE, JAMES O. _Personal Narrative_, Cincinnati, 1831; reprinted, +but OP. Positively gripping chronicle of life in New Mexico and the +Californias during Mexican days. + +PIKE, ZEBULON M. _The Southwestern Expedition of Zebulon M. Pike_, +Philadelphia, 1810. The 1895 edition edited by Elliott Coues is the most +useful to students. No edition is in print. Pike's explorations of the +Southwest (1806-7) began while the great Lewis and Clark expedition +(1804-6) was ending. His journal is nothing like so informative as +theirs but is just as readable. _The Lost Pathfinder_ is a biography of +Pike by W. Eugene Hollon, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. + +TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1872. Mark Twain was a man who wrote and not +merely a writer in man-form. He was frontier American in all his fibers. +He was drunk with western life at a time when both he and it were +standing on tiptoe watching the sun rise over the misty mountain tops, +and he wrote of what he had seen and lived before he became too sober. +_Roughing It_ comes nearer catching the energy, the youthfulness, the +blooming optimism, the recklessness, the lust for the illimitable in +western life than any other book. It deals largely with mining life, but +the surging vitality of this life as reflected by Mark Twain has been +the chief common denominator of all American frontiers and was as +characteristic of Texas "cattle kings" when grass was free as of +Virginia City "nabobs" in bonanza. + + + + + +21. Range Life: Cowboys, Cattle, Sheep + +THE COWBOY ORIGINATED in Texas. The Texas cowboy, along with the Texas +cowman, was an evolvement from and a blend of the riding, shooting, +frontier-formed southerner, the Mexican-Indian horseback worker with +livestock (the vaquero), and the Spanish open-range rancher. The blend +was not in blood, but in occupational techniques. I have traced this +genesis with more detail in _The Longhorns_. Compared with evolution +in species, evolution in human affairs is meteor-swift. The driving of +millions of cattle and horses from Texas to stock the whole plains area +of North America while, following the Civil War, it was being denuded of +buffaloes and secured from Indian domination, enabled the Texas cowboy +to set his impress upon the whole ranching industry. The cowboy became +the best-known occupational type that America has given the world. He +exists still and will long exist, though much changed from the original. +His fame derives from the past. + +Romance, both genuine and spurious, has obscured the realities of range +and trail. The realities themselves have, however, been such that few +riders really belonging to the range wished to lead any other existence. +Only by force of circumstances have they changed "the grass beneath and +the sky above" for a more settled, more confining, and more materially +remunerative way of life. Some of the old-time cowboys were little more +adaptable to change than the Plains Indians; few were less reluctant +to plow or work in houses. Heaven in their dreams was a range better +watered than the one they knew, with grass never stricken by drought, +plenty of fat cattle, the best horses and comrades of their experience, +more of women than they talked about in public, and nothing at all of +golden streets, golden harps, angel wings, and thrones; it was a mere +extension, somewhat improved, of the present. Bankers, manufacturers, +merchants, and mechanics seldom so idealize their own occupations; they +work fifty weeks a year to go free the other two. + +For every hired man on horseback there have been hundreds of plowmen in +America, and tens of millions of acres of rangelands have been plowed +under, but who can cite a single autobiography of a laborer in the +fields of cotton, of corn, of wheat? Or do coal miners, steelmongers, +workers in oil refineries, factory hands of any kind of factory, +the employees of chain stores and department stores ever write +autobiographies? Many scores of autobiographies have been written by +range men, perhaps half of them by cowboys who never became owners at +all. A high percentage of the autobiographies are in pamphlet form; many +that were written have not been published. The trail drivers of open +range days, nearly all dead now, felt the urge to record experiences +more strongly than their successors. They realized that they had been a +part of an epic life. + +The fact that the hired man on horseback has been as good a man as the +owner and, on the average, has been a more spirited and eager man +than the hand on foot may afford some explanation of the validity and +vitality of his chroniclings, no matter how crude they be. On the other +hand, the fact that the rich owner and the college-educated aspirant to +be a cowboy soon learned, if they stayed on the range, that _a man's +a man for a' that_ may to some extent account for a certain generous +amplitude of character inherent in their most representative +reminiscences. Sympathy for the life biases my judgment; that judgment, +nevertheless, is that some of the strongest and raciest autobiographic +writing produced by America has been by range men. + +{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)} + +This is not to say that these chronicles are of a high literary order. +Their writers have generally lacked the maturity of mind, the reflective +wisdom, and the power of observation found in personal narratives of the +highest order. No man who camped with a chuck wagon has written anything +remotely comparable to Charles M. Doughty's _Arabia Deserta_, a +chronicle at once personal and impersonal, restrainedly subjective and +widely objective, of his life with nomadic Bedouins. Perspective is a +concomitant of civilization. The chronicles of the range that show +perspective have come mostly from educated New Englanders, Englishmen, +and Scots. The great majority of the chronicles are limited in subject +matter to physical activities. They make few concessions to "the desire +of the moth for the star"; they hardly enter the complexities of life, +including those of sex. In one section of the West at one time the +outstanding differences among range men were between owners of sheep and +owners of cattle, the ambition of both being to hog the whole country. +On another area of the range at another time, the outstanding difference +was between little ranchers, many of whom were stealing, and big +ranchers, plenty of whom had stolen. Such differences are not exponents +of the kind of individualism that burns itself into great human +documents. + +Seldom deeper than the chronicles does range fiction go below physical +surface into reflection, broodings, hungers--the smolderings deep down +in a cowman oppressed by drought and mortgage sitting in a rocking chair +on a ranch gallery looking at the dust devils and hoping for a cloud; +the goings-on inside a silent cowboy riding away alone from an empty pen +to which he will never return; the streams of consciousness in a silent +man and a silent woman bedded together in a wind-lashed frame house away +out on the lone prairie. The wide range of human interests leaves ample +room for downright, straightaway narratives of the careers of strong +men. If the literature of the range ever matures, however, it will +include keener searchings for meanings and harder struggles for human +truths by writers who strive in "the craft so long to lerne." For +three-quarters of a century the output of fiction on the cowboy has been +tremendous, and it shows little diminution. Mass production inundating +the masses of readers has made it difficult for serious fictionists +writing about range people to get a hearing. + +The code of the West was concentrated into the code of the range--and +not all of it by any means depended upon the six-shooter. No one can +comprehend this code without knowing something about the code of the Old +South, whence the Texas cowboy came. + +Mexican goats make the best eating in Mexico and mohair has made +good money for many ranchers of the Southwest. Goats, goat herders, +goatskins, and wine in goatskins figure in the literature of Spain as +prominently as six-shooters in Blazing Frontier fiction--and far more +pleasantly. Read George Borrow's _The Bible in Spain_, one of the +most delectable of travel books. Beyond a few notices of Mexican goat +herders, there is on the subject of goats next to nothing readable in +American writings. Where there is no competition, supremacy is small +distinction; so I should offend no taste by saying that "The Man of +Goats" in my own _Tongues of the Monte_ is about the best there is so +far as goats go. + +Although sheep are among the most salient facts of range life, they +have, as compared with cattle and horses, been a dim item in the range +tradition. Yet, of less than a dozen books on sheep and sheepmen, more +than half of them are better written than hundreds of books concerning +cowboy life. Mary Austin's _The Flock_ is subtle and beautiful; +Archer B. Gilfillan's _Sheep_ is literature in addition to having much +information; Hughie Call's _Golden Fleece_ is delightful; Winifred +Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_ and _Texas Sheepman_ have charm--a rare +quality in most books on cows and cow people. Among furnishings in the +cabin of Robert Maudslay, "the Texas Sheepman," were a set of Sir Walter +Scott's works, Shakespeare, and a file of the _Illustrated London News_. +"A man who read Shakespeare and the _Illustrated London News_ had little +to contribute to + + Come a ti yi yoopee + Ti yi ya!" + +O. Henry's ranch experiences in Texas were largely confined to a sheep +ranch. The setting of his "Last of the Troubadours" is a sheep ranch. I +nominate it as the best range story in American fiction. + +"Cowboy Songs" and "Horses" are separate chapters following this. The +literature cited in them is mostly range literature, although precious +little in all the songs rises to the status of poetry. A considerable +part of the literature listed under "Texas Rangers" and "The Bad Man +Tradition" bears on range life. + + +ABBOTT, E. C., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. We _Pointed Them North_, +New York, 1939. Abbott, better known as Teddy Blue, used to give his +address as Three Duce Ranch, Gilt Edge, Montana. Helena Huntington +Smith, who actually wrote and arranged his reminiscences, instead of +currying him down and putting a checkrein on him, spurred him in the +flanks and told him to swaller his head. He did. This book is franker +about the women a rollicky cowboy was likely to meet in town than all +the other range books put together. The fact that Teddy Blue's wife was +a half-breed Indian, daughter of Granville Stuart, and that Indian women +do not object to the truth about sex life may account in part for his +frankness. The book is mighty good reading. OP. + +ADAMS, ANDY. _The Log of a Cowboy_ (1903). In 1882, at the age of +twenty-three, Andy Adams came to Texas from Indiana. For about ten years +he traded horses and drove them up the trail. He knew cattle people +and their ranges from Brownsville to Caldwell, Kansas. After mining for +another decade, he began to write. If all other books on trail driving +were destroyed, a reader could still get a just and authentic conception +of trail men, trail work, range cattle, cow horses, and the cow country +in general from _The Log of a Cowboy_. It is a novel without a plot, a +woman, character development, or sustained dramatic incidents; yet it +is the classic of the occupation. It is a simple, straightaway narrative +that takes a trail herd from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line, the +hands talking as naturally as cows chew cuds, every page illuminated +by an easy intimacy with the life. Adams wrote six other books. _The +Outlet, A Texas Matchmaker, Cattle Brands_, and _Reed Anthony, Cowman_ +all make good reading. _Wells Brothers_ and _The Ranch on the Beaver_ +are stories for boys. I read them with pleasure long after I was grown. +All but _The Log of a Cowboy_ are OP, published by Houghton Mifflin, +Boston. + +ADAMS, RAMON F. _Cowboy Lingo_, Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy +words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with +explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. _Western +Words_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. _Come an' +Get It_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition +of chuck wagon cooks. + +ALDRIDGE, REGINALD. _Ranch Notes_, London, 1884. Aldridge, an educated +Englishman, got into the cattle business before, in the late eighties, +it boomed itself flat. His book is not important, but it is maybe +a shade better than _Ranch Life in Southern Kansas and the Indian +Territory_ by Benjamin S. Miller, New York, 1896. Aldridge and Miller +were partners, and each writes kindly about the other. + +ALLEN, JOHN HOUGHTON. _Southwest_, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1952. A +chemical compound of highly impressionistic autobiographic nonfiction +and highly romantic fiction and folk tales. The setting is a ranch of +Mexican tradition in the lower border country of Texas, also saloons and +bawdy houses of border towns. Vaqueros and their work in the brush are +intensely vivid. The author has a passion for superlatives and for "a +joyous cruelty, a good cruelty, a young cruelty." + +ARNOLD, OREN, and HALE, J. P. _Hot Irons_, Macmillan, New York, 1940. +Technique and lore of cattle brands. OP. + +AUSTIN, MARY. _The Flock_, Boston, 1906, OP. Mary Austin saw the +meanings of things; she was a creator. Very quietly she sublimated life +into the literature of pictures and emotions. + +Australian ranching is not foreign to American ranching. The best book +on the subject that I have found is _Pastures New_, by R. V. Billis and +A. S. Kenyon, London, 1930. + +BARNARD, EVAN G. ("Parson"). _A Rider of the Cherokee Strip_, Houghton +Mifflin, Boston, 1936. Savory with little incidents and cowboy humor. +OP. + +BARNES, WILL C. _Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp_, Chicago, 1920. OP. +Good simple narratives. _Apaches and Longhorns_, Los Angeles, 1941. +Autobiography. OP. _Western Grazing Grounds and Forest Ranges_, Chicago, +1913. OP. Governmentally factual. Barnes was in the U.S. Forest Service +and was informed. + +BARROWS, JOHN R. _Ubet_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1934. Excellent on Northwest; +autobiographical. OP. + +BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924. Vivid, +economical stories of "The Warriors of the Pecos" (Billy the Kid and the +troubles on John Chisum's ranch-empire), of Butch Cassidy and his Wild +Bunch in their Wyoming hide-outs, of the way frontier Texans fought +Mexicans and Comanches over the open ranges. Research clogs the style of +many historians; perhaps it is just as well that Bechdolt did not search +more extensively into the arcana of footnotes. OP. + +BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Tall Tales from Texas Cow Camps_, Dallas, 1934. The +tales are tall all right and true to cows that never saw a milk bucket. +OP. Reprinted 1946 by Haldeman-Julius, Girard, Kansas. + +BOREIN, EDWARD. _Etchings of the West_, edited by Edward S. Spaulding, +Santa Barbara, California, 1950. OP. A very handsome folio; primarily a +reproduction of sketches, many of which are on range subjects. Ed +Borein tells more in them than hundreds of windbags have told in tens of +thousands of pages. They are beautiful and authentic, even if they are +what post-impressionists call "documentary." Believers in the True Faith +say now that Leonardo da Vinci is documentary in his painting of the +Lord's Supper. Ed Borein was a great friend of Charlie Russell's but not +an imitator. _Etchings of the West_ will soon be among the rarities of +Western books. + +BOWER, B. M. _Chip of the Flying U_, New York, 1904. Charles Russell +illustrated this and three other Bower novels. Contrary to his denial, +he is supposed to have been the prototype for Chip. A long time ago I +read _Chit of the Flying U_ and _The Lure of the Dim Trails_ and thought +them as good as Eugene Manlove Rhodes's stories. That they have faded +almost completely out of memory is a commentary on my memory; just the +same, a character as well named as Chip should, if he have substance +beyond his name, leave an impression even on weak memories. B. M. +Bower was a woman, Bower being the name of her first husband. A Montana +cowpuncher named "Fiddle Back" Sinclair was her second, and Robert +Ellsworth Cowan became the third. Under the name of Bud Cowan he +published a book of reminiscences entitled _Range Rider_ (Garden City, +N. Y., 1930). B. M. Bower wrote a slight introduction to it; neither he +nor she says anything about being married to the other. In the best +of her fiction she is truer to life than he is in a good part of his +nonfiction. Her chaste English is partly explained in an autobiographic +note contributed to _Adventure_ magazine, December 10, 1924. Her +restless father had moved the family from Minnesota to Montana. There, +she wrote, he "taught me music and how to draw plans of houses (he was +an architect among other things) and to read _Paradise Lost_ and Dante +and H. Rider Haggard and the Bible and the Constitution--and my taste +has been extremely catholic ever since." + +BRANCH, E. DOUGLAS. _The Cowboy and His Interpreters_, New York, 1926. +Useful bibliography on range matters, and excellent criticism of two +kinds of fiction writers. OP. + +BRATT, JOHN. _Trails of Yesterday_, Chicago, 1921. John Bratt, +twenty-two years old, came to America from England in 1864, went west, +and by 1870 was ranching on the Platte. He became a big operator, but +his reminiscences, beautifully printed, are stronger on camp cooks and +other hired hands than on cattle "kings." Nobody ever heard a cowman +call himself or another cowman a king. "Cattle king" is journalese. + +BRISBIN, GENERAL JAMES S. _The Beef Bonanza; or, How to Get Rich on the +Plains_, Philadelphia, 1881. One of several books of its decade designed +to appeal to eastern and European interest in ranching as an investment. +Figureless and with more human interest is _Prairie Experiences in +Handling Cattle and Sheep_, by Major W. Shepherd (of England), London? +1884. + +BRONSON, EDGAR BEECHER. _Cowboy Life on the Western Plains_, Chicago, +1910. _The Red Blooded_, Chicago, 1910. Freewheeling nonfiction. + +BROOKS, BRYANT B. _Memoirs_, Gardendale, California, 1939. The book +never was published; it was merely printed to satisfy the senescent +vanity of a property-worshiping, cliche-parroting reactionary who made +money ranching before he became governor of Wyoming. He tells a few good +anecdotes of range days. Numerous better books pertaining to the range +are NOT listed here; this mediocrity represents a particular type. + +BROTHERS, MARY HUDSON. A _Pecos Pioneer_, University of New Mexico +Press, Albuquerque, 1943. Superior to numerous better-known books. See +comment under "Women Pioneers." + +BROWN, DEE, and SCHMITT, MARTIN F. _Trail Driving Days_, Scribner's, +New York, 1952. Primarily a pictorial record, more on the side of +action than of realism, except for post-trailing period. Excellent +bibliography. + +BURTON, HARLEY TRUE. A _History of the J A Ranch_, Austin, 1928. Facts +about one of the greatest ranches of Texas and its founder, Charles +Goodnight. OP. + +CALL, HUGHIE. _Golden Fleece_, Boston, 1942. Hughie married a sheepman, +and after mothering the range as well as children with him for a +quarter of a century, concluded that Montana is still rather masculine. +Especially good on domestic life and on sheepherders. OP. + +CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, edited by E. E. Dale, Boston, 1930. +OP. Good on tough hombres. + +CLAY, JOHN. My _Life on the Range_, privately printed, Chicago, 1924. +OP. John Clay, an educated Scot, came to Canada in 1879 and in time +managed some of the largest British-owned ranches of North America. His +book is the best of all sources on British-owned ranches. It is just as +good on cowboys and sheepherders. Clay was a fine gentleman in addition +to being a canny businessman in the realm of cattle and land. He +appreciated the beautiful and had a sense of style. + +CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _The Cattle on a Thousand Hills_, Huntington +Library, San Marino, California, 1941 (revised, 1951). Scholarly work on +Spanish-Mexican ranching in California. + +CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. _No Life for a Lady_, Houghton Mifflin, +Boston, 1941. Best book on range life from a woman's point of view ever +published. The setting is New Mexico; humor and humanity prevail. + +COLLINGS, ELLSWORTH. _The 101 Ranch_, University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, 1937. The 101 Ranch was far more than a ranch; it was a unique +institution. The 101 Ranch Wild West Show is emphasized in this book. +OP. + +COLLINS, DENNIS. _The Indians' Last Fight or the Dull Knife Raid_, Press +of the Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, n.d. Nearly half of this +very scarce book deals autobiographically with frontier range life. +Realistic, strong, written from the perspective of a man who "wanted +something to read" in camp. + +COLLINS, HUBERT E. _Warpath and Cattle Trail_, New York, 1928. The +pageant of trail life as it passed by a stage stand in Oklahoma; +autobiographical. Beautifully printed and illustrated. Far better than +numerous other out-of-print books that bring much higher prices in the +second-hand market. + +CONN, WILLIAM (translator). _Cow-Boys and Colonels: Narrative of a +Journey across the Prairie and over the Black Hills of Dakota_, London, +1887; New York (1888?). More of a curiosity than an illuminator, +the book is a sparsely annotated translation of _Dans les Montagnes +Rocheuses_, by Le Baron E. de Mandat-Grancey, Paris, October, 1884. (The +only copy I have examined is of 1889 printing.) It is a gossipy account +of an excursion made in 1883-84; cowboys and ranching are viewed pretty +much as a sophisticated Parisian views a zoo. The author must have +felt more at home with the fantastic Marquis de Mores of Medora, North +Dakota. The book appeared at a time when European capital was being +invested in western ranches. It was followed by _La Breche aux Buffles: +Un Ranch Francais dans le Dakota_, Paris, 1889. Not translated so far as +I know. + +COOK, JAMES H. _Fifty Years on the Old Frontier_, 1923. Cook came to +Texas soon after the close of the Civil War and became a brush popper +on the Frio River. Nothing better on cow work in the brush country and +trail driving in the seventies has appeared. OP. A good deal of the +same material was put into Cook's _Longhorn Cowboy_ (Putnam's, 1942), to +which the pushing Mr. Howard R. Driggs attached