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diff --git a/old/swest10.txt b/old/swest10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..96beaa7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/swest10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7666 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of +Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest + + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest + +by J. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + + +Etext needs spellchecking! + + +Scanned by Charles Keller with +OmniPage Professional OCR software +donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. +Contact Mike Lough <Mikel@caere.com> + +Guide to Life and Literature +of the +Southwest + +REVISED AND ENLARGED IN BOTH KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM + +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 nine- +teenth-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 +indi- +vidualism, 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. + +McDANIELD, 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 Soveretgnty_, 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 govern- +ment'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_, 1 8 S 4. 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 Philosother 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. + +This is not to say that these chronicles are of a high +literary order. Their writers have generally lacked the +maturity + + +{illust. caption = +Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)} + + +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 + + +{illust. caption = +Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)} + + +by J. Evetts Haley, published in the _Southwestern Historical +Quarterly_, 1932 (Vols. XXXV and XXXVI). Also reprinted as a +separate. + +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 collec- +tion, 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 intro- + + + +{illust. caption = +Charles Banks Wilson, in _The Mustangs_ +by J. Frank Dobie (1952)} + + +duced 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. + +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 + + +{illust. caption = +Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)} + + +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. + +"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 + + +{illust. caption = +Charles M. Russell, in _The Blazed Trail of the +Old Frontier_ by Agnes C. Laut (1926)} + + +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. + +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 + + +{illust. caption = Harold D. Bugbee: Buffaloes + + +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. + +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_. + + + +_25_ + +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 Horticultur- +ists 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_, Uni- +versity 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 Boat- + right 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 Hunters +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 -- these were not OCR'd} + + + + +End of Etext of Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest + + + diff --git a/old/swest10.zip b/old/swest10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2be72d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/swest10.zip |