Produced by Charles Keller





GUIDE TO LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE SOUTHWEST

Revised And Enlarged In Both Knowledge And Wisdom

By J. Frank Dobie


Dallas. 1952

Southern Methodist University Press


_Not copyright in 1942 Again not copyright in 1952_

Anybody is welcome to help himself to any of it in any way


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 52-11834

S.M.U. PRESS




Contents

     A Preface with Some Revised Ideas
     1. A Declaration
     2. Interpreters of the Land
     3. General Helps
     4. Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos
     5. Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians
     6. Spanish-Mexican Strains
     7. Flavor of France
     8. Backwoods Life and Humor
     9. How the Early Settlers Lived
     10. Fighting Texians
     11. Texas Rangers
     12. Women Pioneers
     13. Circuit Riders and Missionaries
     14. Lawyers, Politicians, J.P.'s
     15. Pioneer Doctors
     16. Mountain Men
     17. Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail
     18. Stagecoaches, Freighting
     19. Pony Express
     20. Surge of Life in the West
     21. Range Life: Cowboys, Cattle, Sheep
     22. Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads
     23. Horses: Mustangs and Cow Ponies
     24. The Bad Man Tradition
     25. Mining and Oil
     26. Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists
     27. Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters
     28. Bears and Bear Hunters
     29. Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers
     30. Birds and Wild Flowers
     31. Negro Folk Songs and Tales
     32. Fiction-Including Folk Tales
     33. Poetry and Drama
     34. Miscellaneous Interpreters and Institutions
     35. Subjects for Themes
     Index to Authors and Titles


     Illustrations
     Indian Head by Tom Lea, from _A Texas Cowboy_
          by Charles A. Siringo (1950 edition)
     Comanche Horsemen by George Catlin, from
          _North American Indians_
     Vaquero by Tom Lea, from _A Texas Cowboy_
          by Charles A. Siringo (1950 edition)
     Fray Marcos de Niza by Jose Cisneros, from
          The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza by
          Cleve Hallenbeck
     Horse by Gutzon Borglum, from Mustangs
          and Cow Horses
     Praxiteles Swan, fighting chaplain, by John W.
          Thomason, from his Lone Star Preacher
     Horse's Head by William R. Leigh, from The
          Western Pony
     Longhorn by Tom Lea, from The Longhorns
          by J. Frank Dobie
     Cowboy and Steer by Tom Lea, from The
          Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie
     Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The
          Virginian by Owen Wister (1916 edition)
     Mustangs by Charles Banks Wilson, from The
          Mustangs by J. Frank Dobie
     Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The
          Untamed by George Pattullo



     Pancho Villa by Tom Lea, from Southwest
          Review, Winter, 1951
     Frontispiece by Tom Lea, from Santa Rita by
          Martin W. Schwettmann
     Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from The
          Blazed Trail by Agnes C. Laut
     Buffaloes by Harold D. Bugbee
     Illustration by Charles M. Russell, from Fifteen
          Thousand Miles by Stage by Carrie
          Adell Strahorn
     Coyote Head by Olaus J. Murie, from The
          Voice of the Coyote by J. Frank Dobie
     Paisano




A Preface With Some Revised Ideas

IT HAS BEEN ten years since I wrote the prefatory "Declaration" to this
now enlarged and altered book. Not to my generation alone have many
things receded during that decade. To the intelligent young as well as
to the intelligent elderly, efforts in the present atmosphere to opiate
the public with mere pictures of frontier enterprise have a ghastly
unreality. The Texas Rangers have come to seem as remote as the
Foreign Legion in France fighting against the Kaiser. Yet this _Guide_,
extensively added to and revised, is mainly concerned, apart from the
land and its native life, with frontier backgrounds. If during a decade
a man does not change his mind on some things and develop new points of
view, it is a pretty good sign that his mind is petrified and need no
longer be accounted among the living. I have an inclination to rewrite
the "Declaration," but maybe I was just as wise on some matters ten
years ago as I am now; so I let it stand.

          Do I contradict myself?
          Very well then I contradict myself.


I have heard so much silly bragging by Texans that I now think it would
be a blessing to themselves--and a relief to others--if the braggers did
not know they lived in Texas. Yet the time is not likely to come when
a human being will not be better adapted to his environments by knowing
their nature; on the other hand, to study a provincial setting from a
provincial point of view is restricting. Nobody should specialize on
provincial writings before he has the perspective that only a good deal
of good literature and wide history can give. I think it more important
that a dweller in the Southwest read _The Trial and Death of Socrates_
than all the books extant on killings by Billy the Kid. I think this
dweller will fit his land better by understanding Thomas Jefferson's
oath ("I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man") than by reading all the
books that have been written on ranch lands and people. For any dweller
of the Southwest who would have the land soak into him, Wordsworth's
"Tintern Abbey," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "The Solitary
Reaper," "Expostulation and Reply," and a few other poems are more
conducive to a "wise passiveness" than any native writing.

There are no substitutes for nobility, beauty, and wisdom. One of the
chief impediments to amplitude and intellectual freedom is provincial
inbreeding. I am sorry to see writings of the Southwest substituted for
noble and beautiful and wise literature to which all people everywhere
are inheritors. When I began teaching "Life and Literature of the
Southwest" I did not regard these writings as a substitute. To reread
most of them would be boresome, though _Hamlet_, Boswell's _Johnson_,
Lamb's _Essays_, and other genuine literature remain as quickening as
ever.

Very likely I shall not teach the course again. I am positive I shall
never revise this _Guide_ again. It is in nowise a bibliography. I have
made more additions to the "Range Life" chapter than to any other. I
am a collector of such books. A collector is a person who gathers unto
himself the worthless as well as the worthy. Since I did not make a
nickel out of the original printing of the _Guide_ and hardly expect to
make enough to buy a California "ranch" out of the present printing,
I have added several items, with accompanying remarks, more for my own
pleasure than for benefit to society.

Were the listings halved, made more selective, the book might serve
its purpose better. Anybody who wants to can slice it in any manner
he pleases. I am as much against forced literary swallowings as I am
against prohibitions on free tasting, chewing, and digestion. I rate
censors, particularly those of church and state, as low as I rate
character assassins; they often run together.

I'd like to make a book on _Emancipators of the Human Mind_--Emerson,
Jefferson, Thoreau, Tom Paine, Newton, Arnold, Voltaire, Goethe.... When
I reflect how few writings connected with the wide open spaces of
the West and Southwest are wide enough to enter into such a volume, I
realize acutely how desirable is perspective in patriotism.

Hundreds of the books listed in this _Guide_ have given me pleasure as
well as particles for the mosaic work of my own books; but, with minor
exceptions, they increasingly seem to me to explore only the exteriors
of life. There is in them much good humor but scant wit. The hunger for
something afar is absent or battened down. Drought blasts the turf, but
its unhealing blast to human hope is glossed over. The body's thirst for
water is a recurring theme, but human thirst for love and just thinking
is beyond consideration. Horses run with their riders to death or
victory, but fleeting beauty haunts no soul to the "doorway of the
dead." The land is often pictured as lonely, but the lone way of a human
being's essential self is not for this extravert world. The banners of
individualism are carried high, but the higher individualism that grows
out of long looking for meanings in the human drama is negligible.
Somebody is always riding around or into a "feudal domain." Nobody at
all penetrates it or penetrates democracy with the wisdom that came to
Lincoln in his loneliness: "As I would not be a SLAVE, so I would not
be a MASTER. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from
this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." The mountains,
the caves, the forests, the deserts have had no prophets to interpret
either their silences or their voices. In short, these books are mostly
only the stuff of literature, not literature itself, not the very stuff
of life, not the distillations of mankind's "agony and bloody sweat."

An ignorant person attaches more importance to the chatter of small
voices around him than to the noble language of remote individuals. The
more he listens to the small, the smaller he grows. The hope of regional
literature lies in out-growing regionalism itself. On November 11, 1949,
I gave a talk to the Texas Institute of Letters that was published in
the Spring 1950 issue of the _Southwest Review_. The paragraphs that
follow are taken therefrom.

Good writing about any region is good only to the extent that it
has universal appeal. Texans are the only "race of people" known to
anthropologists who do not depend upon breeding for propagation. Like
princes and lords, they can be made by "breath," plus a big white
hat--which comparatively few Texans wear. A beef stew by a cook in San
Antonio, Texas, may have a different flavor from that of a beef stew
cooked in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the essential substances of
potatoes and onions, with some suggestion of beef, are about the same,
and geography has no effect on their digestibility.

A writer--a regional writer, if that term means anything--will whenever
he matures exercise the critical faculty. I mean in the Matthew Arnold
sense of appraisal rather than of praise, or, for that matter, of
absolute condemnation. Understanding and sympathy are not eulogy. Mere
glorification is on the same intellectual level as silver tongues and
juke box music.

In using that word INTELLECTUAL, one lays himself liable to the
accusation of having forsaken democracy. For all that, "fundamental
brainwork" is behind every respect-worthy piece of writing, whether it
be a lightsome lyric that seems as careless as a redbird's flit or a
formal epic, an impressionistic essay or a great novel that measures the
depth of human destiny. Nonintellectual literature is as nonexistent
as education without mental discipline, or as "character building" in a
school that is slovenly in scholarship. Billboards along the highways of
Texas advertise certain towns and cities as "cultural centers." Yet no
chamber of commerce would consider advertising an intellectual center.
The culture of a nineteenth-century finishing school for young ladies
was divorced from intellect; genuine civilization is always informed
by intellect. The American populace has been taught to believe that
the more intellectual a professor is, the less common sense he has;
nevertheless, if American democracy is preserved it will be preserved by
thought and not by physics.

Editors of all but a few magazines of the country and publishers of most
of the daily newspapers cry out for brightness and vitality and at the
same time shut out critical ideas. They want intellect, but want it
petrified. Happily, the publishers of books have not yet reached that
form of delusion. In an article entitled "What Ideas Are Safe?" in
the _Saturday Review of Literature_ for November 5, 1949, Henry Steele
Commager says:

If we establish a standard of safe thinking, we will end up with no
thinking at all.... We cannot... have thought half slave and half
free.... A nation which, in the name of loyalty or of patriotism or of
any sincere and high-sounding ideal, discourages criticism and dissent,
and puts a premium on acquiescence and conformity, is headed for
disaster.

Unless a writer feels free, things will not come to him, he cannot
burgeon on any subject whatsoever.

In 1834 Davy Crockett's _Autobiography_ was published. It is one of
the primary social documents of America. It is as much Davy Crockett,
whether going ahead after bears in a Tennessee canebrake or going ahead
after General Andrew Jackson in Congress, as the equally plain but also
urbane _Autobiography_ of Franklin is Benjamin Franklin. It is undiluted
regionalism. It is provincial not only in subject but in point of view.

No provincial mind of this day could possibly write an autobiography or
any other kind of book co-ordinate in value with Crockett's "classic in
homespun." In his time, Crockett could exercise intelligence and still
retain his provincial point of view. Provincialism was in the air over
his land. In these changed times, something in the ambient air prevents
any active intelligence from being unconscious of lands, peoples,
struggles far beyond any province.

Not long after the Civil War, in Harris County, Texas, my father heard a
bayou-billy yell out:

 Whoopee! Raised in a canebrake and suckled by a she-bear!
 The click of a six-shooter is music to my ear!
 The further up the creek you go, the worse they git,
 And I come from the head of it! Whoopee!

If it were now possible to find some section of country so far up above
the forks of the creek that the owls mate there with the chickens, and
if this section could send to Congress one of its provincials untainted
by the outside world, he would, if at all intelligent, soon after
arriving on Capitol Hill become aware of interdependencies between his
remote province and the rest of the world.


Biographies of regional characters, stories turning on local customs,
novels based on an isolated society, books of history and fiction going
back to provincial simplicity will go on being written and published.
But I do not believe it possible that a good one will henceforth come
from a mind that does not in outlook transcend the region on which it
is focused. That is not to imply that the processes of evolution have
brought all parts of the world into such interrelationships that a
writer cannot depict the manners and morals of a community up Owl Hoot
Creek without enmeshing them with the complexities of the Atlantic
Pact. Awareness of other times and other wheres, not insistence on that
awareness, is the requisite. James M. Barrie said that he could not
write a play until he got his people off on a kind of island, but had he
not known about the mainland he could never have delighted us with the
islanders--islanders, after all, for the night only. Patriotism of the
right kind is still a fine thing; but, despite all gulfs, canyons, and
curtains that separate nations, those nations and their provinces are
all increasingly interrelated.

No sharp line of time or space, like that separating one century from
another or the territory of one nation from that of another, can delimit
the boundaries of any region to which any regionalist lays claim.
Mastery, for instance, of certain locutions peculiar to the Southwest
will take their user to the Aztecs, to Spain, and to the border of
ballads and Sir Walter Scott's romances. I found that I could not
comprehend the coyote as animal hero of Pueblo and Plains Indians apart
from the Reynard of Aesop and Chaucer.

In a noble opinion respecting censorship and freedom of the press,
handed down on March 18, 1949, Judge Curtis Bok of Pennsylvania said:

It is no longer possible that free speech be guaranteed Federally and
denied locally; under modern methods of instantaneous communication
such a discrepancy makes no sense.... What is said in Pennsylvania may
clarify an issue in California, and what is suppressed in California may
leave us the worse in Pennsylvania. Unless a restriction on free speech
be of national validity, it can no longer have any local validity
whatever.


Among the qualities that any good regional writer has in common with
other good writers of all places and times is intellectual integrity.
Having it does not obligate him to speak out on all issues or, indeed,
on any issue. He alone is to judge whether he will sport with
Amaryllis in the shade or forsake her to write his own _Areopagitica_.
Intellectual integrity expresses itself in the tune as well as argument,
in choice of words--words honest and precise--as well as in ideas, in
fidelity to human nature and the flowers of the fields as well as to
principles, in facts reported more than in deductions proposed. Though a
writer write on something as innocuous as the white snails that crawl
up broomweed stalks and that roadrunners carry to certain rocks to
crack and eat, his intellectual integrity, if he has it, will infuse the
subject.

Nothing is too trivial for art, but good art treats nothing in a trivial
way. Nothing is too provincial for the regional writer, but he cannot
be provincial-minded toward it. Being provincial-minded may make him a
typical provincial; it will prevent him from being a representative
or skilful interpreter. Horace Greeley said that when the rules of the
English language got in his way, they did not stand a chance. We may be
sure that if by violating the rules of syntax Horace Greeley sometimes
added forcefulness to his editorials, he violated them deliberately and
not in ignorance. Luminosity is not stumbled into. The richly savored
and deliciously unlettered speech of Thomas Hardy's rustics was the
creation of a master architect who had looked out over the ranges of
fated mankind and looked also into hell. Thomas Hardy's ashes were
placed in Westminster Abbey, but his heart, in accordance with a
provision of his will, was buried in the churchyard of his own village.

I have never tried to define regionalism. Its blanket has been put
over a great deal of worthless writing. Robert Frost has approached a
satisfying conception. "The land is always in my bones," he said--the
land of rock fences. But, "I am not a regionalist. I am a realmist. I
write about realms of democracy and realms of the spirit." Those realms
include The Woodpile, The Grindstone, Blueberries, Birches, and many
other features of the land North of Boston.

To an extent, any writer anywhere must make his own world, no matter
whether in fiction or nonfiction, prose or poetry. He must make
something out of his subject. What he makes depends upon his creative
power, integrated with a sense of form. The popular restriction of
creative writing to fiction and verse is illogical. Carl Sandburg's life
of Lincoln is immeasurably more creative in form and substance than his
fanciful _Potato Face_. Intense exercise of his creative power sets,
in a way, the writer apart from the life he is trying to sublimate.
Becoming a Philistine will not enable a man to interpret Philistinism,
though Philistines who own big presses think so. Sinclair Lewis knew
Babbitt as Babbitt could never know either himself or Sinclair Lewis.

                              J. F. D.

_The time of Mexican primroses_ 1952




1. A Declaration

IN THE UNIVERSITY of Texas I teach a course called "Life and Literature
of the Southwest." About 1929 I had a brief guide to books concerning
the Southwest mimeographed; in 1931 it was included by John William
Rogers in a booklet entitled _Finding Literature on the Texas Plains_.
After that I revised and extended the guide three or four times, during
the process distributing several thousand copies of the mimeographed
forms. Now the guide has grown too long, and I trust that this printing
of it will prevent my making further additions--though within a short
time new books will come out that should be added.

Yet the guide is fragmentary, incomplete, and in no sense a
bibliography. Its emphases vary according to my own indifferences and
ignorance as well as according to my own sympathies and knowledge. It is
strong on the character and ways of life of the early settlers, on the
growth of the soil, and on everything pertaining to the range; it is
weak on information concerning politicians and on citations to studies
which, in the manner of orthodox Ph.D. theses, merely transfer bones
from one graveyard to another.

It is designed primarily to help people of the Southwest see
significances in the features of the land to which they belong, to make
their environments more interesting to them, their past more alive,
to bring them to a realization of the values of their own cultural
inheritance, and to stimulate them to observe. It includes most of
the books about the Southwest that people in general would agree on as
making good reading.

I have never had any idea of writing or teaching about my own section
of the country merely as a patriotic duty. Without apologies, I would
interpret it because I love it, because it interests me, talks to me,
appeals to my imagination, warms my emotions; also because it seems to
me that other people living in the Southwest will lead fuller and richer
lives if they become aware of what it holds. I once thought that, so
far as reading goes, I could live forever on the supernal beauty of
Shelley's "The Cloud" and his soaring lines "To a Skylark," on the rich
melancholy of Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," on Cyrano de Bergerac's
ideal of a free man, on Wordsworth's philosophy of nature--a philosophy
that has illuminated for me the mesquite flats and oak-studded hills of
Texas--on the adventures in Robert Louis Stevenson, the flavor and wit
of Lamb's essays, the eloquent wisdom of Hazlitt, the dark mysteries
of Conrad, the gaieties of Barrie, the melody of Sir Thomas Browne, the
urbanity of Addison, the dash in Kipling, the mobility, the mightiness,
the lightness, the humor, the humanity, the everything of Shakespeare,
and a world of other delicious, high, beautiful, and inspiring things
that English literature has bestowed upon us. That literature is still
the richest of heritages; but literature is not enough.

Here I am living on a soil that my people have been living and working
and dying on for more than a hundred years--the soil, as it happens,
of Texas. My roots go down into this soil as deep as mesquite roots go.
This soil has nourished me as the banks of the lovely Guadalupe River
nourish cypress trees, as the Brazos bottoms nourish the wild peach, as
the gentle slopes of East Texas nourish the sweet-smelling pines, as the
barren, rocky ridges along the Pecos nourish the daggered lechuguilla. I
am at home here, and I want not only to know about my home land, I want
to live intelligently on it. I want certain data that will enable me to
accommodate myself to it. Knowledge helps sympathy to achieve harmony.
I am made more resolute by Arthur Hugh Clough's picture of the dripping
sailor on the reeling mast, "On stormy nights when wild northwesters
rave," but the winds that have bit into me have been dry Texas northers;
and fantastic yarns about them, along with a cowboy's story of a herd of
Longhorns drifting to death in front of one of them, come home to me and
illuminate those northers like forked lightning playing along the top of
black clouds in the night.

No informed person would hold that the Southwest can claim any
considerable body of PURE LITERATURE as its own. At the same time, the
region has a distinct cultural inheritance, full of life and drama, told
variously in books so numerous that their very existence would surprise
many people who depend on the Book-of-the-Month Club for literary
guidance. Any people have a right to their own cultural inheritance,
though sheeplike makers of textbooks and sheeplike pedagogues of
American literature have until recently, either wilfully or ignorantly,
denied that right to the Southwest. Tens of thousands of students of the
Southwest have been assigned endless pages on and listened to dronings
over Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet,
and other dreary creatures of colonial New England who are utterly
foreign to the genius of the Southwest. If nothing in written form
pertaining to the Southwest existed at all, it would be more profitable
for an inhabitant to go out and listen to coyotes singing at night in
the prickly pear than to tolerate the Increase Mather kind of thing. It
is very profitable to listen to coyotes anyhow. I rebelled years ago
at having the tradition, the spirit, the meaning of the soil to which I
belong utterly disregarded by interpreters of literature and at the
same time having the Increase Mather kind of stuff taught as if it were
important to our part of America. Happily the disregard is disappearing,
and so is Increase Mather.

If they had to be rigorously classified into hard and fast categories,
comparatively few of the books in the lists that follow would be rated
as pure literature. Fewer would be rated as history. A majority of them
are the stuff of history. The stuff out of which history is made is
generally more vital than formalized history, especially the histories
habitually forced on students in public schools, colleges, and
universities. There is no essential opposition between history and
literature. The attempt to study a people's literature apart from their
social and, to a less extent, their political history is as illogical
as the lady who said she had read Romeo but had not yet got to Juliet.
Nearly any kind of history is more important than formal literary
history showing how in a literary way Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac
begat Jacob. Any man of any time who has ever written with vigor has
been immeasurably nearer to the dunghill on which he sank his talons
while crowing than to all literary ancestors.

A great deal of chronicle writing that makes no pretense at being
belles-lettres is really superior literature to much that is so
classified. I will vote three times a day and all night for John C.
Duval's _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, Charlie Siringo's _Riata and
Spurs_, James B. Gillett's _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, and
dozens of other straightaway chronicles of the Southwest in preference
to "The Culprit Fay" and much other watery "literature" with which
anthologies representing the earlier stages of American writing
are padded. Ike Fridge's pamphlet story of his ridings for John
Chisum--chief provider of cattle for Billy the Kid to steal--has more of
the juice of reality in it and, therefore, more of literary virtue than
some of James Fenimore Cooper's novels, and than some of James Russell
Lowell's odes.

The one thing essential to writing if it is to be read, to art if it
is to be looked at, is vitality. No critic or professor can be hired
to pump vitality into any kind of human expression, but professors and
critics have taken it out of many a human being who in his attempts
to say something decided to be correct at the expense of being
himself--being natural, being alive. The priests of literary conformity
never had a chance at the homemade chronicles of the Southwest.

The orderly way in which to study the Southwest would be to take up
first the land, its flora, fauna, climate, soils, rivers, etc., then
the aborigines, next the exploring and settling Spaniards, and finally,
after a hasty glance at the French, the English-speaking people who
brought the Southwest to what it is today. We cannot proceed in this
way, however. Neither the prairies nor the Indians who first hunted
deer on them have left any records, other than hieroglyphic, as to their
lives. Some late-coming men have written about them. Droughts and rains
have had far more influence on all forms of life in the Southwest and
on all forms of its development culturally and otherwise than all of the
Coronado expeditions put together. I have emphasized the literature that
reveals nature. My method has been to take up types and subjects rather
than to follow chronology.

Chronology is often an impediment to the acquiring of useful knowledge.
I am not nearly so much interested in what happened in Abilene, Kansas,
in 1867--the year that the first herds of Texas Longhorns over the
Chisholm Trail found a market at that place--as I am in picking out of
Abilene in 1867 some thing that reveals the character of the men who
went up the trail, some thing that will illuminate certain phenomena
along the trail human beings of the Southwest are going up today, some
thing to awaken observation and to enrich with added meaning this corner
of the earth of which we are the temporary inheritors.

By "literature of the Southwest" I mean writings that interpret the
region, whether they have been produced by the Southwest or not. Many of
them have not. What we are interested in is life in the Southwest, and
any interpreter of that life, foreign or domestic, ancient or modern, is
of value.

The term Southwest is variable because the boundaries of the Southwest
are themselves fluid, expanding and contracting according to the point
of view from which the Southwest is viewed and according to whatever
common denominator is taken for defining it. The Spanish Southwest
includes California, but California regards itself as more closely akin
to the Pacific Northwest than to Texas; California is Southwest more in
an antiquarian way than other-wise. From the point of view of the most
picturesque and imagination-influencing occupation of the Southwest,
the occupation of ranching, the Southwest might be said to run up into
Montana. Certainly one will have to go up the trail to Montana to finish
out the story of the Texas cowboy. Early in the nineteenth century the
Southwest meant Tennessee, Georgia, and other frontier territory now
regarded as strictly South. The men and women who "redeemed Texas from
the wilderness" came principally from that region. The code of conduct
they gave Texas was largely the code of the booming West. Considering
the character of the Anglo-American people who took over the Southwest,
the region is closer to Missouri than to Kansas, which is not Southwest
in any sense but which has had a strong influence on Oklahoma. Chihuahua
is more southwestern than large parts of Oklahoma. In _Our Southwest_,
Erna Fergusson has a whole chapter on "What is the Southwest?" She finds
Fort Worth to be in the Southwest but Dallas, thirty miles east, to be
facing north and east. The principal areas of the Southwest are, to have
done with air-minded reservations, Arizona, New Mexico, most of Texas,
some of Oklahoma, and anything else north, south, east, or west that
anybody wants to bring in. The boundaries of cultures and rainfall never
follow survey lines. In talking about the Southwest I naturally incline
to emphasize the Texas part of it.

Life is fluid, and definitions that would apprehend it must also be. Yet
I will venture one definition--not the only one--of an educated person.
An educated person is one who can view with interest and intelligence
the phenomena of life about him. Like people elsewhere, the people of
the Southwest find the features of the land on which they live blank or
full of pictures according to the amount of interest and intelligence
with which they view the features. Intelligence cannot be acquired, but
interest can; and data for interest and intelligence to act upon are
entirely acquirable.

"Studies perfect nature," Bacon said. "Nature follows art" to the extent
that most of us see principally what our attention has been called to.
I might never have noticed rose-purple snow between shadows if I had
not seen a picture of that kind of snow. I had thought white the only
natural color of snow. I cannot think of yew trees, which I have never
seen, without thinking of Wordsworth's poem on three yew trees.

Nobody has written a memorable poem on the mesquite. Yet the mesquite
has entered into the social, economic, and aesthetic life of the land;
it has made history and has been painted by artists. In the homely
chronicles of the Southwest its thorns stick, its roots burn into bright
coals, its trunks make fence posts, its lovely leaves wave. To live
beside this beautiful, often pernicious, always interesting and highly
characteristic tree--or bush--and to know nothing of its significance is
to be cheated out of a part of life. It is but one of a thousand factors
peculiar to the Southwest and to the land's cultural inheritance.

For a long time, as he tells in his _Narrative_, Cabeza de Vaca was
a kind of prisoner to coastal Indians of Texas. Annually, during the
season when prickly pear apples (_tunas_, or Indian figs, as they are
called in books) were ripe, these Indians would go upland to feed on
the fruit. During his sojourn with them Cabeza de Vaca went along. He
describes how the Indians would dig a hole in the ground, squeeze the
fruit out of _tunas_ into the hole, and then swill up big drinks of it.
Long ago the Indians vanished, but prickly pears still flourish over
millions of acres of land. The prickly pear is one of the characteristic
growths of the Southwest. Strangers look at it and regard it as odd.
Painters look at it in bloom or in fruit and strive to capture the
colors. During the droughts ranchmen singe the thorns off its leaves,
using a flame-throwing machine, easily portable by a man on foot, fed
from a small gasoline tank. From Central Texas on down into Central
America prickly pear acts as host for the infinitesimal insect called
cochineal, which supplied the famous dyes of Aztec civilization.

A long essay might be written on prickly pear. It weaves in and out
of many chronicles of the Southwest. A. J. Sowell, one of the best
chroniclers of Texas pioneer life, tells in his life of Bigfoot Wallace
how that picturesque ranger captain once took one of his wounded men
away from an army surgeon because the surgeon would not apply prickly
pear poultices to the wound. In _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, Sowell
narrates how rattlesnakes were so large and numerous in a great prickly
pear flat out from the Nueces River that rangers pursuing bandits had
to turn back. Nobody has written a better description of a prickly pear
flat than O. Henry in his story of "The Caballero's Way."

People may look at prickly pear, and it will be just prickly pear and
nothing more. Or they may look at it and find it full of significances;
the mere sight of a prickly pear may call up a chain of incidents,
facts, associations. A mind that can thus look out on the common
phenomena of life is rich, and all of the years of the person whose mind
is thus stored will be more interesting and full.

Cabeza de Vaca's _Narrative_, the chronicles of A. J. Sowell, and O.
Henry's story are just three samples of southwestern literature that
bring in prickly pear. No active-minded person who reads any one of
these three samples will ever again look at prickly pear in the same
light that he looked at it before he read. Yet prickly pear is just one
of hundreds of manifestations of life in the Southwest that writers have
commented on, told stories about, dignified with significance.

Cotton no longer has the economic importance to Texas that it once had.
Still, it is mighty important. In the minds of millions of farm people
of the South, cotton and the boll weevil are associated. The boll weevil
was once a curse; then it came to be somewhat regarded as a disguised
blessing--in limiting production.

     De first time I seen de boll weevil,
          He was a-settin' on de square.
     Next time I seen him, he had all his family dere--
          Jest a-lookin' foh a home, jest a-lookin' foh a home.

A man dependent on cotton for a living and having that living threatened
by the boll weevil will not be much interested in ballads, but for the
generality of people this boll weevil ballad--the entirety of which is
a kind of life history of the insect--is, while delightful in itself,
a veritable story-book on the weevil. Without the ballad, the weevil's
effect on economic history would be unchanged; but as respects mind and
imagination, the ballad gives the weevil all sorts of significances. The
ballad is a part of the literature of the Southwest.

But I am assigning too many motives of self-improvement to reading.
People read for fun, for pleasure. The literature of the Southwest
affords bully reading.

"If I had read as much as other men, I would know as little," Thomas
Hobbes is credited with having said. A student in the presence of Bishop
E. D. Mouzon was telling about the scores and scores of books he had
read. At a pause the bishop shook his long, wise head and remarked, "My
son, when DO you get time to think?" Two of the best educated men I have
ever had the fortune of talking with were neither schooled nor widely
read. They were extraordinary observers. One was a plainsman, Charles
Goodnight; the other was a borderer, Don Alberto Guajardo, in part
educated by an old Lipan Indian.

But here are the books. I list them not so much to give knowledge as to
direct people with intellectual curiosity and with interest in their own
land to the sources of knowledge; not to create life directly, but to
point out where it has been created or copied. On some of the books I
have made brief observations. Those observations can never be nearly
so important to a reader as the development of his own powers of
observation. With something of an apologetic feeling I confess that I
have read, in my way, most of the books. I should probably have been
a wiser and better informed man had I spent more time out with the
grasshoppers, horned toads, and coyotes. November 5, 1942 J. FRANK DOBIE




2. Interpreters of the Land

"HE'S FOR A JIG or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." Thought employs
ideas, but having an idea is not the same thing as thinking. A rooster
in a pen of hens has an idea. Thought has never been so popular with
mankind as horse opera, horse play, the main idea behind sheep's eyes.
Far be it from me to feel contempt for people who cannot and do not want
to think. The human species has not yet evolved to the stage at which
thought is natural. I am far more at ease lying in grass and gazing
without thought process at clouds than in sitting in a chair trying to
be logical. Just the same, free play of mind upon life is the essence
of good writing, and intellectual activity is synonymous with critical
interpretations.

To the constant disregard of thought, Americans of the mid-twentieth
century have added positive opposition. Critical ideas are apt to
make any critic suspected of being subversive. The Southwest, Texas
especially, is more articulately aware of its land spaces than of any
other feature pertaining to itself. Yet in the realm of government,
the Southwest has not produced a single spacious thinker. So far as the
cultural ancestry of the region goes, the South has been arid of thought
since the time of Thomas Jefferson, the much talked-of mind of John C.
Calhoun being principally casuistic; on another side, derivatives from
the Spanish Inquisition could contribute to thought little more than
tribal medicine men have contributed.