his name. + +COOLIDGE, DANE. _Texas Cowboys_, 1937. Thin, but genuine. _Arizona +Cowboys_, 1938. _Old California Cowboys_, 1939. All well illustrated by +photographs and all OP. + +Cox, JAMES. _The Cattle Industry of Texas and Adjacent Territory_, St. +Louis, 1895. Contains many important biographies and much good history. +In 1928 I traded a pair of store-bought boots to my uncle Neville Dobie +for his copy of this book. A man would have to throw in a young Santa +Gertrudis bull now to get a copy. + +CRAIG, JOHN R. _Ranching with lords and Commons_, Toronto, 1903. During +the great boom of the early 1880'S in the range business, Craig promoted +a cattle company in London and then managed a ranch in western Canada. +His book is good on mismanaged range business and it is good on people, +especially lords, and the land. He attributes to De Quincey a Latin +quotation that properly, I think, belongs to Thackeray. He quotes Hamlin +Garland: "The trail is poetry; a wagon road is prose; the railroad, +arithmetic." He was probably not so good at ranching as at writing. His +book supplements _From Home to Home_, by Alex. Staveley Hill, New York, +1885. Hill was a major investor in the Oxley Ranch, and was, I judge, +the pompous cheat and scoundrel that Craig said he was. + +CRAWFORD, LEWIS F. _Rekindling Camp Fires: The Exploits of Ben Arnold +(Connor)_, Bismarck, North Dakota, 1926. OP. The skill of Lewis F. +Crawford of the North Dakota Historical Society made this a richer +autobiography than if Arnold had been unaided. He was squaw man, scout, +trapper, soldier, deserter, prospector, and actor in other occupations +as well as cowboy. He had a fierce sense of justice that extended to +Indians. His outlook was wider than that of the average ranch hand. +_Badlands and Broncho Trails_, Bismarck, 1922, is a slight book of +simple narratives that catches the tune of the Badlands life. OP. +_Ranching Days in Dakota_, Wirth Brothers, Baltimore, 1950, is good on +horse-raising and the terrible winter of 1886-87. + +CULLEY, JOHN. _Cattle, Horses, and Men_, Los Angeles, 1940. Much about +the noted Bell Ranch of New Mexico. Especially good on horses. Culley +was educated at Oxford. When I visited him in California, he had on his +table a presentation copy of a book by Walter Pater. His book has the +luminosity that comes from cultivated intelligence. OP. + +DACY, GEORGE F. _Four Centuries of Florida Ranching_, St. Louis, 1940. +OP. In _Crooked Trails_, Frederic Remington has a chapter (illustrated) +on "Cracker Cowboys of Florida," and _Lake Okeechobee_, by A. J. Hanna +and Kathryn Abbey, Indianapolis, 1948, treats of modern ranching +in Florida, but the range people of that state have been too +lethargic-minded to write about themselves and no Marjorie Kinnan +Rawlings has settled in their midst to interpret them. + +DALE, E. E. _The Range Cattle Industry_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1930. +Economic aspects. Bibliography. _Cow Country,_ Norman, Oklahoma, 1942. +Bully tales and easy history. Both books are OP. + +DANA, RICHARD HENRY. _Two Years Before the Mast_, 1841. This transcript +of reality has been reprinted many times. It is the classic of the hide +and tallow trade of California. + +DAVID, ROBERT D. _Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_, Casper, Wyoming, 1932. +Much of the "Johnson County War" between cowmen and thieving nesters. +OP. + +DAYTON, EDSON C. _Dakota Days_. Privately printed by the author at +Clifton Springs, New York, 1937--three hundred copies only. Dayton was +more sheepman than cowman. He had a spiritual content. His very use of +the word _intellectual_ on the second page of his book; his estimate +of Milton and Gladstone, adjacent to talk about a frontier saloon; his +consciousness of his own inner growth--something no extravert cowboy +ever noticed, usually because he did not have it; his quotation to +express harmony with nature: + + I have some kinship to the bee, + I am boon brother with the tree; + The breathing earth is part of me-- + +all indicate a refinement that any gambler could safely bet originated +in the East and not in Texas or the South. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _A Vaquero of the Brush Country_, 1929. Much on border +troubles over cattle, the "skinning war," running wild cattle in the +brush, mustanging, trail driving; John Young's narrative, told in the +first person, against range backgrounds. _The Longhorns_, illustrated by +Tom Lea, 1941. History of the Longhorn breed, psychology of stampedes; +days of maverickers and mavericks; stories of individual lead steers +and outlaws of the range; stories about rawhide and many other related +subjects. The book attempts to reveal the blend made by man, beast, and +range. Both books published by Little, Brown, Boston. _The Mustangs_, +1952. See under "Horses." + +FORD, GUS L. _Texas Cattle Brands_, Dallas, 1936. A catalogue of brands. +OP. + +FRENCH, WILLIAM. _Some Recollections of a Western Ranchman_, London, +1927. A civilized Englishman remembers. OP. + +GANN, WALTER. _The Trail Boss_, Boston, 1937. Faithful fiction, with a +steer that Charlie Russell should have painted. OP. + +GARD, WAYNE. _Frontier Justice_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, +1949. This book could be classified under "The Bad Man Tradition," +but it has authentic chapters on fence-cutting, the so-called "Johnson +County Cattlemen's War" of Wyoming, and other range "difficulties." +Clearly written from an equable point of view. Useful bibliography of +range books. + +GIBSON, J. W. (Watt). _Recollections of a Pioneer_, St. Joseph, Missouri +(about 1912). Like many another book concerned only incidentally with +range life, this contains essential information on the subject. Here it +is trailing cattle from Missouri to California in the 1840's and +1850's. Cattle driving from the East to California was not economically +important. The outstanding account on the subject is _A Log of the +Texas-California Cattle Trail, 1854_, by James G. Bell, edited +by J. Evetts Haley, published in the _Southwestern Historical +Quarterly_, 1932 (Vols. XXXV and XXXVI). Also reprinted as a separate. + +{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)} + + +GILFILLAN, ARCHER B. _Sheep_, Boston, 1929. With humor and grace, this +sheepherder, who collected books on Samuel Pepys, tells more about sheep +dogs, sheep nature, and sheepherder life than any other writer I know. +OP. + +GIPSON, FRED. _Fabulous Empire_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946. +Biography of Zack Miller of the 101 Ranch and 101 Wild West Show. + +GOODWYN, FRANK. _Life on the King Ranch_, Crowell, New York, 1951. The +author was reared on the King Ranch. He is especially refreshing on the +vaqueros, their techniques and tales. + +GRAY, FRANK S. _Pioneer Adventures_, 1948, and _Pioneering in Southwest +Texas_, 1949, both printed by the author, Copperas Cove, Texas. These +books are listed because the author has the perspective of a civilized +gentleman and integrates home life on frontier ranches with range work. + +GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. Outstanding +horse lore. OP. + +HAGEDORN, HERMANN. _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_, Boston, 1921. A better +book than Roosevelt's own _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_. OP. + +HALEY, J. EVETTS. _The XIT Ranch of Texas_, Chicago, 1929. As county and +town afford the basis for historical treatment of many areas, ranches +have afforded bases for various range country histories. Of such this is +tops. A lawsuit for libel brought by one or more individuals mentioned +in the book put a stop to the selling of copies by the publishers and +made it very "rare." _Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman_, Boston, +1936, reissued by University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Goodnight, +powerful individual and extraordinary observer, summed up in himself the +whole life of range and trail. Haley's book, packed with realities of +incident and character, paints him against a mighty background. _George +W. Littlefield, Texan_, University of Oklahoma Presss Norman, Okla., +1943, is a lesser biography of a lesser man. + +HAMILTON, W. H. _Autobiography of a Cowman_, in _South Dakota Historical +Collections_, XIX (1938), 475-637. A first-rate narrative of life on the +Dakota range. + +HAMNER, LAURA V. _Short Grass and Longhorns_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1943. +Sketches of Panhandle ranches and ranch people. OP. + +HARRIS, FRANK. _My Reminiscences as a Cowboy_, 1930. A blatant farrago +of lies, included in this list because of its supreme worthlessness. +However, some judges might regard the debilitated and puerile lying in +_The Autobiography of Frank Tarbeaux_, as told to Donald H. Clarke, New +York, 1930, as equally worthless. + +HART, JOHN A., and Others. _History of Pioneer Days in Texas and +Oklahoma_. No date or place of publication; no table of contents. This +slight book was enlarged into _Pioneer Days in the Southwest from 1850 +to 1879_, "Contributions by Charles Goodnight, Emanuel Dubbs, John A. +Hart and Others," Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1909. Good on the way frontier +ranch families lived. The writers show no sense of humor and no idea of +being literary. + +HASTINGS, FRANK S. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. OP. +Hastings was urbane, which means he had perspective; "Old Gran'pa" is +the most pulling cowhorse story I know. + +HENRY, O. _Heart of the West_. Interpretative stories of Texas range +life, which O. Henry for a time lived. His range stories are scattered +through several volumes. "The Last of the Troubadours" is a classic. + +HENRY, STUART. _Our Great American Plains_, New York, 1930. OP. An +unworshipful, anti-Philistinic picture of Abilene, Kansas, when it was +at the end of the Chisholm Trail. While not a primary range book, this +is absolutely unique in its analysis of cow-town society, both citizens +and drovers. Stuart Henry came to Abilene as a boy in 1868. His brother +was the first mayor of the town. After graduating from the University +of Kansas in 1881, he in time acquired "the habit of authorship." He +had written a book on London and _French Essays and Profiles_ and _Hours +with Famous Parisians_ before he returned to Kansas for a subject. +Some of his non-complimentary characterizations of westerners aroused +a mighty roar among panegyrists of the West. They did not try to refute +his anecdote about the sign of the Bull Head Saloon. This sign showed +the whole of a great red bull. The citizens of Abilene were used to +seeing bulls driven through town and they could go out any day and +see bulls with cows on the prairie. Nature might be good, but any art +suggesting nature's virility was indecent. There was such an uprising +of Victorian taste that what distinguishes a bull from a cow had to be +painted out. A similar artistic operation had to be performed on the +bull signifying Bull Durham tobacco--once the range favorite for making +cigarettes. + +HILL, J. L. _The End of the Cattle Trail_, Long Beach, California [May, +1924]. Rare and meaty pamphlet. + +HOLDEN, W. C. _Rollie Burns_, Dallas, 1932. Biography of a Plains +cowman. OP. _The Spur Ranch_, Boston, 1934. History of a great Texas +ranch. OP. + +HORN, TOM. _Life of Tom Horn... Written by Himself, together with His +Letters and Statements by His Friends, A Vindication_. Published (for +John C. Coble) by the Louthan Book Company, Denver, 1904. Who wrote the +book has been somewhat in debate. John C. Coble's name is signed to the +preface attributing full authorship to Horn. Of Pennsylvania background, +wealthy and educated, he had employed Horn as a stock detective on his +Wyoming ranch. He had the means and ability to see the book through the +press. A letter from his wife to me, from Cheyenne, June 21,1926, says +that Horn wrote the book. Charles H. Coe, who succeeded Horn as stock +detective in Wyoming, says in _Juggling a Rope_ (Pendleton, Oregon, +1927, P. 108), that Horn wrote it. I have a copy, bought from Fred +Rosenstock of the Bargain Book Store in Denver, who got it from Hattie +Horner Louthan, of Denver also. For years she taught English in the +University of Denver, College of Commerce, and is the author of more +than one textbook. The Louthan Book Company of Denver was owned by her +family. This copy of _Tom Horn_ contains her bookplate. On top of the +first page of the preface is written in pencil: "I wrote this--`Ghost +wrote.' H. H. L." Then, penciled at the top of the first page of +"Closing Word," is "I wrote this." + +Glendolene Myrtle Kimmell was a schoolteacher in the country where Tom +Horn operated. As her picture shows, she was lush and beautiful. Pages +287-309 print "Miss Kimmell's Statement." She did her best to keep Tom +Horn from hanging. She frankly admired him and, it seems to me, loved +him. Jay Monaghan, _The Legend of Tom Horn, Last of the Bad Men_, +Indianapolis and New York, 1946, says (p. 267), without discussion or +proof, that after Horn was hanged and buried Miss Kimmell was "writing +a long manuscript about a Sir Galahad horseman who was `crushed between +the grinding stones of two civilizations,' but she never found a +publisher who thought her book would sell. It was entitled _The True +Life of Tom Horn_." + +The main debate has been over Horn himself. The books about him are +not highly important, but they contribute to a spectacular and highly +controversial phase of range history, the so-called Johnson County War +of Wyoming. Mercer's _Banditti of the Plains_, Mokler's _History of +Natrona County, Wyoming_, Canton's _Frontier Trails_, and David's +_Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_ (all listed in this chapter) are primary +sources on the subject. + +HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Cowboy_, New York, 1897. Exposition +not nearly so good as Philip Ashton Rollins' _The Cowboy. North of +36_, New York, 1923. Historical novel of the Chisholm Trail. The best +character in it is Old Alamo, lead steer. A young woman owner of the +herd trails with it. The success of the romance caused Emerson Hough +to advise his friend Andy Adams to put a woman in a novel about trail +driving--so Andy Adams told me. Adams replied that a woman with a trail +herd would be as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon and that he would +not violate reality by having her. For a devastation of Hough's use of +history in _North of 36_ see the Appendix in Stuart Henry's _Conquering +Our Great American Plains_. Yet the novel does have the right temper. + +HOYT, HENRY F. _A Frontier Doctor_, Boston, 1929. Texas Panhandle and +New Mexico during Billy the Kid days. Reminiscences. + +HUNT, FRAZIER. _Cat Mossman: Last of the Great Cowmen_, illustrated by +Ross Santee, Hastings House, New York, 1951. Few full-length biographies +of big operators among cowmen have been written. This reveals not only +Cap Mossman's operations on enormous ranges, but the man. + +HUNTER, J. MARVIN (compiler). _The Trail Drivers of Texas_, two volumes, +Bandera, Texas, 1920, 1923. Reprinted in one volume, 1925. All OP. +George W. Saunders, founder of the Old Time Trail Drivers Association +and for many years president, prevailed on hundreds of old-time range +and trail men to write autobiographic sketches. He used to refer to +Volume II as the "second edition"; just the same, he was not ignorant, +and he had a passion for the history of his people. The chronicles, +though chaotic in arrangement, comprise basic source material. An index +to the one-volume edition of _The Trail Drivers of Texas_ is printed as +an appendix to _The Chisholm Trail and Other Routes_, by T. U. Taylor, +San Antonio, 1936--a hodgepodge. + +JAMES, WILL. _Cowboys North and South_, New York, 1924. _The Drifting +Cowboy_, 1925. _Smoky_--a cowhorse story--1930. Several other books, +mostly repetitious. Will James knew his frijoles, but burned them up +before he died, in 1942. He illustrated all his books. The best one is +his first, written before he became sophisticated with life--without +becoming in the right way more sophisticated in the arts of drawing +and writing. _Lone Cowboy: My Life Story_ (1930) is without a date or a +geographical location less generalized than the space between Canada and +Mexico. + +JAMES, W. S. _Cowboy Life in Texas_, Chicago, 1893. A genuine cowboy who +became a genuine preacher and wrote a book of validity. This is the best +of several books of reminiscences by cowboy preachers, some of whom are +as lacking in the real thing as certain cowboy artists. Next to _Cowboy +Life in Texas_, in its genre, might come _From the Plains to the +Pulpit_, by J. W. Anderson, Houston, 1907. The second edition (reset) +has six added chapters. The third, and final, edition, Goose Creek, +Texas, 1922, again reset, has another added chapter. J. B. Cranfill was +a trail driver from a rough range before he became a Baptist preacher +and publisher. His bulky _Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas_, 1916, is +downright and concrete. + +KELEHER, WILLIAM A. _Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item_, Santa Fe, +1942. The Maxwell grant of 1,714,764 acres on the Cimarron River was at +one time perhaps the most famous tract of land in the West. This history +brings in ranching only incidentally; it focuses on the land business, +including grabs by Catron, Dorsey, and other affluent politicians. +Perhaps stronger on characters involved during long litigation over +the land, and containing more documentary evidence, is _The Grant That +Maxwell Bought_, by F. Stanley, The World Press, Denver, 1952 (a folio +of 256 pages in an edition of 250 copies at $15.00). Keleher is a +lawyer; Stanley is a priest. Harvey Fergusson in his historical novel +_Grant of Kingdom_, New York, 1950, vividly supplements both. Keleher's +second book, _The Fabulous Frontier_, Rydal, Santa Fe, 1945, illuminates +connections between ranch lands and politicians; principally it sketches +the careers of A. B. Fall, John Chisum, Pat Garrett, Oliver Lee, Jack +Thorp, Gene Rhodes, and other New Mexico notables. + +KENT, WILLIAM. _Reminiscences of Outdoor Life_, San Francisco, 1929. OP. +This is far from being a straight-out range book. It is the easy talk of +an urbane man associated with ranches and ranch people who was equally +at home in a Chicago office and among fellow congressmen. He had a +country-going nature and gusto for character. + +KING, FRANK M. _Wranglin' the Past_, Los Angeles, 1935. King went all +the way from Texas to California, listening and looking. OP. His second +book, _Longhorn Trail Drivers_ (1940), is worthless. His _Pioneer +Western Empire Builders_ (1946) and _Mavericks_ (1947) are no better. +Most of the contents of these books appeared in _Western Livestock +Journal_, Los Angeles. + +KUPPER, WINIFRED. _The Golden Hoof_, New York, 1945. Story of the sheep +and sheep people of the Southwest. Facts, but, above that, truth that +comes only through imagination and sympathy. OP. _Texas Sheepman_, +University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951. The edited reminiscences of +Robert Maudslay. He drove sheep all over the West, and lived up to the +ideals of an honest Englishman in writing as well as in ranching. He had +a sense of humor. + +LAMPMAN, CLINTON PARKS. _The Great Western Trail_, New York, 1939. OP. +In the upper bracket of autobiographic chronicles, by a sensitive man +who never had the provincial point of view. Lampman contemplated as well +as observed He felt the pathos of human destiny. + +LANG, LINCOLN A. _Ranching with Roosevelt_, Philadelphia, 1926. +Civilized. OP. + +LEWIS, ALFRED HENRY. _Wolfville_ (1897) and other Wolfville books. All +OP. Sketches and rambling stories faithful to cattle backgrounds; flavor +and humanity through fictionized anecdote. "The Old Cattleman," who +tells all the Wolfville stories, is a substantial and flavorsome +creation. + +LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Skilfully +written biographies. OP. + +MCCARTY, JOHN L. _Maverick Town_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. +Tascosa, Texas, on the Canadian River, with emphasis on the guns. + +MCCAULEY, JAMES EMMIT. _A Stove-up Cowboy's Story_, with Introduction +by John A. Lomas and Illustrations by Tom Lea, Austin, 1943. OP. "My +parents be poor like Job's turkey," McCauley wrote. He was a common +cowhand with uncommon saltiness of speech. He wrote as he talked. "God +pity the wight for whom this vivid, honest story has no interest," John +Lomax pronounced. It is one of several brief books of reminiscences +brought out in small editions in the "Range Life Series," under the +editorship of J. Frank Dobie, by the Texas Folklore Society. The two +others worth having are _A Tenderfoot Kid on Gyp Water_, by Carl Peters +Benedict (1943) and _Ed Nichols Rode a Horse_, as told to Ruby Nichols +Cutbirth (1943). + +MCCOY, JOSEPH G. _Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and +Southwest_, Kansas City, 1874. In 1867, McCoy established at Abilene, +Kansas, terminus of the Chisholm Trail, the first market upon which +Texas drovers could depend. He went broke and thereupon put his sense, +information, and vinegar into the first of all range histories. It is a +landmark. Of the several reprinted editions, the one preferred is that +edited by Ralph P. Bieber, with an information-packed introduction and +many illuminating notes, Glendale, California, 1940. This is Volume VIII +in the "Southwest Historical Series," edited by Bieber, and the index to +it is included in the general index to the whole series. Available is an +edition published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. About the +best of original sources on McCoy is _Twenty Years of Kansas City's Live +Stock and Traders_, by Cuthbert Powell, Kansas City, 1893--one of the +rarities. + +MACKAY, MALCOLM S. _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, New York, 1925. Among +the best of civilized range books. Fresh observations and something +besides ordinary narrative. OP. Illustrations by Russell. + +MANDAT-GRANCEY, BARON E. DE. See Conn, William. + +MERCER, A. S. _Banditti of the Plains, or The Cattlemen's Invasion of +Wyoming in 1892_, Cheyenne, 1894; reprinted at Chicago in 1923 +under title of _Powder River Invasion, War on the Rustlers in 1892_, +"Rewritten by John Mercer Boots." Reprinted 1935, with Foreword by James +Mitchell Clarke, by the Grabhorn Press, San Francisco. All editions +OP. Bloody troubles between cowmen and nesters in Wyoming, the "Johnson +County War." For more literature on the subject, consult the entry under +Tom Horn in this chapter. + +MILLER, LEWIS B. _Saddles and Lariats_, Boston, 1912. A fictional +chronicle, based almost entirely on facts, of a trail herd that tried to +get to California in the fifties. The author was a Texan. OP. + +MOKLER, ALFRED JAMES. _History of Natrona County, Wyoming, 1888-1922_, +Chicago, 1923. Contains some good material on the "Johnson County War." +This book is listed as an illustration of many county histories of +western states containing concrete information on ranching. Other +examples of such county histories are S. D. Butcher's _Pioneer History +of Custer County_ (Nebraska), Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1901; _History of +Jack County_ (Texas), Jacksboro, Texas (about 1935); _Historical Sketch +of Parker County and Weatherford, Texas_, St. Louis, 1877. + +MORA, JO. _Trail Dust and Saddle Leather_, Scribner's, New York, 1946. +No better exposition anywhere, and here tellingly illustrated, of +reatas, spurs, bits, saddles, and other gear. _Californios_, Doubleday, +Garden City, N. Y., 1949. Profusely illustrated. Largely on vaquero +techniques. Jo Mora knew the California vaquero, but did not know the +range history of other regions and, therefore, judged as unique what was +widespread. + +NIMMO, JOSEPH, JR. _The Range and Ranch Cattle Traffic in the +Western States and Territories_, Executive Document No. 267, House of +Representatives, 48th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D. C., 1885. +Printed also in one or more other government documents. A statistical +record concerning grazing lands, trail driving, railroad shipping of +cattle, markets, foreign investments in ranches, etc. This document +is the outstanding example of factual material to be found in various +government publications, Volume III of the _Tenth Census of the United +States_ (1880) being another. _The Western Range: Letter from the +Secretary of Agriculture_, etc (a "letter" 620 pages long), United +States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1936, lists many +government publications both state and national. + +NORDYKE, LEWIS. _Cattle Empire_, Morrow, New York, 1949. History, +largely political, of the XIT Ranch. Not so careful in documentation as +Haley's _XIT Ranch of Texas_, and not so detailed on ranch operations, +but thoroughly illuminative on the not-heroic side of big businessmen in +big land deals. The two histories complement each other. + +O'NEIL, JAMES B. _They Die But Once_, New York, 1935. The biographical +narrative of a Tejano who vigorously swings a very big loop; fine +illustration of the fact that a man can lie authentically. OP. + +OSGOOD, E. S. _The Day of the Cattleman_, Minneapolis, 1929. Excellent +history and excellent bibliography. Northwest. OP. + +PEAKE, ORA BROOKS. _The Colorado Range Cattle Industry_, Clark, +Glendale, California, 1937. Dry on facts, but sound in scholarship. +Bibliography. + +PELZER, LOUIS. _The Cattlemen's Frontier_, Clark, Glendale, California, +1936. Economic treatment, faithful but static. Bibliography. + +PENDER, ROSE. A _Lady's Experiences in the Wild West in 1883_, London +(1883?); second printing with a new preface, 1888. Rose Pender and +two fellow-Englishmen went through Wyoming ranch country, stopping on +ranches, and she, a very intelligent, spirited woman, saw realities that +few other chroniclers suggest. This is a valuable bit of social history. + +PERKINS, CHARLES E. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California, 1927. +_The Phantom Bull_, Boston, 1932. Fictional narratives of veracity; +literature. OP. + +PILGRIM, THOMAS (under pseudonym of Arthur Morecamp). _Live Boys; +or Charley and Nasho in Texas_, Boston, 1878. The chronicle, little +fictionized, of a trail drive to Kansas. So far as I know, this is the +first narrative printed on cattle trailing or cowboy life that is to be +accounted authentic. The book is dated from Kerrville, Texas. + +PONTING, TOM CANDY. _The Life of Tom Candy Ponting_, Decatur, Illinois +[1907], reprinted, with Notes and Introduction by Herbert O. Brayer, +by Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. An account of buying +cattle in Texas in 1853, driving them to Illinois, and later shipping +some to New York. Accounts of trail driving before about 1870 have been +few and obscurely printed. The stark diary kept by George C. Duffield +of a drive from San Saba County, Texas, to southern Iowa in 1866 is as +realistic--often agonizing--as anything extant on this much romanticized +subject. It is published in _Annals of Iowa_, Des Moines, IV (April, +1924), 243-62. + +POTTER, JACK. Born in 1864, son of the noted "fighting parson," Andrew +Jackson Potter, Jack became a far-known trail boss and ranch manager. +His first published piece, "Coming Down the Trail," appeared in _The +Trail Drivers of Texas_, compiled by J. Marvin Hunter, and is about +the livest thing in that monumental collection. Jack Potter wrote for +various Western magazines and newspapers. He was more interested in +cow nature than in gun fights; he had humor and imagination as well as +mastery of facts and a tangy language, though small command over form. +His privately printed booklets are: _Lead Steer_ (with Introduction by +J. Frank Dobie), Clayton, N. M., 1939; _Cattle Trails of the Old +West_ (with map), Clayton, N.M., 1935; _Cattle Trails of the Old West_ +(virtually a new booklet), Clayton, N. M., 1939. All OP. + +_Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States_, +Denver, 1905. Biographies of big cowmen and history based on genuine +research. The richest in matter of all the hundred-dollar-and-up rare +books in its field. + +RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD, and BARNES, WILL C. _Cattle_, Garden City, N. Y., +1930. A succinct and vivid focusing of much scattered history. OP. + +RAK, MARY KIDDER. _A Cowman s Wife_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934. +Unglossed, impersonal realism about life on a small modern Arizona +ranch. _Mountain Cattle_, 1936, and OP, is an extension of the first +book. + +REMINGTON, FREDERIC. _Pony Tracks_, New York, 1895 (now published by +Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio); _Crooked Trails_, New York, +1898. Sketches and pictures. + +RHODES, EUGENE MANLOVE. _West Is West, Once in the Saddle, Good Men and +True, Stepsons of Light_, and other novels. "Gene" Rhodes had the "right +tune." He achieved a style that can be called literary. _The Hired Man +on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, is a biography of the writer. Perhaps +"Paso Por Aqui" will endure as his masterpiece. Rhodes had an intense +loyalty to his land and people; he was as gay, gallant, and witty as +he was earnest. More than most Western writers, Rhodes was conscious of +art. He had the common touch and also he was a writer for writing men. +The elements of simplicity and the right kind of sophistication, always +with generosity and with an unflagging zeal for the rights of human +beings, were mixed in him. The reach of any ample-natured man exceeds +his grasp. Rhodes was ample-natured, but he cannot be classed as great +because his grasp was too often disproportionately short of the long +reach. His fiction becomes increasingly dated. + +_The Best Novels and, Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes_, edited by Frank +V. Dearing, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1949, contains an introduction, +with plenty of anecdotes and too much enthusiasm, by J. Frank Dobie. + +RICHARDS, CLARICE E. A _Tenderfoot Bride_, Garden City, N. Y., 1920. +The experiences of a ranchman's wife in Colorado. The telling has charm, +warmth, and flexibility. In the way that art is always truer than a +literal report, _A Tenderfoot Bride_ brings out truths of life that the +literalistic _A Cowman's Wife_ by Mary Kidder Rak misses. + +RICHTER, CONRAD. _The Sea of Grass_, Knopf, New York, 1937. A poetic +portrait in fiction, with psychological values, of a big cowman and his +wife. + +RICKETTS, W. P. _50 Years in the Saddle_, Sheridan, Wyoming, 1942. OP. +A natural book with much interesting information. It contains the best +account of trailing cattle from Oregon to Wyoming that I have seen. + +RIDINGS, SAM P. _The Chisholm Trail_, 1926. Sam P. Ridings, a lawyer, +published this book himself from Medford, Oklahoma. He had gone over +the land, lived with range men, studied history. A noble book, rich in +anecdote and character. The subtitle reads: "A History of the World's +Greatest Cattle Trail, together with a Description of the Persons, a +Narrative of the Events, and Reminiscences associated with the Same." +OP. + +ROBINSON, FRANK C. _A Ram in a Thicket_, Abelard Press, New York, 1950. +Robinson is the author of many Westerns, none of which I have read. This +is an autobiography, here noted because it reveals a maturity of mind +and an awareness of political economy and social evolution hardly +suggested by other writers of Western fiction. + +ROLLINS, ALICE WELLINGTON. _The Story of a Ranch_, New York, 1885. +Philip Ashton Rollins (no relation that I know of to Alice Wellington +Rollins) went into Charlie Everitt's bookstore in New York one day and +said, "I want every book with the word _cowboy_ printed in it." _The +Story of a Ranch_ is listed here to illustrate how titles often have +nothing to do with subject. It is without either story or ranch; it is +about some dilettanteish people who go out to a Kansas sheep farm, talk +Chopin, and wash their fingers in finger bowls. + +ROLLINS, PHILIP ASHTON. _The Cowboy_, Scribner's, New York, 1924. +Revised, 1936. A scientific exposition; full. Rollins wrote two Western +novels, not important. A wealthy man with ranch experience, he collected +one of the finest libraries of Western books ever assembled by any +individual and presented it to Princeton University. + +ROLLINSON, JOHN K. _Pony Trails in Wyoming_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. Not +inspired and not indispensable, but honest autobiography. OP. _Wyoming +Cattle Trails_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1948. A more significant book +than the autobiography. Good on trailing cattle from Oregon. + +ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_, New York, 1888. +Roosevelt understood the West. He became the peg upon which several +range books were hung, Hagedorn's _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_ and +Lang's _Ranching with Roosevelt_ in particular. A good summing up, with +bibliography, is _Roosevelt and the Stockman's Association_, by Ray +H. Mattison, pamphlet issued by the State Historical Society of North +Dakota, Bismarck, 1950. + +RUSH, OSCAR. _The Open Range_, Salt Lake City, 1930. Reprinted 1936 by +Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. A sensitive range man's response to natural +things. The subtitle, _Bunk House Philosophy_, characterizes the book. + +RUSSELL, CHARLES M. _Trails Plowed Under_, 1927, with introduction by +Will Rogers. Russell was the greatest painter that ever painted a range +man, a range cow, a range horse or a Plains Indian. He savvied the cow, +the grass, the blizzard, the drought, the wolf, the young puncher in +love with his own shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts +of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of +his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a +horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life, +whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular +conditions. _Trails Plowed Under_, prodigally illustrated, is a +collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity. +It incorporates the materials in two Rawhide Rawlins pamphlets. _Good +Medicine_, published posthumously, is a collection of Russell's letters, +illustrations saying more than written words. + +Russell's illustrations have enriched numerous range books, B. M. +Bower's novels, Malcolm S. Mackay's _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, and +Patrick T. Tucker's _Riding the High Country_ being outstanding among +them. Tucker's book, autobiography, has a bully chapter on Charlie +Russell. _Charles M. Russell, the Cowboy Artist: A Bibliography_, by +Karl Yost, Pasadena, California, 1948, is better composed than its +companion biography, _Charles M. Russell the Cowboy Artist_, by Ramon F. +Adams and Homer E. Britzman. (Both OP.) One of the most concrete pieces +of writing on Russell is a chapter in _In the Land of Chinook_, by +Al. J. Noyes, Helena, Montana, 1917. "Memories of Charlie Russell," in +_Memories of Old Montana_, by Con Price, Hollywood, 1945, is also +good. All right as far as it goes, about a rock's throw away, is "The +Conservatism of Charles M. Russell," by J. Frank Dobie, in a portfolio +reproduction of _Seven Drawings by Charles M. Russell, with an +Additional Drawing by Tom Lea_, printed by Carl Hertzog, El Paso [1950]. + +SANTEE, ROSS. _Cowboy_, 1928. OP. The plotless narrative, reading like +autobiography, of a kid who ran away from a farm in East Texas to be a +cowboy in Arizona. His cowpuncher teachers are the kind "who know what +a cow is thinking of before she knows herself." Passages in _Cowboy_ +combine reality and elemental melody in a way that almost no other +range writer excepting Charles M. Russell has achieved. Santee is a +pen-and-ink artist also. Among his other books, _Men and Horses_ is +about the best. + +SHAW, JAMES C. _North from Texas: Incidents in the Early Life of a +Range Man in Texas, Dakota and Wyoming, 1852-1883_, edited by Herbert O. +Brayer. Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. Edition limited +to 750 copies. I first met this honest autobiography by long quotations +from it in Virginia Cole Trenholm's _Footprints on the Frontier_ +(Douglas, Wyoming, 1945), wherein I learned that Shaw's narrative had +been privately printed in Cheyenne in 1931, in pamphlet form, for gifts +to a few friends and members of the author's family. I tried to buy a +copy but could find none for sale at any price. This reprint is in a +format suitable to the economical prose, replete with telling incidents +and homely details. It will soon be only a little less scarce than the +original. + +SHEEDY, DENNIS. _The Autobiography of Dennis Sheedy_. Privately printed +in Denver, 1922 or 1923. Sixty pages bound in leather and as scarce as +psalm-singing in "fancy houses." The item is not very important in the +realm of range literature but it exemplifies the successful businessman +that the judicious cowman of open range days frequently became. + +SHEFFY, L. F. _The Life and Times of Timothy Dwight Hobart, 1855-1935_, +Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, Canyon, Texas, 1950. Hobart was +manager for the large J A Ranch, established by Charles Goodnight. +He had a sense of history. This mature biography treats of important +developments pertaining to ranching in the Texas Panhandle. + +SIRINGO, CHARLES A. A _Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane +Deck of a Spanish Cow Pony_, 1885. The first in time of all cowboy +autobiographies and first, also, in plain rollickiness. Siringo later +told the same story with additions under the titles of _A Lone Star +Cowboy, A Cowboy Detective_, etc., all out of print. Finally, there +appeared his _Riata and Spurs_, Boston, 1927, a summation and extension +of previous autobiographies. Because of a threatened lawsuit, half of it +had to be cut and additional material provided for a "Revised Edition." +No other cowboy ever talked about himself so much in print; few had more +to talk about. I have said my full say on him in an introduction, which +includes a bibliography, to _A Texas Cowboy_, published with Tom Lea +illustrations by Sloane, New York, 1950. OP. + +SMITH, ERWIN E., and HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Life on the Texas Range_, +photographs by Smith and text by Haley, University of Texas Press, +Austin, 1952. Erwin Smith yearned and studied to be a sculptor. Early in +this century he went with camera to photograph the life of land, cattle, +horses, and men on the big ranches of West Texas. In him feeling and +perspective of artist were fused with technical mastership. "I don't +mean," wrote Tom Lea, "that he made just the best photographs I ever +saw on the subject. I mean the best pictures. That includes paintings, +drawings, prints." On 9 by 12 pages of 100-pound antique finish paper, +the photographs are superbly reproduced. Evetts Haley's introduction +interprets as well as chronicles the life of a strange and tragic man. +The book is easily the finest range book in the realm of the pictorial +ever published. + +SMITH, WALLACE. _Garden of the Sun_, Los Angeles, 1939. OP. Despite +the banal title, this is a scholarly work with first-rate chapters on +California horses and ranching in the San Joaquin Valley. + +SNYDER, A. B., as told to Nellie Snyder Yost. _Pinnacle Jake_, Caxton, +Caldwell, Idaho, 1951. The setting is Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana +from the 1880's on. Had Pinnacle Jake kept a diary, his accounts of +range characters, especially camp cooks and range horses, with emphasis +on night horses and outlaws, could not have been fresher or more precise +in detail. Reading this book will not give a new interpretation of open +range work with big outfits, but the aliveness of it in both narrative +and sketch makes it among the best of old-time cowboy reminiscences. + +SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life on the Range Today_, +University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1950. An interviewer's findings +without the historical criticism exemplified by Bernard DeVoto on the +subject of federal-owned ranges (in essays in _Harper's Magazine_ during +the late 1940'S). + +STANLEY, CLARK, "better known as the Rattlesnake King." _The Life +and Adventures of the American Cow-Boy_, published by the author at +Providence, Rhode Island, 1897. This pamphlet of forty-one pages, plus +about twenty pages of Snake Oil Liniment advertisements, is one of the +curiosities of cowboy literature. It includes a collection of cowboy +songs, the earliest I know of in time of printing, antedating by eleven +years Jack Thorp's booklet of cowboy songs printed at Estancia, New +Mexico, in 1908. Clark Stanley no doubt used the contents of his +pamphlet in medicine show harangues, thus adding to the cowboy myth. As +time went on, he added scraps of anecdotes and western history, along +with testimonials, to the pamphlet, the latest edition I have seen being +about 1906, printed in Worcester, Massachusetts. + +STEEDMAN, CHARLES J. _Bucking the Sagebrush_, New York, 1904. OP. +Charming; much of nature. Illustrated by Russell. + + +{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Virginian_ by Owen +Wister} + + + +STEVENS, MONTAGUE. _Meet Mr. Grizzly_, University of New Mexico Press, +Albuquerque, 1943. Stevens, a Cambridge Englishman, ranched, hunted, and +made deductions. See characterization under "Bears and Bear Hunters." + +STREETER, FLOYD B. _Prairie Trails and Cow Towns_, Boston, 1936. OP. +This brings together considerable information on Kansas cow towns. +Primary books on the subject, besides those by Stuart Henry, McCoy, +Vestal, and Wright herewith listed, are _The Oklahoma Scout_, by +Theodore Baughman, Chicago, 1886; _Midnight and Noonday_, by G. D. +Freeman, Caldwell, Kansas, 1892; biographies of Wild Bill Hickok, +town marshal; Stuart N. Lake's biography of Wyatt Earp, another noted +marshal; _Hard Knocks_, by Harry Young, Chicago, 1915, not too prudish +to notice dance hall girls but too Victorian to say much. Many Texas +trail drivers had trouble as well as fun in the cow towns. _Life +and Adventures of Ben Thompson_, by W. M. Walton, 1884, reprinted at +Bandera, Texas, 1926, gives samples. Thompson was more gambler than +cowboy; various other men who rode from cow camps into town and found +themselves in their element were gamblers and gunmen first and cowboys +only in passing. + +STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, two volumes, +Cleveland, 1925. Nothing better on the cowboy has ever been written +than the chapter entitled "Cattle Business" in Volume II. A prime work +throughout. OP. + +THORP, JACK (N. Howard) has a secure place in range literature because +of his contribution in cowboy songs. (See entry under "Cowboy Songs and +Other Ballads.") In 1926 he had printed at Santa Fe a paper-backed book +of 123 pages entitled _Tales of the Chuck Wagon_, but "didn't sell +more than two or three million copies." Some of the tales are in his +posthumously published reminiscences, _Pardner of the Wind_ (as told +to Neil McCullough Clark, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945). This book +is richest on range horses, and will be found listed in the section on +"Horses." + +TOWNE, CHARLES WAYLAND, and WENTWORTH, EDWARD NORRIS. _Shepherd's +Empire_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1945. Not firsthand in +the manner of Gilfillan's _Sheep_, nor charming and light in the manner +of Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_, but an essayical history, based on +research. The deference paid to Mary Austin's _The Flock_ marks the +author as civilized. Towne wrote the book; Wentworth supplied the +information. Wentworth's own book, _America's Sheep Trails_, Iowa State +College Press, Ames, 1948, is ponderous, amorphous, and in part, only a +eulogistic "mugbook." + +TOWNSHEND, R. B. _A Tenderfoot in Colorado_, London, 1923; _The +Tenderfoot in New Mexico_, 1924. Delightful as well as faithful. +Literature by an Englishman who translated Tacitus under the spires of +Oxford after he retired from the range. + +TREADWELL, EDWARD F. _The Cattle King_, New York, 1931; reissued by +Christopher, Boston. A strong biography of a very strong man--Henry +Miller of California. + +TRENHOLM, VIRGINIA COLE. _Footprints on the Frontier_, Douglas, Wyoming, +1945. OP. The best range material in this book is a reprint of parts of +James C. Shaw's _Pioneering in Texas and Wyoming_, privately printed at +Cheyenne in 1931. + +TRUETT, VELMA STEVENS. _On the Hoof in Nevada_, Gehrett-Truett-Hall, Los +Angeles, 1950. A 613-page album of cattle brands--priced at $10.00. The +introduction is one of the sparse items on Nevada ranching. + +TUCKER, PATRICK T. _Riding the High Country_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1933. A +brave book with much of Charlie Russell in it. OP. + +VESTAL, STANLEY (pen name for Walter S. Campbell). _Queen of Cow Towns, +Dodge City_, Harper, New York, 1952. "Bibulous Babylon," "Killing of +Dora Hand," and "Marshals for Breakfast" are chapter titles suggesting +the tenor of the book. + +_Vocabulario y Refranero Criollo_, text and illustrations by Tito +Saudibet, Guillermo Kraft Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1945. North American +ranges have called forth nothing to compare with this fully illustrated, +thorough, magnificent history-dictionary of the gaucho world. It stands +out in contrast to American slapdash, puerile-minded pretenses at +dictionary treatises on cowboy life. + +"He who knows only the history of his own country does not know it." The +cowboy is not a singular type. He was no better rider than the Cossack +of Asia. His counterpart in South America, developed also from +Spanish cattle, Spanish horses, and Spanish techniques, is the gaucho. +Literature on the gaucho is extensive, some of it of a high order. +Primary is _Martin Fierro_, the epic by Jose Hernandez (published +1872-79). A translation by Walter Owen was published in the United +States in 1936. No combination of knowledge, sympathy, imagination, and +craftsmanship has produced stories and sketches about the cowboy equal +to those on the gaucho by W. H. Hudson, especially in _Tales of the +Pampas_ and _Far Away and Long Ago_, and by R. B. Cunninghame Graham, +whose writings are dispersed and difficult to come by. + +WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Great Plains_, Ginn, Boston, 1931. While +this landmark in historical interpretation of the West is by no means +limited to the subject of grazing, it contains a long and penetrating +chapter entitled "The Cattle Kingdom." The book is an analysis of land, +climate, barbed wire, dry farming, wells and windmills, native animal +life, etc. No other work on the plains country goes so meatily into +causes and effects. + +WELLMAN, PAUL I. _The Trampling Herd_, Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y., +1939; reissued, 1951. An attempt to sum up the story of the cattle range +in America. + +WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _Arizona Nights_, 1902. "Rawhide," one of the +stories in this excellent collection, utilizes folk motifs about rawhide +with much skill. + +WILLIAMS, J. R. _Cowboys Out Our Way_, with an Introduction by J. +Frank Dobie, Scribner's, New York, 1951. An album reproducing about two +hundred of the realistic, humorous, and human J. R. Williams syndicated +cartoons. This book was preceded by _Out Our Way_, New York, 1943, and +includes numerous cartoons therein printed. There was an earlier and +less extensive collection. Modest Jim Williams has been progressively +dissatisfied with all his cartoon books--and with cartoons not in books. +I like them and in my Introduction say why. + +WISTER, OWEN. _The Virginian_, 1902. Wister was an outsider looking in. +His hero, "The Virginian," is a cowboy without cows--like the cowboys +of Eugene Manlove Rhodes; but this hero does not even smell of cows, +whereas Rhodes's men do. Nevertheless, the novel authentically realizes +the code of the range, and it makes such absorbing reading that in fifty +years (1902-52) it sold over 1,600,000 copies, not counting foreign +translations and paper reprints. + +Wister was an urbane Harvard man, of clubs and travels. In 1952 the +University of Wyoming celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the +publication of _The Virginian_. To mark the event, Frances K. W. Stokes +wrote _My Father Owen Wister_, a biographical pamphlet including "ten +letters written to his mother during his trip to Wyoming in 1885"--a +trip that prepared him to write the novel. The pamphlet is published at +Laramie, Wyoming, name of publisher not printed on it. + +WRIGHT, PETER. _A Three-Foot Stool_, New York and London, 1909. Like +several other Englishmen who went west, Wright had the perspective that +enabled him to comprehend some aspects of ranch life more fully than +many range men who knew nothing but their own environment and times. +He compares the cowboy to the cowherd described by Queen Elizabeth's +Spenser. Into exposition of ranching on the Gila, he interweaves talk +on Arabian afreets, Stevenson's philosophy of adventure, and German +imperialism. + +WRIGHT, ROBERT M. _Dodge City, Cowboy Capital_, Wichita, Kansas, 1913; +reprinted. Good on the most cowboyish of all the cow towns. + + +PAMPHLETS + + +Pamphlets are an important source of knowledge in all fields. No +first-class library is without them. Most of them become difficult +to obtain, and some bring higher prices than whole sets of books. Of +numerous pamphlets pertaining to the range, only a few are listed here. +_History of the Chisum War, or Life of Ike Fridge_, by Ike Fridge, +Electra, Texas (undated), is as compact as jerked beef and as laconic +as conversation in alkali dust. James F. Hinkle, in his _Early Days of +a Cowboy on the Pecos_, Roswell, New Mexico, 1937, says: "One noticeable +characteristic of the cowpunchers was that they did not talk much." Some +people don't have to talk to say plenty. Hinkle was one of them. At +a reunion of trail drivers in San Antonio in October, 1928, Fred S. +Millard showed me his laboriously written reminiscences. He wanted +them printed. I introduced him to J. Marvin Hunter of Bandera, Texas, +publisher of _Frontier Times_. I told Hunter not to ruin the English +by trying to correct it, as he had processed many of the earth-born +reminiscences in _The Trail Drivers of Texas_. He printed Millard's _A +Cowpuncher of the Pecos_ in pamphlet form shortly thereafter. It begins: +"This is a piece I wrote for the Trail Drivers." They would understand +some things on which he was not explicit. + +About 1940, as he told me, Bob Beverly of Lovington, New Mexico, made a +contract with the proprietor of the town's weekly newspaper to print his +reminiscences. By the time the contractor had set eighty-seven pages +of type he saw that he would lose money if he set any more. He gave Bob +Beverly back more manuscript than he had used and stapled a pamphlet +entitled _Hobo of the Rangeland_. The philosophy in it is more +interesting to me than the incidents. "The cowboy of the old West worked +in a land that seemed to be grieving over something--a kind of sadness, +loneliness in a deathly quiet. One not acquainted with the plains could +not understand what effect it had on the mind. It produced a heartache +and a sense of exile." + +Crudely printed, but printed as the author talked, is _The End of the +Long Horn Trail_, by A. P. (Ott) Black, Selfridge, North Dakota (August, +1939). As I know from a letter from his _compadre_, Black was blind and +sixty-nine years old when he dictated his memoirs to a college graduate +who had sense enough to retain the flavor. Black's history is badly +botched, but reading him is like listening. "It took two coons and an +alligator to spend the summer on that cotton plantation.... Cowpunchers +were superstitious about owls. One who rode into my camp one night had +killed a man somewhere and was on the dodge. He was lying down by the +side of the campfire when an owl flew over into some hackberry trees +close by and started hooting. He got up from there right now, got his +horse in, saddled up and rode off into the night." + +John Alley is--or was--a teacher. His _Memories of Roundup Days_, +University of Oklahoma Press, 1934 (just twenty small pages), is an +appraisal of range men, a criticism of life seldom found in old-timers +who look back. On the other hand, some pamphlets prized by collectors +had as well not have been written. Here is the full title of an example: +_An Aged Wanderer, A Life Sketch of J. M. Parker, A Cowboy of the +Western Plains in the Early Days_. "Price 40 cents. Headquarters, +Elkhorn Wagon Yard, San Angelo, Texas." It was printed about 1923. When +Parker wrote it he was senile, and there is no evidence that he was +ever possessed of intelligence. The itching to get into print does not +guarantee that the itcher has anything worth printing. + +Some of the best reminiscences have been pried out of range men. In 1914 +the Wyoming Stock Growers Association resolved a Historical Commission +into existence. A committee was appointed and, naturally, one man did +the work. In 1923 a fifty-five-page pamphlet entitled _Letters from +Old Friends and Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association_ was +printed at Cheyenne. It is made up of unusually informing and pungent +recollections by intelligent cowmen. + + + + + +22. Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads + +{illust. Lyrics = Kind friends, if you will listen, A story I will tell +A-bout a final bust-up, That happened down in Dell.} + + +COWBOY SONGS and ballads are generally ranked alongside Negro spirituals +as being the most important of America's contributions to folk song. As +compared with the old English and Scottish ballads, the cowboy and +all other ballads of the American frontiers generally sound cheap and +shoddy. Since John A. Lomax brought out his collection in 1910, cowboy +songs have found their way into scores of songbooks, have been +recorded on hundreds of records, and have been popularized, often--and +naturally--without any semblance to cowboy style, by thousands of radio +singers. Two general anthologies are recommended especially for the +cowboy songs they contain: _American Ballads and Folk Songs_, by John +A. and Alan Lomax, Macmillan, New York, 1934; _The American Songbag_, by +Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1927. + + +LARRIN, MARGARET. _Singing Cowboy_ (with music), New York, 1931. OP. + +LOMAX, JOHN A., and LOMAX, ALAN. _Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier +Ballads_, Macmillan, New York, 1938. This is a much added-to and revised +form of Lomax's 1910 collection, under the same title. It is the most +complete of all anthologies. More than any other man, John A. Lomax is +responsible for having made cowboy songs a part of the common heritage +of America. His autobiographic _Adventures of a Ballad Hunter_ +(Macmillan, 1947) is in quality far above the jingles that most cowboy +songs are. + +Missouri, as no other state, gave to the West and Southwest. Much of +Missouri is still more southwestern in character than much of Oklahoma. +For a full collection, with full treatment, of the ballads and songs, +including bad-man and cowboy songs, sung in the Southwest there is +nothing better than _Ozark Folksongs_, collected and edited by Vance +Randolph, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, 1946-50. An +unsurpassed work in four handsome volumes. + +OWENS, WILLIAM A. _Texas Folk Songs_, Southern Methodist University +Press, Dallas, 1950. A miscellany of British ballads, American ballads, +"songs of doleful love," etc. collected in Texas mostly from country +people of Anglo-American stock. Musical scores for all the songs. + +The Texas Folklore Society has published many cowboy songs. Its +publications _Texas and Southwestern Lore_ (1927) and _Follow de +Drinkin' Gou'd_ (1928) contain scores, with music and anecdotal +interpretations. Other volumes contain other kinds of songs, including +Mexican. + +THORP, JACK (N. Howard). _Songs of the Cowboys_, Boston, 1921. OP. Good, +though limited, anthology, without music and with illuminating comments. +A pamphlet collection that Thorp privately printed at Estancia, New +Mexico, in 1908, was one of the first to be published. Thorp had the +perspective of both range and civilization. He was a kind of troubadour +himself. The opening chapter, "Banjo in the Cow Camps," of his +posthumous reminiscences, _Pardner of the Wind, is_ delicious. + + + + + +23. Horses: Mustangs and Cow Ponies + +THE WEST WAS DISCOVERED, battled over, and won by men on horseback. +Spanish conquistadores saddled their horses in Vera Cruz and rode until +they had mapped the continents from the Horn to Montana and from the +Floridas to the harbors of the Californias. The padres with them rode on +horseback, too, and made every mission a horse ranch. The national dance +of Mexico, the Jarabe, is an interpretation of the clicking of hoofs and +the pawing and prancing of spirited horses that the Aztecs noted when +the Spaniards came. Likewise, the chief contribution made by white +men of America to the folk songs of the world--the cowboy songs--are +rhythmed to the walk of horses. + +Astride horses introduced by the conquistadores to the Americas, the +Plains Indians became almost a separate race from the foot-moving tribes +of the East and the stationary Pueblos of the Rockies. The men that +later conquered and corralled these wild-riding Plains Indians were +plainsmen on horses and cavalrymen. The earliest American explorers and +trappers of both Plains and Rocky Mountains went out in the saddle. The +first industrial link between the East and the West was a mounted pack +train beating out the Santa Fe Trail. On west beyond the end of this +trail, in Spanish California, even the drivers of oxen rode horseback. +The first transcontinental express was the Pony Express. + +Outlaws and bad men were called "long riders." The Texas Ranger who +followed them was, according to his own proverb, "no better than his +horse." Booted sheriffs from Brownsville on the Rio Grande to the Hole +in the Wall in the Big Horn Mountains lived in the saddle. Climactic of +all the riders rode the cowboy, who lived with horse and herd. + +In the Old West the phrase "left afoot" meant nothing short of being +left flat on your back. "A man on foot is no man at all," the saying +went. If an enemy could not take a man's life, the next best thing was +to take his horse. Where cow thieves went scot free, horse thieves were +hanged, and to say that a man was "as common as a horse thief" was to +express the nadir of commonness. The pillow of the frontiersmen who +slept with a six-shooter under it was a saddle, and hitched to the horn +was the loose end of a stake rope. Just as "Colonel Colt" made all +men equal in a fight, the horse made all men equal in swiftness and +mobility. + +The proudest names of civilized languages when literally translated mean +"horseman": eques, caballero, chevalier, cavalier. Until just yesterday +the Man on Horseback had been for centuries the symbol of power and +pride. The advent of the horse, from Spanish sources, so changed the +ways and psychology of the Plains Indians that they entered into what +historians call the Age of Horse Culture. Almost until the automobile +came, the whole West and Southwest were dominated by a Horse Culture. + +Material on range horses is scattered through the books listed under +"Range Life," "Stagecoaches, Freighting," "Pony Express." + +No thorough comprehension of the Spanish horse of the Americas is +possible without consideration of this horse's antecedents, and that +involves a good deal of the horse history of the world. + +BROWN, WILLIAM ROBINSON. _The Horse of the Desert_ (no publisher or +place on title page), 1936; reprinted by Macmillan, New York. A noble, +beautiful, and informing book. + +CABRERA, ANGEL. _Caballos de America_, Buenos Aires, 1945. The authority +on Argentine horses. + +CARTER, WILLIAM H. _The Horses of the World_, National Geographic +Society, Washington, D. C., 1923. A concentrated survey. + +_Cattleman_. Published at Fort Worth, this monthly magazine of the Texas +and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association began in 1939 to issue, for +September, a horse number. It has published a vast amount of material +both scientific and popular on range horses. Another monthly magazine +worth knowing about is the _Western Horseman_, Colorado Springs, +Colorado. + +DENHARDT, ROBERT MOORMAN. _The Horse of the Americas_, University of +Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1947. This historical treatment of the Spanish +horse could be better ordered; some sections of the book are little more +than miscellanies. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson, +Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. Before this handsome book arrives at +the wild horses of North America, a third of it has been spent on the +Arabian progenitors of the Spanish horse, the acquisition of the Spanish +horse by western Indians, and the nature of Indian horses. There are +many narratives of mustangs and mustangers and of Spanish-blooded horses +under the saddle. The author has tried to compass the natural history of +the animal and to blend vividness with learning. The book incorporates +his _Tales of the Mustang_, a slight volume published in an edition of +only three hundred copies in 1936. It also incorporates a large part of +_Mustangs and Cow Horses_, edited by Dobie, Boatright, and Ransom, and +issued by the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1940--a volume that went +out of print not long after it was published. + +DODGE, THEODORE A. _Riders of Many Lands_, New York, 1893. Illustrations +by Remington. Wide and informed views. + +GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. _The Horses of the Conquest_, London, 1930. +Graham was both historian and horseman, as much at home on the pampas as +in his ancient Scottish home. This excellent book on the Spanish horses +introduced to the Western Hemisphere is in a pasture to itself. +Reprinted in 1949 by the University of Oklahoma Press, with introduction +and notes by Robert Moorman Denhardt. + +{illust. caption = Charles Banks Wilson, in _The Mustangs_ by J. Frank +Dobie (1952)} + +GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. OP. + +HASTINGS, FRANK. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. "Old +Gran'pa" is close to the best American horse story I have ever read. OP. + +HAYES, M. HORACE. _Points of the Horse_, London, 1904. This and +subsequent editions are superior in treatment and illustrations to +earlier editions. Hayes was a far traveler and scholar as well as +horseman. One of the less than a dozen best books on the horse. + +JAMES, WILL. _Smoky_, Scribner's, New York, 1930. Perhaps the best of +several books that Will James--always with illustrations--has woven +around horse heroes. + +LEIGH, WILLIAM R. _The Western Pony_, New York, 1933. One of the +most beautifully printed books on the West; beautiful illustrations; +illuminating text. OP. + +MULLER, DAN. _Horses_, Reilly and Lee, Chicago, 1936. Interesting +illustrations. + +PATTULLO, GEORGE. _The Untamed_, New York, 1911. A collection of short +stories, among which "Corazon" and "Neutria" are excellent on horses. +OP. + +PERKINS, CHARLES ELLIOTT. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California, +1927. A fine narrative, illustrated by Edward Borein. OP. + +RIDGEWAY, W. _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_, +Cambridge, England, 1905. A standard work, though many of its +conclusions are disputed, especially by Lady Wentworth in her +_Thoroughbred Racing Stock and Its Ancestors_, London, 1938. + +SANTEE, ROSS. _Men and Horses_, New York, 1926. Three chapters of this +book, "A Fool About a Horse," "The Horse Wrangler," and "The Rough +String," are especially recommended. _Cowboy_, New York, 1928, reveals +in a fine way the rapport between the cowboy and his horse. _Sleepy +Black,_ New York, 1933, is a story of a horse designed for younger +readers; being good on the subject, it is good for any reader. All OP. + +SIMPSON, GEORGE GAYLOR. _Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in +the Modern World and through Sixty Million Years of History_, Oxford +University Press, New York, 1951. In the realm of paleontology this work +supplants all predecessors. Bibliography. + +STEELE, RUFUS. _Mustangs of the Mesas_, Hollywood, California, 1941. +OP. Modern mustanging in Nevada; excellently written narratives of +outstanding mustangs. + +STONG, PHIL. _Horses and Americans_, New York, 1939. A survey and a +miscellany combined. OP. + + +{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Untamed_ by George +Pattullo (1911)} + + + +THORP, JACK (N. Howard) as told to Neil McCullough Clark. _Pardner of +the Wind_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945. Two chapters in this book +make the "Spanish thunderbolts," as Jack Thorp called the mustangs and +Spanish cow horses, graze, run, pitch, and go gentle ways as free as the +wind. "Five Hundred Mile Horse Race" is a great story. No other range +man excepting Ross Santee has put down so much everyday horse lore in +such a fresh way. + +TWEEDIE, MAJOR GENERAL W. _The Arabian Horse: His Country and People_, +Edinburgh and London, 1894. One of the few horse books to be classified +as literature. Wise in the blend of horse, land, and people. + +WENTWORTH, LADY. _The Authentic Arabian Horse and His Descendants_, +London, 1945. Rich in knowledge and both magnificent and munificent in +illustrations. Almost immediately after publication, this noble volume +entered the rare book class. + +WYMAN, WALKER D. _The Wild Horse of the West_, Caxton, Caldwell, +Idaho, 1945. A scholarly sifting of virtually all available material +on mustangs. Readable. Only thorough bibliography on subject so far +published. + + + + + +24. The Bad Man Tradition + +PLENTY of six-shooter play is to be found in most of the books about +old-time cowboys; yet hardly one of the professional bad men was a +representative cowboy. Bad men of the West and cowboys alike wore +six-shooters and spurs; they drank each other's coffee; they had a +fanatical passion for liberty--for themselves. But the representative +cowboy was a reliable hand, hanging through drought, blizzard, and high +water to his herd, whereas the bona fide bad man lived on the dodge. +Between the killer and the cowboy standing up for his rights or merely +shooting out the lights for fun, there was as much difference as between +Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Of course, the elements were mixed +in the worst of the bad men, as they are in the best of all good men. No +matter what deductions analysis may lead to, the fact remains that the +western bad men of open range days have become a part of the American +tradition. They represent six-shooter culture at its zenith--the wild +and woolly side of the West--a stage between receding bowie knife +individualism of the backwoods and blackguard, machine-gun gangsterism +of the city. + +The songs about Sam Bass, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid reflect popular +attitude toward the hard-riding outlaws. Sam Bass, Jesse James, Billy +the Kid, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Joaquin Murrieta, John Wesley +Hardin, Al Jennings, Belle Starr, and other "long riders" with their +guns in their hands have had their biographies written over and over. +They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying +under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, they, like antique +Robin Hood and the late Pancho Villa, recede from all realistic +judgment. If the picture show finds in them models for generosity, +gallantry, and fidelity to a code of liberty, and if the public finds +them picturesque, then philosophers may well be thankful that they +lived, rode, and shot. + +{illust. caption = Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)} + +"The long-tailed heroes of the revolver," to pick a phrase from Mark +Twain's unreverential treatment of them in _Roughing It_, often +did society a service in shooting each other--aside from providing +entertainment to future generations. As "The Old Cattleman" of Alfred +Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ stories says, "A heap of people need a heap +of killing." Nor can the bad men be logically segregated from the +long-haired killers on the side of the law like Wild Bill Hickok and +Wyatt Earp. W. H. Hudson once advanced the theory that bloodshed and +morality go together. If American civilization proceeds, the rage for +collecting books on bad men will probably subside until a copy of Miguel +Antonio Otero's _The Real Billy the Kid_ will bring no higher price +than a first edition of A. Edward Newton's _The Amenities of +Book-Collecting_. + +See "Fighting Texians," "Texas Rangers," "Range Life," "Cowboy Songs and +Other Ballads." + + +AIKMAN, DUNCAN. _Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats_, 1927. OP. +Patronizing in the H. L. Mencken style. + +BILLY THE KID. We ve got to take him seriously, not so much for what he +was-- + + There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through, + And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two-- + +as for his provocations. Popular imagination, represented by writers of +all degrees, goes on playing on him with cumulative effect. As a figure +in literature the Kid has come to lead the whole field of western +bad men. The _Saturday Review_, for October 11, 1952, features a +philosophical essay entitled "Billy the Kid: Faust in America--The +Making of a Legend." The growth of this legend is minutely traced +through a period of seventy-one years (1881-1952) by J. C. Dykes in +_Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend_, University of New Mexico +Press, Albuquerque, 1952 (186 pages). It lists 437 titles, including +magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets, +fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholarship, it gives the +substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads +like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent +and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related +characters weave all through it. A first-class bibliography that is also +readable is almost a new genre. + +Pat F. Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, killed the Kid +about midnight, July 14, 1881. The next spring his _Authentic Life +of Billy the Kid_ was published at Santa Fe, at least partly written, +according to good evidence, by a newspaperman named Ash Upton. This +biography is one of the rarities in Western Americana. In 1927 it was +republished by Macmillan, New York, under title of _Pat F. Garrett's +Authentic Life of Billy the Kid_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton. This is +now OP but remains basic. The most widely circulated biography has been +_The Saga of Billy the Kid_ by Walter Noble Burns, New York, 1926. +It contains a deal of fictional conversation and it has no doubt +contributed to the Robin-Hoodizing of the lethal character baptized as +William H. Bonney, who was born in New York in 1859 and now lives with +undiminished vigor as Billy the Kid. Walter Noble Burns was not so +successful with _The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin +Murrieta_ (1932), or, despite hogsheads of blood, with _Tombstone_ +(1927). + +CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, Boston, 1930. + +COE, GEORGE W. _Frontier Fighter_, Boston, 1934; reprinted by University +of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. The autobiography of one of Billy the +Kid's men as recorded by Nan Hillary Harrison. + +COOLIDGE, DANE. _Fighting Men of the West_, New York, 1932. Biographical +sketches. OP. + +CUNNINGHAM, EUGENE. _Triggernometry_, 1934; reprinted by Caxton, +Caldwell, Idaho. Excellent survey of codes and characters. Written by a +man of intelligence and knowledge. Bibliography. + +FORREST, E. R. _Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground_, Caxton, Caldwell, +Idaho, 1936. + +GARD, WAYNE. _Sam Bass_, Boston, 1936. Most of the whole truth. OP. + +HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Jeff Milton--A Good Man with a Gun_, University of +Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Jeff Milton the whole man as well as the +queller of bad men. + +HENDRICKS, GEORGE. _The Bad Man of the West_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1941. +Analyses and classifications go far toward making this treatment of old +subjects original. Excellent bibliographical guide. + +HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Outlaw_, 1907. OP. An omnibus +carelessly put together with many holes in it. + +LAKE, STUART. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Best written of all gunmen +biographies. Earp happened to be on the side of the law. + +LANKFORD, N. P. _Vigilante Days and Ways_, 1890, 1912. OP. Full +treatment of lawlessness in the Northwest. + +LOVE, ROBERTUS. _The Rise and Fall of Jesse James_, New York, 1926. +Excellently written. OP. + +RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD. _Famous s and Western Outlaws_, Doubleday, Garden +City, N. Y., 1929. A rogues' gallery. _Guns of the Frontier_, Boston, +1940. Another miscellany. OP. + +RASCOE, BURTON. _Belle Starr_, New York, 1941. OP. + +RIPLEY, THOMAS. _They Died with Their Boots On_, 1935. Mostly about John +Wesley Hardin. OP. + +SABIN, EDWIN L. _Wild Men of the Wild West_, New York, 1929. Biographic +survey of killers from the Mississippi to the Pacific. OP. + +WILD BILL HICKOK. The subject of various biographies, among them +those by Frank J. Wilstach (1926) and William E. Connelley (1933). The +_Nebraska History Magazine_ (Volume X) for April-June 1927 is devoted to +Wild Bill and contains a "descriptive bibliography" on him by Addison E. +Sheldon. + +WOODHULL, FROST. Folk-Lore Shooting, in _Southwestern Lore_, Publication +IX of the Texas Folklore Society, 1931. Rich. Humor. + + + + + +25. Mining and Oil + +DURING the twentieth century oil has brought so much money to the +Southwest that the proceeds from cattle have come to look like tips. +This statement is not based on statistics, though statistics no doubt +exist--even on the cost of catching sun perch. Geological, legal, and +economic writings on oil are mountainous in quantity, but the human +drama of oil yet remains, for the most part, to be written. It is odd +to find such a modern book as Erna Fergusson's _Our Southwest_ not +mentioning oil. It is odd that no book of national reputation comes off +the presses about any aspect of oil. The nearest to national notice on +oil is the daily report of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. +Oil companies subsidize histories of themselves, endow universities with +money to train technicians they want, control state legislatures and +senates, and dictate to Congress what they want for themselves in income +tax laws; but so far they have not been able to hire anybody to write +a book about oil that anybody but the hirers themselves wants to read. +Probably they don't read them. The first thing an oilman does after +amassing a few millions is buy a ranch on which he can get away from +oil--and on which he can spend some of his oil money. + +People live a good deal by tradition and fight a good deal by tradition +also, voting more by prejudice. When one considers the stream of cow +country books and the romance of mining living on in legends of lost +mines and, then, the desert of oil books, one realizes that it takes +something more than money to make the mare of romance run. Geology and +economics are beyond the aim of this _Guide_, but if oil money keeps on +buying up ranch land, the history of modern ranching will be resolved +into the biographies of a comparatively few oilmen. + + +BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields_. Texas +Folklore Society, Austin, 1945. Folk tales about Gib rather than +minstrelsy. OP. + +BOONE, LALIA PHIPPS. _The Petroleum Dictionary_, University of Oklahoma +Press, Norman, 1952. "More than 6,000 entries: definitions of technical +terms and everyday expressions, a comprehensive guide to the language of +the oil industry." + +CAUGHEY, JOHN WALTON. _Gold Is the Cornerstone_ (1948). Adequate +treatment of the discovery of California gold and of the miners. +_Rushing for Gold_ (1949). Twelve essays by twelve writers, with +emphasis on travel to California. Both books published by University of +California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. + +CENDRARS, BLAISE. _Sutter's Gold_, London, 1926. OP. + +CLARK, JAMES A., and HALBOUTY, MICHEL T. _Spindletop_, Random House, New +York, 1952. On January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher, near Beaumont, +Texas, roared in the oil age. This book, while it presumes to record +what Pat Higgins was thinking as he sat in front of a country store, +seems to be "the true story." The bare facts in it make drama. + +DE QUILLE, DAN (pseudonym for William Wright). _The Big Bonanza_, +Hartford, 1876. Reprinted, 1947. OP. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _Coronado's Children_, Dallas, 1930; reprinted by +Grosset and Dunlap, New York. Legendary tales of lost mines and buried +treasures of the Southwest. _Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, Little, +Brown, Boston, 1939. More of the same thing. + +EMRICH, DUNCAN, editor. _Comstock Bonanza_, Vanguard, New York, 1950. +A collection of writings, garnered mostly from West Coast magazines and +newspapers, bearing on mining in Nevada during the boom days of Mark +Twain's. + +{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _Santa Rita_ by Martin W. Schwettmann +(1943)} + +_Roughing It_. James G. Gally's writing is a major discovery in a minor +field. + +FORBES, GERALD. _Flush Production: The Epic of Oil in the +Gulf-Southwest_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1942. + +GILLIS, WILLIAM R. _Goldrush Days with Mark Twain_, New York, 1930. OP. + +GLASSCOCK, LUCILLE. _A Texas Wildcatter_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1952. +The wildcatter is Mrs. Glasscock's husband. She chronicles this player's +main moves in the game and gives an insight into his energy-driven +ambition. + +HOUSE, BOYCE. _Oil Boom_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. With Boyce +House's earlier _Were You in Ranger?_, this book gives a contemporary +picture of the gushing days of oil, money, and humanity. + +LYMAN, GEORGE T. _The Saga of the Comstock Lode_, 1934, and _Ralston's +Ring_, 1937. Both published by Scribner's, New York. + +MCKENNA, JAMES _A. Black Range Tales_, New York, 1936. Reminiscences of +prospecting life. OP. + +MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. +Marland_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. Mature in style +and in interpretative power, John Joseph Mathews goes into the very life +of an oilman who was something else. + +RISTER, C. C. _Oil! Titan of the Southwest_, University of Oklahoma +Press, Norman, 1949. Facts in factual form. Plenty of oil wealth and +taxes; nothing on oil government. + +SHINN, CHARLES H. _Mining Camps_, 1885, reprinted by Knopf, New York, +1948. Perhaps the most competent analysis extant on the behavior of the +gold hunters, with emphasis on their self-government. _The Story of the +Mine as Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada_, New York, +1896. OP. Shinn knew and he knew also how to combine into form. + +STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, Cleveland, 1925. +Superb on California and Montana hunger for precious metals. OP. + +TAIT, SAMUEL W. _Wildcatters: An Informal History of Oil-Hunting in +America_, Princeton University Press, 1946. OP. + +TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_. The mining boom itself. + + + + + +26. Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists + +"NO MAN," says Mary Austin, "has ever really entered into the heart of +any country until he has adopted or made up myths about its familiar +objects." A man might reject the myths but he would have to know many +facts about its natural life and have imagination as well as knowledge +before entering into a country's heart. The history of any land begins +with nature, and all histories must end with nature. + +"The character of a country is the destiny of its people," wrote Harvey +Fergusson in _Rio Grande_. Ross Calvin, also of New Mexico, had the same +idea in mind when he entitled his book _Sky Determines_. "Culture +mocks at the boundaries set up by politics," Clark Wissler said. "It +approaches geographical boundaries with its hat in its hand." The +engineering of water across mountains, electric translation of sounds, +refrigeration of air and foods, and other technical developments carry +human beings a certain distance across some of nature's boundaries, but +no cleverness of science can escape nature. The inhabitants of Yuma, +Arizona, are destined forever to face a desert devoid of graciousness. +Technology does not create matter; it merely uses matter in a skilful +way--uses it up. + +Man advances by learning the secrets of nature and taking advantage of +his knowledge. He is deeply happy only when in harmony with his work +and environments. The backwoodsman, early settler, pioneer plainsman, +mountain man were all like some infuriated beast of Promethean +capabilities tearing at its own vitals. Driven by an irrational energy, +they seemed intent on destroying not only the growth of the soil but the +power of the soil to reproduce. Davy Crockett, the great bear killer, +was "wrathy to kill a bear," and as respects bears and other wild life, +one may search the chronicles of his kind in vain for anything beyond +the incidents of chase and slaughter. To quote T. B. Thorpe's blusterous +bear hunter, the whole matter may be summed up in one sentence: "A bear +is started and he is killed." For the average American of the soil, +whether wearing out a farm, shotgunning with a headlight the last doe +of a woodland, shooting the last buffalo on the range, trapping the +last howling lobo, winging the last prairie chicken, running down in an +automobile the last antelope, making a killer's target of any hooting +owl or flying heron that comes within range, poisoning the last eagle to +fly over a sheep pasture for him the circumstances of the killing have +expressed his chief intellectual interest in nature. + +A sure sign of advancing civilization has been the rapidly changing +popular attitude toward nature during recent years. People are becoming +increasingly interested not merely in conserving game for sportsmen +to shoot, but in preserving all wild life, in observing animals, in +cultivating native flora, in building houses that harmonize with climate +and landscape. Roger Tory Peterson's _Field Guide to the Birds_ has +become one of the popular standard works of America. + +The story of the American Indian is--despite taboos and squalor--a story +of harmonizations with nature. "Wolf Brother," in _Long Lance_, by Chief +Buffalo Child Long Lance, is a poetic concretion of this harmony. As +much at ease with the wilderness as any Blackfoot Indian was George +Frederick Ruxton, educated English officer and gentleman, who rode +horseback from Vera Cruz to the Missouri River and wrote _Adventures +in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_. In this book he tells how a lobo +followed him for days from camp to camp, waiting each evening for his +share of fresh meat and sometimes coming close to the fire at night. Any +orthodox American would have shot the lobo at first appearance. Ruxton +had the civilized perspective on nature represented by Thoreau and Saint +Francis of Assisi. Primitive harmony was run over by frontier wrath to +kill, a wrath no less barbaric than primitive superstitions. + +But the coyote's howl is more tonic than all theories about nature; the +buck's whistle more invigorating; the bull's bellow in the canyon more +musical; the call of the bobwhite more serene; the rattling of the +rattlesnake more logical; the scream of the panther more arousing to the +imagination; the odor from the skunk more lingering; the sweep of the +buzzard in the air more majestical; the wariness of the wild turkey +brighter; the bark of the prairie dog lighter; the guesses of the +armadillo more comical; the upward dartings and dippings of the +scissortail more lovely; the flight of the sandhill cranes more fraught +with mystery. + +There is an abundance of printed information on the animal life of +America, to the west as well as to the east. Much of it cannot be +segregated; the earthworm, on which Darwin wrote a book, knows nothing +of regionalism. The best books on nature come from and lead to the +Grasshopper's Library, which is free to all consultants. I advise the +consultant to listen to the owl's hoot for wisdom, plant nine bean rows +for peace, and, with Wordsworth, sit on an old gray stone listening for +"authentic tidings of invisible things." Studies are only to "perfect +nature." In the words of Mary Austin, "They that make the sun noise +shall not fail of the sun's full recompense." + +Like knowledge in any other department of life, that on nature never +comes to a stand so long as it has vitality. A continuing interest +in natural history is nurtured by _Natural History_, published by the +American Museum of Natural History, New York; _Nature_, published +in Washington, D. C.; _The Living Wilderness_, also from Washington; +_Journal of Mammalogy_, a quarterly, Baltimore, Maryland; _Audubon +Magazine_ (formerly _Bird Lore_), published by the National Audubon +Society, New York; _American Forests_, Washington, D. C., and various +other publications. + +In addition to books of natural history interest listed below, others +are listed under "Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters," "Bears and Bear +Hunters," "Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers," "Birds and Wild Flowers," and +"Interpreters." Perhaps a majority of worthy books pertaining to the +western half of America look on the outdoors. + + +ADAMS, W. H. DAVENPORT (from the French of Benedict Revoil). _The Hunter +and the Trapper of North America_, London, 1875. A strange book. + +ARNOLD, OREN. _Wild Life in the Southwest_, Dallas, 1936. Helpful +chapters on various characteristic animals and plants. OP. + +BAILEY, VERNON. _Mammals of New Mexico_, United States Department of +Agriculture, Bureau of Biological Survey, Washington, D. C., 1931. +_Biological Survey of Texas_, 1905. OP. The "North American Fauna +Series," to which these two books belong, contains or points to the +basic facts covering most of the mammals of the Southwest. + +BAILLIE-GROHMAN, WILLIAM A. _Camps in the Rockies_, 1882. A true +sportsman, Baillie-Grohman was more interested in living animals than in +just killing. OP. + +BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, Doubleday, Garden +City, N. Y., 1947. To be personal, Roy Bedichek has the most richly +stored mind I have ever met; it is as active as it is full. Liberal in +the true sense of the word, it frees other minds. Here, using facts as a +means, it gives meanings to the hackberry tree, limestone, mockingbird, +Inca dove, Mexican primrose, golden eagle, the Davis Mountains, cedar +cutters, and many another natural phenomenon. _Adventures with a Texas +Naturalist_ is regarded by some good judges as the wisest book in the +realm of natural history produced in America since Thoreau wrote. + +The title of Bedichek's second book, _Karankaway Country_ (Garden City, +1950), is misleading. The Karankawa Indians start it off, but it goes to +coon inquisitiveness, prairie chicken dances, the extinction of species +to which the whooping crane is approaching, browsing goats, dignified +skunks, swifts in love flight, a camp in the brush, dust, erosion, +silt--always with thinking added to seeing. The foremost naturalist of +the Southwest, Bedichek constantly relates nature to civilization and +human values. + +BROWNING, MESHACH. _Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_, 1859; +reprinted, Philadelphia, 1928. Prodigal on bear and deer. + +CAHALANE, VICTOR H. _Mammals of North America_, Macmillan, New York, +1947. The author is a scientist with an open mind on the relationships +between predators and game animals. His thick, delightfully illustrated +book is the best dragnet on American mammals extant. It contains +excellent lists of references. + +CATON, JUDGE JOHN DEAN. _Antelope and Deer of America_, 1877. Standard +work. OP. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Longhorns_ (1941) and _The Mustangs_ (1952), +while hardly to be catalogued as natural history books, go farther into +natural history than most books on cattle and horses go. _On the Open +Range_ (1931; reprinted by Banks Upshaw, Dallas) contains a number of +animal stories more or less true. Ben Lilly of _The Ben Lilly Legend_ +(Boston, 1950) thought that God had called him to hunt. He spent +his life, therefore, in hunting. He saw some things in nature beyond +targets. + +DODGE, RICHARD I. _The Hunting Grounds of the Great West_, London, 1877. +Published in New York the same year under title of _The Plains of the +Great West and Their Inhabitants_. Outstanding survey of outstanding +wild creatures. + +DUNRAVEN, EARL OF. _The Great Divide_, London, 1876; reprinted under +title of _Hunting in the Yellowstone_, 1925. OP. + +ELLIOTT, CHARLES (editor). _Fading Trails_, New York, 1942. Humanistic +review of characteristic American wild life. OP. + +FLACK, CAPTAIN. _The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods_, +1866; another form of _A Hunter's Experience in the Southern States of +America_, by Captain Flack, "The Ranger," London, 1866. + +GANSON, EVE. _Desert Mavericks_, Santa Barbara, California, 1928. +Illustrated; delightful. OP. + +GEISER, SAMUEL WOOD. _Naturalists of the Frontier_, Southern Methodist +University Press, Dallas, 1937; revised and enlarged edition, 1948. +Biographies of men who were characters as well as scientists, generally +in environments alien to their interests. + +GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_, 1854. A +translation from the German. Delightful reading and revealing picture of +how backwoodsmen of the Mississippi Valley "lived off the country." + +GRAHAM, GID. _Animal Outlaws_, Collinsville, Oklahoma, 1938. OP. A +remarkable collection of animal stories. Privately printed. + +GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. Between 1893 and 1913, Grinnell, partly in +collaboration with Theodore Roosevelt, edited five volumes for The Boone +and Crockett Club that contain an extraordinary amount of information, +written mostly by men of civilized perspective, on bears, deer, mountain +sheep, buffaloes, cougars, elk, wolves, moose, mountains, and forests. +The series, long out of print, is a storehouse of knowledge not to be +overlooked by any student of wild life in the West. The titles are: +_American Big-Game Hunting_, 1893; _Hunting in Many Lands_, 1895; _Trail +and Camp-Fire_, 1897; _American Big Game in Its Haunts_, 1904; _Hunting +at High Altitudes_, 1913. + +GRINNELL, JOSEPH; DIXON, JOSEPH S.; and LINSDALE, JEAN M. _Fur-Bearing +Mammals of California: Their Natural History, Systematic Status, and +Relation to Man_, two volumes, University of California Press, Berkeley, +1937. The king, so far, of all state natural histories. + +HALL, E. RAYMOND. _Mammals of Nevada_, University of California Press, +Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946. So far as my knowledge goes, this is the +only respect-worthy book extant pertaining to the state whose economy is +based on fees from divorces and gambling and whose best-known citizen is +Senator Pat McCarran. + +HARTMAN, CARL G. _Possum_, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. This +richly illustrated book comprehends everything pertaining to the subject +from prehistoric marsupium to baking with sweet potatoes in a Negro +cabin. It is the outcome of a lifetime's scientific investigation not +only of possums but of libraries and popular talk. Thus, in addition to +its biographical and natural history aspects, it is a study in the +evolution of man's knowledge about one of the world's folkiest +creatures. + +{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Blazed Trail of the Old +Frontier_ by Agnes C. Laut (1926)} + + +HORNADAY, WILLIAM T. _Camp Fires on Desert and Lava_, London, n.d. OP. +Dr. Hornaday, who died in 1937, was the first director of the New York +Zoological Park. He was a great conservationist and an authority on the +wild life of America. + +HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. Not about +the Southwest or even North America, but Hudson's chapters on "The +Puma," "Some Curious Animal Weapons," "The Mephitic Skunk," "Humming +Birds," "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," "Horse and Man," etc. come +home to the Southwest. Few writers tend to make readers so aware; no +other has written so delightfully of the lands of grass. + +INGERSOLL, ERNEST. _Wild Neighbors_, New York, 1897. OP. A superior +work. Chapter II, "The Father of Game," is on the cougar; Chapter IV, +"The Hound of the Plains," is on the coyote; there is an excellent essay +on the badger. Each chapter is provided with a list of books affording +more extended treatment of the subject. + +JAEGER, EDMUND C. _Denizens of the Desert_, Boston, 1922. OP. "Don +Coyote," the roadrunner, and other characteristic animals. _Our Desert +Neighbors_, Stanford University Press, California, 1950. + +LOCKE, LUCIE H. _Naturally Yours, Texas_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1949. +Charm must never be discounted; it is far rarer than facts, and often +does more to lead to truth. This slight book is in verse and drawings, +type integrated with delectable black-and-white representations of the +prairie dog, armadillo, sanderling, mesquite, whirlwind, sand dune, +mirage, and dozens of other natural phenomena. The only other book in +this list to which it is akin is Eve Ganson's _Desert Mavericks_. + +LUMHOLTZ, CARL. _Unknown Mexico_, New York, 1902. Nearly anything about +animals as well as about Indians and mountains of Mexico may be found in +this extraordinary two-volume work. OP. + +MCILHENNY, EDWARD A. _The Alligator s Life History_, Boston, 1935. OP. +The alligator got farther west than is generally known--at least within +reach of Laredo and Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande. McIlhenny's book +treats--engagingly, intimately, and with precision--of the animal +in Louisiana. Hungerers for anatomical biology are referred to _The +Alligator and Its Allies_ by A. M. Reese, New York, 1915. I have more to +say about McIlhenny in Chapter 30. + +MARCY, COLONEL R. B. _Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border_, New +York, 1866. Marcy had a scientific mind and a high sense of values. He +knew how to write and what he wrote remains informing and pleasant. + +MARTIN, HORACE T. _Castorologia, or The History and Traditions of the +Canadian Beaver_, London, 1892. OP. The beaver is a beaver, whether +on Hudson's Bay or the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Much has been +written on this animal, the propeller of the trappers of the West, but +this famous book remains the most comprehensive on facts and the amplest +in conception. The author was humorist as well as scientist. + +MENGER, RUDOLPH. _Texas Nature Observations and Reminiscences_, San +Antonio, 1913. OP. Being of an educated German family, Dr. Menger found +many things in nature more interesting than two-headed calves. + +MILLS, ENOS. _The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Wild Life on the Rockies, +Waiting in the Wilderness_, and other books. Some naturalists have +taken exception to some observations recorded by Mills; nevertheless, he +enlarges and freshens mountain life. + +MUIR, JOHN. _The Mountains of California, Our National Parks_, and +other books. Muir, a great naturalist, had the power to convey his wise +sympathies and brooded-over knowledge. + +MURPHY, JOHN MORTIMER. _Sporting Adventures in the Far West_, London, +1879. One of the earliest roundups of game animals of the West. + +NEWSOME, WILLIAM M. _The Whitetailed Deer_, New York, 1926. OP. Standard +work. + +PALLISER, JOHN. _The Solitary Hunter; or Storting Adventures in the +Prairies_, London, 1857. + +ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_, with a +chapter entitled "Books on Big Game"; _Hunting Adventures in the West; +The Wilderness Hunter; Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail; A Book Lover's +Holiday in the Open; The Deer Family_ (in collaboration). + +SEARS, PAUL B. _Deserts on the March_, University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, 1935. Dramatic picturization of the forces of nature operating +in what droughts of the 1930's caused to be called "the Dust Bowl." +"Drought and Wind and Man" might be another title. + +SETON, ERNEST THOMPSON. _Wild Animals I Have Known; Lives of the +Hunted_. Probably no other writer of America has aroused so many people, +young people especially, to an interest in our wild animals. Natural +history encyclopedias he has authored are _Life Histories of Northern +Animals_, New York, 1920, and _Lives of Game Animals_, New York, 1929. +Seton's final testament, _Trail of an Artist Naturalist_ (Scribner's, +New York, 1941), has a deal on wild life of the Southwest. + +THORPE, T. B. _The Hive of the Bee-Hunter_, New York, 1854. OP. Juicy. + +WARREN, EDWARD ROYAL. _The Mammals of Colorado_, University of Oklahoma +Press, Norman, 1942. OP. + + + + + +27. Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters + +THE LITERATURE on the American bison, more popularly called buffalo, +is enormous. Nearly everything of consequence pertaining to the Plains +Indians touches the animal. The relationship of the Indian to the +buffalo has nowhere been better stated than in Note 49 to the Benavides +_Memorial_, edited by Hodge and Lummis. "The Great Buffalo Hunt at +Standing Rock," a chapter in _My Friend the Indian_ by James McLaughlin, +sums up the hunting procedure; other outstanding treatments of the +buffalo in Indian books are to be found in _Long Lance_ by Chief Buffalo +Child Long Lance; _Letters and Notes on... the North American Indians_ +by George Catlin; _Forty Years a Fur Trader_ by Charles Larpenteur. +Floyd B. Streeter's chapter on "The Buffalo Range" in _Prairie Trails +and Cow Towns_ lists twenty-five sources of information. + +The bibliography that supersedes all other bibliographies is in the book +that supersedes all other books on the subject--Frank Gilbert Roe's _The +North American Buffalo_. More about it in the list that follows. + +Nearly all men who got out on the plains were "wrathy to kill" +buffaloes above all else. The Indians killed in great numbers but seldom +wastefully. The Spaniards were restrained by Indian hostility. Mountain +men, emigrants crossing the plains, Santa Fe traders, railroad builders, +Indian fighters, settlers on the edge of the plains, European sportsmen, +all slaughtered and slew. Some observed, but the average American +hunter's observations on game animals are about as illuminating as the +trophy-stuffed den of a rich oilman or the lockers of a packing house. +Lawrence of Arabia won his name through knowledge and understanding of +Arabian life and through power to lead and to write. Buffalo Bill won +his name through power to exterminate buffaloes. He was a buffalo man in +the way that Hitler was a Polish Jew man. + +{illust. caption = Harold D. Bugbee: Buffaloes + +It is a pleasure to note the writings of sportsmen with inquiring minds +and of scientists and artists who hunted. Three examples are: _The +English Sportsman in the Western Prairies_, by the Hon. Grantley F. +Berkeley, London, 1861; _Travels in the Interior of North America, +1833-1834_, by Maximilian, Prince of Wied (original edition, 1843), +included in that "incomparable storehouse of buffalo lore from early +eye-witnesses," _Early Western Travels_, edited by Reuben Gold +Thwaites; George Catlin's _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and +Conditions of the North American Indians_, London, 1841. + +Three aspects of the buffalo stand out: the natural history of the great +American animal; the interrelationship between Indian and buffalo; the +white hunter--and exterminator. + + +ALLEN, J. A. _The American Bison, Living and Extinct_, Cambridge, Mass., +1876. Reprinted in 9th Annual Report of the United States Geological and +Geographical Survey, Washington, 1877. Basic and rich work, much of it +appropriated by Hornaday. + +BRANCH, E. DOUGLAS. _The Hunting of the Buffalo_, New York, 1925. +Interpretative as well as factual. OP. + +COOK, JOHN R. _The Border and the Buffalo_. Topeka, Kansas, 1907. +Personal narrative. + +DIXON, OLIVE. _Billy Dixon_, Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1914; reprinted, Dallas, +1927. Bully autobiography; excellent on the buffalo hunter as a type. +OP. + +DODGE, R. I. _The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants_, +New York, 1877. One of the best chapters of this source book is on the +buffalo. + +GARRETSON, MARTIN S. _The American Bison_, New York Zoological Society, +New York, 1938. Not thorough, but informing. Limited bibliography. OP. + +GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD (1849-1938) may be classed next to J. A. Allen and +W. T. Hornaday as historian of the buffalo. His primary sources were the +buffaloed plains and the Plains Indians, whom he knew intimately. "In +Buffalo Days" is a long and excellent essay by him in _American Big-Game +Hunting_, edited by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, New +York, 1893. He has another long essay, "The Bison," in _Musk-Ox, Bison, +Sheep and Goat_ by Caspar Whitney, George Bird Grinnell, and Owen +Wister, New York, 1904. His noble and beautifully simple _When Buffalo +Ran_, New Haven, 1920, is specific on work from a buffalo horse. Again +in his noble two-volume work on _The Cheyenne Indians_ (1923) Grinnell +is rich not only on the animal but on the Plains Indian relationship to +it. All OP. + +HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman_, 1936. +Goodnight killed and also helped save the buffalo. Haley has preserved +his observations. + +HORNADAY, W. T. _Extermination of the American Bison_ (Smithsonian +Reports for 1887, published in 1889, Part II). Hornaday was a good +zoologist but inferior in research. + +INMAN, HENRY. _Buffalo Jones Forty Years of Adventure_, Topeka, Kansas, +1899. A book rich in observations as well as experience, though Jones +was a poser. OP. + +LAKE, STUART N. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Early chapters excellent on +buffalo hunting. + +MCCREIGHT, M. I. _Buffalo Bone Days_, Sykesville, Pa., 1939. OP. A +pamphlet strong on buffalo bones, for fertilizer. + +PALLISER, JOHN (and others). _Journals, Detailed Reports, and +Observations, relative to Palliser's Exploration of British North +America, 1857-1860_, London, 1863. According to Frank Gilbert Roe, "a +mine of inestimable information" on the buffalo. + +_Panhandle-Plains Historical Review_, Canyon, Texas. Articles and +reminiscences, _passim_. + +PARKMAN, FRANCIS. _The Oregon Trail_, 1847. Available in various +editions, this book contains superb descriptions of buffaloes and +prairies. + +POE, SOPHIE A. _Buckboard Days_ (edited by Eugene Cunningham), Caldwell, +Idaho, 1936. Early chapters. OP. + +ROE, FRANK GILBERT. _The North American Buffalo_, University of Toronto +Press, 1951. A monumental work comprising and critically reviewing +virtually all that has been written on the subject and supplanting much +of it. No other scholar dealing with the buffalo has gone so fully +into the subject or viewed it from so many angles, brought out so many +aspects of natural history and human history. In a field where +ignorance has often prevailed, Roe has to be iconoclastic in order to be +constructive. If his words are sometimes sharp, his mind is sharper. The +one indispensable book on the subject. + +RYE, EDGAR. _The Quirt and the Spur_, Chicago, 1909. Rye was in the Fort +Griffin, Texas, country when buffalo hunters dominated it. OP. + +SCHULTZ, JAMES WILLARD. _Apauk, Caller of Buffalo_, New York, 1916. +OP. Whether fiction or nonfiction, as claimed by the author, this book +realizes the relationships between Plains Indian and buffalo. + +WEEKES, MARY. _The Last Buffalo Hunter_ (as told by Norbert Welsh), +New York, 1939. OP. The old days recalled with upspringing sympathy. +Canada--but buffaloes and buffalo hunters were pretty much the same +everywhere. + +West Texas Historical Association (Abilene, Texas) _Year Books_. +Reminiscences and articles, _passim_. + +WILLIAMS, O. W. A privately printed letter of eight unnumbered pages, +dated from Fort Stockton, Texas, June 30, 1930, containing the best +description of a buffalo stampede that I have encountered. It is +reproduced in Dobie's _On the Open Range_. + + + + + +28. Bears and Bear Hunters + +THE BEAR, whether black or grizzly, is a great American citizen. Think +of how many children have been put to sleep with bear stories! Facts +about the animal are fascinating; the effect he has had on the minds of +human beings associated with him transcends naturalistic facts. The tree +on which Daniel Boone carved the naked fact that here he "Killed A. Bar +In the YEAR 1760" will never die. Davy Crockett killed 105 bars in one +season, and his reputation as a bar hunter, plus ability to tell about +his exploits, sent him to Congress. He had no other reason for going. +The grizzly was the hero of western tribes of Indians from Alaska +on down into the Sierra Madre. Among western white men who met him, +occasionally in death, the grizzly inspired a mighty saga, the cantos of +which lie dispersed in homely chronicles and unrecorded memories as well +as in certain vivid narratives by Ernest Thompson Seton, Hittell's John +Capen Adams, John G. Neihardt, and others. + +For all that, neither the black bear nor the grizzly has been amply +conceived of as an American character. The conception must include a +vast amount of folklore. In a chapter on "Bars and Bar Hunters" in _On +the Open Range_ and in "Juan Oso" and "Under the Sign of Ursa Major," +chapters of _Tongues of the Monte_, I have indicated the nature of this +dispersed epic in folk tales. + +In many of the books listed under "Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists" and +"Mountain Men" the bear "walks like a man." + + +ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1922 reprinted by +Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Contains several versions of +the famous Hugh Glass bear story. + +HITTELL, THEODORE H. _The Adventures of John Capen Adams_, 1860; +reprinted 1911, New York. OP. Perhaps no man has lived who knew +grizzlies better than Adams. A rare personal narrative. + +MILLER, JOAQUIN. _True Bear Stories_, Chicago, 1900. OP. Truth +questionable in places; interest guaranteed. + +MILLER, LEWIS B. _Saddles and Lariats_, Boston, 1909. OP. The chapter +"In a Grizzly's Jaws" is a wonderful bear story. + +MILLS, ENOS A. _The Grizzly, Our Greatest Wild Animal_, Houghton +Mifflin, Boston, 1919. Some naturalists have accused Mills of having too +much imagination. He saw much and wrote vividly. + +NEIHARDT, JOHN G. _The Song of Hugh Glass_, New York, 1915. An epic +in vigorous verse of the West's most famous man-and-bear story. This +imagination-rousing story has been told over and over, by J. Cecil Alter +in _James Bridger_, by Stanley Vestal in _Mountain Men_, and by other +writers. + +ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Hunting Adventures_ in the {illust. caption = +Charles M. Russell, in _Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage_ by Carrie Adell +Strahorn (1915 ) _West_ (1885) and _The Wilderness Hunter_ (1893)--books +reprinted in parts or wholly under varying titles. Several narratives of +hunts intermixed with baldfaced facts. + +SETON, ERNEST THOMPSON. _The Biography of a Grizzly_, 1900; now +published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York. _Monarch, the Big Bear +of Tallac_, 1904. Graphic narratives. + +SKINNER, M. P. _Bears in the Yellowstone_, Chicago, 1925. OP. A +naturalist's rounded knowledge, pleasantly told. + +STEVENS, MONTAGUE. _Meet Mr. Grizzly_, University of New Mexico Press, +Albuquerque, 1943. Montague Stevens graduated from Trinity College, +Cambridge, in 1881 and came to New Mexico to ranch. As respects +deductions on observed data, his book is about the most mature yet +published by a ranchman. Goodnight experienced more, had a more ample +nature, but he lacked the perspective, the mental training, to know what +to make of his observations. Another English rancher, R. B. Townshend, +had perspective and charm but was not a scientific observer. So far as +sense of smell goes, _Meet Mr. Grizzly_ is as good as W. H. Hudson's _A +Hind in Richmond Park_. On the nature and habits of grizzly bears, it is +better than _The Grizzly_ by Enos Mills. + +WRIGHT, WILLIAM H. _The Grizzly Bear: The Narrative of a +Hunter-Naturalist, Historical, Scientific and Adventurous_, New York, +1928. OP. This is not only the richest and justest book published on the +grizzly; it is among the best books of the language on specific mammals. +Wright had a passion for bears, for their preservation, and for arousing +informed sympathy in other people. Yet he did not descend to propaganda. +_His The Black Bear_, London, n.d., is good but no peer to his work on +the grizzly. Also OP. + + + + + +29. Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers + +I SEPARATE COYOTES, lobos, and panthers from the mass of animals because +they, along with bears, have made such an imprint on human imagination. +White-tailed deer are far more common and more widely dispersed. Men, +women also, by the tens of thousands go out with rifles every fall in +efforts to get near them; but the night-piercing howl and the cunning +ways of the coyote, the panther's track and the rumor of his scream have +inspired more folk tales than all the deer. + +Lore and facts about these animals are dispersed in many books not +classifiable under natural history. Lewis and Clark and nearly all the +other chroniclers of Trans-Mississippi America set down much on wild +life. James Pike's _Scout and Ranger_ details the manner in which, +he says, a panther covered him up alive, duplicating a fanciful and +delightful tale in Gerstaecker's _Wild Sports in the Far West_. James +B. O'Neil concludes _They Die but Once_ with some "Bedtime Stories" +that--almost necessarily--bring in a man-hungry panther. + + +COYOTES AND LOBOS + + +The two full-length books on Brother Coyote listed below specify most of +the printed literature on the animal. (He is "Brother" in Mexican tales +and I feel much more brotherly toward him than I feel toward character +assassins in political power.) It would require another book to +catalogue in detail all the writings that include folk tales about Don +Coyote. Ethnologists and scientific folklorists recognize what they call +"the Coyote Circle" in the folklore of many tribes of Indians. Morris +Edward Opler in _Myths and Legends of the Lipan Apache Indians_, 1940, +and in _Myths and Tales of the Chiricahua Apache Indians_, 1942 (both +issued by the American Folklore Society, New York) treats fully of +this cycle. Numerous tales that belong to the cycle are included by J. +Gilbert McAllister, an anthropologist who writes as a humanist, in his +extended collection, "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in _The Sky Is My Tipi_, +edited by Mody C. Boatright for the Texas Folklore Society (Publication +XXII), Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949. + +Literary retellers of Indian coyote folk tales have been many. The +majority of retellers from western Indians include Coyote. One of the +very best is Frank B. Linderman, in _Indian Why Stories_ and _Indian +Old-Man Stories_. These titles are substantive: _Old Man Coyote_ by +Clara Kern Bayliss (New York, 1908, OP), _Coyote Stories_ by Mourning +Dove (Caldwell, Idaho, 1934, OP); _Don Coyote_ by Leigh Peck (Boston, +1941) gets farther away from the Indian, is more juvenile. The _Journal +of American Folklore_ and numerous Mexican books have published hundreds +of coyote folk tales from Mexico. Among the most pleasingly told +are _Picture Tales frown Mexico_ by Dan Storm, 1941 (Lippincott, +Philadelphia). The first two writers listed below bring in folklore. + + +CUSHING, FRANK HAMILTON. _Zuni Breadstuff_, Museum of the American +Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, 1920. This extraordinary book, one of +the most extraordinary ever written on a particular people, is not made +up of coyote lore alone. In it the coyote becomes a character of +dignity and destiny, and the telling is epic in dignity as well as +in prolongation. Frank Hamilton Cushing was a genius; his sympathy, +insight, knowledge, and mastery of the art of writing enabled him to +reveal the spirit of the Zuni Indians as almost no other writer has +revealed the spirit of any other tribe. Their attitude toward Coyote +is beautifully developed. Cushing's _Zuni Folk Tales_ (Knopf, New York, +1901, 1931) is climactic on "tellings" about Coyote. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Voice of the Coyote_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1949. +Not only the coyote but his effect on human imagination and ecological +relationships. Natural history and folklore; many tales from factual +trappers as well as from Mexican and Indian folk. This is a strange book +in some ways. If the author had quit at the end of the first chapter, +which is on coyote voicings and their meaning to varied listeners, he +would still have said something. The book includes some, but by no means +all, of the material on the subject in _Coyote Wisdom_ (Publication XIV +of the Texas Folklore Society, 1938) edited by J. Frank Dobie and now +distributed by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. + +GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. Wolves and Wolf Nature, in _Trail and Camp-Fire_, +New York, 1897. This long chapter is richer in facts about the coyote +than anything published prior to _The Voice of the Coyote_, which +borrows from it extensively. + +LOFBERG, LILA, and MALCOLMSON, DAVID. _Sierra Outpost_, Duell, Sloan and +Pearce, New York, 1941. An extraordinary detailment of the friendship +between two people, isolated by snow high in the California Sierras, and +three coyotes. Written with fine sympathy, minute in observations. + +MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Talking to the Moon_, University of Chicago +Press, 1945. A wise and spiritual interpretation of the black-jack +country of eastern Oklahoma, close to the Osages, in which John Joseph +Mathews lives. Not primarily about coyotes, the book illuminates +them more than numerous books on particular animals illuminate their +subjects. + +MURIE, ADOLPH. _Ecology of the Coyote in the Yellowstone_, United States +Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1940. An example of +strict science informed by civilized humanity. _The Wolves of Mount +McKinley_, United States Government Printing Of ice, Washington, D. C., +1944. Murie's combination of prolonged patience, science, and sympathy +behind the observations has never been common. His ecological point of +view is steady. Highly interesting reading. + +YOUNG, STANLEY PAUL (with Edward A. Goldman). _The Wolves of North +America_, American Wildlife Institute, Washington, D. C., 1944. Full +information, full bibliography, without narrative power. _Sketches of +American Wildlife_, Monumental Press, Baltimore, 1946. This slight book +contains pleasant chapters on the Puma, Wolf, Coyote, Antelope and other +animals characteristic of the West. (With Hartley H. T. Jackson) _The +Clever Coyote_, Stackpole, Harrisburg, Pa., and Wildlife Management +Institute, Washington, D. C., 1951. Emphasis upon the economic status +and control of the species, an extended classification of subspecies, +and a full bibliography make this book and Dobie's _The Voice of the +Coyote_ complemental to each other rather than duplicative. + + +PANTHERS + + +Anybody who so wishes may call them mountain lions. Where there were +Negro mammies, white children were likely to be haunted in the night by +fear of ghosts. Otherwise, for some children of the South and West, +no imagined terror of the night equaled the panther's scream. The +Anglo-American lore pertaining to the panther is replete with stories of +attacks on human beings. Indian and Spanish lore, clear down to where W. +H. Hudson of the pampas heard it, views the animal as _un amigo de +los cristianos_--a friend of man. The panther is another animal as +interesting for what people associated with him have taken to be facts +as for the facts themselves. + + +BARKER, ELLIOTT S. _When the Dogs Barked `Treed'_, University of New +Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946. Mainly on mountain lions, but firsthand +observations on other predatory animals also. Before he became state +game warden, the author was for years with the United States Forest +Service. + +HIBBEN, FRANK C. _Hunting American Lions_, New York, 1948; reprinted +by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Mr. Hibben considers +hunting panthers and bears a terribly dangerous business that only +intrepid heroes like him-self would undertake. Sometimes in this book, +but more awesomely in _Hunting American Bears_, he manages to out-zane +Zane Grey, who had to warn his boy scout readers and puerile-minded +readers of added years that _Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon_ is true +in contrast to the fictional _Young Lion Hunter_, which uses some of the +same material. + +HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. A chapter +in this book entitled "The Puma, or Lion of America" provoked an attack +from Theodore Roosevelt (in _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_); +but it remains the most delightful narrative-essay yet written on the +subject. + +YOUNG, STANLEY PAUL, and GOLDMAN, EDWARD A. _The Puma, Mysterious +American Cat_, American Wildlife Institute, Washington, D. C., 1946. +Scientific, liberal with information of human interest, bibliography. +We get an analysis of the panther's scream but it does not curdle the +blood. + + +{illust} + + + + + +30. Birds and Wild Flowers + +NEARLY EVERYBODY ENJOYS to an extent the singing of birds and the +colors of flowers; to the majority, however, the enjoyment is casual, +generalized, vague, in the same category as that derived from a short +spell of prattling by a healthy baby. Individuals who study birds and +native flora experience an almost daily refreshment of the spirit and +growth of the intellect. For them the world is an unending Garden of +Delight and a hundred-yard walk down a creek that runs through town +or pasture is an exploration. Hardly anything beyond good books, good +pictures and music, and good talk is so contributory to the enrichment +of life as a sympathetic knowledge of the birds, wild flowers, and other +native fauna and flora around us. + +The books listed are dominantly scientific. Some include keys to +identification. Once a person has learned to use the key for identifying +botanical or ornithological species, he can spend the remainder of his +life adding to his stature. + + +BIRDS + + +BAILEY, FLORENCE MERRIAM. _Birds of New Mexico_, 1928. OP. Said by those +who know to be at the top of all state bird books. Much on habits. + +BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_ (1947) and +_Karankaway Country_ (1950), Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y. These are +books of essays on various aspects of nature, but nowhere else can one +find an equal amount of penetrating observation on chimney swifts, Inca +doves, swallows, golden eagles, mockingbirds, herons, prairie chickens, +whooping cranes, swifts, scissortails, and some other birds. As Bedichek +writes of them they become integrated with all life. + +BRANDT, HERBERT. _Arizona and Its Bird Life_, Bird Research Foundation, +Cleveland, 1951. This beautiful, richly illustrated volume of 525 pages +lives up to its title; the birds belong to the Arizona country, and with +them we get pines, mesquites, cottonwoods, John Slaughter's ranch, +the northward-flowing San Pedro, and many other features of the land. +Herbert Brandt's _Texas Bird Adventures_, illustrated by George Miksch +Sutton (Cleveland, 1940), is more on the Big Bend country and ranch +country to the north than on birds, though birds are here. + +DAWSON, WILLIAM LEON. _The Birds of California_, San Diego, etc., +California, 1923. OP. Four magnificent volumes, full in illustrations, +special observations on birds, and scientific data. + +DOBIE, J. FRANK, who is no more of an ornithologist than he is a +geologist, specialized on an especially characteristic bird of the +Southwest and gathered its history, habits, and folklore into a long +article: "The Roadrunner in Fact and Folklore," in _In the Shadow of +History_, Publication XV of the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1939. +OP. "Bob More: Man and Bird Man," _Southwest Review_, Dallas, Vol. +XXVII, No. 1 (Autumn, 1941). + +NICE, MARGARET MORSE. _The Birds of Oklahoma_, Norman, 1931. OP. United +States Biological Survey publication. + +OBERHOLSER, HARRY CHURCH. The Birds of Texas in manuscript form. "A +stupendous work, the greatest of its genre, by the nation's outstanding +ornithologist, who has been fifty years making it." The quotation is +condensed from an essay by Roy Bedichek in the _Southwest Review_, +Dallas, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1953). Maybe some day some man +or woman with means will see the light of civilized patriotism and +underwrite the publication of these great volumes. Patriotism that does +not act to promote the beautiful, the true, and the good had better pipe +down. + +PETERSON, ROGER TORY. _A Field Guide to Western Birds_ (1941) and _A +Field Guide to the Birds_ (birds of the eastern United States, +revised 1947), Houghton Mifflin, Boston. These are standard guides for +identification. The range, habits, and characteristics of each bird are +summarized. + +SIMMONS, GEORGE FINLEY. _Birds of the Austin Region_, University of +Texas Press, Austin, 1925. A very thorough work, including migratory as +well as nesting species. + +SUTTON, GEORGE MIKSCH. _Mexican Birds_, illustrated with water-color +and pen-and-ink drawings by the author, University of Oklahoma Press, +Norman, 1951. The main part of this handsome book is a personal +narrative--pleasant to read even by one who is not a bird man--of +discovery in Mexico. To it is appended a resume of Mexican bird life for +the use of other seekers. Sutton's _Birds in the Wilderness: Adventures +of an Ornithologist_ (Macmillan, New York, 1936) contains essays on pet +roadrunners, screech owls, and other congenial folk of the Big Bend +of Texas. _The Birds of Brewster County, Texas_, in collaboration with +Josselyn Van Tyne, is a publication of the Museum of Zoology, University +of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1937. + +_Wild Turkey_. Literature on this national bird is enormous. Among books +I name first _The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting_, by Edward A. McIlhenny, +New York, 1914. OP. McIlhenny was a singular man. His family settled on +Avery Island, Louisiana, in 1832; he made it into a famous refuge for +wild fowls. The memories of individuals of a family long established +on a country estate go back several lifetimes. In two books of Negro +folklore and in _The Alligator's Life History_, McIlhenny wrote as an +inheritor. Initially, he was a hunter-naturalist, but scientific enough +to publish in the _Auk_ and the _Journal of Heredity_. Age, desire for +knowledge, and practice in the art of living dimmed his lust for hunting +and sharpened his interest in natural history. His book on the wild +turkey, an extension into publishable form of a manuscript from a +civilized Alabama hunter, is delightful and illuminative reading. + +_The Wild Turkey of Virginia_, by Henry S. Mosby and Charles O. Handley, +published by the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries of Virginia, +Richmond, 1943, is written from the point of view of wild life +management. It contains an extensive bibliography. Less technical is +_The American Wild Turkey_, by Henry E. Davis, Small Arms Technical +Company, Georgetown, South Carolina, 1949. No strain, or subspecies, of +the wild turkey is foreign to any other, but human blends in J. Stokley +Ligon, naturalist, are unique. The title of his much-in-little book is +_History and Management of Merriam's Wild Turkey_, New Mexico Game +and Fish Commission, through the University of New Mexico Press, +Albuquerque, 1946. + + +WILD FLOWERS AND GRASSES + + +The scientific literature on botany of western America is extensive. The +list that follows is for laymen as much as for botanists. + + +BENSON, LYMAN, and DARROW, ROBERT A. _A Manual of Southwestern Desert +Trees and Shrubs_, Biological Science Bulletin No. 6, University of +Arizona, Tucson, 1944. A thorough work of 411 pages, richly illustrated, +with general information added to scientific description. + +CARR, WILLIAM HENRY. _Desert Parade: A Guide to Southwestern Desert +Plants and Wildlife_, Viking, New York, 1947. + +CLEMENTS, FREDERIC E. and EDITH S. _Rocky Mountain Flowers_, H. W. +Wilson, New York, 1928. Scientific description, with glossary of terms +and key for identification. + +COULTER, JOHN M. _Botany of Western Texas_, United States Department of +Agriculture, Washington, 1891-94. OP. Nothing has appeared during the +past sixty years to take the place of this master opus. + +GEISER, SAMUEL WOOD. _Horticulture and Horticulturists in Early +Texas_, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1945. +Historical-scientific, more technical than the author's _Naturalists of +the Frontier_. + +JAEGER, EDMUND C. _Desert Wild Flowers_, Stanford University Press, +California, 1940, revised 1947. Scientific but designed for use by any +intelligent inquirer. + +LUNDELL, CYRUS L., and collaborators. _Flora of Texas_, Southern +Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1942-. A "monumental" work, highly +technical, being published part by part. + +MCKELVEY, SUSAN DELANO. _Yuccas of the Southwestern United States_, +Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1938. Definitive work in two +volumes. + +_Range Plant Handbook_, prepared by the Forest Service of the United +States Department of Agriculture. United States Government Printing +Office, Washington, 1937. A veritable encyclopedia, illustrated. + +SCHULZ, ELLEN D. _Texas Wild Flowers_, Chicago, 1928. Good as a +botanical guide and also for human uses; includes lore on many plants. +OP. _Cactus Culture_, Orange Judd, New York, 1932. Now in revised +edition. + +SILVIUS, W. A. _Texas Grasses_, published by the author, San +Antonio, 1933. A monument, of 782 illustrated pages, to a lifetime's +disinterested following of knowledge "like a star." + +STEVENS, WILLIAM CHASE. _Kansas Wild Flowers_, University of Kansas +Press, Lawrence, 1948. This is more than a state book, and the +integration of knowledge, wisdom, and appreciation of flower life with +botanical science makes it appeal to layman as well as to botanist. 463 +pages, 774 illustrations. Applicable to the whole plains area. + +STOCKWELL, WILLIAM PALMER, and BREAZEALE, LUCRETIA. _Arizona Cacti_, +Biological Science Bulletin No. 1, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1933. +Beautifully illustrated. + +THORNBER, JOHN JAMES, and BONKER, FRANCES. _The Fantastic Clan: The +Cactus Family_, New York, 1932. OP. + +THORP, BENJAMIN CARROLL. _Texas Range Grasses_, University of +Texas Press, Austin, 1952. A survey of 168 species of grasses, their +adaptability to soils and regions, and their values for grazing. +Beautifully illustrated and printed, but no index. + +WHITEHOUSE, EULA. _Texas Wild Flowers in Natural Colors_, 1936; +republished 1948 in Dallas. OP. Toward 200 flowers are pictured in +colors, each in conjunction with descriptive material. The finding lists +are designed to enable novices to identify flowers. A charming book. + + +{illust. caption = Paisano (roadrunner) means fellow-countryman} + + + + + +31. Negro Folk Songs and Tales + +WEST OF A WAVERING line along the western edge of the central parts +of Texas and Oklahoma the Negro is not an important social or cultural +element of the Southwest, just as the modern Indian hardly enters into +Texas life at all and the Mexican recedes to the east. Negro folk songs +and tales of the Southwest have in treatment been blended with those +of the South. Dorothy Scarborough's _On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs_ +(1925, OP) derives mainly from Texas, but in making up the body of a +Negro song, Miss Scarborough says, "You may find one bone in Texas, one +in Virginia and one in Mississippi." Leadbelly, a guitar player equally +at home in the penitentiaries of Texas and Louisiana, furnished John A. +and Alan Lomax with _Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly_, New York, +1936 (OP). The Lomax anthologies, _American Ballads and Folk Songs_, +1934, and _Our Singing Country_, 1941 (Macmillan, New York) and Carl +Sandburg's _American Songbag_ (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1927) all give +the Negro of the Southwest full representation. + +Three books of loveliness by R. Emmett Kennedy, _Black Cameos_ (1924), +_Mellows_ (1925), and _More Mellows_ (1931) represent Louisiana Negroes. +All are OP. An excellent all-American collection is James Weldon +Johnson's _Book of American Negro Spirituals_, Viking, New York, 1940. +Bibliographies and lists of other books will be found in _The Negro and +His Songs_ (1925, OP) and _Negro Workaday Songs_, by Howard W. Odum and +Guy B. Johnson, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1926, +and in _American Negro Folk-Songs_, by Newman I. White, Cambridge, 1928. + +A succinct guide to Negro lore is _American Folk Song and Folk Lore: A +Regional Bibliography_, by Alan Lomax and Sidney R. Crowell, New York, +1942. OP. + +Narrowing the field down to Texas, J. Mason Brewer's "Juneteenth," +in _Tone the Bell Easy_, Publication X of the Texas Folklore Society, +Austin, 1932, is outstanding as a collection of tales. In volume after +volume the Texas Folklore Society has published collections of Negro +songs and tales A. W. Eddins, Martha Emmons, Gates Thomas, and H. B. +Parks being principal contributors. + + + + + +32. Fiction--Including Folk Tales + +FROM THE DAYS of the first innocent sensations in Beadle's Dime Novel +series, on through Zane Grey's mass production and up to any present-day +newsstand's crowded shelf of _Ace High_ and _Flaming Guns_ magazines, +the Southwest, along with all the rest of the West, has been represented +in a fictional output quantitatively stupendous. Most of it has betrayed +rather than revealed life, though not with the contemptible contempt +for both audience and subject that characterizes most of Hollywood's +pictures on the same times, people, and places. Certain historical +aspects of the fictional betrayal of the West may be found in E. Douglas +Branch's _The Cowboy and His Interpreters_, in _The House of Beadle +and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels_, by Albert Johannsen in two +magnificent volumes, and in Jay Monaghan's _The Great Rascal: The Life +and Adventures of Ned Buntline_ Buntline having been perhaps the most +prolific of all Wild West fictionists. + +Some "Westerns" have a kind of validity. If a serious reader went +through the hundreds of titles produced by William McLeod Raine, Dane +Coolidge, Eugene Cunningham,. B. M. Bower, the late Ernest Haycox, +and other manufacturers of range novels who have known their West at +firsthand, he would find, spottedly, a surprising amount of truth about +land and men, a fluency in genuine cowboy lingo, and a respect for the +code of conduct. Yet even these novels have added to the difficulty +that serious writing in the Western field has in getting a hearing on +literary, rather than merely Western, grounds. Any writer of Westerns +must, like all other creators, be judged on his own intellectual +development. "The Western and Ernest Haycox," by James Fargo, in +_Prairie Schooner_, XXVI (Summer, 1952) has something on this subject. + +Actualities in the Southwest seem to have stifled fictional creation. +No historical novel dealing with Texas history has achieved the drama of +the fall of the Alamo or the drawing of the black beans, has presented +a character with half the reality of Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, or Sallie +Skull, or has captured the flavor inherent in the talk on many a ranch +gallery. + +Historical fiction dealing with early day Texas is, however, distinctly +maturing. As a dramatization of Jim Bowie and the bowie knife, _The Iron +Mistress_, by Paul Wellman (Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1951), +is the best novel published so far dealing with a figure of the Texas +revolution. In _Divine Average_ (Little, Brown, Boston, 1952), Elithe +Hamilton Kirkland weaves from her seasoned knowledge of life and from +"realities of those violent years in Texas history between 1838 and +1858" a story of human destiny. She reveals the essential nature of +Range Templeton more distinctly, more mordantly, than history +has revealed the essential nature of Sam Houston or any of his +contemporaries. The wife and daughter of Range Templeton are the most +plausible women in any historical novel of Texas that I have read. The +created world here is more real than the actual. + +Among the early tale-tellers of the Southwest are Jeremiah Clemens, who +wrote _Mustang Gray_, Mollie E. Moore Davis, of plantation tradition, +Mayne Reid, who dared convey real information in his romances, Charles +W. Webber, a naturalist, and T. B. Thorpe, creator of "The Big Bear of +Arkansas." + +Fiction that appeared before World War I can hardly be called modern. +No fiction is likely to appear, however, that will do better by certain +types of western character and certain stages of development in western +society than that produced by Bret Harte, with his gamblers; stage +drivers, and mining camps; O. Henry with his "Heart of the West" types; +Alfred Henry Lewis with his "Wolfville" anecdotes and characters; Owen +Wister, whose _Virginian_ remains the classic of cowboy novels without +cows; and Andy Adams, whose _Log of a Cowboy_ will be read as long as +people want a narrative of cowboys sweating with herds. + +The authors listed below are in alphabetical order. Those who seem to me +to have a chance to survive are not exactly in that order. + + +FRANK APPLEGATE (died 1932) wrote only two books, _Native Tales of New +Mexico_ and _Indian Stories from the Pueblos_, but as a delighted and +delightful teller of folk tales his place is secure. + +MARY AUSTIN seems to be settling down as primarily an expositor. Her +novels are no longer read, but the simple tales in _One-Smoke Stories_ +(her last book, 1934) and in some nonfiction collections, notably _Lost +Borders_ and _The Flock_, do not recede with time. + +While the Southwest can hardly claim Willa Cather, of Nebraska, her +_Death Comes for the Archbishop_ (1927), which is made out of New +Mexican life, is not only the best-known novel concerned with the +Southwest but one of the finest of America. + +Despite the fact that it is not on the literary map, Will Levington +Comfort's _Apache_ (1931) remains for me the most moving and incisive +piece of writing on Indians of the Southwest that I have found. + +If a teller of folk tales and plotless narratives belongs in this +chapter, then J. Frank Dobie should be mentioned for the folk tales in +_Coronado's Children, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, and _Tongues of the +Monte_, also for some of his animal tales in _The Voice of the Coyote_, +outlaw and maverick narratives in _The Longhorns_, and "The Pacing White +Steed of the Prairies" and other horse stories in _The Mustangs_. + +The characters in Harvey Fergusson's _Wolf Song_ (1927) are the Mountain +Men of Kit Carson's time, and the city of their soul is rollicky Taos. +It is a lusty, swift song of the pristine earth. Fergusson's _The Blood +of the Conquerors_ (1931) tackles the juxtaposition of Spanish-Mexican +and