Among historians of the Southwest the general rule has been to be
careful with facts and equally careful in avoiding thought-provoking
interpretations. In the multitudinous studies on Spanish-American
history all padres are "good" and all conquistadores are "intrepid," and
that is about as far as interpretation goes. The one state book of
the Southwest that does not chloroform ideas is Erna Fergusson's _New
Mexico: A Pageant of Three Peoples_ (Knopf, New York, 1952). Essayical
in form, it treats only of the consequential. It evaluates from the
point of view of good taste, good sense, and an urbane comprehension of
democracy. The subject is provincial, but the historian transcends all
provincialism. Her sympathy does not stifle conclusions unusable in
church or chamber of commerce propaganda. In brief, a cultivated mind
can take pleasure in this interpretation of New Mexico--and that marks
it as a solitary among the histories of neighboring states.

The outstanding historical interpreter of the Southwest is Walter
Prescott Webb, of the University of Texas. _The Great Plains_ utilizes
chronology to explain the presence of man on the plains; it is primarily
a study in cause and effect, of water and drought, of adaptations and
lack of adaptations, of the land's growth into human imagination as well
as economic institutions. Webb uses facts to get at meanings. He fulfils
Emerson's definition of Scholar: "Man Thinking." In _Divided We Stand_
he goes into machinery, the feudalism of corporation-dominated economy,
the economic supremacy of the North over the South and the West. In
_The Great Frontier_ (Houghton Mifilin, Boston, 1952) he considers the
Western Hemisphere as a frontier for Europe--a frontier that brought
about the rise of democracy and capitalism and that, now vanished as a
frontier, foreshadows the vanishment of democracy and capitalism.

In _Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and a Myth_ (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950) Henry Nash Smith plows
deep. But the tools of this humanistic historian are of delicate finish
rather than of horsepower. To him, thinking is a joyful process and
lucidity out of complexity is natural. He compasses Parrington's _Main
Currents in American Thought_ and Beadle's Dime Novels along with
agriculture and manufacturing. Excepting the powerful books by Walter
Prescott Webb, not since Frederick Jackson Turner, in 1893, presented
his famous thesis on "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History" has such a revealing evaluation of frontier movements appeared
As a matter of fact, Henry Nash Smith leaves Turner's ideas on the
dependence of democracy upon farmers without more than one leg to stand
upon. Not being a King Canute, he does not take sides for or against
social evolution. With the clearest eyes imaginable, he looks into it.
Turner's _The Frontier in American History_ (1920) has been a fertile
begetter of interpretations of history.

Instead of being the usual kind of jokesmith book or concatenation
of tall tales, _Folk Laughter on the American Frontier_ by Mody C.
Boatright (Macmillan, New York, 1949) goes into the human and social
significances of humor. Of boastings, anecdotal exaggerations,
hide-and-hair metaphors, stump and pulpit parables, tenderfoot baitings,
and the like there is plenty, but thought plays upon them and arranges
them into patterns of social history.

Mary Austin (1868-1934) is an interpreter of nature, which for her
includes naturally placed human beings as much as naturally placed
antelopes and cacti. She wrote _The American Rhythm_ on the theory that
authentic poetry expresses the rhythms of that patch of earth to which
the poet is rooted. Rhythm is experience passed into the subconscious
and is "distinct from our intellectual perception of it." Before they
can make true poetry, English-speaking Americans will be in accord
with "the run of wind in tall grass" as were the Pueblo Indians when
Europeans discovered them. But Mary Austin's primary importance is not
as a theorist. Her spiritual depth is greater than her intellectual. She
is a translator of nature through concrete observations. She interprets
through character sketches, folk tales, novels. "Anybody can write facts
about a country," she said. She infuses fact with understanding and
imagination. In _Lost Borders_, _The Land of Little Rain_, _The Land of
Journey's Ending_, and _The Flock_ the land itself often seems to speak,
but often she gets in its way. She sees "with an eye made quiet by the
power of harmony." _Earth Horizons_, a stubborn book, is Mary Austin's
inner autobiography. _The Beloved House_, by T. M. Pearce (Caxton,
Caldwell, Idaho, 1940), is an understanding biography.

Joseph Wood Krutch of Columbia University spent a year in Arizona, near
Tucson. Instead of talking about his _The Desert Year_ (Sloane, New
York, 1952), I quote a representative paragraph:

In New England the struggle for existence is visibly the struggle of
plant with plant, each battling his neighbor for sunlight and for the
spot of ground which, so far as moisture and nourishment are concerned,
would support them all. Here, the contest is not so much of plant
against plant as of plant against inanimate nature. The limiting factor
is not the neighbor but water; and I wonder if this is, perhaps, one of
the things which makes this country seem to enjoy a kind of peace one
does not find elsewhere. The struggle of living thing against living
thing can be distressing in a way that a mere battle with the elements
is not. If some great clump of cactus dies this summer it will be
because the cactus has grown beyond the capacity of its roots to get
water, not because one green fellow creature has bested it in some
limb-to-limb struggle. In my more familiar East the crowding of the
countryside seems almost to parallel the crowding of the cities. Out
here there is, even in nature, no congestion.


_Southwest_, by Laura Adams Armer (New York, 1935, OP) came from long
living and brooding in desert land. It says something beautiful.

_Talking to the Moon_, by John Joseph Mathews (University of Chicago
Press, 1945) is set in the blackjack country of eastern Oklahoma. This
Oxford scholar of Osage blood built his ranch house around a fireplace,
flanked by shelves of books. His observations are of the outside,
but they are informed by reflections made beside a fire. They are not
bookish at all, but the spirits of great writers mingle with echoes of
coyote wailing and wood-thrush singing.

_Sky Determines: An Interpretation of the Southwest_, by Ross Calvin
(New York, 1934; republished by the University of New Mexico Press)
lives up to its striking title. The introductory words suggest the
essence of the book:

In New Mexico whatever is both old and peculiar appears upon examination
to have a connection with the arid climate. Peculiarities range from the
striking adaptations of the flora onward to those of fauna, and on up
to those of the human animal. Sky determines. And the writer once
having picked up the trail followed it with certainty, and indeed almost
inevitably, as it led from ecology to anthropology and economics.


Cultivated intellect is the highest form of civilization. It is
inseparable from the arts, literature, architecture. In any civilized
land, birds, trees, flowers, animals, places, human contributors to
life out of the past, all are richer and more significant because of
representations through literature and art. No literate person can
listen to a skylark over an English meadow without hearing in its
notes the melodies of Chaucer and Shelley. As the Southwest advances
in maturity of mind and civilization, the features of the land take on
accretions from varied interpreters.

It is not necessary for an interpreter to write a whole book about
a feature to bring out its significance. We need more gossipy
books--something in the manner of _Pinon Country_ by Haniel Long (Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1941), in which one can get a swift slant on
Billy the Kid, smell the pinon trees, feel the deeply religious attitude
toward his corn patch of a Zuni Indian. Roy Bedichek's chapters on the
mockingbird, in _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, are like rich talk
under a tree on a pleasant patch of ground staked out for his claim by
an April-voiced mockingbird. In _The Voice of the Coyote_ I tried
to compass the whole animal, and I should think that the "Father
of Song-Making" chapter might make coyote music and the night more
interesting and beautiful for any listener. Intelligent writers often
interpret without set purpose, and many books under various categories
in this _Guide_ are interpretative.




3. General Helps

THERE IS no chart to the Life and Literature of the Southwest. An
attempt to put it all into an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia would
be futile. All guides to knowledge are too long or too short. This one
at the outset adds to its length--perhaps to its usefulness--by citing
other general reference works and a few anthologies.

_Books of the Southwest: A General Bibliography_, by Mary Tucker,
published by J. J. Augustin, New York, 1937, is better on Indians and
the Spanish period than on Anglo-American culture. _Southwest Heritage:
A Literary History with Bibliography_, by Mabel Major, Rebecca W. Smith,
and T. M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1938,
revised 1948, takes up the written material under the time-established
heads of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, etc., with due respect to chronological
development. _A Treasury of Southern Folklore_, 1949, and _A Treasury of
Western Folklore_, 1951, both edited by B. A. Botkin and both published
by Crown, New York, are so liberal in the extensions of folklore and so
voluminous that they amount to literary anthologies.

Of possible use in working out certain phases of life and literature
common to the Southwest as well as to the West and Middle West are the
following academic treatises: _The Frontier in American Literature_,
by Lucy Lockwood Hazard, New York, 1927; _The Literature of the Middle
Western Frontier_, by Ralph Leslie Rusk, New York, 1925; _The Prairie
and the Making of Middle America_, by Dorothy Anne Dondore, Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, 1926; _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain West
1803-1903_, by L. J. Davidson and P. Bostwick, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939;
and _The Rediscovery of the Frontier_, by Percy H. Boynton, Chicago,
1931. Anyone interested in vitality in any phase of American writing
will find Vernon L. Parrington's _Main Currents in American Thought_
(three vols.), New York, 1927-39, an opener-up of avenues.

Perhaps the best anthology of southwestern narratives is _Golden Tales
of the Southwest_, selected by Mary L. Becker, New York, 1939. Two
anthologies of southwestern writings are _Southwesterners Write_, edited
by T. M. Pearce and A. P. Thomason, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1946, and _Roundup Time_, edited by George Sessions Perry,
Whittlesey House, New York, 1943. Themes common to the Southwest are
represented in _Western Prose and Poetry_, an anthology put together by
Rufus A. Coleman, New York, 1932, and in _Mid Country: Writings from the
Heart of America_, edited by Lowry C. Wimberly, University of Nebraska
Press, Lincoln, 1945.

For the southern tradition that has flowed into the Southwest Franklin
J. Meine's _Tall Tales of the Southwest_, New York, 1930, OP, is the
best anthology published. It is the best anthology of any kind that I
know of. _A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature_, selected by Stark
Young, New York, 1937, brings in Texas.

Anthologies of poetry are listed under the heading of "Poetry and
Drama." The outstanding state bibliography of the region is _A
Bibliography of Texas_, by C. W. Raines, Austin, 1896. Since this is
half a century behind the times, its usefulness is limited. At that,
it is more useful than the shiftless, hit-and-miss, ignorance-revealing
_South of Forty: From the Mississippi to the Rio Grande: A
Bibliography_, by Jesse L. Rader, Norman, Oklahoma, 1947. Henry
R. Wagner's _The Plains and the Rockies_, "a contribution to the
bibliography of original narratives of travel and adventure, 1800-1865,"
which came out 1920-21, was revised and extended by Charles L. Camp and
reprinted in 1937. It is stronger on overland travel than on anything
else, only in part covers the Southwest, and excludes a greater length
of time than Raines's _Bibliography_. Now published by Long's College
Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.

Mary G. Boyer's _Arizona in Literature_, Glendale, California, 1934, is
an anthology that runs toward six hundred pages. _Texas Prose Writings_,
by Sister M. Agatha, Dallas, 1936, OP, is a meaty, critical survey. L.
W. Payne's handbook-sized _A Survey of Texas Literature_, Chicago, 1928,
is complemented by a chapter entitled "Literature and Art in Texas" by
J. Frank Dobie in _The Book of Texas_, New York, 1929. OP.

_A Guide to Materials Bearing on Cultural Relations in New Mexico_,
University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1944, is so logical and
liberal-minded that in some respects it amounts to a bibliography of the
whole Southwest; it recognizes the overriding of political boundaries
by ideas, human types, and other forms of culture. The _New Mexico
Quarterly_, published by the University of New Mexico, furnishes
periodically a bibliographical record of contemporary literature of the
Southwest. _New Mexico's Own Chronicle_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton and
Paul Horgan (Dallas, 1937, OP), is an anthology strong on the historical
side.

In the lists that follow, the symbol OP indicates that the book is out
of print. Many old books obviously out of print are not so tagged.





4. Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos

THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and ubiquitous
that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it, he may find it more
troublesome to avoid than to get hold of. The average old-timer has
for generations regarded Indian scares and fights as the most important
theme for reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same
point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian
Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs, ceremonies, mythology,
and other folklore in hundreds of tomes; laborious, literal-minded
scholars of other institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore
and tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally been
dried out.

The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him and take
his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide. The Spaniard's
policy was to baptize him, take his land, enslave him, and appropriate
his women. Any English-speaking frontiersman who took up with the
Indians was dubbed "squaw man"--a term of sinister connotations. Despite
pride in descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of
such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-Americans
and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for instance, with the
interdicted crosses between white men and black women. The Spaniards,
on the other hand, crossed in battalions with the Indians, generating
_mestizo_ (mixed-blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.

As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have in general
absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian culture--nothing at all
comparable to the Uncle Remus stories and characters and the spiritual
songs and the blues music from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his
own grandpa saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing
raid in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian arrowheads;
every section of the country has a bluff called Lovers' Leap, where,
according to legend, a pair of forlorn Indian lovers, or perhaps only
one of the pair, dived to death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa
Peak, Squaw Creek, Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County,
Indian Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All
such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of Indian
culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of America.

(1) The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated Indian lore
about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human relationships with
the land. Through the Mexican medium, with which he is becoming more
sympathetic, the gringo is getting the ages-old Indian culture.

(2) The Pueblo and Navajo Indians in particular are impressing their
arts, crafts, and ways of life upon special groups of Americans living
near them, and these special groups are transmitting some of their
acquisitions. The special groups incline to be arty and worshipful, but
they express a salutary revolt against machined existence and they have
done much to revive dignity in Indian life. Offsetting dilettantism, the
Museum of New Mexico and associated institutions and artists and other
individuals have fostered Indian pottery, weaving, silversmithing,
dancing, painting, and other arts and crafts. Superior craftsmanship can
now depend upon a fairly reliable market; the taste of American buyers
has been somewhat elevated.

          O mountains, pure and holy, give me
     a song, a strong and holy song to bless
     my flock and bring the rain!

This is from "Navajo Holy Song," as rendered by Edith Hart Mason. It
expresses a spiritual content in Indian life far removed from the We and
God, Incorporated form of religion ordained by the National Association
of Manufacturers.

(3) The wild freedom, mobility, and fierce love of liberty of
the mounted Indians of the Plains will perhaps always stir
imaginations--something like the charging Cossacks, the camping Arabs,
and the migrating Tartars. There is no romance in Indian fights east
of the Mississippi. The mounted Plains Indians always made a big hit in
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Little boys still climb into their seats
and cry out when red horsemen of the Plains ride across the screen.

See "Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians," "Mountain Men."


APPLEGATE, FRANK G. _Indian Stories from the Pueblos_, Philadelphia,
1929. Charming. OP.

ASTROV, MARGOT (editor), _The Winged Serpent_, John Day, New York, 1946.
An anthology of prose and poetry by American Indians. Here are singular
expressions of beauty and dignity.

AUSTIN, MARY. _The Trail Book_, 1918, OP; _One-Smoke Stories_, 1934,
Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Delightful folk tales, each leading to a
vista.

BANDELIER, A. F. _The Delight Makers_, 1918, Dodd, Mead, New York.
Historical fiction on ancient pueblo life.

COOLIDGE, DANE and MARY. _The Navajo Indians_, Boston, 1930. Readable;
bibliography. OP.

COOLIDGE, MARY ROBERTS. _The Rain-Makers_, Boston, 1929. OP. This
thorough treatment of the Indians of Arizona and New Mexico contains an
excellent account of the Hopi snake ceremony for bringing rain. During
any severe drought numbers of Christians in the Southwest pray without
snakes. It always rains eventually--and the prayer-makers naturally take
the credit. The Hopis put on a more spectacular show. See Dr. Walter
Hough's _The Hopi Indians_, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1915. OP.

CUSHING, FRANK HAMILTON. _Zuni Folk Tales_, 1901; reprinted, 1931,
by Knopf, New York. _My Adventures in Zuni_, Santa Fe, 1941. _Zuni
Breadstuff_, Museum of the American Indian, New York, 1920. Cushing had
rare imagination and sympathy. His retellings of tales are far superior
to verbatim recordings. _Zuni Breadstuff_ reveals more of Indian
spirituality than any other book I can name. All OP.

DEHUFF, ELIZABETH. _Tay Tay's Tales_, 1922; _Tay Tay's Memories_, 1924.
OP.

DOUGLAS, FREDERIC H., and D HARNONCOURT, RENE. _Indian Art of the United
States_, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1941.

DYK, WALTER. _Son of Old Man Hat_, New York, 1938. OP.

FERGUSSON, ERNA. _Dancing Gods_, Knopf, New York, 1931. Erna Fergusson
is always illuminating.

FOREMAN, GRANT. _Indians and Pioneers_, 1930, and _Advancing the
Frontier_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1933. Grant Foreman
is prime authority on the so-called "Civilized Tribes." University
of Oklahoma Press has published a number of excellent volumes in "The
Civilization of the American Indian" series.

GILLMOR, FRANCES, and WETHERILL, LOUISA WADE. _Traders to the Navajos_,
Boston, 1936; reprinted by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,
1952. An account not only of the trading post Wetherills but of the
Navajos as human beings, with emphasis on their spiritual qualities.

GODDARD, P. E. _Indians of the Southwest_, New York, 1921. Excellent
outline of exterior facts. OP.

HAMILTON, CHARLES (editor). _Cry of the Thunderbird_, Macmillan,
New York, 1951. An anthology of writings by Indians containing many
interesting leads.

HEWETT, EDGAR L. _Ancient Life in the American Southwest_, Indianapolis,
1930. OP. A master work in both archeology and Indian nature. (With
Bertha P. Dretton) _The Pueblo Indian World_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1945.

HODGE, F. W. _Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico_, Washington,
D. C., 1907. Indispensable encyclopedia, by a very great scholar and a
very fine gentleman. OP.

LABARRE, WESTON. _The Peyote Cult_, Yale University Press, New Haven,
1938.

LAFARGE, OLIVER. _Laughing Boy_, Boston, 1929. The Navajo in fiction.

LUMMIS, C. F. _Mesa, Canon, and Pueblo_, New York, 1925; _Pueblo
Indian Folk Tales_, New York, 1910. Lummis, though self-vaunting and
opinionated, opens windows.

MATTHEWS, WASHINGTON. _Navajo Legends_, Boston, 1897; _Navajo Myths,
Prayers and Songs_, Berkeley, California, 1907.

MOONEY, JAMES. _Myths of the Cherokees_, in Nineteenth Annual Report of
the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1902. Outstanding writing.

NELSON, JOHN LOUW. _Rhythm for Rain_, Boston, 1937. Based on ten years
spent with the Hopi Indians, this study of their life is a moving story
of humanity. OP.

PEARCE, J. E. _Tales That Dead Men Tell_, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1935. Eloquent, liberating to the human mind; something rare
for Texas scholarship. Pearce was professor of anthropology at the
University of Texas, an emancipator from prejudices and ignorance. It is
a pity that all the college students who are forced by the bureaucrats
of Education--Education spelled with a capital E--"the unctuous
elaboration of the obvious"--do not take anthropology instead.
Collegians would then stand a chance of becoming educated.

PETRULLO, VICENZO. _The Diabolic Root: A Study of Peyotism, the New
Indian Religion, among the Delawares_, University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, 1934. The use of peyote has now spread northwest into
Canada. See Milly Peacock Stenberg's _The Peyote Culture among Wyoming
Indians_, University of Wyoming Publications, Laramie, 1946, for
bibliography.

REICHARD, GLADYS A. _Spider Woman_, 1934, and _Dezba Woman of the
Desert_, 1939. Both honest, both OP.

SIMMONS, LEO W. (editor). _Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi
Indian_, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1942. The clearest view into
the mind and living ways, including sex life, of an Indian that has
been published. Few autobiographers have been clearer; not one has been
franker. A singular human document.

{illust}





5. Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians

THE APACHES and the bareback Indians of the Plains were extraordinary
_hombres del campo--_men of the outdoors, plainsmen, woodsmen, trailers,
hunters, endurers. They knew some phases of nature with an intimacy that
few civilized naturalists ever attain to. It is unfortunate that most
of the literature about them is from their enemies. Yet an enemy often
teaches a man more than his friends and makes him work harder.

See "Indian Culture," "Texas Rangers."


BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, London, 1892. Reprinted by
Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. A truly great book, on both
Apaches and Arizona frontier. Bourke had amplitude, and he knew.

BUCKELEW, F. M. _The Indian Captive_, Bandera, Texas, 1925. Homely and
realistic. OP.

CATLIN, GEORGE. _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and
Conditions of the North American Indians, Written during Eight Years'
Travel, 1832-39_, 1841. Despite many strictures, Catlin's two volumes
remain standard. I am pleased to find Frank Roe, in _The North American
Buffalo_, standing up for him. In _Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of
George Catlin, Painter and Recorder of the American Indian_, New York,
1948, Loyd Haberly fails in evaluating evidence but brings out the man's
career and character.

CLUM, WOODWORTH. _Apache Agent_, Boston, 1936. Worthy autobiography of a
noble understander of the Apache people. OP.

COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON. _Apache_, Dutton, New York, 1931. Noble; vivid;
semifiction.

DAVIS, BRITTON. _The Truth about Geronimo_, Yale University Press, New
Haven, 1929. Davis helped run Geronimo down.

DESHIELDS, JAMES T. _Cynthia Ann Parker_, St. Louis, 1886; reprinted
1934. Good narrative of noted woman captive. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. The
opening chapters of this book distil a great deal of research by
scholars on Plains Indian acquisition of horses, riding, and raiding.

GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. _The Cheyenne Indians_, New Haven, 1923. This
two-volume work supersedes _The Fighting Cheyennes_, 1915. It is noble,
ample, among the most select books on Plains Indians. _Blackfoot Lodge
Tales: The Story of a Prairie People_, 1892, shows Grinnell's skill as
storyteller at its best. _Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales_, 1893,
is hardly an equal but it reveals the high values of life held by
representatives of the original plainsmen. _The Story of the Indian_,
1895, is a general survey. All OP. Grinnell's knowledge and power as a
writer on Indians and animals has not been sufficiently recognized.
He combined in a rare manner scholarship, plainsmanship, and the
worldliness of publishing.


{illust. caption = George Catlin, in _North American Indians_ (1841)}



HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier_, San Angelo
Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Mainly a history of military
activities against Comanches and other tribes, laced with homilies on
the free enterprise virtues of the conquerors.

LEE, NELSON. _Three Years among the Comanches_, 1859.

LEHMAN, HERMAN. _Nine Years with the Indians_, Bandera, Texas, 1927.
Best captive narrative of the Southwest.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _The Apache Indians_, Macmillan, New York, 1938.
Factual history.

LONG LANCE, CHIEF BUFFALO CHILD. _Long Lance_, New York, 1928. OP. Long
Lance was a Blackfoot only by adoption, but his imagination incorporated
him into tribal life more powerfully than blood could have. He is said
to have been a North Carolina mixture of Negro and Croatan Indian; he
was a magnificent specimen of manhood with swart Indian complexion.
He fought in the Canadian army during World War I and thus became
acquainted with the Blackfeet. No matter what the facts of his life, he
wrote a vivid and moving autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian in whom the
spirit of the tribe and the natural life of the Plains during buffalo
days were incorporated. In 1932 in the California home of Anita Baldwin,
daughter of the spectacular "Lucky" Baldwin, he absented himself from
this harsh world by a pistol shot.

LOWIE, ROBERT H. _The Crow Indians_, New York, 1935. This scholar and
anthropologist lived with the Crow Indians to obtain intimate knowledge
and then wrote this authoritative book. OP.

MCALLISTER, J. GILBERT. "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in _The Sky Is My Tipi_,
edited by Mody C. Boatright (Texas Folklore Society Publication XXII),
Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949. Wise in exposition;
true-to-humanity and delightful in narrative.

MCGILLICUDDY, JULIA B. _McGillicuddy Agent_, Stanford University Press,
California, 1941. Dr. Valentine T. McGillicuddy, Scotch in stubbornness,
honesty, efficiency, and individualism, was U.S. Indian agent to the
Sioux and knew them to the bottom. In the end he was defeated by the
army mind and the bloodsuckers known as the "Indian Ring." The elements
of nobility that distinguish the man distinguish his wife's biography of
him.

MCLAUGHLIN, JAMES. My _Friend the Indian_, 1910, 1926. OP. McLaughlin
was U.S. Indian agent and inspector for half a century. Despite
priggishness, he had genuine sympathy for the Indians; he knew the
Sioux, Nez Perces, and Cheyennes intimately, and few books on Indian
plainsmen reveal so much as his.

MARRIOTT, ALICE. _The Ten Grandmothers_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1945. Narratives of the Kiowas--a complement to James Mooney's
_Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians_, in Seventeenth Annual Report
of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1893. Alice Marriott, author of
other books on Indians, combines ethnological science with the art of
writing.

MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road_,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1932. This book of essays on the character
of and certain noble characters among the Great Osages, including their
upright agent Leban J. Miles, has profound spiritual qualities.

NEIHARDT, JOHN G. _Black Elk Speaks_, New York, 1932. OP. Black Elk was
a holy man of the Ogalala Sioux. The story of his life as he told it
to understanding John G. Neihardt is more of mysteries and spiritual
matters than of mundane affairs.

RICHARDSON, R. N. _The Comanche Barrier to the South Plains_, Glendale,
California, 1933. Factual history.

RISTER, CARL C. _Border Captives_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
1940.

RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_,
London, 1847. Vivid on Comanche raids. See Ruxton in "Surge of Life in
the West."

SCHULTZ, J. W. _My Life as an Indian_, 1907. OP. In this
autobiographical narrative of the life of a white man with a Blackfoot
woman, facts have probably been arranged, incidents added. Whatever his
method, the author achieved a remarkable human document. It is true not
only to Indian life in general but in particular to the life of a "squaw
man" and his loved and loving mate. Among other authentic books by
Schultz is _With the Indians of the Rockies_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1912.

SMITH, C. L. and J. D. _The Boy Captives_, Bandera, Texas, 1927. A kind
of classic in homeliness. OP.

VESTAL, STANLEY. _Sitting Bull_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1932.
Excellent biography. OP.

WALLACE, ERNEST, and HOEBEL, E. ADAMSON. _The Comanches: Lords of
the South Plains_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. A
wide-compassing and interesting book on a powerful and interesting
people.

WELLMAN, PAUL I. _Death on the Prairie_ (1934), _Death in the Desert_
(1935); both reprinted in _Death on Horseback_, 1947. All OP. Graphic
history, mostly in narrative, of the struggle of Plains and Apache
Indians to hold their homelands against the whites.

WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted by
Steck, Austin, 1936. Its stirring narratives made this a household book
among Texans of the late nineteenth century.





6. Spanish-Mexican Strains

THE MEXICAN Revolution that began in 1910 resulted in a rich development
of the native cultural elements of Mexico, the art of Diego Rivera being
one of the highlights of this development. The native culture is closer
to the Mexican earth and to the indigenes than to Spain, notwithstanding
modern insistence on the Latin in Latin-American culture.

The Spaniards, through Mexico, have had an abiding influence on the
architecture and language of the Southwest. They gave us our most
distinctive occupation, ranching on the open range. They influenced
mining greatly, and our land titles and irrigation laws still go back
to Spanish and Mexican sources. After more than a hundred years of
occupation of Texas and almost that length of time in other parts of
the Southwest, the English-speaking Americans still have the rich
accumulations of lore pertaining to coyotes, mesquites, prickly pear,
and many other plants and animals to learn from the Mexicans, who got
their lore partly from intimate living with nature but largely through
Indian ancestry.

See "Fighting Texians," "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."

AIKEN, RILEY. "A Pack Load of Mexican Tales," in _Puro Mexicano_,
published by Texas Folklore Society, 1935. Now published by Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas. Delightful.

ALEXANDER, FRANCES (and others). _Mother Goose on the Rio Grande_, Banks
Upshaw, Dallas, 1944. Charming rhymes in both Spanish and English in
charming form.

APPLEGATE, FRANK G. _Native Tales of New Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1932.
Delicious; the real thing. OP.

ATHERTON, GERTRUDE. _The Splendid Idle Forties_, New York, 1902. Romance
of Mexican California.

AUSTIN, MARY. _One-Smoke Stories_, Boston, 1934. Short tales of
Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, also of Indians.

BANDELIER, A. F. _The Gilded Man_, New York, 1873. The dream of El
Dorado.

BARCA, MADAM CALDERON DE LA. _Life in Mexico_, 1843; reprinted by Dutton
about 1930. Among books on Mexican life to be ranked first both in
readability and revealing qualities.

BELL, HORACE. _On the Old West Coast_, New York, 1930. A golden treasury
of anecdotes. OP.

BENTLEY, HAROLD W. _A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English_, New York,
1932. In a special way this book reveals the Spanish-Mexican influence
on life in the Southwest; it also guides to books in English that
reflect this influence. OP.

BISHOP, MORRIS. _The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca_, New York, 1933. Better
written than Cabeza de Vaca's own narrative. OP.

BLANCO, ANTONIO FIERRO DE. _The Journey of the Flame_, Boston, 1933.
Bully and flavorsome; the Californias. OP.

BOLTON, HERBERT E. _Spanish Exploration in the Southwest_, 1916. The
cream of explorer narratives, well edited. _Coronado on the Turquoise
Trail_ (originally published in New York, 1949, under the title
_Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains_; now issued by University of
New Mexico Press, Albuquerque). By his own work and by directing other
scholars, Dr. Bolton has surpassed all other American historians of his
time in output on Spanish-American history. _Coronado_ is the climax
of his many volumes. Its fault is being too worshipful of everything
Spanish and too uncritical. A little essay on Coronado in Haniel Long's
_Pinon Country_ goes a good way to put this belegended figure into
proper perspective.

BRENNER, ANITA. _Idols Behind Altars_, 1929. OP. The pagan worship that
endures among Mexican Indians. _The Wind that Swept Mexico: The History
of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1942_, 1943, OP. _Your Mexican Holiday_,
revised 1947. No writer on modern Mexico has a clearer eye or clearer
intellect than Anita Brenner; she maintains good humor in her realism
and never lapses into phony romance.

CABEZA DE VACA'S _Narrative_. Any translation procurable. One is
included in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States_, edited by
F. W. Hodge and T. H. Lewis, now published by Barnes & Noble, New York.

The most dramatic and important aftermath of Cabeza de Vaca's twisted
walk across the continent was Coronado's search for the Seven Cities of
Cibola. Coronado's precursor was Fray Marcos de Niza. _The Journey
of Fray Marcos de Niza_, by Cleve Hallenbeck, with illustrations and
decorations by Jose Cisneros, is one of the most beautiful books in
format published in America. It was designed and printed by Carl Hertzog
of El Paso, printer without peer between the Atlantic and the Pacific,
and is issued by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas.

CASTANEDA'S narrative of Coronado's expedition. Winship's translation is
preferred. It is included in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United
States_, cited above.

CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New York, 1927.
Classical historical fiction on New Mexico.

CUMBERLAND, CHARLES C. _Mexican Revolution: Genesis under Madero_,
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. Bibliography. To know Mexico
and Mexicans without knowing anything about Mexican revolutions is like
knowing the United States in ignorance of frontiers, constitutions, and
corporations. The Madero revolution that began in 1910 is still going
on. Mr. Cumberland's solid book, independent in itself, is to be
followed by two other volumes.

DE SOTO. Hernando de Soto made his expedition from Florida north and
west at the time Coronado was exploring north and east. _The Florida
of the Inca_, by Garcilaso de la Vega, translated by John and Jeannette
Varner, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951, is the first complete
publishing in English of this absorbing narrative.