Anglo-American elements in New Mexico, of which state he is a +native. _Grant of Kingdom_ (1850) is strong in wisdom life, vitality of +character, and historical values. + +FRED GIPSON'S _Hound-Dog Man_ and _The Home Place_ lack the critical +attitude toward life present in great fiction but they are as honest and +tonic as creek bottom soil and the people in them are genuine. + +FRANK GOODWYN'S _The Magic of Limping John_ (New York, 1944, OP) is a +coherence of Mexican characters, folk tales, beliefs, and ways in +the ranch country of South Texas. There is something of magic in the +telling, but Frank Goodwyn has not achieved objective control over +imagination or sufficiently stressed the art of writing. + +PAUL HORGAN of New Mexico has in _The Return of the Weed_ (short +stories), _Far from Cibola_, and other fiction coped with modern life in +the past-haunted New Mexico. + +OLIVER LAFARGE'S _Laughing Boy_ (1929) grew out of the author's +ethnological knowledge of the Navajo Indians. He achieves character. + +TOM LEA'S _The Brave Bulls_ (1949) has, although it is a sublimation of +the Mexican bullfighting world, Death and Fear of Death for its dominant +theme. It may be compared in theme with Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge +of Courage_. It is written with the utmost of economy, and is beautiful +in its power. _The Wonderful Country_ (1952), a historical novel of the +frontier, but emphatically not a "Western," recognizes more complexities +of society. Its economy and directness parallel the style of Tom Lea's +drawings and paintings, with which both books are illustrated. + +_Sundown_, by John Joseph Mathews (1934), goes more profoundly than +_Laughing Boy_ into the soul of a young Indian (an Osage) and his +people. Its translation of the "long, long thoughts" of the boy and then +of "shades of the prison house" closing down upon him is superb writing. +The "shades of the prison house" come from oil, with all of the world's +coarse thumbs that go with oil. + +GEORGE SESSIONS PERRY'S _Hold Autumn in Your Hand_ (1941) incarnates +a Texas farm hand too poor "to flag a gut-wagon," but with the good +nature, dignity, and independence of the earth itself. _Walls Rise Up_ +(1939) is a kind of _Crock of Gold_, both whimsical and earthy, laid on +the Brazos River. + +KATHERINE ANNE PORTER is as dedicated to artistic perfection as was A. +E. Housman. Her output has, therefore, been limited: _Flowering Judas_ +(1930, enlarged 1935); _Pale Horse, Pale Rider_ (1939), _The Leaning +Tower_ (1944). Her stories penetrate psychology, especially the +psychology of a Mexican hacienda, with rare finesse. Her small canvases +sublimate the inner realities of men and women. She appeals only to +cultivated taste, and to some tastes no other fiction writer in America +today is her peer in subtlety. + +EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES died in 1934. Most of his novels--distinguished +by intricate plots and bright dialogue--had appeared in the _Saturday +Evening Post_. His finest story is "Paso Por Aqui," published in the +volume entitled _Once in the Saddle_ (1927). Gene Rhodes, who has a +canyon--on which he ranched--named for him in New Mexico, was an artist; +at the same time, he was a man akin to his land and its men. He is the +only writer of the range country who has been accorded a biography--_The +Hired Man on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, his wife. See under "Range +Life." + +CONRAD RICHTER'S _The Sea of Grass_ (1937) is a kind of prose poem, +beautiful and tragic. Lutie, wife of the owner of the grass, is perhaps +the most successful creation of a ranch woman that fiction has so far +achieved. + +DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH'S _The Wind_ (1925) excited the wrath of chambers of +commerce and other boosters in West Texas--a tribute to its realism. + +_The Grapes of Wrath_, by John Steinbeck (1939), made Okies a word +in the American language. Although dated by the Great Depression, its +humanity and realism are beyond date. It is among the few good novels +produced by America in the first half of the twentieth century. + +JOHN W. THOMASON, after fighting as a marine in World War I, wrote _Fix +Bayonets_ (1926), followed by _Jeb Stuart_ (1930). A native Texan, he +followed the southern tradition rather than the western. _Lone Star +Preacher_ (1941) is a strong and sympathetic characterization of +Confederate fighting men woven into fictional form. + +In _High John the Conqueror_ (Macmillan, 1948) John W. Wilson conveys +real feeling for the tragic life of Negro sharecroppers in the Brazos +bottoms. He represents the critical awareness of life that has come +to modern fiction of the Southwest, in contrast to the sterile action, +without creation of character, in most older fiction of the region. + + + + + +33. Poetry and Drama + +"KNOWLEDGE itself is power," Sir Francis Bacon wrote in classical Latin, +and in abbreviated form the proverb became a familiar in households +and universities alike. But knowledge of what? There is no power in +knowledge of mediocre verse. + + I had rather flunk my Wasserman test + Than read a poem by Edgar A. Guest. + +The power of great poetry lies not in knowledge of it but in +assimilation of it. Most talk about poetry is vacuous. Poetry can pass +no power into any human being unless it itself has power--power +of beauty, truth, wit, humor, pathos, satire, worship, and other +attributes, always through form. No poor poetry is worth reading. Taste +for the best makes the other kind insipid. + +Compared with America's best poetry, most poetry of the Southwest is as +mediocre as American poetry in the mass is as compared with the great +body of English poetry between Chaucer and Masefield. Yet mediocre +poetry is not so bad as mediocre sculpture. The mediocre in poetry is +merely fatuous; in sculpture, it is ugly. Generations to come will have +to look at Coppini's monstrosity in front of the Alamo; it can't rot +down or burn up. Volumes of worthless verse, most of it printed at the +expense of the versifiers, hardly come to sight, and before long they +disappear from existence except for copies religiously preserved in +public libraries. + +Weak fiction goes the same way. But a good deal of very bad prose in the +nonfiction field has some value. In an otherwise dull book there may +be a solitary anecdote, an isolated observation on a skunk, a single +gesture of some human being otherwise highly unimportant, one salty +phrase, a side glimpse into the human comedy. If poetry is not good, it +is positively nothing. + +The earliest poet of historical consequence the only form of his +poetical consequence--of the Southwest was Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. He +led the Texas cavalry at San Jacinto, became president of the Republic +of Texas, organized the futile Santa Fe Expedition, gathered up six +volumes of notes and letters for a history of Texas that might have been +as raw-meat realistic as anything in Zola or Tolstoy. Then as a poet +he reached his climax in "The Daughter of Mendoza"--a graceful but +moonshiny imitation of Tom Moore and Lord Byron. Perhaps it is better +for the weak to imitate than to try to be original. + +It would not take one more than an hour to read aloud all the poetry +of the Southwest that could stand rereading. At the top of all I should +place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same +title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove +Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of +men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to +all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry +to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." +I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a volume of the same title. +Margaret Bell Houston's "Song from the Traffic," which takes one to the +feathered mesquites and the bluebonnets, might come next. Begging pardon +of the perpetually palpitating New Mexico lyricists, I would skip most +of them, except for bits of Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, Haniel Long, +and maybe somebody I don't know, and go to George Sterling's "Father +Coyote"--in California. Probably I would come back to gallant Phil +LeNoir's "Finger of Billy the Kid," written while he was dying of +tuberculosis in New Mexico. I wouldn't leave without the swift, +brilliantly economical stanzas that open the ballad of "Sam Bass," and +a single line, "He came of a solitary race," in the ballad of "Jesse +James." + +Several other poets have, of course, achieved something for mortals +to enjoy and be lifted by. Their work has been sifted into various +anthologies. The best one is_ Signature of the Sun: Southwest Verse, +1900-1950_, selected and edited by Mabel Major and T. M. Pearce, +University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Two other anthologies +are _Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp_, by John A. Lomax, 1919, +reprinted in 1950 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York; _The Road to +Texas_, by Whitney Montgomery, Kaleidograph, Dallas, 1940. Montgomery's +Kaleidograph Press has published many volumes by southwestern poets. +Somebody who has read them all and has read all the poets represented, +without enough of distillation, in _Signature of the Sun_ could no doubt +be juster on the subject than I am. + +Like historical fiction, drama of the Southwest has been less dramatic +than actuality and less realistic than real characters. Lynn Riggs of +Oklahoma, author of _Green Grow the Lilacs_, has so far been the most +successful dramatist. + + + + + +34. Miscellaneous Interpreters and Institutions + + +ARTISTS + +ART MAY BE SUBSTANTIVE, but more than being its own excuse for being, +it lights up the land it depicts, shows people what is significant, +cherishable in their own lives and environments. Thus Peter Hurd of +New Mexico has revealed windmills, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri has +elevated mules. Nature may not literally follow art, but human eyes +follow art and literature in recognizing nature. + +The history of art in the Southwest, if it is ever rightly written, will +not bother with the Italian "Holy Families" imported by agent-guided +millionaires trying to buy exclusiveness. It will begin with clay +(Indian pottery), horse hair (vaquero weaving), hide (vaquero plaiting), +and horn (backwoods carving). It will note Navajo sand painting and +designs in blankets. + +Charles M. Russell's art has been characterized in the chapter on "Range +Life." He had to paint, and the Old West was his life. More versatile +was his contemporary Frederic Remington, author of _Pony Tracks, Crooked +Trails_, and other books, and prolific illustrator of Owen Wister, +Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Henry Lewis, and numerous other writers of +the West. Not so well known as these two, but rising in estimation, +was Charles Schreyvogle. He did not write; his best-known pictures +are reproduced in a folio entitled _My Bunkie and Others_. Remington, +Russell, and Schreyvogle all did superb sculptoring in bronze. One of +the finest pieces of sculpture in the Southwest is "The Seven Mustangs" +by A. Phimister Proctor, in front of the Texas Memorial Museum at +Austin. + +Among contemporary artists, Ross Santee and Will James (died, 1942) have +illustrated their own cow country books, some of which are listed under +"Range Life" and "Horses." William R. Leigh, author of _The Western +Pony_, is a significant painter of the range. Edward Borein of Santa +Barbara, California, has in scores of etchings and a limited amount of +book illustrations "documented" many phases of western life. Buck Dunton +of Taos illustrated also. His lithographs and paintings of wild animals, +trappers, cowboys, and Indians seem secure. + +I cannot name and evaluate modern artists of the Southwest. They are +many, and the excellence of numbers of them is nationally recognized. +Many articles have been written about the artists who during this +century have lived around Taos and painted that region of the Southwest. +Some of the better-known names are Ernest L. Blumenschein, Oscar +Berninghaus, Ward Lockwood, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ila +McAfee, Barbara Latham Cook, Howard Cook. Artists thrive in Arizona, +Oklahoma, and Texas as well as in New Mexico. Tom Lea, of El Paso, may +be quitting painting and drawing to spend the remainder of his life in +writing. Perhaps he himself does not know. Jerry Bywaters, who is at +work on the history of art in the Southwest, has about quit producing +to direct the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Alexandre Hogue gives +his strength to teaching art in Tulsa University. Exhibitions, not +commentators, are the revealers of art. + +A few books, all expensive, reproduce the art of certain depicters of +the West and Southwest. _Etchings of the West_, by Edward Borein, and +_The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_ have been noted in other chapters +(consult Index). Other recent art works are: _Peter Hurd: Portfolio of +Landscapes and Portraits_, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, +1950; _Gallery of Western Paintings_, edited by Raymond Carlson, +McGraw-Hill, New York, 1951 (unsatisfactory reproduction); _Frederic +Remington, Artist of the Old West_, by Harold McCracken, Lippincott, +Philadelphia, 1947 (biography and check list with many reproductions); +_Portrait of the Old West_, by Harold McCracken, McGraw-Hill, New York, +1952 (samplings of numerous artists). + +In February, 1946, Robert Taft of the University of Kansas began +publishing in the _Kansas Historical Quarterly_ chapters, richly +illustrated in black and white, in "The Pictorial Record of the Old +West." The book to be made from these chapters will have a historical +validity missing in most picture books. + + +MAGAZINES + + +The leading literary magazine of the region is the _Southwest Review_, +published quarterly at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The +_New Mexico Quarterly_, published by the University of New Mexico at +Albuquerque, the _Arizona Quarterly_, published by the University of +Arizona at Tucson the _Colorado Quarterly_, published by the University +of Colorado at Boulder, and _Prairie Schooner_, University of Nebraska +Press, Lincoln, are excellent exponents of current writing in +the Southwest and West. All these magazines are liberated from +provincialism. + + +HISTORICAL SOCIETIES + + +Every state 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 +University of Florida, Gainesville, publishes the _Southern Folklore +Quarterly_. Levette J. Davidson of the University of Denver, author +of _A Guide to American Folklore_, University of Denver Press, 1951, +directs the Western Folklore Conference. The _Journal of American +Folklore_ has published a good deal from the Southwest and Mexico. The +Sociedad Folklorica de Mexico publishes its own _Anurio_. Between 1929 +and 1932, B. A. Botkin, editor of _A Treasury of Southern Folklore_, +1949, and A _Treasury of Western Folklore_, 1951 (Crown, New York), +brought out four volumes entitled _Folk-Say_, University of Oklahoma +Press. OP. The volumes are significant for literary utilizations of +folklore and interpretations of folks. + + +MUSEUMS + + +Museums do not belong to the DAR. Their perspective on the past is +constructive. The growing museums in Santa Fe, Tucson, Phoenix, Tulsa, +Oklahoma City, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Denver, and on west +into California represent the art, fauna, flora, geology, archeology, +occupations, transportation, architecture, and other phases of the +Southwest in a way that may be more informing than many printed volumes. + + + + + +35. Subjects for Themes + +THE OBJECT OF THEME-WRITING is to make a student observe, to become +aware, to evaluate, to enrich himself. Any phase of life or literature +named or suggested in the foregoing chapters could be taken as a subject +for an essay. The most immature essay must be more than a summary; a +mere summary is never an essay. The writer must synthesize, make his own +combination of thoughts, facts, incidents, characteristics, anecdotes, +interpretations, illustrations, according to his own pattern. A writer +is a weaver, weaving various threads of various hues and textures into a +design that is his own. + +"Look into thy heart and write." "Write what you know about." All this +is good advice in a way--but students have to write themes whether they +have anything to write or not. The way to get full of a subject, to +generate a conveyable interest, is to fill up on the subject. As clouds +are but transient forms of matter that "change but cannot die," so +most writing, even the best, is but a variation in form of experiences, +ideas, observations, emotions that have been recorded over and over. + +In general, the materials a student weaves are derived from three +sources: what he has read, what he has heard, what he has observed and +experienced himself. If he chooses to sketch an interesting character, +he will make his sketch richer and more interesting if he reads all he +can find that illuminates his subject's background. If he sets out to +tell a legend or a series of related folk tales or anecdotes, he will +improve his telling by reading what he can on the subjects that his +proposed narratives treat of and by reading similar narratives +already written by others. If he wishes to tell what he knows about +rattlesnakes, buzzards, pet coyotes, Brahma cattle, prickly pear, +cottonwoods, Caddo Lake, the Brazos River, Santa Fe adobes, or other +features of the land, let him bolster and put into perspective his own +knowledge by reading what others have said on the matter. Knowledge +fosters originality. Reading gives ideas. + +The list of subjects that follows is meant to be suggestive, and must +not be regarded as inclusive. The best subject for any writer is one +that he is interested in. A single name or category may afford scores +of subjects. For example, take Andy Adams, the writer about cowboys and +range life. His campfire yarns, the attitude of his cowboys toward their +horses, what he has to say about cows, the metaphor of the range as he +has recorded it, the placidity of his cowboys as opposed to Zane Grey +sensationalism, etc., are a few of the subjects to be derived from a +study of his books. Or take a category like "How the Early Settlers +Lived." Pioneer food, transportation, sociables, houses, neighborliness, +loneliness, living on game meat, etc., make subjects. Almost every +subject listed below will suggest either variations or associated +subjects. + +The Humor of the Southwest Similes from Nature (Crockett is rich in +them) The Code of Individualism The Code of the Range Six-shooter Ethics +The Right to Kill The Tradition of Cowboy Gallantry (read Owen Wister's + + _The Virginian_ and _A Journey in Search + of Christmas;_ also novels by + Eugene Manlove Rhodes) + +Frontier Hospitality Amusements + + (shooting matches, tournaments, play parties, dances, + poker, horse races, quiltings, + house-raisings) + +The Western Gambler + + (Bret Harte and Alfred Henry Lewis have + idealized him in fiction; he might + be contrasted with the Mississippi + River gambler) + +Indian Captives The Age of Horse Culture + + (Spanish, Indian, Anglo-American; the + horse was important enough to + any one of these classes to + warrant extended study) + +The Cowboy's Horse The Cowboy Myth + + (Mody Boatright is writing a book + on the subject) + +Evolution of the Frontier Criminal Lawyer + +The Frontier Intellect in the Atomic Age + +British Chroniclers of the West Civilized + +Perspective in Writings on the Old West + +The Indian in Fiction + +Fictional Betrayal of the West + +The West in Reality and the West on the Screen + +Around the Chuck Wagon: Cowboy Yarns Stretching the Blanket + +Authentic Liars + +Recent Fiction of the Southwest (any writer worth writing about) + +Literary Magazines of the Southwest Ranch Women Mexican Labor (on ranch, +farm, or in town) + +Mexican Folk Tales Backwoods Life in Frederick Gerstaecker "The Old +Catdeman" in Alfred Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ Books + +Mayne Reid as an Exponent of the Southwest (see estimate of him +in _Mesa, Canon and Pueblo_, +by Charles F. Lummis) + +The Gunman in Fiction and Reality + + (O. Henry, Bret Harte, Alfred + Henry Lewis; _The Saga of Billy + the Kid_, by Walter Noble Burns; + Gillett's _Six Years with the Texas + Rangers;_ Webb's _The Texas + Rangers;_ Lake's _Wyatt Earp)_ + +Character of the Trail Drivers Cowboy's Life as Reflected in His Songs +"Wrathy to Kill a Bear" (the frontiersman as a destroyer of wild life +"I Thought I Might See Something to Shoot at" Anecdotes of the Stump +Speaker Exempla of Revivalists and Campmeeting Preachers The Campmeeting +Stagecoaching Life on the Santa Fe Trail The Rendezvous of the Mountain +Men In the Covered Wagon Squatter Life No Shade From Grass to Wheat From +Wheat to Dust Brush (a special study of prickly pear, the mesquite, or some other +form of flora could be made) + +Cotton (whole books are suggested here, the tenant farmer being one +of the subjects) + +Oil Booms Longhorns Coyote Stories Deer Nature, or Whitetails and Their +Rattlesnakes, or Rattlesnake Stories Panther Stories Tarantula Lore +Grasshopper Plagues The Javelina in Fact and in Folk Tale The Roadrunner +(Paisano) Wild Turkeys The Poisoned-Out Prairie Dog Sheep Vanishing +Sheep Herders The Bee Hunter Pot Hunters Buffalo Hunters The Bar Hunter +and Bar Stories Indian Fighter Indian Hater Scalps Squaw Men Mountain +Men and Grizzlies Scouts and Guides Stage Drivers Fiddlers and Fiddle +Tunes Frontier Justices of the Peace (Roy Bean set the example) +Horse Traders Horse Racers Newspapermen Frontier Schoolteacher +Circuit Rider Pony Express Rider Folk Tales of My Community Flavorsome +Characters of My Community Stanley Vestal Harvey Fergusson Kansas Cow +Towns Drought and Thirst Washington Irving on the West Witty Repartee +in Eugene Manlove Rhodes Bigfoot Wallace's Humor Charles M. Russell as +Artist of the West (or any other western artist) +Learning to See Life Around Me Features of My Own Cultural Inheritance +I Heard It Back Home Family Traditions My Family's Interesting Character +Doodlebugs in the Sand Bobwhites Blue Quail Coachwhips and Other Good +Snakes Mockingbird Habits Jack Rabbit Lore Catfish Lore Herb Remedies + +"Criticism of Life" in Southwestern Fiction + +Intellectual Integrity in________________ (Name of writer or writers or +some locally prominent newspaper to be supplied) + +{pages 197 - 222 are an Index -- not included} + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Guide to Life and Literature of the +Southwest, by J. 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