DIAZ, BERNAL. _History of the Conquest_. There are several translations.
A book of gusto and humanity as enduring as the results of the Conquest
itself.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _Coronado's Children_, 1930. Legendary tales of the
Southwest, many of them derived from Mexican sources. _Tongues of the
Monte_, 1935. A pattern of the soil of northern Mexico and its folk.
_Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, 1939. Lost mines and money in Mexico and
New Mexico. Last two books published by Little, Brown, Boston.

DOMENECH, ABBE. _Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico_, London,
1858. Delightful folklore, though Domenech would not have so designated
his accounts.

FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Blood of the Conquerors_, 1921. Fiction. OP. _Rio
Grande_, Knopf, New York, 1933. Best interpretations yet written of
upper Mexican class.

FLANDRAU, CHARLES M. _Viva Mexico!_ New York, 1909; reissued, 1951.
Delicious autobiographic narrative of life in Mexico.

FULTON, MAURICE G., and HORGAN, PAUL (editors). _New Mexico's Own
Chronicle_, Dallas, 1937. OP. Selections from writers about the New
Mexico scene.

GILPATRICK, WALLACE. _The Man Who Likes Mexico_, New York, 1911. OP.
Bully reading.

GONZALEZ, JOVITA. Tales about Texas-Mexican vaquero folk in _Texas and
Southwestern Lore_, in _Man, Bird, and Beast_, and in _Mustangs and Cow
Horses_, Publications VI, VIII, and XVI of Texas Folklore Society.


{illust. caption = Jose Cisneros: Fray Marcos, in _The Journey of Fray
Marcos de Niza_ by Cleve Hallenbeck (1949)}



GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. _Hernando De Soto_, London, 1912. Biography.
OP.

HARTE, BRET. _The Bell Ringer of Angels_ and other legendary tales of
California.

LAUGHLIN, RUTH. _Caballeros_. When the book was published in 1931, the
author was named Ruth Laughlin Barker; after she discarded the Barker
part, it was reissued, in 1946, by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. Delightful
picturings of Mexican--or Spanish, as many New Mexicans prefer--life
around Santa Fe.

LEA, TOM. _The Brave Bulls_. See under "Fiction."

LUMMIS, C. F. _Flowers of Our Lost Romance_, Boston, 1929. Humanistic
essays on Spanish contributions to southwestern civilization. OP. _The
Land of Poco Tiempo_, New York, 1913 (reissued by University of New
Mexico Press, 1952), in an easier style. _A New Mexico David_, 1891,
1930. Folk tales and sketches. OP.

MERRIAM, CHARLES. _Machete_, Dallas, 1932. Plain and true to the
_gente_. OP.

NIGGLI, JOSEPHINA. _Mexican Village_, University of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, 1945. A collection of skilfully told stories that
reveal Mexican life.

O'SHAUGHNESSY, EDITH. _A Diplomat s Wife in Mexico_, New York, 1916;
_Diplomatic Days_, 1917; _Intimate Pages of Mexican History_, 1920.
Books of passion and power and high literary merit, interpretative of
revolutionary Mexico. OP.

OTERO, NINA. _Old Spain in Our Southwest_, New York, 1936. Genuine. OP.

PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE. _Flowering Judas_. See under "Fiction."

PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. _Conquest of Mexico_. History that is literature.

REMINGTON, FREDERIC W. _Pony Tracks_, New York, 1895. Includes sketches
of Mexican ranch life.

ROSS, PATRICIA FENT. _Made in Mexico: The Story of a Country's Arts
and Crafts_, Knopf, New York, 1952. Picturesquely and instructively
illustrated by Carlos Merida.

TANNENBAUM, FRANK. _Peace by Revolution_, Columbia University Press, New
York, 1933; _Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread_, Knopf, New York,
1950. Tannenbaum dodges nothing, not even the church.

_Terry's Guide to Mexico_. It has everything.

Texas Folklore Society. Its publications are a storehouse of Mexican
folklore in the Southwest and in Mexico also. Especially recommended
are _Texas and Southwestern Lore_ (VI), _Man, Bird, and Beast_ (VIII),
_Southwestern Lore_ (IX), _Spur-of-the-Cock_ (XI), _Puro Mexicano_
(XII), _Texian Stomping Grounds_ (XVII), _Mexican Border Ballads and
Other Lore_ (XXI), _The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore_
(XXIV, 1951). All published by Southern Methodist University Press,
Dallas.

TOOR, FRANCES. A _Treasury of Mexican Folkways_, Crown, New York, 1947.
An anthology of life.

TURNER, TIMOTHY G._ Bullets, Bottles and Gardenias_, Dallas, 1935.
Obscurely published but one of the best books on Mexican life. OP.





7. Flavor of France

THERE IS little justification for including Louisiana as a part of the
Southwest. Despite the fact that the French flag--tied to a pole in
Louisiana--once waved over Texas, French influence on it and other parts
of the Southwest has been minor.


ARTHUR, STANLEY CLISBY. _Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover_ (1952) and
_Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman_ (1937), both
published by Harmanson--Publisher and Bookseller, 333 Royal St., New
Orleans.

CABLE, GEORGE W. _Old Creole Days: Strange True Stories of Louisiana_.

CHOPIN, KATE. _Bayou Folk_.

FORTIER, ALCEE. Any of his work on Louisiana.

HEARN, LAFCADIO. _Chita_. A lovely story.

JOUTEL. _Journal_ of La Salle's career in Texas.

KANE, HARNETT T. _Plantation Parade: The Grand Manner in Louisiana_
(1945), _Natchez on the Mississippi_ (1947), _Queen New Orleans_ (1949),
all published by Morrow, New York.

KING, GRACE. _New Orleans: The Place and the People; Balcony Stories._

MCVOY, LIZZIE CARTER. _Louisiana in the Short Story_, Louisiana State
University Press, 1940.

SAXON, LYLE. _Fabulous New Orleans; Old Louisiana; Lafitte the Pirate_.




8. Backwoods Life and Humor

THE SETTLERS who put their stamp on Texas were predominantly from the
southern states--and far more of them came to Texas to work out of debt
than came with riches in the form of slaves. The plantation owner came
too, but the go-ahead Crockett kind of backwoodsman was typical. The
southern type never became so prominent in New Mexico, Arizona, and
California as in Texas. Nevertheless, the fact glares out that the code
of conduct--the riding and shooting tradition, the eagerness to stand up
and fight for one's rights, the readiness to back one's judgment with
a gun, a bowie knife, money, life itself--that characterized the whole
West as well as the Southwest was southern, hardly at all New England.

The very qualities that made many of the Texas pioneers rebels to
society and forced not a few of them to quit it between sun and
sun without leaving new addresses fitted them to conquer the
wilderness--qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy
self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust
for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious
politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models
of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society--a society
shockingly tame--may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman
is one who never gives offense." Under this definition a shaded violet,
a butterfly, and a floating summer cloud are all gentlemen. "The art of
war," said Napoleon, "is to make offense." Conquering the hostile Texas
wilderness meant war with nature and against savages as well as against
Mexicans. Go-ahead Crockett's ideal of a gentleman was one who looked
in another direction while a visitor was pouring himself out a horn of
whiskey.

Laying aside climatic influences on occupations and manners, certain
Spanish influences, and minor Pueblo Indian touches, the Southwest from
the point of view of the bedrock Anglo-Saxon character that has made it
might well include Arkansas and Missouri. The realism of southern folk
and of a very considerable body of indigenous literature representing
them has been too much overshadowed by a kind of _So Red the Rose_
idealization of slave-holding aristocrats.


ALLSOPP, FRED W. _Folklore of Romantic Arkansas_, 2 vols., Grolier
Society, 1931. Allsopp assembled a rich and varied collection of
materials in the tone of "The Arkansas Traveler." OP.

ARRINGTON, ALFRED W. _The Rangers and Regulators of the Tanaha_, 18 56.
East Texas bloodletting.

BALDWIN, JOSEPH G. _The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi_, 1853.

BLAIR, WALTER. _Horse Sense in American Humor from Benjamin Franklin
to Ogden Nash_, 1942. OP. _Native American Humor_, 1937. OP. _Tall Tale
America_, Coward-McCann, New York, 1944. Orderly analyses with many
concrete examples. With Franklin J. Meine as co-author, _Mike Fink,
King of Mississippi River Keelboatmen_, 1933. Biography of a folk type
against pioneer and frontier background. OP.

BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Folk Laughter on the American Frontier_. See under
"Interpreters."

CLARK, THOMAS D. _The Rampaging Frontier_, 1939. OP. Historical
picturization and analysis, fortified by incidents and tales of
"Varmints," "Liars," "Quarter Horses," "Fiddlin'," "Foolin' with the
Gals," etc.

CROCKETT, DAVID. _Autobiography_. Reprinted many times. Scribner's
edition in the "Modern Students' Library" includes _Colonel Crockett's
Exploits and Adventures in_ _Texas_. Crockett set the backwoods
type. See treatment of him in Parrington's _Main Currents in American
Thought_. Richard M. Dorson's _Davy Crockett, American Comic Legend_,
1939, is a summation of the Crockett tradition.

FEATHERSTONHAUGH, G. W. _Excursion through the Slave States_, London,
1866. Refreshing on manners and characters.

FLACK, CAPTAIN. _The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods_,
London, 1866.

GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_. Nothing better on
backwoods life in the Mississippi Valley.

HAMMETT, SAMUEL ADAMS (who wrote under the name of Philip Paxton),
_Piney Woods Tavern; or Sam Slick in Texas_ and _A Stray Yankee in
Texas_. Humor on the roughneck element. For treatment of Hammett as man
and writer see _Sam Slick in Texas_, by W. Stanley Hoole, Naylor, San
Antonio, 1945.

HARRIS, GEORGE W. _Sut Lovingood_, New York, 1867. Prerealism.

HOGUE, WAYMAN. _Back Yonder_. Minton, Balch, New York, 1932. Ozark life.
OP.

HOOPER, J. J. _Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs_, 1845. OP. Downright
realism. Like Longstreet, Hooper in maturity wanted his realism
forgotten. An Alabama journalist, he got into the camp of respectable
slave-holders and spent the later years of his life shouting against
the "enemies of the institution of African slavery." His life partly
explains the lack of intellectual honesty in most southern spokesmen
today. _Alias Simon Suggs: The Life and Times of Johnson Jones Hooper_,
by W. Stanley Hoole, University of Alabama Press, 1952, is a careful
study of Hooper's career.

HUDSON, A. P. _Humor of the Old Deep South_, New York, 1936. An
anthology. OP.

LONGSTREET, A. B. _Georgia Scenes_, 1835. Numerous reprints. Realism.

MASTERSON, JAMES R. _Tall Tales of Arkansas_, Boston, 1943. OP. The
title belies this excellent social history--by a scholar. It has become
quite scarce on account of the fact that it contains unexpurgated
versions of the notorious speech on "Change the Name of Arkansas"--which
in 1919 in officers' barracks at Bordeaux, France, I heard a lusty
individual recite with as many variations as Roxane of _Cyrano de
Bergerac_ wanted in love-making. When Fred W. Allsopp, newspaper
publisher and pillar of Arkansas respectability, found that this book of
unexpurgations had been dedicated to him by the author--a Harvard Ph.D.
teaching in Michigan--he almost "had a colt."

MEINE, FRANKLIN J. (editor). _Tall Tales of the Southwest_, Knopf,
New York, 1930. A superbly edited and superbly selected anthology with
appendices affording a guide to the whole field of early southern humor
and realism. No cavalier idealism. The "Southwest" of this excellent
book is South.

OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States_, 1856.
_A Journey Through Texas_, 1857. Invaluable books on social history.

POSTL, KARL ANTON (Charles Sealsfield or Francis Hardman, pseudonyms).
_The Cabin Book; Frontier Life_. Translations all OP.

RANDOLPH, VANCE. _We Always Lie to Strangers_, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1951. A collection of tall tales of the adding machine
variety. Fertile in invention but devoid of any yearning for the
beautiful or suggestion that the human spirit hungers for something
beyond horse play; in short, typical of American humor.

ROURKE, CONSTANCE. _American Humor_, 1931; _Davy Crockett_, 1934; _Roots
of American Culture and Other Essays_, 1942, all published by Harcourt,
Brace, New York.

THOMPSON, WILLIAM T. _Major Jones's Courtship_, Philadelphia, 1844.
Realism.

THORPE, T. B. _The Hive of the Bee-Hunter_, New York, 1854. This
excellent book should be reprinted.

WATTERSON, HENRY. _Oddities in Southern Life and Character_, Boston,
1882. An anthology with interpretative notes.

WILSON, CHARLES MORROW. _Backwoods America_. University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1935. Well ordered survey with excellent
samplings.

WOOD, RAY. _The American Mother Goose_, 1940; _Fun in American Folk
Rhymes_, 1952; both published by Lippincott, Philadelphia.





9. How the Early Settlers Lived

DESPITE THE FACT that the tendency of a majority of early day
rememberers has been to emphasize Indian fights, killings, and other
sensational episodes, chronicles rich in the everyday manners and
customs of the folk are plentiful. The classic of them all is Noah
Smithwick's _The Evolution of a State_, listed below.

See also "Backwoods Life and Humor," "Pioneer Doctors," "Women
Pioneers," "Fighting Texians."


BARKER, E. C. _The Austin Papers_. Four volumes of sources for any theme
in social history connected with colonial Texans.

BATES, ED. F. _History and Reminiscences of Denton County_, Denton,
Texas, 1918. A sample of much folk life found in county histories.

BELL, HORACE. _On the Old West Coast_, New York, 1930. Social history by
anecdote. California. OP.

BRACHT, VIKTOR. _Texas in 1848_, translated from the German by C. F.
Schmidt, San Antonio, 1931. Better on natural resources than on human
inhabitants. OP.

CARL, PRINCE OF SOLMS-BRAUNFELS. _Texas, 1844-1845_. Translation,
Houston, 1936. OP.

COX, C. C. "Reminiscences," in Vol. VI of _Southwestern Historical
Quarterly_. One of the best of many pioneer recollections published by
the Texas State Historical Association.

CROCKETT, DAVID. Anything about him.

DICK, EVERETT. _The Sod House Frontier_ (1937) and _Vanguards of
the Frontier_ (1941). Both OP. Life on north-ern Plains into Rocky
Mountains, but applicable to life southward.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Flavor of Texas_, 1936. OP. Considerable social
history.

FENLEY, FLORENCE. _Oldtimers: Their Own Stories_, Uvalde, Texas, 1939.
OP. Faithful reporting of realistic detail. Southwest Texas, mostly
ranch life.

FRANTZ, JOE B. _Gail Borden, Dairyman to a Nation_. University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. This biography of a newspaperman and
inventor brings out sides of pioneer life that emphasis on fighting,
farming, and ranching generally overlooks.

GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_, 1860. Dances are
among the sports.

HARRIS, MRS. DILUE. "Reminiscences," edited by Mrs. A. B. Looscan, in
Vols. IV and VII of _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_.

HART, JOHN A. _History of Pioneer Days in Texas and Oklahoma_; no
date. Extended and republished under the title of _Pioneer Days in the
Southwest_, 1909. Much on frontier ways of living.

HOFF, CAROL _Johnny Texas_, Wilcox and Follett, Chicago, 1950. Juvenile,
historical fiction. Delightful in both text and illustrations.

HOGAN, WILLIAM R. _The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History_,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Long on facts, short on intellectual
activity; that is, on interpretations from the perspective of time and
civilization.

HOLDEN, W. C. _Alkali Trails_, Dallas, 1930. Pioneer life in West Texas.
OP.

HOLLEY, MARY AUSTIN. _Texas... in a Series of Letters_, Baltimore, 1833;
reprinted under the title of _Letters of an American Traveler_, edited
by Mattie Austin Hatcher, Dallas, 1933. First good book on Texas to be
printed. OP.

_Lamar Papers_. Six volumes of scrappy source material on Texas history
and life, issued by Texas State Library, Austin. OP.

LEWIS, WILLIE NEWBURY. _Between Sun and Sod_, Clarendon, Texas, 1938.
OP. Again, want of perspective.

LUBBOCK, F. R. Six _Decades in Texas_, Austin, 1900.

MCCONNELL, H. H. _Five Years a Cavalryman_, Jacksboro, Texas, 1889.
Bully.

McDANFIELD, H. F., and TAYLOR, NATHANIEL A. _The Coming Empire, or 2000
Miles in Texas on Horseback_, New York, 1878; privately reprinted, 1937.
Delightful travel narrative. OP.

MCNEAL, T. A. _When Kansas Was Young_, New York, 1922. Episodes and
characters of Plains country. OP.

OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. _A Journey Through Texas_, New York, 1857.
Olmsted journeyed in order to see. He saw.

READ, OPIE. _An Arkansas Planter_, 1896. Pleasant fiction.

RICHARDSON, ALBERT D. _Beyond the Mississippi_, Hartford, 1867. What a
traveling journalist saw.

RISTER, CARL C. _Southern Plainsmen_, University of Oklahoma Press,
1938. Though pedestrian in style, good social data. Bibliography.

ROEMER, DR. FERDINAND. _Texas_, translated from the German by Oswald
Mueller, San Antonio, 1935. OP. Roemer, a geologist, rode through Texas
in the forties and made acute observations on the land, its plants and
animals, and the settlers.

SCHMITZ, JOSEPH WILLIAM. _Thus They Lived_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1935.
This would have been a good social history of Texas had the writer
devoted ten more years to the subject. Unsatisfactory bibliography.

SHIPMAN, DANIEL. _Frontier Life, 58 Years in Texas_, n.p., 1879. One of
the pioneer reminiscences that should be reprinted.

SMITH, HENRY. "Reminiscences," in _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_,
Vol. XIV. Telling details.

SMITHWICK, NOAH. _The Evolution of a State_, Austin, 1900. Reprinted by
Steck, Austin, 1935. Best of all books dealing with life in early Texas.
Bully reading.

_Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, published since 1897 by Texas State
Historical Association, Austin. A depository of all kinds of history;
the first twenty-five or thirty volumes are the more interesting.

SWEET, ALEXANDER E., and KNOX, J. ARMOY. _On a Mexican Mustang Through
Texas_, Hartford, 1883. Humorous satire, often penetrating and ruddy
with actuality.

WALLIS, JONNIE LOCKHART. _Sixty Years on the Brazos: The Life and
Letters of Dr. John Washington Lockhart_, privately printed, Los
Angeles, 1930. In notebook style, but as rare in essence as it is among
dealers in out-of-print books.

WAUGH, JULIA NOTT. _Castroville and Henry Castro_, San Antonio, 1934.
OP. Best-written monograph dealing with any aspect of Texas history that
I have read.

WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in _Straight Texas_, Texas Folklore
Society Publication XIII, 1937.





10. Fighting Texians

THE TEXAS PEOPLE belong to a fighting tradition that the majority of
them are proud of. The footholds that the Spaniards and Mexicans held in
Texas were maintained by virtue of fighting, irrespective of missionary
baptizing. The purpose of the Anglo-American colonizer Stephen F. Austin
to "redeem Texas from the wilderness" was accomplished only by fighting.
The Texans bought their liberty with blood and maintained it for nine
years as a republic with blood. It was fighting men who pushed back the
frontiers and blazed trails.

The fighting tradition is now giving way to the oil tradition. The Texas
myth as imagined by non-Texans is coming to embody oil millionaires in
airplanes instead of horsemen with six-shooters and rifles. See Edna
Ferber's Giant (1952 novel). Nevertheless, many Texans who never rode
a horse over three miles at a stretch wear cowboy boots, and a lot of
Texans are under the delusion that bullets and atomic bombs can settle
complexities that demand informed intelligence and the power to think.

As I have pointed out in _The Flavor of Texas_, the chronicles of men
who fought the Mexicans and were prisoners to them comprise a unique
unit in the personal narratives and annals of America.

Many of the books listed under the headings of "Texas Rangers," "How the
Early Settlers Lived," and "Range Life" specify the fighting tradition.


BEAN, PETER ELLIS. _Memoir_, published first in Vol. I of Yoakum's
_History of Texas_; in 1930 printed as a small book by the Book Club of
Texas, Dallas, now OP. A fascinating narrative.

BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924.
Forceful retelling of the story of the Mier Expedition and of other
activities of the "fighting Texans." OP.

CHABOT, FREDERICK C. _The Perote Prisoners_, San Antonio, 1934.
Annotated diaries of Texas prisoners in Mexico. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Flavor of Texas_, Dallas, 1936. OP. Chapters on
Bean, Green, Duval, Kendall, and other representers of the fighting
Texans.

DUVAL, JOHN C. _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, 1870; _Early Times
in Texas_, 1892. Both books are kept in print by Steck, Austin. For
biography and critical estimate, see _John C. Duval: First Texas Man of
Letters_, by J. Frank Dobie (illustrated by Tom Lea), Dallas, 1939.
OP. _Early Times in Texas_, called "the _Robinson Crusoe_ of Texas," is
Duval's story of the Goliad Massacre and of his escape from it. Duval
served as a Texas Ranger with Bigfoot Wallace, who was in the Mier
Expedition. His narrative of Bigfoot's _Adventures_ is the rollickiest
and the most flavorsome that any American frontiersman has yet inspired.
The tiresome thumping on the hero theme present in many biographies of
frontiersmen is entirely absent. Stanley Vestal wrote _Bigfoot Wallace_
also, Boston, 1942. OP.

ERATH, MAJOR GEORGE G. _Memoirs_, Texas State Historical Association,
Austin, 1923. Erath understood his fellow Texians. OP.

GILLETT, JAMES B. _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, 1921. OP.

GREEN, THOMAS JEFFERSON. _Journal of the Texan Expedition against Mier_,
1845; reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Green was one of the leaders
of the Mier Expedition. He lived in wrath and wrote with fire. For
information on Green see _Recollections and Reflections_ by his son,
Wharton J. Green, 1906. OP.

HOUSTON, SAM. _The Raven_, by Marquis James, 1929, is not the only
biography of the Texan general, but it is the best, and embodies most
of what has been written on Houston excepting the multivolumed _Houston
Papers_ issued by the University of Texas Press, Austin, under the
editorship of E. C. Barker. Houston was an original character even after
he became a respectable Baptist.

KENDALL, GEORGE W. _Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition_, 1844;
reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Two volumes. Kendall, a New Orleans
journalist in search of copy, joined the Santa Fe Expedition sent by
the Republic of Texas to annex New Mexico. Lost on the Staked Plains and
then marched afoot as a prisoner to Mexico City, he found plenty of copy
and wrote a narrative that if it were not so journalistically verbose
might rank alongside Dana's _Two Years Before the Mast_. Fayette
Copeland's _Kendall of the Picayune_, 1943 but OP, is a biography. An
interesting parallel to Kendall's _Narrative is Letters and Notes on the
Texan Santa Fe Expedition, 1841-1842_, by Thomas Falconer, with Notes
and Introduction by F. W. Hodge, New York, 1930. OP. The route of the
expedition is logged and otherwise illuminated in _The Texan Santa
Fe Trail_, by H. Bailey Carroll, Panhandle-Plains Historical Society,
Canyon, Texas, 1951.

LEACH, JOSEPH. _The Typical Texan: Biography of an American Myth_,
Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1952. At the time Texas
was emerging, the three main types of Americans were Yankees, southern
aristocrats, Kentucky westerners embodied by Daniel Boone. Texas took
over the Kentucky tradition. It was enlarged by Crockett, who stayed in
Texas only long enough to get killed, Sam Houston, and Bigfoot Wallace.
Novels, plays, stories, travel books, and the Texans themselves have
kept the tradition going. This is the main thesis of the book. Mr. Leach
fails to note that the best books concerning Texas have done little to
keep the typical Texan alive and that a great part of the present Texas
Brags spirit is as absurdly unrealistic as Mussolini's splurge at making
twentieth-century Italians imagine themselves a {illust. caption = John
W. Thomason, in his _Lone Star Preacher_ (1941)} reincarnation of
Caesar's Roman legions. Mr. Leach dissects the myth and then swallows
it.

LINN, JOHN J. _Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas_, 1883; reprinted
by Steck, Austin, 1936. Mixture of personal narrative and historical
notes, written with energy and prejudice.

MAVERICK, MARY A. _Memoirs_, 1921. OP. Mrs. Maverick's husband, Sam
Maverick, was among the citizens of San Antonio haled off to Mexico as
prisoners in 1842.

MORRELL, Z. N. _Fruits and Flowers in the Wilderness_, 1872. OP.
Morrell, a circuit-riding Baptist preacher, fought the Indians and the
Mexicans. See other books of this kind listed under "Circuit Riders and
Missionaries."

PERRY, GEORGE SESSIONS. Texas, A _World in Itself_, McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1942. Especially good chapter on the Alamo.

SMYTHE, H. _Historical Sketch of Parker County, Texas_, 1877. One
of various good county histories of Texas replete with fighting. For
bibliography of this extensive class of literature consult _Texas County
Histories_, by H. Bailey Carroll, Texas State Historical Association,
Austin, 1943. OP.

SONNICHSEN, C. L. _I'll Die Before I'll Run: The Story of the Great
Feuds of Texas_--and of some not great. Harper, New York, 1951.

SOWELL, A. J. _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, 1884; _Life of Bigfoot
Wallace_, 1899; _Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest
Texas_, 1900. All OP; all meaty with the character of ready-to-fight but
peace-seeking Texas pioneers. Sowell will some day be recognized as an
extraordinary chronicler.

STAPP, WILLIAM P. _The Prisoners of Perote_, 1845; reprinted by Steck,
Austin, 1936. Journal of one of the Mier men who drew a white bean.

THOMASON, JOHN W. _Lone Star Preacher_, Scribner's, New York, 1941. The
cream, the essence, the spirit, and the body of the fighting tradition
of Texas. Historical novel of Civil War.

WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Texas Rangers_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1935. See under "Texas Rangers."

WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted
by Steck, Austin, 1936. Narratives that have for generations been a
household heritage among Texas families who fought for their land.





11. Texas Rangers

THE TEXAS RANGERS were never more than a handful in number, but they
were picked men who knew how to ride, shoot, and tell the truth. On the
Mexican border and on the Indian frontier, a few rangers time and again
proved themselves more effective than battalions of soldiers.

     Oh, pray for the ranger, you kind-hearted stranger,
          He has roamed over the prairies for many a year;
     He has kept the Comanches from off your ranches,
          And chased them far over the Texas frontier.


BANTA, WILLIAM. _Twenty-seven Years on the Texas Frontier_, 1893;
reprinted, 1933. OP.

GAY, BEATRICE GRADY. _Into the Setting Sun_, Santa Anna, Texas, 1936.
Coleman County scenes and characters, dominated by ranger character. OP.

GILLETT, JAMES B. _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, printed for the
author at Austin, Texas, 1921. He paid the printer cash for either one
or two thousand copies, as he told me, and sold them personally. Edited
by Milo M. Quaife, the book was published by Yale University Press in
1925. This edition was reprinted, 1943, by the Lakeside Press,
Chicago, in its "Lakeside Classics" series, which are given away by the
publishers at Christmas annually and are not for sale--except through
second-hand dealers. Meantime, in 1927, the narrative had appeared under
title of _The Texas Ranger_, "in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs,"
a professional neutralizer for school readers of any writing not
standardized, published by World Book Co., Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York.
All editions OP. I regard Gillett as the strongest and straightest of
all ranger narrators. He combined in his nature wild restlessness and
loyal gentleness. He wrote in sunlight.

GREER, JAMES K. _Buck Barry_, Dallas, 1932. OP. _Colonel Jack Hays,
Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder_, Dutton, New York, 1952.
Hays achieved more vividness in reputation than narratives about him
have attained to.

JENNINGS, N. A. _The Texas Ranger_, New York, 1899; reprinted 1930, with
foreword by J. Frank Dobie. OP. Good narrative.

MALTBY, W. JEFF. _Captain Jeff_, Colorado, Texas, 1906. Amorphous. OP.

MARTIN, JACK. _Border Boss_, San Antonio, 1942. Mediocre biography of
Captain John R. Hughes. OP.

PAINE, ALBERT BIGELOW. _Captain Bill McDonald_, New York, 1909. Paine
did not do so well by "Captain Bill" as he did in his rich biography of
Mark Twain. OP.

PIKE, JAMES. _Scout and Ranger_, 1865, reprinted 1932 by Princeton
University Press. Pike drew a long bow; interesting. OP.

RAYMOND, DORA NEILL. _Captain Lee Hall of Texas_, Norman, Oklahoma,
1940. OP.

REID, SAMUEL C. _Scouting Expeditions of the Texas Rangers_, 1859;
reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Texas Rangers in Mexican War.

ROBERTS, DAN W. _Rangers and Sovereignty_, 1914. OP. Roberts was better
as ranger than as writer.

ROBERTS, MRS. D. W. (wife of Captain Dan W. Roberts). A _Woman's
Reminiscences of Six Years in Camp with The Texas Rangers_, Austin,
1928. OP. Mrs. Roberts was a sensible and charming woman with a seeing
eye.

SOWELL, A. J. _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_, San Antonio, 1884. A
graphic book down to bedrock. OP.

WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Texas Rangers_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1935. The beginning, middle, and end of the subject. Bibliography.





12. Women Pioneers

ONE REASON for the ebullience of life and rollicky carelessness on the
frontiers of the West was the lack--temporary--of women. The men, mostly
young, had given no hostages to fortune. They were generally as free
from family cares as the buccaneers. This was especially true of the
first ranches on the Great Plains, of cattle trails, of mining camps,
logging camps, and of trapping expeditions. It was not true of the
colonial days in Texas, of ranch life in the southern part of Texas,
of homesteading all over the West, of emigrant trails to California and
Oregon, of backwoods life.

Various items listed under "How the Early Settlers Lived" contain
material on pioneer women.


ALDERSON, NANNIE T., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. A _Bride Goes West_,
New York, 1942. Montana in the eighties. OP.

BAKER, D. W. C. A _Texas Scrapbook_, 1875; reprinted, 1936, by Steck,
Austin.

BROTHERS, MARY HUDSON. A _Pecos Pioneer_, 1943. OP. The best part of
this book is not about the writer's brother, who cowboyed with Chisum's
Jinglebob outfit and ran into Billy the Kid, but is Mary Hudson's own
life. Only Ross Santee has equaled her in description of drought
and rain. The last chapters reveal a girl's inner life, amid outward
experiences, as no other woman's chronicle of ranch ways--sheep ranch
here.

CALL, HUGHIE. _Golden Fleece_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1942. Hughie
Call became wife of a Montana sheepman early in this century. OP.

CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. _No Life for a Lady_, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1941. Bright, witty, penetrating; anecdotal. Best account of
frontier life from woman's point of view yet published. New Mexico
is the setting, toward turn of the century. People who wished Mrs.
Cleaveland would write another book were disappointed when her _Satan's
Paradise_ appeared in 1952.

ELLIS, ANNE. _The Life of An Ordinary Woman_, 1929, and _Plain Anne
Ellis_, 1931, both OP. Colorado country and town. Books of disillusioned
observations, wit, and wisdom by a frank woman.

FAUNCE, HILDA. _Desert Wife_, 1934. OP. Desert loneliness at a Navajo
trading post.

HARRIS, MRS. DILUE. Reminiscences, in _Southwestern Historical
Quarterly_, Vols. IV and VII.

KLEBERG, ROSA. "Early Experiences in Texas," in _Quarterly of the
Texas State Historical Association_ (initial title for _Southwestern
Historical Quarterly_), Vols. I and II.

MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, 1926. OP. She was
juicy and a bride, and all life was bright to her.

MATTHEWS, SALLIE REYNOLDS. _Interwoven_, Houston, 1936. Ranch life in
the Texas frontier as a refined and intelligent woman saw it. OP.

MAVERICK, MARY A. _Memoirs_, San Antonio, 1921. OP. Essential.

PICKRELL, ANNIE DOOM. _Pioneer Women in Texas_, Austin, 1929. Too much
lady business but valuable. OP.

POE, SOPHIE A. _Buckboard Days_, edited by Eugene Cunningham, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1936. Mrs. Poe was there--New Mexico.

RAK, MARY KIDDER. _A Cowman's Wife_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934. The
external experiences of an ex-teacher on a small Arizona ranch.

RHODES, MAY D. _The Hired Man on Horseback_, 1938. Biography of Eugene
Manlove Rhodes, but also warm-natured autobiography of the woman who
ranched with "Gene" in New Mexico. OP.

RICHARDS, CLARICE E. _A Tenderfoot Bride_, Garden City, N. Y., 1920. OP.
Charming.

STEWART, ELINOR P. _Letters of a Woman Homesteader_, Boston, 1914. OP.

WHITE, OWEN P. _A Frontier Mother_, New York, 1929. OP. Overdone, as
White overdid every subject he touched.

WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted by
Steck, Austin, 1936. A glimpse into the lives led by families that gave
many women to savages--for death or for Cynthia Ann Parker captivity.

WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in _Straight Texas_, Texas Folklore
Society Publication XIII, 1937. Excellent.





13. Circuit Riders and Missionaries

NOTWITHSTANDING both the tradition and the facts of hardshooting,
hard-riding cowboys, of bad men, of border lawlessness, of inhabitants
who had left some other place under a cloud, of frontier towns
"west of God," hard layouts and conscienceless "courthouse
crowds"--notwithstanding all this, the Southwest has been and is
religious-minded. This is not to say that it is spiritual-natured.
It belongs to H. L. Mencken's "Bible Belt." "Pass-the-Biscuits"
Pappy O'Daniel got to be governor of Texas and then U.S. senator by
advertising his piety. A politician as "ignorant as a Mexican hog" on
foreign affairs and the complexities of political economy can run in
favor of what he and the voters call religion and leave an informed man
of intellect and sincerity in the shade. The biggest campmeeting in the
Southwest, the Bloys Campmeeting near Fort Davis, Texas, is in the midst
of an enormous range country away from all factories and farmers.

Since about 1933 the United States Indian Service has not only allowed
but rather encouraged the Indians to revert to their own religious
ceremonies. They have always been religious. The Spanish colonists
of the Southwest, as elsewhere, were zealously Catholic, and their
descendants have generally remained Catholic. The first English-speaking
settlers of the region--the colonists led by Stephen F. Austin to
Texas--were overwhelmingly Protestant, though in order to establish
Mexican citizenship and get titles to homestead land they had,
technically, to declare themselves Catholics. One of the causes of the
Texas Revolution as set forth by the Texans in their Declaration of
Independence was the Mexican government's denial of "the right
of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own
conscience." A history of southwestern society that left out the
Bible would be as badly gapped as one leaving out the horse or the
six-shooter.

See chapter entitled "On the Lord's Side" in Dobie's _The Flavor of
Texas_. Most of the books listed under "How the Early Settlers Lived"
contain information on religion and preachers. Church histories are
about as numerous as state histories. Virtually all county histories
take into account church development. The books listed below are strong
on personal experiences.


ASBURY, FRANCIS. Three or more lives have been written of this
representative pioneer bishop.

BOLTON, HERBERT E. _The Padre on Horseback_, 1932. Life of the Jesuit
missionary Kino. OP.

BROWNLOW, W. G. _Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, the
Tennessee Patriot_, 1862. Brownlow was a very representative figure.
Under the title of _William G Brownlow, Fighting Parson of the Southern
Highland_, E. M Coulter has brought out a thorough life of him,
published by University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1937.

BURLESON, RUFUS C. _Life and Writings_, 1901. OP. The autobiographical
part of this amorphously arranged volume is a social document of the
first rank.

CARTWRIGHT, PETER. _Autobiography_, 1857. Out of Kentucky, into Indiana
and then into Illinois, where he ran against Lincoln for Congress,
Cartwright rode with saddlebags and Bible. Sandburg characterizes him
as "an enemy of whisky, gambling, jewelry, fine clothes, and higher
learning." He seems to me more unlovely in his intolerance and
sectarianism than most circuit riders of the Southwest, but as
a militant, rough-and-ready "soldier of the Lord" he represented
southwestern frontiers as well as his own.

CRANFILL, J. B. _Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas_, 1916. Cranfill
was a lot of things besides a Baptist preacher--trail driver, fiddler,
publisher, always an observer. OP.

DEVILBISS, JOHN WESLEY. _Reminiscences and Events_ (compiled by H. A.
Graves), 1886. The very essence of pioneering,

DOMENECH, ABBE. _Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico_ (translated
from the French), London, 1858. OP. The Abbe always had eyes open for
wonders. He saw them. Delicious narrative.

EVANS, WILL G. _Border Skylines_, published in Dallas, 1940, for Bloys
Campmeeting Association, Fort Davis, Texas. Chronicles of the men
and women--cow people--and cow country responsible for the best known
campmeeting, held annually, Texas has ever had. OP.

GRAVIS, PETER W. _25 Years on the Outside Row of the Northwest Texas
Annual Conference_, Comanche, Texas, 1892. Another one of those small
personal records, privately printed but full of juice. OP.

LIDE, ANNA A. _Robert Alexander and the Early Methodist Church in
Texas_, La Grange, Texas, 1935. OP.

MORRELL, Z. N. _Fruits and Flowers in the Wilderness_, 1872. Though
reprinted three times, last in 1886, long OP. In many ways the best
circuit rider's chronicle of the Southwest that has been published.
Morrell fought Indians and Mexicans in Texas and was rich in other
experiences.

MORRIS, T. A. _Miscellany_, 1884. The "Notes of Travel"--particularly
to Texas in 1841--are what makes this book interesting.

PARISOT, P. F. _Reminiscences of a Texas Missionary_, 1899. Mostly the
Texas-Mexican border.

POTTER, ANDREW JACKSON, commonly called the Fighting Parson. _Life_ of
him by H. A. Graves, 1890, not nearly so good as Potter was himself.

THOMASON, JOHN W. _Lone Star Preacher_, Scribner's, New York, 1941.
Fiction, true to humanity. The moving story of a Texas chaplain who
carried a Bible in one hand and a captain's sword in the other through
the Civil War.





14. Lawyers, Politicians, J. P.'s

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN wanted to exclude lawyers, along with roving
frontiersmen, from his colonies in Texas, and hoped thus to promote a
utopian society. The lawyers got in, however. Their wit, the anecdotes
of which they were both subject and author, and the political stories
they made traditional from the stump, have not been adequately set down.
As criminal lawyers they stood as high in society as corporation lawyers
stand now and were a good deal more popular, though less wealthy. The
code of independence that fostered personal violence and justified
killings--in contradistinction to murders--and that ran to excess
in outlaws naturally fostered the criminal lawyer. His type is now
virtually obsolete.

Keen observers, richly stored in experience and delightful in talk, as
many lawyers of the Southwest have been and are, very few of them have
written on other than legal subjects. James D. Lynch's _The Bench
and the Bar of Texas_ (1885) is confined to the eminence of "eminent
jurists" and to the mastery of "masters of jurisprudence." What we
want is the flavor of life as represented by such characters as witty
Three-Legged Willie (Judge R. M. Williamson) and mysterious Jonas
Harrison. It takes a self-lover to write good autobiography. Lawyers are
certainly as good at self-loving as preachers, but we have far better
autobiographic records of circuit riders than of early-day lawyers.

Like them, the pioneer justice of peace resides more in folk anecdotes
than in chroniclings. Horace Bell's expansive _On the Old West Coast_
so represents him. A continent away, David Crockett, in his
_Autobiography_, confessed, "I was afraid some one would ask me what the
judiciary was. If I knowed I wish I may be shot." Before this, however,
Crockett had been a J. P. "I gave my decisions on the principles of
common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural
born sense, and not on law learning to guide me; for I had never read a
page in a law book in all my life."


COOMBES, CHARLES E. _The Prairie Dog Lawyer_, Dallas, 1945. OP.
Experiences and anecdotes by a lawyer better read in rough-and-ready
humanity than in law. The prairie dogs have all been poisoned out from
the West Texas country over which he ranged from court to court.

HAWKINS, WALACE. _The Case of John C. Watrous, United States Judge for
Texas: A Political Story of High Crimes and Misdemeanors_, Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1950. More technical than social.

KITTRELL, NORMAN G. _Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of
Texas_, Houston, 1921. OP. Best collection of lawyer anecdotes of the
Southwest.

ROBINSON, DUNCAN W. _Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, Texas'
Three-Legged Willie_, Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1948.
This was the Republic of Texas judge who laid a Colt revolver across a
Bowie knife and said: "Here is the constitution that overrides the law."

SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos_, Macmillan, New
York, 1943. Roy Bean (1830-1903), justice of peace at Langtry, Texas,
advertised himself as "Law West of the Pecos." He was more picaresque
than picturesque; folk imagination gave him notoriety. The Texas State
Highway Department maintains for popular edification the beer joint
wherein he held court. Three books have been written about him, besides
scores of newspaper and magazine articles. The only biography of
validity is Sonnichsen's.

SLOAN, RICHARD E. _Memories of an Arizona Judge_, Stanford, California,
1932. Full of humanity. OP.

SMITH, E. F. _A Saga of Texas Law: A Factual Story of Texas Law,
Lawyers, Judges and Famous Lawsuits_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1940.
Interesting.





15. Pioneer Doctors

BEFORE the family doctors came, frontiersmen sawed off legs with
handsaws, tied up arteries with horsetail hair, cauterized them with
branding irons. Before homemade surgery with steel tools was practiced,
Mexican _curanderas_ (herb women) supplied _remedios_, and they still
know the medicinal properties of every weed and bush. Herb stores in
San Antonio, Brownsville, and El Paso do a thriving business. Behind the
_curanderas_ were the medicine men of the tribes. Not all their lore
was superstition, as any one who reads the delectable autobiography
of Gideon Lincecum, published by the Mississippi Historical Society
in 1904, will agree. Lincecum, learned in botany, a sharply-edged
individual who later moved to Texas, went out to live with a Choctaw
medicine man and wrote down all his lore about the virtues of native
plants. The treatise has never been printed.

The extraordinary life of Lincecum has, however, been interestingly
delineated in Samuel Wood Geiser's _Naturalists of the Frontier_,
Southern Methodist University Press, 1937, 1948, and in Pat Ireland
Nixon's _The Medical Story of Early Texas_, listed below. No historical
novelist could ask for a richer theme than Gideon Lincecum or Edmund
Montgomery, the subject of I. K. Stephens' biography listed below.

BUSH, I. J. _Gringo Doctor_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. OP. Dr. Bush
represented frontier medicine and surgery on both sides of the Rio
Grande. Living at El Paso, he was for a time with the Maderistas in the
revolution against Diaz.

COE, URLING C. _Frontier Doctor_, New York, 1939. OP. Not of the
Southwest but representing other frontier doctors. Lusty autobiography
full of characters and anecdotes.

DODSON, RUTH. "Don Pedrito Jaramillo: The Curandero of Los Olmos," in
_The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore_ (Publication of the
Texas Folklore Society XXIV), edited by Wilson M. Hudson, Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1951. Don Pedrito was no more of a
fraud than many an accredited psychiatrist, and he was the opposite of
offensive.

NIXON, PAT IRELAND. _A Century of Medicine in San Antonio_, published
by the author, San Antonio, 1936. Rich in information, diverting in
anecdote, and tonic in philosophy. Bibliography. _The Medical Story
of Early Texas, 1528-1835_ [San Antonio], 1946. Lightness of life with
scholarly thoroughness; many character sketches.

RED, MRS. GEORGE P. _The Medicine Man in Texas_, Houston, 1930.
Biographical. OP.

STEPHENS, I. K. _The Hermit Philosopher of Liendo_, Southern Methodist
University Press, Dallas, 1951. Well-conceived and well-written
biography of Edmund Montgomery--illegitimate son of a Scottish lord,
husband of the sculptress Elisabet Ney--who, after being educated in
Germany and becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians of
London, came to Texas with his wife and sons and settled on Liendo
Plantation, near Hempstead, once known as Sixshooter Junction. Here, in
utter isolation from people of cultivated minds, he conducted scientific
experiments in his inadequate laboratory and thought out a philosophy
said to be half a century ahead of his time. He died in 1911. His life
was the drama of an elevated soul of complexities, far more tragic than
any life associated with the lurid "killings" around him.

WOODHULL, FROST. "Ranch Remedios," in _Man, Bird, and Beast_, Texas
Folklore Society Publication VIII, 1930. The richest and most readable
collection of pioneer remedies yet published.





16. Mountain Men

AS USED HERE, the term "Mountain Men" applies to those trappers and
traders who went into the Rocky Mountains before emigrants had even
sought a pass through them to the west or cattle had beat out a trail
on the plains east of them. Beaver fur was the lodestar for the Mountain
Men. Their span of activity was brief, their number insignificant.
Yet hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or
permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain
Men. The books are not nearly so numerous as those connected with range
life, but when one considers the writings of Stanley Vestal, Sabin,
Ruxton, Fer gusson, Chittenden, Favour, Garrard, Inman, Irving, Reid,
and White in this Seld, one doubts whether any other form of American
life at all has been so well covered in ballad, fiction, biography,
history.

See James Hobbs, James O. Pattie, and Reuben Gold Thwaites under "Surge
of Life in the West," also "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."


ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1925. A hogshead
of life. Bibliography. OP. Republished by Long's College Book Co.,
Columbus, Ohio.

BONNER, T. D. _The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, 1856_;
reprinted in 1931, with an illuminating introduction by Bernard DeVoto.
OP. Beckwourth was the champion of all western liars.

BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. Good
narrative. OP.

CHITTENDEN, _H. M. The American Fur Trade of the_ _Far West_, New York,
1902. OP. Basic work. Bibliography.

CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and Fur
Traders of the Southwest_, Knopf, New York, 1950. Fresh emphasis on the
California-Arizona-New Mexico region by a knowing scholar. Economical in
style without loss of either humanity or history. Bibliography.

CONRAD, HOWARD L. _Uncle Dick Wootton_, 1890. Primary source. OP.

COYNER, D. H. _The Lost Trappers_, 1847.

DAVIDSON, L. J., and BOSTWICK, P. _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain
West 1803-1903_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. Davidson and Forrester
Blake, editors. _Rocky Mountain Tales_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1947.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. _Across the Wide Missouri_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1947. Superbly illustrated by reproductions of Alfred Jacob Miller.
DeVoto has amplitude and is a master of his subject as well as of the
craft of writing.

FAVOUR, ALPHEUS H. _Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man_, University of
North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1936. Flavor and facts both. Full
bibliography.

FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Rio Grande_, 1933, republished by Tudor, New York.
The drama and evolution of human life in New Mexico, written out of
knowledge and with power. _Wolf Song_, New York, 1927. OP. Graphic
historical novel of Mountain Men. It sings with life.

GARRARD, LEWIS H. _Wah-toyah and the Taos Trail_, 1850. One of the basic
works.

GRANT, BLANCHE C. _When Old Trails Were New--The Story of Taos_, New
York, 1934. OP. Taos was rendezvous town for the free trappers.

GUTHRIE, A. B., JR. _The Big Sky_, Sloane, New York, 1947 (now published
by Houghton Mifflin, Boston). "An unusually original novel, superb as
historical fiction."--Bernard DeVoto. I still prefer Harvey Fergusson's
_Wolf Song_.

HAMILTON, W. T. _My Sixty Years on the Plains_, New York, 1905. Now
published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897.

IRVING, WASHINGTON. _The Adventures of Captain Bonneville_ and
_Astoria_. The latter book was founded on Robert Stuart's Narratives. In
1935 these were prepared for the press, with much illuminative material,
by Philip Ashton Rollins and issued under the title of _The Discovery of
the Oregon Trail_.

LARPENTEUR, CHARLES. _Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri_,
edited by Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. As Milo Milton Quaife shows in
an edition of the narrative issued by the Lakeside Press, Chicago,
1933, the indefatigable Coues just about rewrote the old fur trader's
narrative. It is immediate and vigorous.

LAUT, A. C. _The Story of the Trapper_, New York, 1902. A popular
survey, emphasizing types and characters.

LEONARD, ZENAS. _Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard_,
Clearfield, Pa., 1839. In 1833 the Leonard trappers reached San
Francisco Bay, boarded a Boston ship anchored near shore, and for the
first time in two years varied their meat diet by eating bread and
drinking "Coneac." One of the trappers had a gun named Knock-him-stiff.
Such earthy details abound in this narrative of adventures in a brand
new world.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Very
readable biographic sketches. OP.

MILLER, ALFRED JACOB. _The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_, with an account
of the artist by Marvin C. Ross, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
1950. Although Miller painted the West during 1837-38, only now is he
being discovered by the public. This is mainly a picture book, in the
top rank.

PATTIE, JAMES OHIO. _The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of
Kentucky_, Cincinnati, 1831. Pattie and his small party went west in
1824. For grizzlies, thirst, and other features of primitive adventure
the narrative is primary.

REID, MAYNE. _The Scalp Hunters_. An antiquated novel, but it has some
deep-dyed pictures of Mountain Men.

ROSS, ALEXANDER. _Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or
Columbia River_ (1849) and _The Fur Hunters of the Far West_ (1855). The
trappers of the Southwest can no more be divorced from the trappers of
the Hudson's Bay Company than can Texas cowboys from those of Montana.

RUSSELL, OSBORNE. _Journal of a Trapper_, Boise, Idaho, 1921. In the
winter of 1839, at Fort Hall on Snake River, Russell and three other
trappers "had some few books to read, such as Byron, Shakespeare and
Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's Commentary on it, and some small
works on geology, chemistry and philosophy." Russell was wont to
speculate on Life and Nature. In perspective he approaches Ruxton.

RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Life in the Far West_, 1848; reprinted by the
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen.
No other contemporary of the Mountain Men has been so much quoted as
Ruxton. He remains supremely readable.

SABIN, EDWIN L. _Kit Carson Days_, 1914. A work long standard, rich on
rendezvous, bears, and many other associated subjects. Bibliography.
Republished in rewritten form, 1935. OP.

VESTAL, STANLEY (pseudonym for Walter S. Campbell). _Kit Carson_,
1928. As a clean-running biographic narrative, it is not likely to be
superseded. _Mountain Men_, 1937, OP; _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1939.
Vestal's "Fandango," a tale of the Mountain Men in Taos, is among the
most spirited ballads America has produced. It and a few other Mountain
Men ballads are contained in the slight collection, _Fandango_, 1927.
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, published the aforementioned titles. _James
Bridger, Mountain Man_, Morrow, New York, 1946, is smoother than J.
Cecil Alter's biography but not so savory. _Joe Meek, the Merry Mountain
Man_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1952.

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _The Long Rifle_, 1932, and _Ranchero_, 1933,
Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, N. Y. Historical fiction.





17. Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail

THERE WAS Independence on the Missouri River, then eight hundred miles
of twisting trail across hills, plains, and mountains, all uninhabited
save by a few wandering Indians and uncountable buffaloes. Then there
was Santa Fe. On west of it lay nearly a thousand miles of wild broken
lands before one came to the village of Los Angeles. But there was
no trail to Los Angeles. At Santa Fe the trail turned south and after
crawling over the Jornada del Muerto--Journey of the Dead Man--threading
the great Pass of the North (El Paso) and crossing a vast desert,
reached Chihuahua City.

Looked at in one way, Santa Fe was a mud village. In another way, it was
the solitary oasis of human picturesqueness in a continent of vacancy.
Like that of Athens, though of an entirely different quality, its fame
was out of all proportion to its size. In a strong chapter, entitled "A
Caravan Enters Santa Fe," R. L. Duffus _(The Santa Fe Trail)_ elaborates
on how for all travelers the town always had "the lure of adventure."
Josiah Gregg doubted whether "the first sight of the walls of Jerusalem
were beheld with much more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy" than
Santa Fe was by a caravan topping the last rise and, eight hundred miles
of solitude behind it, looking down on the town's shining walls and
cottonwoods.

No other town of its size in America has been the subject of and focus
for as much good literature as Santa Fe. Pittsburgh and dozens of
other big cities all put together have not inspired one tenth of
the imaginative play that Santa Fe has inspired. Some of the
transcontinental railroads probably carry as much freight in a day as
went over the Santa Fe Trail in all the wagons in all the years they
pulled over the Santa Fe Trail. But the Santa Fe Trail is one of the
three great trails of America that, though plowed under, fenced across,
and cemented over, seem destined for perennial travel--by those happily
able to go without tourist guides. To quote Robert Louis Stevenson, "The
greatest adventures are not those we go to seek." The other two trails
comparable to the Santa Fe are also of the West--the Oregon Trail for
emigrants and the Chisholm Trail for cattle.

For additional literature see "Mountain Men," "Stagecoaches,
Freighting," "Surge of Life in the West."

CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New York, 1927.
Historical novel.

CONNELLEY, W. E. (editor). _Donithan's Expedition_, 1907. Saga of the
Mexican War. OP.

DAVIS, W. W. H. _El Gringo, or New Mexico and Her People_, 1856;
reprinted by Rydal, Santa Fe, 1938. OP. Excellent on manners and
customs.

DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1930. OP. Bibliography.
Best book of this century on the subject.

DUNBAR, SEYMOUR. _History of Travel in America_, 1915; revised edition
issued by Tudor, New York, 1937.

GREGG, JOSIAH. _Commerce of the Prairies_, two vols., 1844. Reprinted,
but all OP. Gregg wrote as a man of experience and not as a professional
writer. He wrote not only the classic of the Santa Fe trade and trail
but one of the classics of bedrock Americana. It is a commentary on
civilization in the Southwest that his work is not kept in print. Harvey
Fergusson, in _Rio Grande_, has written a penetrating criticism of the
man and his subject. In 1941 and 1944 the University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, issued two volumes of the _Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg_,
edited by Maurice G. Fulton with Introductions by Paul Horgan. These
volumes, interesting in themselves, are a valuable complement to Gregg's
major work.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897. A mine of lore.

LAUGHLIN, RUTH (formerly Ruth Laughlin Barker). _Caballeros_, New York,
1931; republished by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1946. Essayical goings
into the life of things. Especially delightful on burros. A book to be
starred. _The Wind Leaves No Shadow_, New York, 1948; Caxton, 1951. A
novel around Dona Tules Barcelo, the powerful, beautiful, and silvered
mistress of Santa Fe's gambling _sala_ in the 1830's and '40's.

MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, Yale University
Press, New Haven, 1926. Delectable diary.

PILLSBURY, DOROTHY L. _No High Adobe_, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1950. Sketches, pleasant to read, that make the _gente_
very real.

RUXTON, GEORGE FREDERICK. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky
Mountains_, London, 1847. In 1924 the second half of this book was
reprinted under title of _Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains_. In 1950,
with additional Ruxton writings discovered by Clyde and Mae Reed Porter,
the book, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, was reissued under title of _Ruxton
of the Rockies_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Santa Fe is only
one incident in it. Ruxton illuminates whatever he touches. He was in
love with the wilderness and had a fire in his belly. Other writers add
details, but Ruxton and Gregg embodied the whole Santa Fe world.

VESTAL, STANLEY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1939.





18. Stagecoaches, Freighting

A GOOD INTRODUCTION to a treatment of the stagecoach of the West would
be Thomas De Quincey's "The English Mail-Coach." The proper place to
read about the coaches would be in Doctor Lyon's Pony Express Museum,
out from Pasadena, California. May it never perish! Old Monte drives up
now and then in Alfred Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ tales, and Bret Harte
made Yuba Bill crack the Whip; but, somehow, considering all the
excellent expositions and reminiscing of stage-coaching in western
America, the proud, insolent, glorious figure of the driver has not been
adequately pictured.

Literature on "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail" is pertinent. See also
under "Pony Express."


BANNING, WILLIAM, and BANNING, GEORGE HUGH. _Six Horses_, New York,
1930. A combination of history and autobiography. Routes to and in
California; much of Texas. Enjoyable reading. Excellent on drivers,
travelers, stations, "pass the mustard, please." Bibliography. OP.

CONKLING, ROSCOE P. and MARGARET B. _The Butterfield Overland Trail,
1857-1869_, Arthur H. Clark Co., Glendage, California. Three volumes
replete with facts from politics in Washington over mail contracts to
Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River.

DOBBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter entitled "Pistols, Poker and the Petit
Mademoiselle in a Stagecoach," in _The Flavor of Texas_ 1936. OP.

DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_ New York, 1930. Swift reading. Well
selected bibliography. OP.

FREDERICK, J. V. _Ben Holladay, the Stage Coach King_, Clark, Glendale,
California, 1940. Bibliography.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. Chapter v, "The Stage-Coach Mail," in _Fort Concho
and the Texas Frontier_, illustrated by Harold Bugbee, San Angelo
Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Strong on frontier crossed by
stage line.

HUNGERFORD, EDWARD. _Wells Fargo: Advancing the Frontier_, Random House,
New York, 1949. Written without regard for the human beings that the
all-swallowing corporation crushed. Facts on highwaymen.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1897. OP. _The Great
Salt Lake Trail_, 1898. OP. Many first-hand incidents and characters.

MAJORS, ALEXANDER. _Seventy Years on the Frontier_, Chicago, 1893.
Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Majors was the
lead steer of all freighters.

ORMSBY, W. L. _The Butterfield Overland Mail_, edited by Lyle H. Wright
and Josephine M. Bynum, Huntington Library, San Marino, California,
1942. Ormsby rode the stage from St. Louis to San Francisco in 1858 and
contributed to the New York _Herald_ the lively articles now made into
this book.

ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to California_,
Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus,
Ohio. A full storehouse. Basic.

SANTLEBEN, AUGUST. _A Texas Pioneer_, edited by I. D. Affleck, New York,
1910. OP. Best treatise available on freighting on Chihuahua Trail.

TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1871. Mark Twain went west by stage.

WINTHER, O. O. _Express and Stagecoach Days in California_, Stanford
University Press, 1926. Compact, with bibliography. OP.






19. Pony Express

"PRESENTLY the driver exclaims, `Here he comes!'

"Every neck is stretched and every eye strained. Away across the endless
dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky. In a
second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising
and falling sweeping towards us nearer and nearer--growing more and more
distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still nearer, and
the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another instant a
whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck [of the stagecoach], a wave of
the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited
faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm."--Mark
Twain, _Roughing It_.

A word cannot be defined in its own terms; nor can a region, or a
feature of that region. Analogy and perspective are necessary for
comprehension. The sense of horseback motion has never been better
realized than by Kipling in "The Ballad of East and West." See "Horses."


BRADLEY, GLENN D._ The Story of the Pony Express_, Chicago, 1913.
Nothing extra. OP.

BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930.
Bibliography on West in general.

CHAPMAN, ARTHUR. _The Pony Express_, Putnam's, New York, 1932. Good
reading and bibliography.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter on "Rides and Riders," in _On the Open Range_,
published in 1931; reprinted by Banks Up shaw, Dallas. Chapter on "Under
the Saddle" in _The Mustangs_.

HAPEN, LEROY. _The Overland Mail_, Cleveland, 1926. Factual,
bibliography. OP.

ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to California_,
Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus,
Ohio. Basic work.

VISSCHER, FRANK J. _A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony
Express_, Chicago, 1908. OP. Not excessively "thrilling."





20. Surge of Life in the West

THE WANDERINGS of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, De Soto, and La Salle had
long been chronicled, although the chronicles had not been popularized
in English, when in 1804 Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William
Clark set out to explore not only the Louisiana Territory, which had
just been purchased for the United States by President Thomas Jefferson,
but on west to the Pacific. Their _Journals_, published in 1814,
initiated a series of chronicles comparable in scope, vitality, and
manhood adventure to the great collection known as _Hakluyt's Voyages_.

Between 1904 and 1907 Reuben Gold Thwaites, one of the outstanding
editors of the English-speaking world, brought out in thirty-two volumes
his epic _Early Western Travels_. This work includes the Lewis and Clark
_Journals_, every student of the West, whether Northwest or Southwest,
goes to the collection sooner or later. It is a commentary on the
values of life held by big rich boasters of patriotism in the West that
virtually all the chronicles in the collection remain out of print.

An important addendum to the Thwaites collection of _Early Western
Travels_ is "The Southwest Historical Series," edited by Ralph
P. Bieber--twelve volumes, published 1931-43, by Clark, Glendale,
California.

The stampede to California that began in 1849 climaxed all migration
orgies of the world in its lust for gold; but the lust for gold was
merely one manifestation of a mighty population's lust for life.
Railroads raced each other to cross the continent. Ten million Longhorns
were going up the trails; from Texas while the last of a hundred million
buffaloes, killed in herds--the greatest slaughter in history--were
being skinned. Dodge City was the Cowboy Capital of the world, and
Chicago was becoming "hog butcher of the world." Miller and Lux were
expanding their ranges so that, as others boasted, their herds could
trail from Oregon to Baja California and bed down every night on Miller
and Lux's own grass.

Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) was massing in San Francisco at his
own expense the greatest assemblage of historical documents any one
individual ever assembled. While his interviewers and note-takers sorted
down tons of manuscript, he was employing a corps of historians to write
what, at first designed as a history of the Pacific states, grew in
twenty-eight volumes to embrace also Alaska, British Columbia, Texas,
Mexico, and Central America, aside from five volumes on the Native Races
and six volumes of essays. Meantime he was printing these volumes
in sets of thousands and selling them through an army of agents that
covered America.

Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900) was building the Southern Pacific
Railroad into a network, interlocked with other systems and steamship
lines, not only enveloping California land but also the whole economic
and political life of that and other states, with headquarters in the
U.S. Congress. Then his nephew, Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927),
taking over his wealth and power, was building gardens at San Marino,
California, collecting art, books, and manuscripts to make, without
benefit of any institution of learning and in defiance of all the slow
processes of tradition found at Oxford and Harvard, a Huntington
Library and a Huntington Art Gallery that, set down amid the most costly
botanical profusion imaginable, now rival the world's finest.

The dreams were of empire. Old men and young toiled as "terribly" as
mighty Raleigh. The "spacious times" of Queen Elizabeth seemed, indeed,
to be translated to another sphere, though here the elements that went
into the mixture were less diverse. Boom methods of Gargantuan scale
were applied to cultural factors as well as to the physical. Few men
stopped to reflect that while objects of art may be bought by the
wholesale, the development of genuine culture is too intimately personal
and too chemically blended with the spiritual to be bartered for. The
Huntingtons paid a quarter of a million dollars for Gainsborough's "The
Blue Boy." It is very beautiful. Meanwhile the mustang grapevine waits
for some artist to paint the strong and lovely grace of its drapery and
thereby to enrich for land-dwellers every valley where it hangs over elm
or oak.

Most of the books in this section could be placed in other sections.
Many have been. They represent the vigor, vitality, energy, and daring
characteristic of our frontiers. To quote Harvey Fergusson's phrase, the
adventures of mettle have always had "a tension that would not let them
rest."


BARKER, EUGENE C. _The Life of Stephen F. Austin_, Dallas, 1925.
Republished by Texas State Historical Association, Austin. Iron-wrought
biography of the leader in making Texas Anglo-American.

BELL, HORACE. _Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in California_,
Los Angeles, 1881; reprinted, but OP. In this book and in _On the Old
West Coast_, Bell caught the lift and spiritedness of life-hungry men.

BIDWELL, JOHN (1819-1900). _Echoes of the Past_, Chico, California
(about 1900). Bidwell got to California several years before gold was
discovered. He became foremost citizen and entertained scientists,
writers, scholars, and artists at his ranch home. His brief accounts
of the trip across the plains and of pioneer society in California are
graphic, charming, telling. The book goes in and out of print but is not
likely to die.

BILLINGTON, RAY ALLEN. _Westward Expansion: A History of the American
Frontier_, Macmillan, New York, 1949. This Alpha to Omega treatise
concludes with a seventy-five-page, double-column, fine-print
bibliography which not only lists but comments upon most books and
articles of any consequence that have been published on frontier
history.

BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, New York, 1891. Now
published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Bourke had an
eager, disciplined mind, at once scientific and humanistic; he had
imagination and loyalty to truth and justice; he had a strong body
and joyed in frontier exploring. He was a captain in the army but had
nothing of the littleness of the army mind exhibited by Generals Nelson
Miles and O. O. Howard in their egocentric reminiscences. I rank his
book as the meatiest and richest of all books dealing with campaigns
against Indians. In its amplitude it includes the whole frontier.
General George Crook was a wise, generous, and noble man, but his
_Autobiography_ (edited by Martin F. Schmitt; University of Oklahoma
Press) lacks that power in writing necessary to turn the best subject
on earth into a good book and capable also, as Darwin demonstrated, of
turning earthworms into a classic.

BURNHAM, FREDERICK RUSSELL. _Scouting on Two Continents_, New York,
1926; reprinted, Los Angeles, 1942. A brave book of enthralling
interest. The technique of scouting in the Apache Country is illuminated
by that of South Africa in the Boer War. Hunting for life, Major Burnham
carried it with him. OP.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. _The Year of Decision 1846_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1943. Critical interpretation as well as depiction. The Mexican War,
New Mexico, California, Mountain Men, etc. DeVoto's _Across the Wide
Missouri_ is wider in spirit, less bound to political complexities. See
under "Mountain Men."

EMORY, LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM H. _Notes of a Military Reconnaissance
from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California,
including Part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers_, Washington,
1848. Emory's own vivid report is only one item in _Executive Document
No. 41_, 30th Congress, 1st Session, with which it is bound. Lieutenant
J. W. Albert's _Journal_ and additional _Report on New Mexico_, St.
George Cooke's Odyssey of his march from Santa Fe to San Diego, another
_Journal_ by Captain A. R. Johnson, the Torrey-Englemann report on
botany, illustrated with engravings, all go to make this one of the
meatiest of a number of meaty government publications. The Emory part of
it has been reprinted by the University of New Mexico Press, under title
of _Lieutenant Emory Reports_, Introduction and Notes by Ross Calvin,
Albuquerque, 1951.

Emory's great two-volume _Report on United States and Mexican Boundary
Survey_, Washington 1857 and 1859, is, aside from descriptions of
borderlands and their inhabitants, a veritable encyclopedia, wonderfully
illustrated, on western flora and fauna. United States Commissioner
on this Boundary Survey (following the Mexican War) was John Russell
Bartlett. While exploring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and
far down into Mexico, he wrote _Personal Narrative of Explorations
and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua_.
published in two volumes, New York, 1854. For me very little rewritten
history has the freshness and fascination of these strong, firsthand
personal narratives, though I recognize many of them as being the stuff
of literature rather than literature itself.

FOWLER, JACOB. _The Journal of Jacob Fowler, 1821-1822_, edited by
Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. Hardly another chronicle of the West is
so Defoe-like in homemade realism, whether on Indians and Indian horses
or Negro Paul's experience with the Mexican "Lady" at San Fernando de
Taos. Should be reprinted.

GAMBRELL, HERBERT. _Anson Jones: The Last President of Texas_, Garden
City, New York, 1948; now distributed by Southern Methodist University
Press, Dallas, Texas. Anson Jones was more surged over than surgent.
Infused with a larger comprehension than that behind many a world
figure, this biography of a provincial figure is perhaps the most
artfully written that Texas has produced. It goes into the soul of the
man.

HOBBS, JAMES. _Wild Life in the Far West_, Hartford, 1872. Hobbs saw
just about all the elephants and heard just about all the owls to be
seen and heard in the Far West including western Mexico. Should be
reprinted.

HULBERT, ARCHER BUTLER. _Forty-Niners: The Chronicle of the California
Trail_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1931. Hulbert read exhaustively in
the exhausting literature by and about the gold hunters rushing to
California. Then he wove into a synthetic diary the most interesting
and illuminating records on happenings, characters, ambitions, talk,
singing, the whole life of the emigrants.

IRVING, WASHINGTON. Irving made his ride into what is now Oklahoma in
1832. He had recently returned from a seventeen-year stay in Europe and
was a mature literary man--as mature as a conforming romanticist could
become Prairie life refreshed him. A _Tour on the Prairies_, published
in 1835, remains refreshing. It is illuminated by _Washington Irving
on the Prairie; or, A Narrative of the Southwest in the Year 1832_, by
Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (who accompanied Irving), edited by Stanley
T. Williams and Barbara D. Simison, New York, 1937; by _The Western
Journals of Washington Irving_, excellently edited by John Francis
McDermott, Norman, Oklahoma, 1944; and by Charles J. Latrobe's _The
Rambler in North America, 1832-1833_, New York, 1835.

JAMES, MARQUIS. _The Raven_, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1929. Graphic
life of Sam Houston.

KURZ, RUDOLPH FRIEDERICH. _Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz: ... His
Experiences among Fur Traders and American Indians on the Mississippi
and Upper Missouri Rivers, during the Years of 1846-1852_, U.S. Bureau
of Ethnology Bulletin 115, Washington, 1937. The public has not had a
chance at this book, which was printed rather than published. Kurz both
saw and recorded with remarkable vitality. He was an artist and the
volume contains many reproductions of his paintings and drawings. One of
the most readable and illuminating of western journals.

LEWIS, OSCAR. _The Big Four_, New York, 1938. Railroad magnates.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, California, 1928.
Fresh sketches of representative men. The book deserves to be better
known than it is. OP.

LYMAN, GEORGE D. _John Marsh Pioneer_, New York, 1930. Prime biography
and prime romance. Laid mostly in California. This book almost heads the
list of all biographies of western men. OP.

PARKMAN, FRANCIS. _The Oregon Trail_, 1849. Parkman knew how to write
but some other penetrators of the West put down about as much. School
assignments have made his book a recognized classic.

PATTIE, JAMES O. _Personal Narrative_, Cincinnati, 1831; reprinted,
but OP. Positively gripping chronicle of life in New Mexico and the
Californias during Mexican days.

PIKE, ZEBULON M. _The Southwestern Expedition of Zebulon M. Pike_,
Philadelphia, 1810. The 1895 edition edited by Elliott Coues is the most
useful to students. No edition is in print. Pike's explorations of the
Southwest (1806-7) began while the great Lewis and Clark expedition
(1804-6) was ending. His journal is nothing like so informative as
theirs but is just as readable. _The Lost Pathfinder_ is a biography of
Pike by W. Eugene Hollon, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949.

TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1872. Mark Twain was a man who wrote and not
merely a writer in man-form. He was frontier American in all his fibers.
He was drunk with western life at a time when both he and it were
standing on tiptoe watching the sun rise over the misty mountain tops,
and he wrote of what he had seen and lived before he became too sober.
_Roughing It_ comes nearer catching the energy, the youthfulness, the
blooming optimism, the recklessness, the lust for the illimitable in
western life than any other book. It deals largely with mining life, but
the surging vitality of this life as reflected by Mark Twain has been
the chief common denominator of all American frontiers and was as
characteristic of Texas "cattle kings" when grass was free as of
Virginia City "nabobs" in bonanza.





21. Range Life: Cowboys, Cattle, Sheep

THE COWBOY ORIGINATED in Texas. The Texas cowboy, along with the Texas
cowman, was an evolvement from and a blend of the riding, shooting,
frontier-formed southerner, the Mexican-Indian horseback worker with
livestock (the vaquero), and the Spanish open-range rancher. The blend
was not in blood, but in occupational techniques. I have traced this
genesis with more detail in _The Longhorns_. Compared with evolution
in species, evolution in human affairs is meteor-swift. The driving of
millions of cattle and horses from Texas to stock the whole plains area
of North America while, following the Civil War, it was being denuded of
buffaloes and secured from Indian domination, enabled the Texas cowboy
to set his impress upon the whole ranching industry. The cowboy became
the best-known occupational type that America has given the world. He
exists still and will long exist, though much changed from the original.
His fame derives from the past.

Romance, both genuine and spurious, has obscured the realities of range
and trail. The realities themselves have, however, been such that few
riders really belonging to the range wished to lead any other existence.
Only by force of circumstances have they changed "the grass beneath and
the sky above" for a more settled, more confining, and more materially
remunerative way of life. Some of the old-time cowboys were little more
adaptable to change than the Plains Indians; few were less reluctant
to plow or work in houses. Heaven in their dreams was a range better
watered than the one they knew, with grass never stricken by drought,
plenty of fat cattle, the best horses and comrades of their experience,
more of women than they talked about in public, and nothing at all of
golden streets, golden harps, angel wings, and thrones; it was a mere
extension, somewhat improved, of the present. Bankers, manufacturers,
merchants, and mechanics seldom so idealize their own occupations; they
work fifty weeks a year to go free the other two.

For every hired man on horseback there have been hundreds of plowmen in
America, and tens of millions of acres of rangelands have been plowed
under, but who can cite a single autobiography of a laborer in the
fields of cotton, of corn, of wheat? Or do coal miners, steelmongers,
workers in oil refineries, factory hands of any kind of factory,
the employees of chain stores and department stores ever write
autobiographies? Many scores of autobiographies have been written by
range men, perhaps half of them by cowboys who never became owners at
all. A high percentage of the autobiographies are in pamphlet form; many
that were written have not been published. The trail drivers of open
range days, nearly all dead now, felt the urge to record experiences
more strongly than their successors. They realized that they had been a
part of an epic life.

The fact that the hired man on horseback has been as good a man as the
owner and, on the average, has been a more spirited and eager man
than the hand on foot may afford some explanation of the validity and
vitality of his chroniclings, no matter how crude they be. On the other
hand, the fact that the rich owner and the college-educated aspirant to
be a cowboy soon learned, if they stayed on the range, that _a man's
a man for a' that_ may to some extent account for a certain generous
amplitude of character inherent in their most representative
reminiscences. Sympathy for the life biases my judgment; that judgment,
nevertheless, is that some of the strongest and raciest autobiographic
writing produced by America has been by range men.

{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)}

This is not to say that these chronicles are of a high literary order.
Their writers have generally lacked the maturity of mind, the reflective
wisdom, and the power of observation found in personal narratives of the
highest order. No man who camped with a chuck wagon has written anything
remotely comparable to Charles M. Doughty's _Arabia Deserta_, a
chronicle at once personal and impersonal, restrainedly subjective and
widely objective, of his life with nomadic Bedouins. Perspective is a
concomitant of civilization. The chronicles of the range that show
perspective have come mostly from educated New Englanders, Englishmen,
and Scots. The great majority of the chronicles are limited in subject
matter to physical activities. They make few concessions to "the desire
of the moth for the star"; they hardly enter the complexities of life,
including those of sex. In one section of the West at one time the
outstanding differences among range men were between owners of sheep and
owners of cattle, the ambition of both being to hog the whole country.
On another area of the range at another time, the outstanding difference
was between little ranchers, many of whom were stealing, and big
ranchers, plenty of whom had stolen. Such differences are not exponents
of the kind of individualism that burns itself into great human
documents.

Seldom deeper than the chronicles does range fiction go below physical
surface into reflection, broodings, hungers--the smolderings deep down
in a cowman oppressed by drought and mortgage sitting in a rocking chair
on a ranch gallery looking at the dust devils and hoping for a cloud;
the goings-on inside a silent cowboy riding away alone from an empty pen
to which he will never return; the streams of consciousness in a silent
man and a silent woman bedded together in a wind-lashed frame house away
out on the lone prairie. The wide range of human interests leaves ample
room for downright, straightaway narratives of the careers of strong
men. If the literature of the range ever matures, however, it will
include keener searchings for meanings and harder struggles for human
truths by writers who strive in "the craft so long to lerne." For
three-quarters of a century the output of fiction on the cowboy has been
tremendous, and it shows little diminution. Mass production inundating
the masses of readers has made it difficult for serious fictionists
writing about range people to get a hearing.

The code of the West was concentrated into the code of the range--and
not all of it by any means depended upon the six-shooter. No one can
comprehend this code without knowing something about the code of the Old
South, whence the Texas cowboy came.

Mexican goats make the best eating in Mexico and mohair has made
good money for many ranchers of the Southwest. Goats, goat herders,
goatskins, and wine in goatskins figure in the literature of Spain as
prominently as six-shooters in Blazing Frontier fiction--and far more
pleasantly. Read George Borrow's _The Bible in Spain_, one of the
most delectable of travel books. Beyond a few notices of Mexican goat
herders, there is on the subject of goats next to nothing readable in
American writings. Where there is no competition, supremacy is small
distinction; so I should offend no taste by saying that "The Man of
Goats" in my own _Tongues of the Monte_ is about the best there is so
far as goats go.

Although sheep are among the most salient facts of range life, they
have, as compared with cattle and horses, been a dim item in the range
tradition. Yet, of less than a dozen books on sheep and sheepmen, more
than half of them are better written than hundreds of books concerning
cowboy life. Mary Austin's _The Flock_ is subtle and beautiful;
Archer B. Gilfillan's _Sheep_ is literature in addition to having much
information; Hughie Call's _Golden Fleece_ is delightful; Winifred
Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_ and _Texas Sheepman_ have charm--a rare
quality in most books on cows and cow people. Among furnishings in the
cabin of Robert Maudslay, "the Texas Sheepman," were a set of Sir Walter
Scott's works, Shakespeare, and a file of the _Illustrated London News_.
"A man who read Shakespeare and the _Illustrated London News_ had little
to contribute to

     Come a ti yi yoopee
     Ti yi ya!"

O. Henry's ranch experiences in Texas were largely confined to a sheep
ranch. The setting of his "Last of the Troubadours" is a sheep ranch. I
nominate it as the best range story in American fiction.

"Cowboy Songs" and "Horses" are separate chapters following this. The
literature cited in them is mostly range literature, although precious
little in all the songs rises to the status of poetry. A considerable
part of the literature listed under "Texas Rangers" and "The Bad Man
Tradition" bears on range life.


ABBOTT, E. C., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. We _Pointed Them North_,
New York, 1939. Abbott, better known as Teddy Blue, used to give his
address as Three Duce Ranch, Gilt Edge, Montana. Helena Huntington
Smith, who actually wrote and arranged his reminiscences, instead of
currying him down and putting a checkrein on him, spurred him in the
flanks and told him to swaller his head. He did. This book is franker
about the women a rollicky cowboy was likely to meet in town than all
the other range books put together. The fact that Teddy Blue's wife was
a half-breed Indian, daughter of Granville Stuart, and that Indian women
do not object to the truth about sex life may account in part for his
frankness. The book is mighty good reading. OP.

ADAMS, ANDY. _The Log of a Cowboy_ (1903). In 1882, at the age of
twenty-three, Andy Adams came to Texas from Indiana. For about ten years
he traded horses and drove them up the trail. He knew cattle people
and their ranges from Brownsville to Caldwell, Kansas. After mining for
another decade, he began to write. If all other books on trail driving
were destroyed, a reader could still get a just and authentic conception
of trail men, trail work, range cattle, cow horses, and the cow country
in general from _The Log of a Cowboy_. It is a novel without a plot, a
woman, character development, or sustained dramatic incidents; yet it
is the classic of the occupation. It is a simple, straightaway narrative
that takes a trail herd from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line, the
hands talking as naturally as cows chew cuds, every page illuminated
by an easy intimacy with the life. Adams wrote six other books. _The
Outlet, A Texas Matchmaker, Cattle Brands_, and _Reed Anthony, Cowman_
all make good reading. _Wells Brothers_ and _The Ranch on the Beaver_
are stories for boys. I read them with pleasure long after I was grown.
All but _The Log of a Cowboy_ are OP, published by Houghton Mifflin,
Boston.

ADAMS, RAMON F. _Cowboy Lingo_, Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy
words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with
explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. _Western
Words_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. _Come an'
Get It_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition
of chuck wagon cooks.

ALDRIDGE, REGINALD. _Ranch Notes_, London, 1884. Aldridge, an educated
Englishman, got into the cattle business before, in the late eighties,
it boomed itself flat. His book is not important, but it is maybe
a shade better than _Ranch Life in Southern Kansas and the Indian
Territory_ by Benjamin S. Miller, New York, 1896. Aldridge and Miller
were partners, and each writes kindly about the other.

ALLEN, JOHN HOUGHTON. _Southwest_, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1952. A
chemical compound of highly impressionistic autobiographic nonfiction
and highly romantic fiction and folk tales. The setting is a ranch of
Mexican tradition in the lower border country of Texas, also saloons and
bawdy houses of border towns. Vaqueros and their work in the brush are
intensely vivid. The author has a passion for superlatives and for "a
joyous cruelty, a good cruelty, a young cruelty."

ARNOLD, OREN, and HALE, J. P. _Hot Irons_, Macmillan, New York, 1940.
Technique and lore of cattle brands. OP.

AUSTIN, MARY. _The Flock_, Boston, 1906, OP. Mary Austin saw the
meanings of things; she was a creator. Very quietly she sublimated life
into the literature of pictures and emotions.

Australian ranching is not foreign to American ranching. The best book
on the subject that I have found is _Pastures New_, by R. V. Billis and
A. S. Kenyon, London, 1930.

BARNARD, EVAN G. ("Parson"). _A Rider of the Cherokee Strip_, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1936. Savory with little incidents and cowboy humor.
OP.

BARNES, WILL C. _Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp_, Chicago, 1920. OP.
Good simple narratives. _Apaches and Longhorns_, Los Angeles, 1941.
Autobiography. OP. _Western Grazing Grounds and Forest Ranges_, Chicago,
1913. OP. Governmentally factual. Barnes was in the U.S. Forest Service
and was informed.

BARROWS, JOHN R. _Ubet_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1934. Excellent on Northwest;
autobiographical. OP.

BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924. Vivid,
economical stories of "The Warriors of the Pecos" (Billy the Kid and the
troubles on John Chisum's ranch-empire), of Butch Cassidy and his Wild
Bunch in their Wyoming hide-outs, of the way frontier Texans fought
Mexicans and Comanches over the open ranges. Research clogs the style of
many historians; perhaps it is just as well that Bechdolt did not search
more extensively into the arcana of footnotes. OP.

BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Tall Tales from Texas Cow Camps_, Dallas, 1934. The
tales are tall all right and true to cows that never saw a milk bucket.
OP. Reprinted 1946 by Haldeman-Julius, Girard, Kansas.

BOREIN, EDWARD. _Etchings of the West_, edited by Edward S. Spaulding,
Santa Barbara, California, 1950. OP. A very handsome folio; primarily a
reproduction of sketches, many of which are on range subjects. Ed
Borein tells more in them than hundreds of windbags have told in tens of
thousands of pages. They are beautiful and authentic, even if they are
what post-impressionists call "documentary." Believers in the True Faith
say now that Leonardo da Vinci is documentary in his painting of the
Lord's Supper. Ed Borein was a great friend of Charlie Russell's but not
an imitator. _Etchings of the West_ will soon be among the rarities of
Western books.

BOWER, B. M. _Chip of the Flying U_, New York, 1904. Charles Russell
illustrated this and three other Bower novels. Contrary to his denial,
he is supposed to have been the prototype for Chip. A long time ago I
read _Chit of the Flying U_ and _The Lure of the Dim Trails_ and thought
them as good as Eugene Manlove Rhodes's stories. That they have faded
almost completely out of memory is a commentary on my memory; just the
same, a character as well named as Chip should, if he have substance
beyond his name, leave an impression even on weak memories. B. M.
Bower was a woman, Bower being the name of her first husband. A Montana
cowpuncher named "Fiddle Back" Sinclair was her second, and Robert
Ellsworth Cowan became the third. Under the name of Bud Cowan he
published a book of reminiscences entitled _Range Rider_ (Garden City,
N. Y., 1930). B. M. Bower wrote a slight introduction to it; neither he
nor she says anything about being married to the other. In the best
of her fiction she is truer to life than he is in a good part of his
nonfiction. Her chaste English is partly explained in an autobiographic
note contributed to _Adventure_ magazine, December 10, 1924. Her
restless father had moved the family from Minnesota to Montana. There,
she wrote, he "taught me music and how to draw plans of houses (he was
an architect among other things) and to read _Paradise Lost_ and Dante
and H. Rider Haggard and the Bible and the Constitution--and my taste
has been extremely catholic ever since."

BRANCH, E. DOUGLAS. _The Cowboy and His Interpreters_, New York, 1926.
Useful bibliography on range matters, and excellent criticism of two
kinds of fiction writers. OP.

BRATT, JOHN. _Trails of Yesterday_, Chicago, 1921. John Bratt,
twenty-two years old, came to America from England in 1864, went west,
and by 1870 was ranching on the Platte. He became a big operator, but
his reminiscences, beautifully printed, are stronger on camp cooks and
other hired hands than on cattle "kings." Nobody ever heard a cowman
call himself or another cowman a king. "Cattle king" is journalese.

BRISBIN, GENERAL JAMES S. _The Beef Bonanza; or, How to Get Rich on the
Plains_, Philadelphia, 1881. One of several books of its decade designed
to appeal to eastern and European interest in ranching as an investment.
Figureless and with more human interest is _Prairie Experiences in
Handling Cattle and Sheep_, by Major W. Shepherd (of England), London?
1884.

BRONSON, EDGAR BEECHER. _Cowboy Life on the Western Plains_, Chicago,
1910. _The Red Blooded_, Chicago, 1910. Freewheeling nonfiction.

BROOKS, BRYANT B. _Memoirs_, Gardendale, California, 1939. The book
never was published; it was merely printed to satisfy the senescent
vanity of a property-worshiping, cliche-parroting reactionary who made
money ranching before he became governor of Wyoming. He tells a few good
anecdotes of range days. Numerous better books pertaining to the range
are NOT listed here; this mediocrity represents a particular type.

BROTHERS, MARY HUDSON. A _Pecos Pioneer_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1943. Superior to numerous better-known books. See
comment under "Women Pioneers."

BROWN, DEE, and SCHMITT, MARTIN F. _Trail Driving Days_, Scribner's,
New York, 1952. Primarily a pictorial record, more on the side of
action than of realism, except for post-trailing period. Excellent
bibliography.

BURTON, HARLEY TRUE. A _History of the J A Ranch_, Austin, 1928. Facts
about one of the greatest ranches of Texas and its founder, Charles
Goodnight. OP.

CALL, HUGHIE. _Golden Fleece_, Boston, 1942. Hughie married a sheepman,
and after mothering the range as well as children with him for a
quarter of a century, concluded that Montana is still rather masculine.
Especially good on domestic life and on sheepherders. OP.

CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, edited by E. E. Dale, Boston, 1930.
OP. Good on tough hombres.

CLAY, JOHN. My _Life on the Range_, privately printed, Chicago, 1924.
OP. John Clay, an educated Scot, came to Canada in 1879 and in time
managed some of the largest British-owned ranches of North America. His
book is the best of all sources on British-owned ranches. It is just as
good on cowboys and sheepherders. Clay was a fine gentleman in addition
to being a canny businessman in the realm of cattle and land. He
appreciated the beautiful and had a sense of style.

CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _The Cattle on a Thousand Hills_, Huntington
Library, San Marino, California, 1941 (revised, 1951). Scholarly work on
Spanish-Mexican ranching in California.

CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. _No Life for a Lady_, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1941. Best book on range life from a woman's point of view ever
published. The setting is New Mexico; humor and humanity prevail.

COLLINGS, ELLSWORTH. _The 101 Ranch_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1937. The 101 Ranch was far more than a ranch; it was a unique
institution. The 101 Ranch Wild West Show is emphasized in this book.
OP.

COLLINS, DENNIS. _The Indians' Last Fight or the Dull Knife Raid_, Press
of the Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, n.d. Nearly half of this
very scarce book deals autobiographically with frontier range life.
Realistic, strong, written from the perspective of a man who "wanted
something to read" in camp.

COLLINS, HUBERT E. _Warpath and Cattle Trail_, New York, 1928. The
pageant of trail life as it passed by a stage stand in Oklahoma;
autobiographical. Beautifully printed and illustrated. Far better than
numerous other out-of-print books that bring much higher prices in the
second-hand market.

CONN, WILLIAM (translator). _Cow-Boys and Colonels: Narrative of a
Journey across the Prairie and over the Black Hills of Dakota_, London,
1887; New York (1888?). More of a curiosity than an illuminator,
the book is a sparsely annotated translation of _Dans les Montagnes
Rocheuses_, by Le Baron E. de Mandat-Grancey, Paris, October, 1884. (The
only copy I have examined is of 1889 printing.) It is a gossipy account
of an excursion made in 1883-84; cowboys and ranching are viewed pretty
much as a sophisticated Parisian views a zoo. The author must have
felt more at home with the fantastic Marquis de Mores of Medora, North
Dakota. The book appeared at a time when European capital was being
invested in western ranches. It was followed by _La Breche aux Buffles:
Un Ranch Francais dans le Dakota_, Paris, 1889. Not translated so far as
I know.

COOK, JAMES H. _Fifty Years on the Old Frontier_, 1923. Cook came to
Texas soon after the close of the Civil War and became a brush popper
on the Frio River. Nothing better on cow work in the brush country and
trail driving in the seventies has appeared. OP. A good deal of the
same material was put into Cook's _Longhorn Cowboy_ (Putnam's, 1942), to
which the pushing Mr. Howard R. Driggs attached his name.

COOLIDGE, DANE. _Texas Cowboys_, 1937. Thin, but genuine. _Arizona
Cowboys_, 1938. _Old California Cowboys_, 1939. All well illustrated by
photographs and all OP.

Cox, JAMES. _The Cattle Industry of Texas and Adjacent Territory_, St.
Louis, 1895. Contains many important biographies and much good history.
In 1928 I traded a pair of store-bought boots to my uncle Neville Dobie
for his copy of this book. A man would have to throw in a young Santa
Gertrudis bull now to get a copy.

CRAIG, JOHN R. _Ranching with lords and Commons_, Toronto, 1903. During
the great boom of the early 1880'S in the range business, Craig promoted
a cattle company in London and then managed a ranch in western Canada.
His book is good on mismanaged range business and it is good on people,
especially lords, and the land. He attributes to De Quincey a Latin
quotation that properly, I think, belongs to Thackeray. He quotes Hamlin
Garland: "The trail is poetry; a wagon road is prose; the railroad,
arithmetic." He was probably not so good at ranching as at writing. His
book supplements _From Home to Home_, by Alex. Staveley Hill, New York,
1885. Hill was a major investor in the Oxley Ranch, and was, I judge,
the pompous cheat and scoundrel that Craig said he was.

CRAWFORD, LEWIS F. _Rekindling Camp Fires: The Exploits of Ben Arnold
(Connor)_, Bismarck, North Dakota, 1926. OP. The skill of Lewis F.
Crawford of the North Dakota Historical Society made this a richer
autobiography than if Arnold had been unaided. He was squaw man, scout,
trapper, soldier, deserter, prospector, and actor in other occupations
as well as cowboy. He had a fierce sense of justice that extended to
Indians. His outlook was wider than that of the average ranch hand.
_Badlands and Broncho Trails_, Bismarck, 1922, is a slight book of
simple narratives that catches the tune of the Badlands life. OP.
_Ranching Days in Dakota_, Wirth Brothers, Baltimore, 1950, is good on
horse-raising and the terrible winter of 1886-87.

CULLEY, JOHN. _Cattle, Horses, and Men_, Los Angeles, 1940. Much about
the noted Bell Ranch of New Mexico. Especially good on horses. Culley
was educated at Oxford. When I visited him in California, he had on his
table a presentation copy of a book by Walter Pater. His book has the
luminosity that comes from cultivated intelligence. OP.

DACY, GEORGE F. _Four Centuries of Florida Ranching_, St. Louis, 1940.
OP. In _Crooked Trails_, Frederic Remington has a chapter (illustrated)
on "Cracker Cowboys of Florida," and _Lake Okeechobee_, by A. J. Hanna
and Kathryn Abbey, Indianapolis, 1948, treats of modern ranching
in Florida, but the range people of that state have been too
lethargic-minded to write about themselves and no Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings has settled in their midst to interpret them.

DALE, E. E. _The Range Cattle Industry_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1930.
Economic aspects. Bibliography. _Cow Country,_ Norman, Oklahoma, 1942.
Bully tales and easy history. Both books are OP.

DANA, RICHARD HENRY. _Two Years Before the Mast_, 1841. This transcript
of reality has been reprinted many times. It is the classic of the hide
and tallow trade of California.

DAVID, ROBERT D. _Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_, Casper, Wyoming, 1932.
Much of the "Johnson County War" between cowmen and thieving nesters.
OP.

DAYTON, EDSON C. _Dakota Days_. Privately printed by the author at
Clifton Springs, New York, 1937--three hundred copies only. Dayton was
more sheepman than cowman. He had a spiritual content. His very use of
the word _intellectual_ on the second page of his book; his estimate
of Milton and Gladstone, adjacent to talk about a frontier saloon; his
consciousness of his own inner growth--something no extravert cowboy
ever noticed, usually because he did not have it; his quotation to
express harmony with nature:

          I have some kinship to the bee,
          I am boon brother with the tree;
          The breathing earth is part of me--

all indicate a refinement that any gambler could safely bet originated
in the East and not in Texas or the South.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _A Vaquero of the Brush Country_, 1929. Much on border
troubles over cattle, the "skinning war," running wild cattle in the
brush, mustanging, trail driving; John Young's narrative, told in the
first person, against range backgrounds. _The Longhorns_, illustrated by
Tom Lea, 1941. History of the Longhorn breed, psychology of stampedes;
days of maverickers and mavericks; stories of individual lead steers
and outlaws of the range; stories about rawhide and many other related
subjects. The book attempts to reveal the blend made by man, beast, and
range. Both books published by Little, Brown, Boston. _The Mustangs_,
1952. See under "Horses."

FORD, GUS L. _Texas Cattle Brands_, Dallas, 1936. A catalogue of brands.
OP.

FRENCH, WILLIAM. _Some Recollections of a Western Ranchman_, London,
1927. A civilized Englishman remembers. OP.

GANN, WALTER. _The Trail Boss_, Boston, 1937. Faithful fiction, with a
steer that Charlie Russell should have painted. OP.

GARD, WAYNE. _Frontier Justice_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
1949. This book could be classified under "The Bad Man Tradition,"
but it has authentic chapters on fence-cutting, the so-called "Johnson
County Cattlemen's War" of Wyoming, and other range "difficulties."
Clearly written from an equable point of view. Useful bibliography of
range books.

GIBSON, J. W. (Watt). _Recollections of a Pioneer_, St. Joseph, Missouri
(about 1912). Like many another book concerned only incidentally with
range life, this contains essential information on the subject. Here it
is trailing cattle from Missouri to California in the 1840's and
1850's. Cattle driving from the East to California was not economically
important. The outstanding account on the subject is _A Log of the
Texas-California Cattle Trail, 1854_, by James G. Bell, edited
by J. Evetts Haley, published in the _Southwestern Historical
Quarterly_, 1932 (Vols. XXXV and XXXVI). Also reprinted as a separate.

{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)}


GILFILLAN, ARCHER B. _Sheep_, Boston, 1929. With humor and grace, this
sheepherder, who collected books on Samuel Pepys, tells more about sheep
dogs, sheep nature, and sheepherder life than any other writer I know.
OP.

GIPSON, FRED. _Fabulous Empire_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946.
Biography of Zack Miller of the 101 Ranch and 101 Wild West Show.

GOODWYN, FRANK. _Life on the King Ranch_, Crowell, New York, 1951. The
author was reared on the King Ranch. He is especially refreshing on the
vaqueros, their techniques and tales.

GRAY, FRANK S. _Pioneer Adventures_, 1948, and _Pioneering in Southwest
Texas_, 1949, both printed by the author, Copperas Cove, Texas. These
books are listed because the author has the perspective of a civilized
gentleman and integrates home life on frontier ranches with range work.

GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. Outstanding
horse lore. OP.

HAGEDORN, HERMANN. _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_, Boston, 1921. A better
book than Roosevelt's own _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_. OP.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. _The XIT Ranch of Texas_, Chicago, 1929. As county and
town afford the basis for historical treatment of many areas, ranches
have afforded bases for various range country histories. Of such this is
tops. A lawsuit for libel brought by one or more individuals mentioned
in the book put a stop to the selling of copies by the publishers and
made it very "rare." _Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman_, Boston,
1936, reissued by University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Goodnight,
powerful individual and extraordinary observer, summed up in himself the
whole life of range and trail. Haley's book, packed with realities of
incident and character, paints him against a mighty background. _George
W. Littlefield, Texan_, University of Oklahoma Presss Norman, Okla.,
1943, is a lesser biography of a lesser man.

HAMILTON, W. H. _Autobiography of a Cowman_, in _South Dakota Historical
Collections_, XIX (1938), 475-637. A first-rate narrative of life on the
Dakota range.

HAMNER, LAURA V. _Short Grass and Longhorns_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1943.
Sketches of Panhandle ranches and ranch people. OP.

HARRIS, FRANK. _My Reminiscences as a Cowboy_, 1930. A blatant farrago
of lies, included in this list because of its supreme worthlessness.
However, some judges might regard the debilitated and puerile lying in
_The Autobiography of Frank Tarbeaux_, as told to Donald H. Clarke, New
York, 1930, as equally worthless.

HART, JOHN A., and Others. _History of Pioneer Days in Texas and
Oklahoma_. No date or place of publication; no table of contents. This
slight book was enlarged into _Pioneer Days in the Southwest from 1850
to 1879_, "Contributions by Charles Goodnight, Emanuel Dubbs, John A.
Hart and Others," Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1909. Good on the way frontier
ranch families lived. The writers show no sense of humor and no idea of
being literary.

HASTINGS, FRANK S. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. OP.
Hastings was urbane, which means he had perspective; "Old Gran'pa" is
the most pulling cowhorse story I know.

HENRY, O. _Heart of the West_. Interpretative stories of Texas range
life, which O. Henry for a time lived. His range stories are scattered
through several volumes. "The Last of the Troubadours" is a classic.

HENRY, STUART. _Our Great American Plains_, New York, 1930. OP. An
unworshipful, anti-Philistinic picture of Abilene, Kansas, when it was
at the end of the Chisholm Trail. While not a primary range book, this
is absolutely unique in its analysis of cow-town society, both citizens
and drovers. Stuart Henry came to Abilene as a boy in 1868. His brother
was the first mayor of the town. After graduating from the University
of Kansas in 1881, he in time acquired "the habit of authorship." He
had written a book on London and _French Essays and Profiles_ and _Hours
with Famous Parisians_ before he returned to Kansas for a subject.
Some of his non-complimentary characterizations of westerners aroused
a mighty roar among panegyrists of the West. They did not try to refute
his anecdote about the sign of the Bull Head Saloon. This sign showed
the whole of a great red bull. The citizens of Abilene were used to
seeing bulls driven through town and they could go out any day and
see bulls with cows on the prairie. Nature might be good, but any art
suggesting nature's virility was indecent. There was such an uprising
of Victorian taste that what distinguishes a bull from a cow had to be
painted out. A similar artistic operation had to be performed on the
bull signifying Bull Durham tobacco--once the range favorite for making
cigarettes.

HILL, J. L. _The End of the Cattle Trail_, Long Beach, California [May,
1924]. Rare and meaty pamphlet.

HOLDEN, W. C. _Rollie Burns_, Dallas, 1932. Biography of a Plains
cowman. OP. _The Spur Ranch_, Boston, 1934. History of a great Texas
ranch. OP.

HORN, TOM. _Life of Tom Horn... Written by Himself, together with His
Letters and Statements by His Friends, A Vindication_. Published (for
John C. Coble) by the Louthan Book Company, Denver, 1904. Who wrote the
book has been somewhat in debate. John C. Coble's name is signed to the
preface attributing full authorship to Horn. Of Pennsylvania background,
wealthy and educated, he had employed Horn as a stock detective on his
Wyoming ranch. He had the means and ability to see the book through the
press. A letter from his wife to me, from Cheyenne, June 21,1926, says
that Horn wrote the book. Charles H. Coe, who succeeded Horn as stock
detective in Wyoming, says in _Juggling a Rope_ (Pendleton, Oregon,
1927, P. 108), that Horn wrote it. I have a copy, bought from Fred
Rosenstock of the Bargain Book Store in Denver, who got it from Hattie
Horner Louthan, of Denver also. For years she taught English in the
University of Denver, College of Commerce, and is the author of more
than one textbook. The Louthan Book Company of Denver was owned by her
family. This copy of _Tom Horn_ contains her bookplate. On top of the
first page of the preface is written in pencil: "I wrote this--`Ghost
wrote.' H. H. L." Then, penciled at the top of the first page of
"Closing Word," is "I wrote this."

Glendolene Myrtle Kimmell was a schoolteacher in the country where Tom
Horn operated. As her picture shows, she was lush and beautiful. Pages
287-309 print "Miss Kimmell's Statement." She did her best to keep Tom
Horn from hanging. She frankly admired him and, it seems to me, loved
him. Jay Monaghan, _The Legend of Tom Horn, Last of the Bad Men_,
Indianapolis and New York, 1946, says (p. 267), without discussion or
proof, that after Horn was hanged and buried Miss Kimmell was "writing
a long manuscript about a Sir Galahad horseman who was `crushed between
the grinding stones of two civilizations,' but she never found a
publisher who thought her book would sell. It was entitled _The True
Life of Tom Horn_."

The main debate has been over Horn himself. The books about him are
not highly important, but they contribute to a spectacular and highly
controversial phase of range history, the so-called Johnson County War
of Wyoming. Mercer's _Banditti of the Plains_, Mokler's _History of
Natrona County, Wyoming_, Canton's _Frontier Trails_, and David's
_Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_ (all listed in this chapter) are primary
sources on the subject.

HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Cowboy_, New York, 1897. Exposition
not nearly so good as Philip Ashton Rollins' _The Cowboy. North of
36_, New York, 1923. Historical novel of the Chisholm Trail. The best
character in it is Old Alamo, lead steer. A young woman owner of the
herd trails with it. The success of the romance caused Emerson Hough
to advise his friend Andy Adams to put a woman in a novel about trail
driving--so Andy Adams told me. Adams replied that a woman with a trail
herd would be as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon and that he would
not violate reality by having her. For a devastation of Hough's use of
history in _North of 36_ see the Appendix in Stuart Henry's _Conquering
Our Great American Plains_. Yet the novel does have the right temper.

HOYT, HENRY F. _A Frontier Doctor_, Boston, 1929. Texas Panhandle and
New Mexico during Billy the Kid days. Reminiscences.

HUNT, FRAZIER. _Cat Mossman: Last of the Great Cowmen_, illustrated by
Ross Santee, Hastings House, New York, 1951. Few full-length biographies
of big operators among cowmen have been written. This reveals not only
Cap Mossman's operations on enormous ranges, but the man.

HUNTER, J. MARVIN (compiler). _The Trail Drivers of Texas_, two volumes,
Bandera, Texas, 1920, 1923. Reprinted in one volume, 1925. All OP.
George W. Saunders, founder of the Old Time Trail Drivers Association
and for many years president, prevailed on hundreds of old-time range
and trail men to write autobiographic sketches. He used to refer to
Volume II as the "second edition"; just the same, he was not ignorant,
and he had a passion for the history of his people. The chronicles,
though chaotic in arrangement, comprise basic source material. An index
to the one-volume edition of _The Trail Drivers of Texas_ is printed as
an appendix to _The Chisholm Trail and Other Routes_, by T. U. Taylor,
San Antonio, 1936--a hodgepodge.

JAMES, WILL. _Cowboys North and South_, New York, 1924. _The Drifting
Cowboy_, 1925. _Smoky_--a cowhorse story--1930. Several other books,
mostly repetitious. Will James knew his frijoles, but burned them up
before he died, in 1942. He illustrated all his books. The best one is
his first, written before he became sophisticated with life--without
becoming in the right way more sophisticated in the arts of drawing
and writing. _Lone Cowboy: My Life Story_ (1930) is without a date or a
geographical location less generalized than the space between Canada and
Mexico.

JAMES, W. S. _Cowboy Life in Texas_, Chicago, 1893. A genuine cowboy who
became a genuine preacher and wrote a book of validity. This is the best
of several books of reminiscences by cowboy preachers, some of whom are
as lacking in the real thing as certain cowboy artists. Next to _Cowboy
Life in Texas_, in its genre, might come _From the Plains to the
Pulpit_, by J. W. Anderson, Houston, 1907. The second edition (reset)
has six added chapters. The third, and final, edition, Goose Creek,
Texas, 1922, again reset, has another added chapter. J. B. Cranfill was
a trail driver from a rough range before he became a Baptist preacher
and publisher. His bulky _Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas_, 1916, is
downright and concrete.

KELEHER, WILLIAM A. _Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item_, Santa Fe,
1942. The Maxwell grant of 1,714,764 acres on the Cimarron River was at
one time perhaps the most famous tract of land in the West. This history
brings in ranching only incidentally; it focuses on the land business,
including grabs by Catron, Dorsey, and other affluent politicians.
Perhaps stronger on characters involved during long litigation over
the land, and containing more documentary evidence, is _The Grant That
Maxwell Bought_, by F. Stanley, The World Press, Denver, 1952 (a folio
of 256 pages in an edition of 250 copies at $15.00). Keleher is a
lawyer; Stanley is a priest. Harvey Fergusson in his historical novel
_Grant of Kingdom_, New York, 1950, vividly supplements both. Keleher's
second book, _The Fabulous Frontier_, Rydal, Santa Fe, 1945, illuminates
connections between ranch lands and politicians; principally it sketches
the careers of A. B. Fall, John Chisum, Pat Garrett, Oliver Lee, Jack
Thorp, Gene Rhodes, and other New Mexico notables.

KENT, WILLIAM. _Reminiscences of Outdoor Life_, San Francisco, 1929. OP.
This is far from being a straight-out range book. It is the easy talk of
an urbane man associated with ranches and ranch people who was equally
at home in a Chicago office and among fellow congressmen. He had a
country-going nature and gusto for character.

KING, FRANK M. _Wranglin' the Past_, Los Angeles, 1935. King went all
the way from Texas to California, listening and looking. OP. His second
book, _Longhorn Trail Drivers_ (1940), is worthless. His _Pioneer
Western Empire Builders_ (1946) and _Mavericks_ (1947) are no better.
Most of the contents of these books appeared in _Western Livestock
Journal_, Los Angeles.

KUPPER, WINIFRED. _The Golden Hoof_, New York, 1945. Story of the sheep
and sheep people of the Southwest. Facts, but, above that, truth that
comes only through imagination and sympathy. OP. _Texas Sheepman_,
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951. The edited reminiscences of
Robert Maudslay. He drove sheep all over the West, and lived up to the
ideals of an honest Englishman in writing as well as in ranching. He had
a sense of humor.

LAMPMAN, CLINTON PARKS. _The Great Western Trail_, New York, 1939. OP.
In the upper bracket of autobiographic chronicles, by a sensitive man
who never had the provincial point of view. Lampman contemplated as well
as observed He felt the pathos of human destiny.

LANG, LINCOLN A. _Ranching with Roosevelt_, Philadelphia, 1926.
Civilized. OP.

LEWIS, ALFRED HENRY. _Wolfville_ (1897) and other Wolfville books. All
OP. Sketches and rambling stories faithful to cattle backgrounds; flavor
and humanity through fictionized anecdote. "The Old Cattleman," who
tells all the Wolfville stories, is a substantial and flavorsome
creation.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Skilfully
written biographies. OP.

MCCARTY, JOHN L. _Maverick Town_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1946.
Tascosa, Texas, on the Canadian River, with emphasis on the guns.

MCCAULEY, JAMES EMMIT. _A Stove-up Cowboy's Story_, with Introduction
by John A. Lomas and Illustrations by Tom Lea, Austin, 1943. OP. "My
parents be poor like Job's turkey," McCauley wrote. He was a common
cowhand with uncommon saltiness of speech. He wrote as he talked. "God
pity the wight for whom this vivid, honest story has no interest," John
Lomax pronounced. It is one of several brief books of reminiscences
brought out in small editions in the "Range Life Series," under the
editorship of J. Frank Dobie, by the Texas Folklore Society. The two
others worth having are _A Tenderfoot Kid on Gyp Water_, by Carl Peters
Benedict (1943) and _Ed Nichols Rode a Horse_, as told to Ruby Nichols
Cutbirth (1943).

MCCOY, JOSEPH G. _Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and
Southwest_, Kansas City, 1874. In 1867, McCoy established at Abilene,
Kansas, terminus of the Chisholm Trail, the first market upon which
Texas drovers could depend. He went broke and thereupon put his sense,
information, and vinegar into the first of all range histories. It is a
landmark. Of the several reprinted editions, the one preferred is that
edited by Ralph P. Bieber, with an information-packed introduction and
many illuminating notes, Glendale, California, 1940. This is Volume VIII
in the "Southwest Historical Series," edited by Bieber, and the index to
it is included in the general index to the whole series. Available is an
edition published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. About the
best of original sources on McCoy is _Twenty Years of Kansas City's Live
Stock and Traders_, by Cuthbert Powell, Kansas City, 1893--one of the
rarities.

MACKAY, MALCOLM S. _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, New York, 1925. Among
the best of civilized range books. Fresh observations and something
besides ordinary narrative. OP. Illustrations by Russell.

MANDAT-GRANCEY, BARON E. DE. See Conn, William.

MERCER, A. S. _Banditti of the Plains, or The Cattlemen's Invasion of
Wyoming in 1892_, Cheyenne, 1894; reprinted at Chicago in 1923
under title of _Powder River Invasion, War on the Rustlers in 1892_,
"Rewritten by John Mercer Boots." Reprinted 1935, with Foreword by James
Mitchell Clarke, by the Grabhorn Press, San Francisco. All editions
OP. Bloody troubles between cowmen and nesters in Wyoming, the "Johnson
County War." For more literature on the subject, consult the entry under
Tom Horn in this chapter.

MILLER, LEWIS B. _Saddles and Lariats_, Boston, 1912. A fictional
chronicle, based almost entirely on facts, of a trail herd that tried to
get to California in the fifties. The author was a Texan. OP.

MOKLER, ALFRED JAMES. _History of Natrona County, Wyoming, 1888-1922_,
Chicago, 1923. Contains some good material on the "Johnson County War."
This book is listed as an illustration of many county histories of
western states containing concrete information on ranching. Other
examples of such county histories are S. D. Butcher's _Pioneer History
of Custer County_ (Nebraska), Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1901; _History of
Jack County_ (Texas), Jacksboro, Texas (about 1935); _Historical Sketch
of Parker County and Weatherford, Texas_, St. Louis, 1877.

MORA, JO. _Trail Dust and Saddle Leather_, Scribner's, New York, 1946.
No better exposition anywhere, and here tellingly illustrated, of
reatas, spurs, bits, saddles, and other gear. _Californios_, Doubleday,
Garden City, N. Y., 1949. Profusely illustrated. Largely on vaquero
techniques. Jo Mora knew the California vaquero, but did not know the
range history of other regions and, therefore, judged as unique what was
widespread.

NIMMO, JOSEPH, JR. _The Range and Ranch Cattle Traffic in the
Western States and Territories_, Executive Document No. 267, House of
Representatives, 48th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D. C., 1885.
Printed also in one or more other government documents. A statistical
record concerning grazing lands, trail driving, railroad shipping of
cattle, markets, foreign investments in ranches, etc. This document
is the outstanding example of factual material to be found in various
government publications, Volume III of the _Tenth Census of the United
States_ (1880) being another. _The Western Range: Letter from the
Secretary of Agriculture_, etc (a "letter" 620 pages long), United
States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1936, lists many
government publications both state and national.

NORDYKE, LEWIS. _Cattle Empire_, Morrow, New York, 1949. History,
largely political, of the XIT Ranch. Not so careful in documentation as
Haley's _XIT Ranch of Texas_, and not so detailed on ranch operations,
but thoroughly illuminative on the not-heroic side of big businessmen in
big land deals. The two histories complement each other.

O'NEIL, JAMES B. _They Die But Once_, New York, 1935. The biographical
narrative of a Tejano who vigorously swings a very big loop; fine
illustration of the fact that a man can lie authentically. OP.

OSGOOD, E. S. _The Day of the Cattleman_, Minneapolis, 1929. Excellent
history and excellent bibliography. Northwest. OP.

PEAKE, ORA BROOKS. _The Colorado Range Cattle Industry_, Clark,
Glendale, California, 1937. Dry on facts, but sound in scholarship.
Bibliography.

PELZER, LOUIS. _The Cattlemen's Frontier_, Clark, Glendale, California,
1936. Economic treatment, faithful but static. Bibliography.

PENDER, ROSE. A _Lady's Experiences in the Wild West in 1883_, London
(1883?); second printing with a new preface, 1888. Rose Pender and
two fellow-Englishmen went through Wyoming ranch country, stopping on
ranches, and she, a very intelligent, spirited woman, saw realities that
few other chroniclers suggest. This is a valuable bit of social history.

PERKINS, CHARLES E. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California, 1927.
_The Phantom Bull_, Boston, 1932. Fictional narratives of veracity;
literature. OP.

PILGRIM, THOMAS (under pseudonym of Arthur Morecamp). _Live Boys;
or Charley and Nasho in Texas_, Boston, 1878. The chronicle, little
fictionized, of a trail drive to Kansas. So far as I know, this is the
first narrative printed on cattle trailing or cowboy life that is to be
accounted authentic. The book is dated from Kerrville, Texas.

PONTING, TOM CANDY. _The Life of Tom Candy Ponting_, Decatur, Illinois
[1907], reprinted, with Notes and Introduction by Herbert O. Brayer,
by Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. An account of buying
cattle in Texas in 1853, driving them to Illinois, and later shipping
some to New York. Accounts of trail driving before about 1870 have been
few and obscurely printed. The stark diary kept by George C. Duffield
of a drive from San Saba County, Texas, to southern Iowa in 1866 is as
realistic--often agonizing--as anything extant on this much romanticized
subject. It is published in _Annals of Iowa_, Des Moines, IV (April,
1924), 243-62.

POTTER, JACK. Born in 1864, son of the noted "fighting parson," Andrew
Jackson Potter, Jack became a far-known trail boss and ranch manager.
His first published piece, "Coming Down the Trail," appeared in _The
Trail Drivers of Texas_, compiled by J. Marvin Hunter, and is about
the livest thing in that monumental collection. Jack Potter wrote for
various Western magazines and newspapers. He was more interested in
cow nature than in gun fights; he had humor and imagination as well as
mastery of facts and a tangy language, though small command over form.
His privately printed booklets are: _Lead Steer_ (with Introduction by
J. Frank Dobie), Clayton, N. M., 1939; _Cattle Trails of the Old
West_ (with map), Clayton, N.M., 1935; _Cattle Trails of the Old West_
(virtually a new booklet), Clayton, N. M., 1939. All OP.

_Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States_,
Denver, 1905. Biographies of big cowmen and history based on genuine
research. The richest in matter of all the hundred-dollar-and-up rare
books in its field.

RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD, and BARNES, WILL C. _Cattle_, Garden City, N. Y.,
1930. A succinct and vivid focusing of much scattered history. OP.

RAK, MARY KIDDER. _A Cowman s Wife_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934.
Unglossed, impersonal realism about life on a small modern Arizona
ranch. _Mountain Cattle_, 1936, and OP, is an extension of the first
book.

REMINGTON, FREDERIC. _Pony Tracks_, New York, 1895 (now published by
Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio); _Crooked Trails_, New York,
1898. Sketches and pictures.

RHODES, EUGENE MANLOVE. _West Is West, Once in the Saddle, Good Men and
True, Stepsons of Light_, and other novels. "Gene" Rhodes had the "right
tune." He achieved a style that can be called literary. _The Hired Man
on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, is a biography of the writer. Perhaps
"Paso Por Aqui" will endure as his masterpiece. Rhodes had an intense
loyalty to his land and people; he was as gay, gallant, and witty as
he was earnest. More than most Western writers, Rhodes was conscious of
art. He had the common touch and also he was a writer for writing men.
The elements of simplicity and the right kind of sophistication, always
with generosity and with an unflagging zeal for the rights of human
beings, were mixed in him. The reach of any ample-natured man exceeds
his grasp. Rhodes was ample-natured, but he cannot be classed as great
because his grasp was too often disproportionately short of the long
reach. His fiction becomes increasingly dated.

_The Best Novels and, Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes_, edited by Frank
V. Dearing, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1949, contains an introduction,
with plenty of anecdotes and too much enthusiasm, by J. Frank Dobie.

RICHARDS, CLARICE E. A _Tenderfoot Bride_, Garden City, N. Y., 1920.
The experiences of a ranchman's wife in Colorado. The telling has charm,
warmth, and flexibility. In the way that art is always truer than a
literal report, _A Tenderfoot Bride_ brings out truths of life that the
literalistic _A Cowman's Wife_ by Mary Kidder Rak misses.

RICHTER, CONRAD. _The Sea of Grass_, Knopf, New York, 1937. A poetic
portrait in fiction, with psychological values, of a big cowman and his
wife.

RICKETTS, W. P. _50 Years in the Saddle_, Sheridan, Wyoming, 1942. OP.
A natural book with much interesting information. It contains the best
account of trailing cattle from Oregon to Wyoming that I have seen.

RIDINGS, SAM P. _The Chisholm Trail_, 1926. Sam P. Ridings, a lawyer,
published this book himself from Medford, Oklahoma. He had gone over
the land, lived with range men, studied history. A noble book, rich in
anecdote and character. The subtitle reads: "A History of the World's
Greatest Cattle Trail, together with a Description of the Persons, a
Narrative of the Events, and Reminiscences associated with the Same."
OP.

ROBINSON, FRANK C. _A Ram in a Thicket_, Abelard Press, New York, 1950.
Robinson is the author of many Westerns, none of which I have read. This
is an autobiography, here noted because it reveals a maturity of mind
and an awareness of political economy and social evolution hardly
suggested by other writers of Western fiction.

ROLLINS, ALICE WELLINGTON. _The Story of a Ranch_, New York, 1885.
Philip Ashton Rollins (no relation that I know of to Alice Wellington
Rollins) went into Charlie Everitt's bookstore in New York one day and
said, "I want every book with the word _cowboy_ printed in it." _The
Story of a Ranch_ is listed here to illustrate how titles often have
nothing to do with subject. It is without either story or ranch; it is
about some dilettanteish people who go out to a Kansas sheep farm, talk
Chopin, and wash their fingers in finger bowls.

ROLLINS, PHILIP ASHTON. _The Cowboy_, Scribner's, New York, 1924.
Revised, 1936. A scientific exposition; full. Rollins wrote two Western
novels, not important. A wealthy man with ranch experience, he collected
one of the finest libraries of Western books ever assembled by any
individual and presented it to Princeton University.

ROLLINSON, JOHN K. _Pony Trails in Wyoming_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. Not
inspired and not indispensable, but honest autobiography. OP. _Wyoming
Cattle Trails_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1948. A more significant book
than the autobiography. Good on trailing cattle from Oregon.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_, New York, 1888.
Roosevelt understood the West. He became the peg upon which several
range books were hung, Hagedorn's _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_ and
Lang's _Ranching with Roosevelt_ in particular. A good summing up, with
bibliography, is _Roosevelt and the Stockman's Association_, by Ray
H. Mattison, pamphlet issued by the State Historical Society of North
Dakota, Bismarck, 1950.

RUSH, OSCAR. _The Open Range_, Salt Lake City, 1930. Reprinted 1936 by
Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. A sensitive range man's response to natural
things. The subtitle, _Bunk House Philosophy_, characterizes the book.

RUSSELL, CHARLES M. _Trails Plowed Under_, 1927, with introduction by
Will Rogers. Russell was the greatest painter that ever painted a range
man, a range cow, a range horse or a Plains Indian. He savvied the cow,
the grass, the blizzard, the drought, the wolf, the young puncher in
love with his own shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts
of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of
his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a
horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life,
whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular
conditions. _Trails Plowed Under_, prodigally illustrated, is a
collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity.
It incorporates the materials in two Rawhide Rawlins pamphlets. _Good
Medicine_, published posthumously, is a collection of Russell's letters,
illustrations saying more than written words.

Russell's illustrations have enriched numerous range books, B. M.
Bower's novels, Malcolm S. Mackay's _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, and
Patrick T. Tucker's _Riding the High Country_ being outstanding among
them. Tucker's book, autobiography, has a bully chapter on Charlie
Russell. _Charles M. Russell, the Cowboy Artist: A Bibliography_, by
Karl Yost, Pasadena, California, 1948, is better composed than its
companion biography, _Charles M. Russell the Cowboy Artist_, by Ramon F.
Adams and Homer E. Britzman. (Both OP.) One of the most concrete pieces
of writing on Russell is a chapter in _In the Land of Chinook_, by
Al. J. Noyes, Helena, Montana, 1917. "Memories of Charlie Russell," in
_Memories of Old Montana_, by Con Price, Hollywood, 1945, is also
good. All right as far as it goes, about a rock's throw away, is "The
Conservatism of Charles M. Russell," by J. Frank Dobie, in a portfolio
reproduction of _Seven Drawings by Charles M. Russell, with an
Additional Drawing by Tom Lea_, printed by Carl Hertzog, El Paso [1950].

SANTEE, ROSS. _Cowboy_, 1928. OP. The plotless narrative, reading like
autobiography, of a kid who ran away from a farm in East Texas to be a
cowboy in Arizona. His cowpuncher teachers are the kind "who know what
a cow is thinking of before she knows herself." Passages in _Cowboy_
combine reality and elemental melody in a way that almost no other
range writer excepting Charles M. Russell has achieved. Santee is a
pen-and-ink artist also. Among his other books, _Men and Horses_ is
about the best.

SHAW, JAMES C. _North from Texas: Incidents in the Early Life of a
Range Man in Texas, Dakota and Wyoming, 1852-1883_, edited by Herbert O.
Brayer. Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. Edition limited
to 750 copies. I first met this honest autobiography by long quotations
from it in Virginia Cole Trenholm's _Footprints on the Frontier_
(Douglas, Wyoming, 1945), wherein I learned that Shaw's narrative had
been privately printed in Cheyenne in 1931, in pamphlet form, for gifts
to a few friends and members of the author's family. I tried to buy a
copy but could find none for sale at any price. This reprint is in a
format suitable to the economical prose, replete with telling incidents
and homely details. It will soon be only a little less scarce than the
original.

SHEEDY, DENNIS. _The Autobiography of Dennis Sheedy_. Privately printed
in Denver, 1922 or 1923. Sixty pages bound in leather and as scarce as
psalm-singing in "fancy houses." The item is not very important in the
realm of range literature but it exemplifies the successful businessman
that the judicious cowman of open range days frequently became.

SHEFFY, L. F. _The Life and Times of Timothy Dwight Hobart, 1855-1935_,
Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, Canyon, Texas, 1950. Hobart was
manager for the large J A Ranch, established by Charles Goodnight.
He had a sense of history. This mature biography treats of important
developments pertaining to ranching in the Texas Panhandle.

SIRINGO, CHARLES A. A _Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane
Deck of a Spanish Cow Pony_, 1885. The first in time of all cowboy
autobiographies and first, also, in plain rollickiness. Siringo later
told the same story with additions under the titles of _A Lone Star
Cowboy, A Cowboy Detective_, etc., all out of print. Finally, there
appeared his _Riata and Spurs_, Boston, 1927, a summation and extension
of previous autobiographies. Because of a threatened lawsuit, half of it
had to be cut and additional material provided for a "Revised Edition."
No other cowboy ever talked about himself so much in print; few had more
to talk about. I have said my full say on him in an introduction, which
includes a bibliography, to _A Texas Cowboy_, published with Tom Lea
illustrations by Sloane, New York, 1950. OP.

SMITH, ERWIN E., and HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Life on the Texas Range_,
photographs by Smith and text by Haley, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1952. Erwin Smith yearned and studied to be a sculptor. Early in
this century he went with camera to photograph the life of land, cattle,
horses, and men on the big ranches of West Texas. In him feeling and
perspective of artist were fused with technical mastership. "I don't
mean," wrote Tom Lea, "that he made just the best photographs I ever
saw on the subject. I mean the best pictures. That includes paintings,
drawings, prints." On 9 by 12 pages of 100-pound antique finish paper,
the photographs are superbly reproduced. Evetts Haley's introduction
interprets as well as chronicles the life of a strange and tragic man.
The book is easily the finest range book in the realm of the pictorial
ever published.

SMITH, WALLACE. _Garden of the Sun_, Los Angeles, 1939. OP. Despite
the banal title, this is a scholarly work with first-rate chapters on
California horses and ranching in the San Joaquin Valley.

SNYDER, A. B., as told to Nellie Snyder Yost. _Pinnacle Jake_, Caxton,
Caldwell, Idaho, 1951. The setting is Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana
from the 1880's on. Had Pinnacle Jake kept a diary, his accounts of
range characters, especially camp cooks and range horses, with emphasis
on night horses and outlaws, could not have been fresher or more precise
in detail. Reading this book will not give a new interpretation of open
range work with big outfits, but the aliveness of it in both narrative
and sketch makes it among the best of old-time cowboy reminiscences.

SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life on the Range Today_,
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1950. An interviewer's findings
without the historical criticism exemplified by Bernard DeVoto on the
subject of federal-owned ranges (in essays in _Harper's Magazine_ during
the late 1940'S).

STANLEY, CLARK, "better known as the Rattlesnake King." _The Life
and Adventures of the American Cow-Boy_, published by the author at
Providence, Rhode Island, 1897. This pamphlet of forty-one pages, plus
about twenty pages of Snake Oil Liniment advertisements, is one of the
curiosities of cowboy literature. It includes a collection of cowboy
songs, the earliest I know of in time of printing, antedating by eleven
years Jack Thorp's booklet of cowboy songs printed at Estancia, New
Mexico, in 1908. Clark Stanley no doubt used the contents of his
pamphlet in medicine show harangues, thus adding to the cowboy myth. As
time went on, he added scraps of anecdotes and western history, along
with testimonials, to the pamphlet, the latest edition I have seen being
about 1906, printed in Worcester, Massachusetts.

STEEDMAN, CHARLES J. _Bucking the Sagebrush_, New York, 1904. OP.
Charming; much of nature. Illustrated by Russell.


{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Virginian_ by Owen
Wister}



STEVENS, MONTAGUE. _Meet Mr. Grizzly_, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1943. Stevens, a Cambridge Englishman, ranched, hunted, and
made deductions. See characterization under "Bears and Bear Hunters."

STREETER, FLOYD B. _Prairie Trails and Cow Towns_, Boston, 1936. OP.
This brings together considerable information on Kansas cow towns.
Primary books on the subject, besides those by Stuart Henry, McCoy,
Vestal, and Wright herewith listed, are _The Oklahoma Scout_, by
Theodore Baughman, Chicago, 1886; _Midnight and Noonday_, by G. D.
Freeman, Caldwell, Kansas, 1892; biographies of Wild Bill Hickok,
town marshal; Stuart N. Lake's biography of Wyatt Earp, another noted
marshal; _Hard Knocks_, by Harry Young, Chicago, 1915, not too prudish
to notice dance hall girls but too Victorian to say much. Many Texas
trail drivers had trouble as well as fun in the cow towns. _Life
and Adventures of Ben Thompson_, by W. M. Walton, 1884, reprinted at
Bandera, Texas, 1926, gives samples. Thompson was more gambler than
cowboy; various other men who rode from cow camps into town and found
themselves in their element were gamblers and gunmen first and cowboys
only in passing.

STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, two volumes,
Cleveland, 1925. Nothing better on the cowboy has ever been written
than the chapter entitled "Cattle Business" in Volume II. A prime work
throughout. OP.

THORP, JACK (N. Howard) has a secure place in range literature because
of his contribution in cowboy songs. (See entry under "Cowboy Songs and
Other Ballads.") In 1926 he had printed at Santa Fe a paper-backed book
of 123 pages entitled _Tales of the Chuck Wagon_, but "didn't sell
more than two or three million copies." Some of the tales are in his
posthumously published reminiscences, _Pardner of the Wind_ (as told
to Neil McCullough Clark, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945). This book
is richest on range horses, and will be found listed in the section on
"Horses."

TOWNE, CHARLES WAYLAND, and WENTWORTH, EDWARD NORRIS. _Shepherd's
Empire_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1945. Not firsthand in
the manner of Gilfillan's _Sheep_, nor charming and light in the manner
of Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_, but an essayical history, based on
research. The deference paid to Mary Austin's _The Flock_ marks the
author as civilized. Towne wrote the book; Wentworth supplied the
information. Wentworth's own book, _America's Sheep Trails_, Iowa State
College Press, Ames, 1948, is ponderous, amorphous, and in part, only a
eulogistic "mugbook."

TOWNSHEND, R. B. _A Tenderfoot in Colorado_, London, 1923; _The
Tenderfoot in New Mexico_, 1924. Delightful as well as faithful.
Literature by an Englishman who translated Tacitus under the spires of
Oxford after he retired from the range.

TREADWELL, EDWARD F. _The Cattle King_, New York, 1931; reissued by
Christopher, Boston. A strong biography of a very strong man--Henry
Miller of California.

TRENHOLM, VIRGINIA COLE. _Footprints on the Frontier_, Douglas, Wyoming,
1945. OP. The best range material in this book is a reprint of parts of
James C. Shaw's _Pioneering in Texas and Wyoming_, privately printed at
Cheyenne in 1931.

TRUETT, VELMA STEVENS. _On the Hoof in Nevada_, Gehrett-Truett-Hall, Los
Angeles, 1950. A 613-page album of cattle brands--priced at $10.00. The
introduction is one of the sparse items on Nevada ranching.

TUCKER, PATRICK T. _Riding the High Country_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1933. A
brave book with much of Charlie Russell in it. OP.

VESTAL, STANLEY (pen name for Walter S. Campbell). _Queen of Cow Towns,
Dodge City_, Harper, New York, 1952. "Bibulous Babylon," "Killing of
Dora Hand," and "Marshals for Breakfast" are chapter titles suggesting
the tenor of the book.

_Vocabulario y Refranero Criollo_, text and illustrations by Tito
Saudibet, Guillermo Kraft Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1945. North American
ranges have called forth nothing to compare with this fully illustrated,
thorough, magnificent history-dictionary of the gaucho world. It stands
out in contrast to American slapdash, puerile-minded pretenses at
dictionary treatises on cowboy life.

"He who knows only the history of his own country does not know it." The
cowboy is not a singular type. He was no better rider than the Cossack
of Asia. His counterpart in South America, developed also from
Spanish cattle, Spanish horses, and Spanish techniques, is the gaucho.
Literature on the gaucho is extensive, some of it of a high order.
Primary is _Martin Fierro_, the epic by Jose Hernandez (published
1872-79). A translation by Walter Owen was published in the United
States in 1936. No combination of knowledge, sympathy, imagination, and
craftsmanship has produced stories and sketches about the cowboy equal
to those on the gaucho by W. H. Hudson, especially in _Tales of the
Pampas_ and _Far Away and Long Ago_, and by R. B. Cunninghame Graham,
whose writings are dispersed and difficult to come by.

WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Great Plains_, Ginn, Boston, 1931. While
this landmark in historical interpretation of the West is by no means
limited to the subject of grazing, it contains a long and penetrating
chapter entitled "The Cattle Kingdom." The book is an analysis of land,
climate, barbed wire, dry farming, wells and windmills, native animal
life, etc. No other work on the plains country goes so meatily into
causes and effects.

WELLMAN, PAUL I. _The Trampling Herd_, Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y.,
1939; reissued, 1951. An attempt to sum up the story of the cattle range
in America.

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _Arizona Nights_, 1902. "Rawhide," one of the
stories in this excellent collection, utilizes folk motifs about rawhide
with much skill.

WILLIAMS, J. R. _Cowboys Out Our Way_, with an Introduction by J.
Frank Dobie, Scribner's, New York, 1951. An album reproducing about two
hundred of the realistic, humorous, and human J. R. Williams syndicated
cartoons. This book was preceded by _Out Our Way_, New York, 1943, and
includes numerous cartoons therein printed. There was an earlier and
less extensive collection. Modest Jim Williams has been progressively
dissatisfied with all his cartoon books--and with cartoons not in books.
I like them and in my Introduction say why.

WISTER, OWEN. _The Virginian_, 1902. Wister was an outsider looking in.
His hero, "The Virginian," is a cowboy without cows--like the cowboys
of Eugene Manlove Rhodes; but this hero does not even smell of cows,
whereas Rhodes's men do. Nevertheless, the novel authentically realizes
the code of the range, and it makes such absorbing reading that in fifty
years (1902-52) it sold over 1,600,000 copies, not counting foreign
translations and paper reprints.

Wister was an urbane Harvard man, of clubs and travels. In 1952 the
University of Wyoming celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the
publication of _The Virginian_. To mark the event, Frances K. W. Stokes
wrote _My Father Owen Wister_, a biographical pamphlet including "ten
letters written to his mother during his trip to Wyoming in 1885"--a
trip that prepared him to write the novel. The pamphlet is published at
Laramie, Wyoming, name of publisher not printed on it.

WRIGHT, PETER. _A Three-Foot Stool_, New York and London, 1909. Like
several other Englishmen who went west, Wright had the perspective that
enabled him to comprehend some aspects of ranch life more fully than
many range men who knew nothing but their own environment and times.
He compares the cowboy to the cowherd described by Queen Elizabeth's
Spenser. Into exposition of ranching on the Gila, he interweaves talk
on Arabian afreets, Stevenson's philosophy of adventure, and German
imperialism.

WRIGHT, ROBERT M. _Dodge City, Cowboy Capital_, Wichita, Kansas, 1913;
reprinted. Good on the most cowboyish of all the cow towns.


PAMPHLETS


Pamphlets are an important source of knowledge in all fields. No
first-class library is without them. Most of them become difficult
to obtain, and some bring higher prices than whole sets of books. Of
numerous pamphlets pertaining to the range, only a few are listed here.
_History of the Chisum War, or Life of Ike Fridge_, by Ike Fridge,
Electra, Texas (undated), is as compact as jerked beef and as laconic
as conversation in alkali dust. James F. Hinkle, in his _Early Days of
a Cowboy on the Pecos_, Roswell, New Mexico, 1937, says: "One noticeable
characteristic of the cowpunchers was that they did not talk much." Some
people don't have to talk to say plenty. Hinkle was one of them. At
a reunion of trail drivers in San Antonio in October, 1928, Fred S.
Millard showed me his laboriously written reminiscences. He wanted
them printed. I introduced him to J. Marvin Hunter of Bandera, Texas,
publisher of _Frontier Times_. I told Hunter not to ruin the English
by trying to correct it, as he had processed many of the earth-born
reminiscences in _The Trail Drivers of Texas_. He printed Millard's _A
Cowpuncher of the Pecos_ in pamphlet form shortly thereafter. It begins:
"This is a piece I wrote for the Trail Drivers." They would understand
some things on which he was not explicit.

About 1940, as he told me, Bob Beverly of Lovington, New Mexico, made a
contract with the proprietor of the town's weekly newspaper to print his
reminiscences. By the time the contractor had set eighty-seven pages
of type he saw that he would lose money if he set any more. He gave Bob
Beverly back more manuscript than he had used and stapled a pamphlet
entitled _Hobo of the Rangeland_. The philosophy in it is more
interesting to me than the incidents. "The cowboy of the old West worked
in a land that seemed to be grieving over something--a kind of sadness,
loneliness in a deathly quiet. One not acquainted with the plains could
not understand what effect it had on the mind. It produced a heartache
and a sense of exile."

Crudely printed, but printed as the author talked, is _The End of the
Long Horn Trail_, by A. P. (Ott) Black, Selfridge, North Dakota (August,
1939). As I know from a letter from his _compadre_, Black was blind and
sixty-nine years old when he dictated his memoirs to a college graduate
who had sense enough to retain the flavor. Black's history is badly
botched, but reading him is like listening. "It took two coons and an
alligator to spend the summer on that cotton plantation.... Cowpunchers
were superstitious about owls. One who rode into my camp one night had
killed a man somewhere and was on the dodge. He was lying down by the
side of the campfire when an owl flew over into some hackberry trees
close by and started hooting. He got up from there right now, got his
horse in, saddled up and rode off into the night."

John Alley is--or was--a teacher. His _Memories of Roundup Days_,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1934 (just twenty small pages), is an
appraisal of range men, a criticism of life seldom found in old-timers
who look back. On the other hand, some pamphlets prized by collectors
had as well not have been written. Here is the full title of an example:
_An Aged Wanderer, A Life Sketch of J. M. Parker, A Cowboy of the
Western Plains in the Early Days_. "Price 40 cents. Headquarters,
Elkhorn Wagon Yard, San Angelo, Texas." It was printed about 1923. When
Parker wrote it he was senile, and there is no evidence that he was
ever possessed of intelligence. The itching to get into print does not
guarantee that the itcher has anything worth printing.

Some of the best reminiscences have been pried out of range men. In 1914
the Wyoming Stock Growers Association resolved a Historical Commission
into existence. A committee was appointed and, naturally, one man did
the work. In 1923 a fifty-five-page pamphlet entitled _Letters from
Old Friends and Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association_ was
printed at Cheyenne. It is made up of unusually informing and pungent
recollections by intelligent cowmen.





22. Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads

{illust. Lyrics = Kind friends, if you will listen, A story I will tell
A-bout a final bust-up, That happened down in Dell.}


COWBOY SONGS and ballads are generally ranked alongside Negro spirituals
as being the most important of America's contributions to folk song. As
compared with the old English and Scottish ballads, the cowboy and
all other ballads of the American frontiers generally sound cheap and
shoddy. Since John A. Lomax brought out his collection in 1910, cowboy
songs have found their way into scores of songbooks, have been
recorded on hundreds of records, and have been popularized, often--and
naturally--without any semblance to cowboy style, by thousands of radio
singers. Two general anthologies are recommended especially for the
cowboy songs they contain: _American Ballads and Folk Songs_, by John
A. and Alan Lomax, Macmillan, New York, 1934; _The American Songbag_, by
Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1927.


LARRIN, MARGARET. _Singing Cowboy_ (with music), New York, 1931. OP.

LOMAX, JOHN A., and LOMAX, ALAN. _Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier
Ballads_, Macmillan, New York, 1938. This is a much added-to and revised
form of Lomax's 1910 collection, under the same title. It is the most
complete of all anthologies. More than any other man, John A. Lomax is
responsible for having made cowboy songs a part of the common heritage
of America. His autobiographic _Adventures of a Ballad Hunter_
(Macmillan, 1947) is in quality far above the jingles that most cowboy
songs are.

Missouri, as no other state, gave to the West and Southwest. Much of
Missouri is still more southwestern in character than much of Oklahoma.
For a full collection, with full treatment, of the ballads and songs,
including bad-man and cowboy songs, sung in the Southwest there is
nothing better than _Ozark Folksongs_, collected and edited by Vance
Randolph, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, 1946-50. An
unsurpassed work in four handsome volumes.

OWENS, WILLIAM A. _Texas Folk Songs_, Southern Methodist University
Press, Dallas, 1950. A miscellany of British ballads, American ballads,
"songs of doleful love," etc. collected in Texas mostly from country
people of Anglo-American stock. Musical scores for all the songs.

The Texas Folklore Society has published many cowboy songs. Its
publications _Texas and Southwestern Lore_ (1927) and _Follow de
Drinkin' Gou'd_ (1928) contain scores, with music and anecdotal
interpretations. Other volumes contain other kinds of songs, including
Mexican.

THORP, JACK (N. Howard). _Songs of the Cowboys_, Boston, 1921. OP. Good,
though limited, anthology, without music and with illuminating comments.
A pamphlet collection that Thorp privately printed at Estancia, New
Mexico, in 1908, was one of the first to be published. Thorp had the
perspective of both range and civilization. He was a kind of troubadour
himself. The opening chapter, "Banjo in the Cow Camps," of his
posthumous reminiscences, _Pardner of the Wind, is_ delicious.





23. Horses: Mustangs and Cow Ponies

THE WEST WAS DISCOVERED, battled over, and won by men on horseback.
Spanish conquistadores saddled their horses in Vera Cruz and rode until
they had mapped the continents from the Horn to Montana and from the
Floridas to the harbors of the Californias. The padres with them rode on
horseback, too, and made every mission a horse ranch. The national dance
of Mexico, the Jarabe, is an interpretation of the clicking of hoofs and
the pawing and prancing of spirited horses that the Aztecs noted when
the Spaniards came. Likewise, the chief contribution made by white
men of America to the folk songs of the world--the cowboy songs--are
rhythmed to the walk of horses.

Astride horses introduced by the conquistadores to the Americas, the
Plains Indians became almost a separate race from the foot-moving tribes
of the East and the stationary Pueblos of the Rockies. The men that
later conquered and corralled these wild-riding Plains Indians were
plainsmen on horses and cavalrymen. The earliest American explorers and
trappers of both Plains and Rocky Mountains went out in the saddle. The
first industrial link between the East and the West was a mounted pack
train beating out the Santa Fe Trail. On west beyond the end of this
trail, in Spanish California, even the drivers of oxen rode horseback.
The first transcontinental express was the Pony Express.

Outlaws and bad men were called "long riders." The Texas Ranger who
followed them was, according to his own proverb, "no better than his
horse." Booted sheriffs from Brownsville on the Rio Grande to the Hole
in the Wall in the Big Horn Mountains lived in the saddle. Climactic of
all the riders rode the cowboy, who lived with horse and herd.

In the Old West the phrase "left afoot" meant nothing short of being
left flat on your back. "A man on foot is no man at all," the saying
went. If an enemy could not take a man's life, the next best thing was
to take his horse. Where cow thieves went scot free, horse thieves were
hanged, and to say that a man was "as common as a horse thief" was to
express the nadir of commonness. The pillow of the frontiersmen who
slept with a six-shooter under it was a saddle, and hitched to the horn
was the loose end of a stake rope. Just as "Colonel Colt" made all
men equal in a fight, the horse made all men equal in swiftness and
mobility.

The proudest names of civilized languages when literally translated mean
"horseman": eques, caballero, chevalier, cavalier. Until just yesterday
the Man on Horseback had been for centuries the symbol of power and
pride. The advent of the horse, from Spanish sources, so changed the
ways and psychology of the Plains Indians that they entered into what
historians call the Age of Horse Culture. Almost until the automobile
came, the whole West and Southwest were dominated by a Horse Culture.

Material on range horses is scattered through the books listed under
"Range Life," "Stagecoaches, Freighting," "Pony Express."

No thorough comprehension of the Spanish horse of the Americas is
possible without consideration of this horse's antecedents, and that
involves a good deal of the horse history of the world.

BROWN, WILLIAM ROBINSON. _The Horse of the Desert_ (no publisher or
place on title page), 1936; reprinted by Macmillan, New York. A noble,
beautiful, and informing book.

CABRERA, ANGEL. _Caballos de America_, Buenos Aires, 1945. The authority
on Argentine horses.

CARTER, WILLIAM H. _The Horses of the World_, National Geographic
Society, Washington, D. C., 1923. A concentrated survey.

_Cattleman_. Published at Fort Worth, this monthly magazine of the Texas
and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association began in 1939 to issue, for
September, a horse number. It has published a vast amount of material
both scientific and popular on range horses. Another monthly magazine
worth knowing about is the _Western Horseman_, Colorado Springs,
Colorado.

DENHARDT, ROBERT MOORMAN. _The Horse of the Americas_, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1947. This historical treatment of the Spanish
horse could be better ordered; some sections of the book are little more
than miscellanies.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson,
Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. Before this handsome book arrives at
the wild horses of North America, a third of it has been spent on the
Arabian progenitors of the Spanish horse, the acquisition of the Spanish
horse by western Indians, and the nature of Indian horses. There are
many narratives of mustangs and mustangers and of Spanish-blooded horses
under the saddle. The author has tried to compass the natural history of
the animal and to blend vividness with learning. The book incorporates
his _Tales of the Mustang_, a slight volume published in an edition of
only three hundred copies in 1936. It also incorporates a large part of
_Mustangs and Cow Horses_, edited by Dobie, Boatright, and Ransom, and
issued by the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1940--a volume that went
out of print not long after it was published.

DODGE, THEODORE A. _Riders of Many Lands_, New York, 1893. Illustrations
by Remington. Wide and informed views.

GRAHAM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME. _The Horses of the Conquest_, London, 1930.
Graham was both historian and horseman, as much at home on the pampas as
in his ancient Scottish home. This excellent book on the Spanish horses
introduced to the Western Hemisphere is in a pasture to itself.
Reprinted in 1949 by the University of Oklahoma Press, with introduction
and notes by Robert Moorman Denhardt.

{illust. caption = Charles Banks Wilson, in _The Mustangs_ by J. Frank
Dobie (1952)}

GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. OP.

HASTINGS, FRANK. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. "Old
Gran'pa" is close to the best American horse story I have ever read. OP.

HAYES, M. HORACE. _Points of the Horse_, London, 1904. This and
subsequent editions are superior in treatment and illustrations to
earlier editions. Hayes was a far traveler and scholar as well as
horseman. One of the less than a dozen best books on the horse.

JAMES, WILL. _Smoky_, Scribner's, New York, 1930. Perhaps the best of
several books that Will James--always with illustrations--has woven
around horse heroes.

LEIGH, WILLIAM R. _The Western Pony_, New York, 1933. One of the
most beautifully printed books on the West; beautiful illustrations;
illuminating text. OP.

MULLER, DAN. _Horses_, Reilly and Lee, Chicago, 1936. Interesting
illustrations.

PATTULLO, GEORGE. _The Untamed_, New York, 1911. A collection of short
stories, among which "Corazon" and "Neutria" are excellent on horses.
OP.

PERKINS, CHARLES ELLIOTT. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California,
1927. A fine narrative, illustrated by Edward Borein. OP.

RIDGEWAY, W. _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_,
Cambridge, England, 1905. A standard work, though many of its
conclusions are disputed, especially by Lady Wentworth in her
_Thoroughbred Racing Stock and Its Ancestors_, London, 1938.

SANTEE, ROSS. _Men and Horses_, New York, 1926. Three chapters of this
book, "A Fool About a Horse," "The Horse Wrangler," and "The Rough
String," are especially recommended. _Cowboy_, New York, 1928, reveals
in a fine way the rapport between the cowboy and his horse. _Sleepy
Black,_ New York, 1933, is a story of a horse designed for younger
readers; being good on the subject, it is good for any reader. All OP.

SIMPSON, GEORGE GAYLOR. _Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in
the Modern World and through Sixty Million Years of History_, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1951. In the realm of paleontology this work
supplants all predecessors. Bibliography.

STEELE, RUFUS. _Mustangs of the Mesas_, Hollywood, California, 1941.
OP. Modern mustanging in Nevada; excellently written narratives of
outstanding mustangs.

STONG, PHIL. _Horses and Americans_, New York, 1939. A survey and a
miscellany combined. OP.


{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Untamed_ by George
Pattullo (1911)}



THORP, JACK (N. Howard) as told to Neil McCullough Clark. _Pardner of
the Wind_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945. Two chapters in this book
make the "Spanish thunderbolts," as Jack Thorp called the mustangs and
Spanish cow horses, graze, run, pitch, and go gentle ways as free as the
wind. "Five Hundred Mile Horse Race" is a great story. No other range
man excepting Ross Santee has put down so much everyday horse lore in
such a fresh way.

TWEEDIE, MAJOR GENERAL W. _The Arabian Horse: His Country and People_,
Edinburgh and London, 1894. One of the few horse books to be classified
as literature. Wise in the blend of horse, land, and people.

WENTWORTH, LADY. _The Authentic Arabian Horse and His Descendants_,
London, 1945. Rich in knowledge and both magnificent and munificent in
illustrations. Almost immediately after publication, this noble volume
entered the rare book class.

WYMAN, WALKER D. _The Wild Horse of the West_, Caxton, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1945. A scholarly sifting of virtually all available material
on mustangs. Readable. Only thorough bibliography on subject so far
published.





24. The Bad Man Tradition

PLENTY of six-shooter play is to be found in most of the books about
old-time cowboys; yet hardly one of the professional bad men was a
representative cowboy. Bad men of the West and cowboys alike wore
six-shooters and spurs; they drank each other's coffee; they had a
fanatical passion for liberty--for themselves. But the representative
cowboy was a reliable hand, hanging through drought, blizzard, and high
water to his herd, whereas the bona fide bad man lived on the dodge.
Between the killer and the cowboy standing up for his rights or merely
shooting out the lights for fun, there was as much difference as between
Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Of course, the elements were mixed
in the worst of the bad men, as they are in the best of all good men. No
matter what deductions analysis may lead to, the fact remains that the
western bad men of open range days have become a part of the American
tradition. They represent six-shooter culture at its zenith--the wild
and woolly side of the West--a stage between receding bowie knife
individualism of the backwoods and blackguard, machine-gun gangsterism
of the city.

The songs about Sam Bass, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid reflect popular
attitude toward the hard-riding outlaws. Sam Bass, Jesse James, Billy
the Kid, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Joaquin Murrieta, John Wesley
Hardin, Al Jennings, Belle Starr, and other "long riders" with their
guns in their hands have had their biographies written over and over.
They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying
under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, they, like antique
Robin Hood and the late Pancho Villa, recede from all realistic
judgment. If the picture show finds in them models for generosity,
gallantry, and fidelity to a code of liberty, and if the public finds
them picturesque, then philosophers may well be thankful that they
lived, rode, and shot.

{illust. caption = Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)}

"The long-tailed heroes of the revolver," to pick a phrase from Mark
Twain's unreverential treatment of them in _Roughing It_, often
did society a service in shooting each other--aside from providing
entertainment to future generations. As "The Old Cattleman" of Alfred
Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ stories says, "A heap of people need a heap
of killing." Nor can the bad men be logically segregated from the
long-haired killers on the side of the law like Wild Bill Hickok and
Wyatt Earp. W. H. Hudson once advanced the theory that bloodshed and
morality go together. If American civilization proceeds, the rage for
collecting books on bad men will probably subside until a copy of Miguel
Antonio Otero's _The Real Billy the Kid_ will bring no higher price
than a first edition of A. Edward Newton's _The Amenities of
Book-Collecting_.

See "Fighting Texians," "Texas Rangers," "Range Life," "Cowboy Songs and
Other Ballads."


AIKMAN, DUNCAN. _Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats_, 1927. OP.
Patronizing in the H. L. Mencken style.

BILLY THE KID. We ve got to take him seriously, not so much for what he
was--

     There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through,
     And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two--

as for his provocations. Popular imagination, represented by writers of
all degrees, goes on playing on him with cumulative effect. As a figure
in literature the Kid has come to lead the whole field of western
bad men. The _Saturday Review_, for October 11, 1952, features a
philosophical essay entitled "Billy the Kid: Faust in America--The
Making of a Legend." The growth of this legend is minutely traced
through a period of seventy-one years (1881-1952) by J. C. Dykes in
_Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1952 (186 pages). It lists 437 titles, including
magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets,
fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholarship, it gives the
substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads
like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent
and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related
characters weave all through it. A first-class bibliography that is also
readable is almost a new genre.

Pat F. Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, killed the Kid
about midnight, July 14, 1881. The next spring his _Authentic Life
of Billy the Kid_ was published at Santa Fe, at least partly written,
according to good evidence, by a newspaperman named Ash Upton. This
biography is one of the rarities in Western Americana. In 1927 it was
republished by Macmillan, New York, under title of _Pat F. Garrett's
Authentic Life of Billy the Kid_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton. This is
now OP but remains basic. The most widely circulated biography has been
_The Saga of Billy the Kid_ by Walter Noble Burns, New York, 1926.
It contains a deal of fictional conversation and it has no doubt
contributed to the Robin-Hoodizing of the lethal character baptized as
William H. Bonney, who was born in New York in 1859 and now lives with
undiminished vigor as Billy the Kid. Walter Noble Burns was not so
successful with _The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin
Murrieta_ (1932), or, despite hogsheads of blood, with _Tombstone_
(1927).

CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, Boston, 1930.

COE, GEORGE W. _Frontier Fighter_, Boston, 1934; reprinted by University
of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. The autobiography of one of Billy the
Kid's men as recorded by Nan Hillary Harrison.

COOLIDGE, DANE. _Fighting Men of the West_, New York, 1932. Biographical
sketches. OP.

CUNNINGHAM, EUGENE. _Triggernometry_, 1934; reprinted by Caxton,
Caldwell, Idaho. Excellent survey of codes and characters. Written by a
man of intelligence and knowledge. Bibliography.

FORREST, E. R. _Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground_, Caxton, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1936.

GARD, WAYNE. _Sam Bass_, Boston, 1936. Most of the whole truth. OP.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Jeff Milton--A Good Man with a Gun_, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Jeff Milton the whole man as well as the
queller of bad men.

HENDRICKS, GEORGE. _The Bad Man of the West_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1941.
Analyses and classifications go far toward making this treatment of old
subjects original. Excellent bibliographical guide.

HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Outlaw_, 1907. OP. An omnibus
carelessly put together with many holes in it.

LAKE, STUART. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Best written of all gunmen
biographies. Earp happened to be on the side of the law.

LANKFORD, N. P. _Vigilante Days and Ways_, 1890, 1912. OP. Full
treatment of lawlessness in the Northwest.

LOVE, ROBERTUS. _The Rise and Fall of Jesse James_, New York, 1926.
Excellently written. OP.

RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD. _Famous s and Western Outlaws_, Doubleday, Garden
City, N. Y., 1929. A rogues' gallery. _Guns of the Frontier_, Boston,
1940. Another miscellany. OP.

RASCOE, BURTON. _Belle Starr_, New York, 1941. OP.

RIPLEY, THOMAS. _They Died with Their Boots On_, 1935. Mostly about John
Wesley Hardin. OP.

SABIN, EDWIN L. _Wild Men of the Wild West_, New York, 1929. Biographic
survey of killers from the Mississippi to the Pacific. OP.

WILD BILL HICKOK. The subject of various biographies, among them
those by Frank J. Wilstach (1926) and William E. Connelley (1933). The
_Nebraska History Magazine_ (Volume X) for April-June 1927 is devoted to
Wild Bill and contains a "descriptive bibliography" on him by Addison E.
Sheldon.

WOODHULL, FROST. Folk-Lore Shooting, in _Southwestern Lore_, Publication
IX of the Texas Folklore Society, 1931. Rich. Humor.





25. Mining and Oil

DURING the twentieth century oil has brought so much money to the
Southwest that the proceeds from cattle have come to look like tips.
This statement is not based on statistics, though statistics no doubt
exist--even on the cost of catching sun perch. Geological, legal, and
economic writings on oil are mountainous in quantity, but the human
drama of oil yet remains, for the most part, to be written. It is odd
to find such a modern book as Erna Fergusson's _Our Southwest_ not
mentioning oil. It is odd that no book of national reputation comes off
the presses about any aspect of oil. The nearest to national notice on
oil is the daily report of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oil companies subsidize histories of themselves, endow universities with
money to train technicians they want, control state legislatures and
senates, and dictate to Congress what they want for themselves in income
tax laws; but so far they have not been able to hire anybody to write
a book about oil that anybody but the hirers themselves wants to read.
Probably they don't read them. The first thing an oilman does after
amassing a few millions is buy a ranch on which he can get away from
oil--and on which he can spend some of his oil money.

People live a good deal by tradition and fight a good deal by tradition
also, voting more by prejudice. When one considers the stream of cow
country books and the romance of mining living on in legends of lost
mines and, then, the desert of oil books, one realizes that it takes
something more than money to make the mare of romance run. Geology and
economics are beyond the aim of this _Guide_, but if oil money keeps on
buying up ranch land, the history of modern ranching will be resolved
into the biographies of a comparatively few oilmen.


BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields_. Texas
Folklore Society, Austin, 1945. Folk tales about Gib rather than
minstrelsy. OP.

BOONE, LALIA PHIPPS. _The Petroleum Dictionary_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1952. "More than 6,000 entries: definitions of technical
terms and everyday expressions, a comprehensive guide to the language of
the oil industry."

CAUGHEY, JOHN WALTON. _Gold Is the Cornerstone_ (1948). Adequate
treatment of the discovery of California gold and of the miners.
_Rushing for Gold_ (1949). Twelve essays by twelve writers, with
emphasis on travel to California. Both books published by University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

CENDRARS, BLAISE. _Sutter's Gold_, London, 1926. OP.

CLARK, JAMES A., and HALBOUTY, MICHEL T. _Spindletop_, Random House, New
York, 1952. On January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher, near Beaumont,
Texas, roared in the oil age. This book, while it presumes to record
what Pat Higgins was thinking as he sat in front of a country store,
seems to be "the true story." The bare facts in it make drama.

DE QUILLE, DAN (pseudonym for William Wright). _The Big Bonanza_,
Hartford, 1876. Reprinted, 1947. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _Coronado's Children_, Dallas, 1930; reprinted by
Grosset and Dunlap, New York. Legendary tales of lost mines and buried
treasures of the Southwest. _Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, Little,
Brown, Boston, 1939. More of the same thing.

EMRICH, DUNCAN, editor. _Comstock Bonanza_, Vanguard, New York, 1950.
A collection of writings, garnered mostly from West Coast magazines and
newspapers, bearing on mining in Nevada during the boom days of Mark
Twain's.

{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _Santa Rita_ by Martin W. Schwettmann
(1943)}

_Roughing It_. James G. Gally's writing is a major discovery in a minor
field.

FORBES, GERALD. _Flush Production: The Epic of Oil in the
Gulf-Southwest_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1942.

GILLIS, WILLIAM R. _Goldrush Days with Mark Twain_, New York, 1930. OP.

GLASSCOCK, LUCILLE. _A Texas Wildcatter_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1952.
The wildcatter is Mrs. Glasscock's husband. She chronicles this player's
main moves in the game and gives an insight into his energy-driven
ambition.

HOUSE, BOYCE. _Oil Boom_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. With Boyce
House's earlier _Were You in Ranger?_, this book gives a contemporary
picture of the gushing days of oil, money, and humanity.

LYMAN, GEORGE T. _The Saga of the Comstock Lode_, 1934, and _Ralston's
Ring_, 1937. Both published by Scribner's, New York.

MCKENNA, JAMES _A. Black Range Tales_, New York, 1936. Reminiscences of
prospecting life. OP.

MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W.
Marland_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. Mature in style
and in interpretative power, John Joseph Mathews goes into the very life
of an oilman who was something else.

RISTER, C. C. _Oil! Titan of the Southwest_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1949. Facts in factual form. Plenty of oil wealth and
taxes; nothing on oil government.

SHINN, CHARLES H. _Mining Camps_, 1885, reprinted by Knopf, New York,
1948. Perhaps the most competent analysis extant on the behavior of the
gold hunters, with emphasis on their self-government. _The Story of the
Mine as Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada_, New York,
1896. OP. Shinn knew and he knew also how to combine into form.

STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, Cleveland, 1925.
Superb on California and Montana hunger for precious metals. OP.

TAIT, SAMUEL W. _Wildcatters: An Informal History of Oil-Hunting in
America_, Princeton University Press, 1946. OP.

TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_. The mining boom itself.





26. Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists

"NO MAN," says Mary Austin, "has ever really entered into the heart of
any country until he has adopted or made up myths about its familiar
objects." A man might reject the myths but he would have to know many
facts about its natural life and have imagination as well as knowledge
before entering into a country's heart. The history of any land begins
with nature, and all histories must end with nature.

"The character of a country is the destiny of its people," wrote Harvey
Fergusson in _Rio Grande_. Ross Calvin, also of New Mexico, had the same
idea in mind when he entitled his book _Sky Determines_. "Culture
mocks at the boundaries set up by politics," Clark Wissler said. "It
approaches geographical boundaries with its hat in its hand." The
engineering of water across mountains, electric translation of sounds,
refrigeration of air and foods, and other technical developments carry
human beings a certain distance across some of nature's boundaries, but
no cleverness of science can escape nature. The inhabitants of Yuma,
Arizona, are destined forever to face a desert devoid of graciousness.
Technology does not create matter; it merely uses matter in a skilful
way--uses it up.

Man advances by learning the secrets of nature and taking advantage of
his knowledge. He is deeply happy only when in harmony with his work
and environments. The backwoodsman, early settler, pioneer plainsman,
mountain man were all like some infuriated beast of Promethean
capabilities tearing at its own vitals. Driven by an irrational energy,
they seemed intent on destroying not only the growth of the soil but the
power of the soil to reproduce. Davy Crockett, the great bear killer,
was "wrathy to kill a bear," and as respects bears and other wild life,
one may search the chronicles of his kind in vain for anything beyond
the incidents of chase and slaughter. To quote T. B. Thorpe's blusterous
bear hunter, the whole matter may be summed up in one sentence: "A bear
is started and he is killed." For the average American of the soil,
whether wearing out a farm, shotgunning with a headlight the last doe
of a woodland, shooting the last buffalo on the range, trapping the
last howling lobo, winging the last prairie chicken, running down in an
automobile the last antelope, making a killer's target of any hooting
owl or flying heron that comes within range, poisoning the last eagle to
fly over a sheep pasture for him the circumstances of the killing have
expressed his chief intellectual interest in nature.

A sure sign of advancing civilization has been the rapidly changing
popular attitude toward nature during recent years. People are becoming
increasingly interested not merely in conserving game for sportsmen
to shoot, but in preserving all wild life, in observing animals, in
cultivating native flora, in building houses that harmonize with climate
and landscape. Roger Tory Peterson's _Field Guide to the Birds_ has
become one of the popular standard works of America.

The story of the American Indian is--despite taboos and squalor--a story
of harmonizations with nature. "Wolf Brother," in _Long Lance_, by Chief
Buffalo Child Long Lance, is a poetic concretion of this harmony. As
much at ease with the wilderness as any Blackfoot Indian was George
Frederick Ruxton, educated English officer and gentleman, who rode
horseback from Vera Cruz to the Missouri River and wrote _Adventures
in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_. In this book he tells how a lobo
followed him for days from camp to camp, waiting each evening for his
share of fresh meat and sometimes coming close to the fire at night. Any
orthodox American would have shot the lobo at first appearance. Ruxton
had the civilized perspective on nature represented by Thoreau and Saint
Francis of Assisi. Primitive harmony was run over by frontier wrath to
kill, a wrath no less barbaric than primitive superstitions.

But the coyote's howl is more tonic than all theories about nature; the
buck's whistle more invigorating; the bull's bellow in the canyon more
musical; the call of the bobwhite more serene; the rattling of the
rattlesnake more logical; the scream of the panther more arousing to the
imagination; the odor from the skunk more lingering; the sweep of the
buzzard in the air more majestical; the wariness of the wild turkey
brighter; the bark of the prairie dog lighter; the guesses of the
armadillo more comical; the upward dartings and dippings of the
scissortail more lovely; the flight of the sandhill cranes more fraught
with mystery.

There is an abundance of printed information on the animal life of
America, to the west as well as to the east. Much of it cannot be
segregated; the earthworm, on which Darwin wrote a book, knows nothing
of regionalism. The best books on nature come from and lead to the
Grasshopper's Library, which is free to all consultants. I advise the
consultant to listen to the owl's hoot for wisdom, plant nine bean rows
for peace, and, with Wordsworth, sit on an old gray stone listening for
"authentic tidings of invisible things." Studies are only to "perfect
nature." In the words of Mary Austin, "They that make the sun noise
shall not fail of the sun's full recompense."

Like knowledge in any other department of life, that on nature never
comes to a stand so long as it has vitality. A continuing interest
in natural history is nurtured by _Natural History_, published by the
American Museum of Natural History, New York; _Nature_, published
in Washington, D. C.; _The Living Wilderness_, also from Washington;
_Journal of Mammalogy_, a quarterly, Baltimore, Maryland; _Audubon
Magazine_ (formerly _Bird Lore_), published by the National Audubon
Society, New York; _American Forests_, Washington, D. C., and various
other publications.

In addition to books of natural history interest listed below, others
are listed under "Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters," "Bears and Bear
Hunters," "Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers," "Birds and Wild Flowers," and
"Interpreters." Perhaps a majority of worthy books pertaining to the
western half of America look on the outdoors.


ADAMS, W. H. DAVENPORT (from the French of Benedict Revoil). _The Hunter
and the Trapper of North America_, London, 1875. A strange book.

ARNOLD, OREN. _Wild Life in the Southwest_, Dallas, 1936. Helpful
chapters on various characteristic animals and plants. OP.

BAILEY, VERNON. _Mammals of New Mexico_, United States Department of
Agriculture, Bureau of Biological Survey, Washington, D. C., 1931.
_Biological Survey of Texas_, 1905. OP. The "North American Fauna
Series," to which these two books belong, contains or points to the
basic facts covering most of the mammals of the Southwest.

BAILLIE-GROHMAN, WILLIAM A. _Camps in the Rockies_, 1882. A true
sportsman, Baillie-Grohman was more interested in living animals than in
just killing. OP.

BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, Doubleday, Garden
City, N. Y., 1947. To be personal, Roy Bedichek has the most richly
stored mind I have ever met; it is as active as it is full. Liberal in
the true sense of the word, it frees other minds. Here, using facts as a
means, it gives meanings to the hackberry tree, limestone, mockingbird,
Inca dove, Mexican primrose, golden eagle, the Davis Mountains, cedar
cutters, and many another natural phenomenon. _Adventures with a Texas
Naturalist_ is regarded by some good judges as the wisest book in the
realm of natural history produced in America since Thoreau wrote.

The title of Bedichek's second book, _Karankaway Country_ (Garden City,
1950), is misleading. The Karankawa Indians start it off, but it goes to
coon inquisitiveness, prairie chicken dances, the extinction of species
to which the whooping crane is approaching, browsing goats, dignified
skunks, swifts in love flight, a camp in the brush, dust, erosion,
silt--always with thinking added to seeing. The foremost naturalist of
the Southwest, Bedichek constantly relates nature to civilization and
human values.

BROWNING, MESHACH. _Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_, 1859;
reprinted, Philadelphia, 1928. Prodigal on bear and deer.

CAHALANE, VICTOR H. _Mammals of North America_, Macmillan, New York,
1947. The author is a scientist with an open mind on the relationships
between predators and game animals. His thick, delightfully illustrated
book is the best dragnet on American mammals extant. It contains
excellent lists of references.

CATON, JUDGE JOHN DEAN. _Antelope and Deer of America_, 1877. Standard
work. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Longhorns_ (1941) and _The Mustangs_ (1952),
while hardly to be catalogued as natural history books, go farther into
natural history than most books on cattle and horses go. _On the Open
Range_ (1931; reprinted by Banks Upshaw, Dallas) contains a number of
animal stories more or less true. Ben Lilly of _The Ben Lilly Legend_
(Boston, 1950) thought that God had called him to hunt. He spent
his life, therefore, in hunting. He saw some things in nature beyond
targets.

DODGE, RICHARD I. _The Hunting Grounds of the Great West_, London, 1877.
Published in New York the same year under title of _The Plains of the
Great West and Their Inhabitants_. Outstanding survey of outstanding
wild creatures.

DUNRAVEN, EARL OF. _The Great Divide_, London, 1876; reprinted under
title of _Hunting in the Yellowstone_, 1925. OP.

ELLIOTT, CHARLES (editor). _Fading Trails_, New York, 1942. Humanistic
review of characteristic American wild life. OP.

FLACK, CAPTAIN. _The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods_,
1866; another form of _A Hunter's Experience in the Southern States of
America_, by Captain Flack, "The Ranger," London, 1866.

GANSON, EVE. _Desert Mavericks_, Santa Barbara, California, 1928.
Illustrated; delightful. OP.

GEISER, SAMUEL WOOD. _Naturalists of the Frontier_, Southern Methodist
University Press, Dallas, 1937; revised and enlarged edition, 1948.
Biographies of men who were characters as well as scientists, generally
in environments alien to their interests.

GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_, 1854. A
translation from the German. Delightful reading and revealing picture of
how backwoodsmen of the Mississippi Valley "lived off the country."

GRAHAM, GID. _Animal Outlaws_, Collinsville, Oklahoma, 1938. OP. A
remarkable collection of animal stories. Privately printed.

GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. Between 1893 and 1913, Grinnell, partly in
collaboration with Theodore Roosevelt, edited five volumes for The Boone
and Crockett Club that contain an extraordinary amount of information,
written mostly by men of civilized perspective, on bears, deer, mountain
sheep, buffaloes, cougars, elk, wolves, moose, mountains, and forests.
The series, long out of print, is a storehouse of knowledge not to be
overlooked by any student of wild life in the West. The titles are:
_American Big-Game Hunting_, 1893; _Hunting in Many Lands_, 1895; _Trail
and Camp-Fire_, 1897; _American Big Game in Its Haunts_, 1904; _Hunting
at High Altitudes_, 1913.

GRINNELL, JOSEPH; DIXON, JOSEPH S.; and LINSDALE, JEAN M. _Fur-Bearing
Mammals of California: Their Natural History, Systematic Status, and
Relation to Man_, two volumes, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1937. The king, so far, of all state natural histories.

HALL, E. RAYMOND. _Mammals of Nevada_, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946. So far as my knowledge goes, this is the
only respect-worthy book extant pertaining to the state whose economy is
based on fees from divorces and gambling and whose best-known citizen is
Senator Pat McCarran.

HARTMAN, CARL G. _Possum_, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. This
richly illustrated book comprehends everything pertaining to the subject
from prehistoric marsupium to baking with sweet potatoes in a Negro
cabin. It is the outcome of a lifetime's scientific investigation not
only of possums but of libraries and popular talk. Thus, in addition to
its biographical and natural history aspects, it is a study in the
evolution of man's knowledge about one of the world's folkiest
creatures.

{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Blazed Trail of the Old
Frontier_ by Agnes C. Laut (1926)}


HORNADAY, WILLIAM T. _Camp Fires on Desert and Lava_, London, n.d. OP.
Dr. Hornaday, who died in 1937, was the first director of the New York
Zoological Park. He was a great conservationist and an authority on the
wild life of America.

HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. Not about
the Southwest or even North America, but Hudson's chapters on "The
Puma," "Some Curious Animal Weapons," "The Mephitic Skunk," "Humming
Birds," "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," "Horse and Man," etc. come
home to the Southwest. Few writers tend to make readers so aware; no
other has written so delightfully of the lands of grass.

INGERSOLL, ERNEST. _Wild Neighbors_, New York, 1897. OP. A superior
work. Chapter II, "The Father of Game," is on the cougar; Chapter IV,
"The Hound of the Plains," is on the coyote; there is an excellent essay
on the badger. Each chapter is provided with a list of books affording
more extended treatment of the subject.

JAEGER, EDMUND C. _Denizens of the Desert_, Boston, 1922. OP. "Don
Coyote," the roadrunner, and other characteristic animals. _Our Desert
Neighbors_, Stanford University Press, California, 1950.

LOCKE, LUCIE H. _Naturally Yours, Texas_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1949.
Charm must never be discounted; it is far rarer than facts, and often
does more to lead to truth. This slight book is in verse and drawings,
type integrated with delectable black-and-white representations of the
prairie dog, armadillo, sanderling, mesquite, whirlwind, sand dune,
mirage, and dozens of other natural phenomena. The only other book in
this list to which it is akin is Eve Ganson's _Desert Mavericks_.

LUMHOLTZ, CARL. _Unknown Mexico_, New York, 1902. Nearly anything about
animals as well as about Indians and mountains of Mexico may be found in
this extraordinary two-volume work. OP.

MCILHENNY, EDWARD A. _The Alligator s Life History_, Boston, 1935. OP.
The alligator got farther west than is generally known--at least within
reach of Laredo and Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande. McIlhenny's book
treats--engagingly, intimately, and with precision--of the animal
in Louisiana. Hungerers for anatomical biology are referred to _The
Alligator and Its Allies_ by A. M. Reese, New York, 1915. I have more to
say about McIlhenny in Chapter 30.

MARCY, COLONEL R. B. _Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border_, New
York, 1866. Marcy had a scientific mind and a high sense of values. He
knew how to write and what he wrote remains informing and pleasant.

MARTIN, HORACE T. _Castorologia, or The History and Traditions of the
Canadian Beaver_, London, 1892. OP. The beaver is a beaver, whether
on Hudson's Bay or the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Much has been
written on this animal, the propeller of the trappers of the West, but
this famous book remains the most comprehensive on facts and the amplest
in conception. The author was humorist as well as scientist.

MENGER, RUDOLPH. _Texas Nature Observations and Reminiscences_, San
Antonio, 1913. OP. Being of an educated German family, Dr. Menger found
many things in nature more interesting than two-headed calves.

MILLS, ENOS. _The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Wild Life on the Rockies,
Waiting in the Wilderness_, and other books. Some naturalists have
taken exception to some observations recorded by Mills; nevertheless, he
enlarges and freshens mountain life.

MUIR, JOHN. _The Mountains of California, Our National Parks_, and
other books. Muir, a great naturalist, had the power to convey his wise
sympathies and brooded-over knowledge.

MURPHY, JOHN MORTIMER. _Sporting Adventures in the Far West_, London,
1879. One of the earliest roundups of game animals of the West.

NEWSOME, WILLIAM M. _The Whitetailed Deer_, New York, 1926. OP. Standard
work.

PALLISER, JOHN. _The Solitary Hunter; or Storting Adventures in the
Prairies_, London, 1857.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_, with a
chapter entitled "Books on Big Game"; _Hunting Adventures in the West;
The Wilderness Hunter; Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail; A Book Lover's
Holiday in the Open; The Deer Family_ (in collaboration).

SEARS, PAUL B. _Deserts on the March_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1935. Dramatic picturization of the forces of nature operating
in what droughts of the 1930's caused to be called "the Dust Bowl."
"Drought and Wind and Man" might be another title.

SETON, ERNEST THOMPSON. _Wild Animals I Have Known; Lives of the
Hunted_. Probably no other writer of America has aroused so many people,
young people especially, to an interest in our wild animals. Natural
history encyclopedias he has authored are _Life Histories of Northern
Animals_, New York, 1920, and _Lives of Game Animals_, New York, 1929.
Seton's final testament, _Trail of an Artist Naturalist_ (Scribner's,
New York, 1941), has a deal on wild life of the Southwest.

THORPE, T. B. _The Hive of the Bee-Hunter_, New York, 1854. OP. Juicy.

WARREN, EDWARD ROYAL. _The Mammals of Colorado_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1942. OP.





27. Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters

THE LITERATURE on the American bison, more popularly called buffalo,
is enormous. Nearly everything of consequence pertaining to the Plains
Indians touches the animal. The relationship of the Indian to the
buffalo has nowhere been better stated than in Note 49 to the Benavides
_Memorial_, edited by Hodge and Lummis. "The Great Buffalo Hunt at
Standing Rock," a chapter in _My Friend the Indian_ by James McLaughlin,
sums up the hunting procedure; other outstanding treatments of the
buffalo in Indian books are to be found in _Long Lance_ by Chief Buffalo
Child Long Lance; _Letters and Notes on... the North American Indians_
by George Catlin; _Forty Years a Fur Trader_ by Charles Larpenteur.
Floyd B. Streeter's chapter on "The Buffalo Range" in _Prairie Trails
and Cow Towns_ lists twenty-five sources of information.

The bibliography that supersedes all other bibliographies is in the book
that supersedes all other books on the subject--Frank Gilbert Roe's _The
North American Buffalo_. More about it in the list that follows.

Nearly all men who got out on the plains were "wrathy to kill"
buffaloes above all else. The Indians killed in great numbers but seldom
wastefully. The Spaniards were restrained by Indian hostility. Mountain
men, emigrants crossing the plains, Santa Fe traders, railroad builders,
Indian fighters, settlers on the edge of the plains, European sportsmen,
all slaughtered and slew. Some observed, but the average American
hunter's observations on game animals are about as illuminating as the
trophy-stuffed den of a rich oilman or the lockers of a packing house.
Lawrence of Arabia won his name through knowledge and understanding of
Arabian life and through power to lead and to write. Buffalo Bill won
his name through power to exterminate buffaloes. He was a buffalo man in
the way that Hitler was a Polish Jew man.

{illust. caption = Harold D. Bugbee: Buffaloes

It is a pleasure to note the writings of sportsmen with inquiring minds
and of scientists and artists who hunted. Three examples are: _The
English Sportsman in the Western Prairies_, by the Hon. Grantley F.
Berkeley, London, 1861; _Travels in the Interior of North America,
1833-1834_, by Maximilian, Prince of Wied (original edition, 1843),
included in that "incomparable storehouse of buffalo lore from early
eye-witnesses," _Early Western Travels_, edited by Reuben Gold
Thwaites; George Catlin's _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and
Conditions of the North American Indians_, London, 1841.

Three aspects of the buffalo stand out: the natural history of the great
American animal; the interrelationship between Indian and buffalo; the
white hunter--and exterminator.


ALLEN, J. A. _The American Bison, Living and Extinct_, Cambridge, Mass.,
1876. Reprinted in 9th Annual Report of the United States Geological and
Geographical Survey, Washington, 1877. Basic and rich work, much of it
appropriated by Hornaday.

BRANCH, E. DOUGLAS. _The Hunting of the Buffalo_, New York, 1925.
Interpretative as well as factual. OP.

COOK, JOHN R. _The Border and the Buffalo_. Topeka, Kansas, 1907.
Personal narrative.

DIXON, OLIVE. _Billy Dixon_, Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1914; reprinted, Dallas,
1927. Bully autobiography; excellent on the buffalo hunter as a type.
OP.

DODGE, R. I. _The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants_,
New York, 1877. One of the best chapters of this source book is on the
buffalo.

GARRETSON, MARTIN S. _The American Bison_, New York Zoological Society,
New York, 1938. Not thorough, but informing. Limited bibliography. OP.

GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD (1849-1938) may be classed next to J. A. Allen and
W. T. Hornaday as historian of the buffalo. His primary sources were the
buffaloed plains and the Plains Indians, whom he knew intimately. "In
Buffalo Days" is a long and excellent essay by him in _American Big-Game
Hunting_, edited by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, New
York, 1893. He has another long essay, "The Bison," in _Musk-Ox, Bison,
Sheep and Goat_ by Caspar Whitney, George Bird Grinnell, and Owen
Wister, New York, 1904. His noble and beautifully simple _When Buffalo
Ran_, New Haven, 1920, is specific on work from a buffalo horse. Again
in his noble two-volume work on _The Cheyenne Indians_ (1923) Grinnell
is rich not only on the animal but on the Plains Indian relationship to
it. All OP.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman_, 1936.
Goodnight killed and also helped save the buffalo. Haley has preserved
his observations.

HORNADAY, W. T. _Extermination of the American Bison_ (Smithsonian
Reports for 1887, published in 1889, Part II). Hornaday was a good
zoologist but inferior in research.

INMAN, HENRY. _Buffalo Jones Forty Years of Adventure_, Topeka, Kansas,
1899. A book rich in observations as well as experience, though Jones
was a poser. OP.

LAKE, STUART N. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Early chapters excellent on
buffalo hunting.

MCCREIGHT, M. I. _Buffalo Bone Days_, Sykesville, Pa., 1939. OP. A
pamphlet strong on buffalo bones, for fertilizer.

PALLISER, JOHN (and others). _Journals, Detailed Reports, and
Observations, relative to Palliser's Exploration of British North
America, 1857-1860_, London, 1863. According to Frank Gilbert Roe, "a
mine of inestimable information" on the buffalo.

_Panhandle-Plains Historical Review_, Canyon, Texas. Articles and
reminiscences, _passim_.

PARKMAN, FRANCIS. _The Oregon Trail_, 1847. Available in various
editions, this book contains superb descriptions of buffaloes and
prairies.

POE, SOPHIE A. _Buckboard Days_ (edited by Eugene Cunningham), Caldwell,
Idaho, 1936. Early chapters. OP.

ROE, FRANK GILBERT. _The North American Buffalo_, University of Toronto
Press, 1951. A monumental work comprising and critically reviewing
virtually all that has been written on the subject and supplanting much
of it. No other scholar dealing with the buffalo has gone so fully
into the subject or viewed it from so many angles, brought out so many
aspects of natural history and human history. In a field where
ignorance has often prevailed, Roe has to be iconoclastic in order to be
constructive. If his words are sometimes sharp, his mind is sharper. The
one indispensable book on the subject.

RYE, EDGAR. _The Quirt and the Spur_, Chicago, 1909. Rye was in the Fort
Griffin, Texas, country when buffalo hunters dominated it. OP.

SCHULTZ, JAMES WILLARD. _Apauk, Caller of Buffalo_, New York, 1916.
OP. Whether fiction or nonfiction, as claimed by the author, this book
realizes the relationships between Plains Indian and buffalo.

WEEKES, MARY. _The Last Buffalo Hunter_ (as told by Norbert Welsh),
New York, 1939. OP. The old days recalled with upspringing sympathy.
Canada--but buffaloes and buffalo hunters were pretty much the same
everywhere.

West Texas Historical Association (Abilene, Texas) _Year Books_.
Reminiscences and articles, _passim_.

WILLIAMS, O. W. A privately printed letter of eight unnumbered pages,
dated from Fort Stockton, Texas, June 30, 1930, containing the best
description of a buffalo stampede that I have encountered. It is
reproduced in Dobie's _On the Open Range_.





28. Bears and Bear Hunters

THE BEAR, whether black or grizzly, is a great American citizen. Think
of how many children have been put to sleep with bear stories! Facts
about the animal are fascinating; the effect he has had on the minds of
human beings associated with him transcends naturalistic facts. The tree
on which Daniel Boone carved the naked fact that here he "Killed A. Bar
In the YEAR 1760" will never die. Davy Crockett killed 105 bars in one
season, and his reputation as a bar hunter, plus ability to tell about
his exploits, sent him to Congress. He had no other reason for going.
The grizzly was the hero of western tribes of Indians from Alaska
on down into the Sierra Madre. Among western white men who met him,
occasionally in death, the grizzly inspired a mighty saga, the cantos of
which lie dispersed in homely chronicles and unrecorded memories as well
as in certain vivid narratives by Ernest Thompson Seton, Hittell's John
Capen Adams, John G. Neihardt, and others.

For all that, neither the black bear nor the grizzly has been amply
conceived of as an American character. The conception must include a
vast amount of folklore. In a chapter on "Bars and Bar Hunters" in _On
the Open Range_ and in "Juan Oso" and "Under the Sign of Ursa Major,"
chapters of _Tongues of the Monte_, I have indicated the nature of this
dispersed epic in folk tales.

In many of the books listed under "Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists" and
"Mountain Men" the bear "walks like a man."


ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1922 reprinted by
Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Contains several versions of
the famous Hugh Glass bear story.

HITTELL, THEODORE H. _The Adventures of John Capen Adams_, 1860;
reprinted 1911, New York. OP. Perhaps no man has lived who knew
grizzlies better than Adams. A rare personal narrative.

MILLER, JOAQUIN. _True Bear Stories_, Chicago, 1900. OP. Truth
questionable in places; interest guaranteed.

MILLER, LEWIS B. _Saddles and Lariats_, Boston, 1909. OP. The chapter
"In a Grizzly's Jaws" is a wonderful bear story.

MILLS, ENOS A. _The Grizzly, Our Greatest Wild Animal_, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1919. Some naturalists have accused Mills of having too
much imagination. He saw much and wrote vividly.

NEIHARDT, JOHN G. _The Song of Hugh Glass_, New York, 1915. An epic
in vigorous verse of the West's most famous man-and-bear story. This
imagination-rousing story has been told over and over, by J. Cecil Alter
in _James Bridger_, by Stanley Vestal in _Mountain Men_, and by other
writers.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Hunting Adventures_ in the {illust. caption =
Charles M. Russell, in _Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage_ by Carrie Adell
Strahorn (1915 ) _West_ (1885) and _The Wilderness Hunter_ (1893)--books
reprinted in parts or wholly under varying titles. Several narratives of
hunts intermixed with baldfaced facts.

SETON, ERNEST THOMPSON. _The Biography of a Grizzly_, 1900; now
published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York. _Monarch, the Big Bear
of Tallac_, 1904. Graphic narratives.

SKINNER, M. P. _Bears in the Yellowstone_, Chicago, 1925. OP. A
naturalist's rounded knowledge, pleasantly told.

STEVENS, MONTAGUE. _Meet Mr. Grizzly_, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1943. Montague Stevens graduated from Trinity College,
Cambridge, in 1881 and came to New Mexico to ranch. As respects
deductions on observed data, his book is about the most mature yet
published by a ranchman. Goodnight experienced more, had a more ample
nature, but he lacked the perspective, the mental training, to know what
to make of his observations. Another English rancher, R. B. Townshend,
had perspective and charm but was not a scientific observer. So far as
sense of smell goes, _Meet Mr. Grizzly_ is as good as W. H. Hudson's _A
Hind in Richmond Park_. On the nature and habits of grizzly bears, it is
better than _The Grizzly_ by Enos Mills.

WRIGHT, WILLIAM H. _The Grizzly Bear: The Narrative of a
Hunter-Naturalist, Historical, Scientific and Adventurous_, New York,
1928. OP. This is not only the richest and justest book published on the
grizzly; it is among the best books of the language on specific mammals.
Wright had a passion for bears, for their preservation, and for arousing
informed sympathy in other people. Yet he did not descend to propaganda.
_His The Black Bear_, London, n.d., is good but no peer to his work on
the grizzly. Also OP.





29. Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers

I SEPARATE COYOTES, lobos, and panthers from the mass of animals because
they, along with bears, have made such an imprint on human imagination.
White-tailed deer are far more common and more widely dispersed. Men,
women also, by the tens of thousands go out with rifles every fall in
efforts to get near them; but the night-piercing howl and the cunning
ways of the coyote, the panther's track and the rumor of his scream have
inspired more folk tales than all the deer.

Lore and facts about these animals are dispersed in many books not
classifiable under natural history. Lewis and Clark and nearly all the
other chroniclers of Trans-Mississippi America set down much on wild
life. James Pike's _Scout and Ranger_ details the manner in which,
he says, a panther covered him up alive, duplicating a fanciful and
delightful tale in Gerstaecker's _Wild Sports in the Far West_. James
B. O'Neil concludes _They Die but Once_ with some "Bedtime Stories"
that--almost necessarily--bring in a man-hungry panther.


COYOTES AND LOBOS


The two full-length books on Brother Coyote listed below specify most of
the printed literature on the animal. (He is "Brother" in Mexican tales
and I feel much more brotherly toward him than I feel toward character
assassins in political power.) It would require another book to
catalogue in detail all the writings that include folk tales about Don
Coyote. Ethnologists and scientific folklorists recognize what they call
"the Coyote Circle" in the folklore of many tribes of Indians. Morris
Edward Opler in _Myths and Legends of the Lipan Apache Indians_, 1940,
and in _Myths and Tales of the Chiricahua Apache Indians_, 1942 (both
issued by the American Folklore Society, New York) treats fully of
this cycle. Numerous tales that belong to the cycle are included by J.
Gilbert McAllister, an anthropologist who writes as a humanist, in his
extended collection, "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in _The Sky Is My Tipi_,
edited by Mody C. Boatright for the Texas Folklore Society (Publication
XXII), Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949.

Literary retellers of Indian coyote folk tales have been many. The
majority of retellers from western Indians include Coyote. One of the
very best is Frank B. Linderman, in _Indian Why Stories_ and _Indian
Old-Man Stories_. These titles are substantive: _Old Man Coyote_ by
Clara Kern Bayliss (New York, 1908, OP), _Coyote Stories_ by Mourning
Dove (Caldwell, Idaho, 1934, OP); _Don Coyote_ by Leigh Peck (Boston,
1941) gets farther away from the Indian, is more juvenile. The _Journal
of American Folklore_ and numerous Mexican books have published hundreds
of coyote folk tales from Mexico. Among the most pleasingly told
are _Picture Tales frown Mexico_ by Dan Storm, 1941 (Lippincott,
Philadelphia). The first two writers listed below bring in folklore.


CUSHING, FRANK HAMILTON. _Zuni Breadstuff_, Museum of the American
Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, 1920. This extraordinary book, one of
the most extraordinary ever written on a particular people, is not made
up of coyote lore alone. In it the coyote becomes a character of
dignity and destiny, and the telling is epic in dignity as well as
in prolongation. Frank Hamilton Cushing was a genius; his sympathy,
insight, knowledge, and mastery of the art of writing enabled him to
reveal the spirit of the Zuni Indians as almost no other writer has
revealed the spirit of any other tribe. Their attitude toward Coyote
is beautifully developed. Cushing's _Zuni Folk Tales_ (Knopf, New York,
1901, 1931) is climactic on "tellings" about Coyote.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Voice of the Coyote_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1949.
Not only the coyote but his effect on human imagination and ecological
relationships. Natural history and folklore; many tales from factual
trappers as well as from Mexican and Indian folk. This is a strange book
in some ways. If the author had quit at the end of the first chapter,
which is on coyote voicings and their meaning to varied listeners, he
would still have said something. The book includes some, but by no means
all, of the material on the subject in _Coyote Wisdom_ (Publication XIV
of the Texas Folklore Society, 1938) edited by J. Frank Dobie and now
distributed by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas.

GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. Wolves and Wolf Nature, in _Trail and Camp-Fire_,
New York, 1897. This long chapter is richer in facts about the coyote
than anything published prior to _The Voice of the Coyote_, which
borrows from it extensively.

LOFBERG, LILA, and MALCOLMSON, DAVID. _Sierra Outpost_, Duell, Sloan and
Pearce, New York, 1941. An extraordinary detailment of the friendship
between two people, isolated by snow high in the California Sierras, and
three coyotes. Written with fine sympathy, minute in observations.

MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Talking to the Moon_, University of Chicago
Press, 1945. A wise and spiritual interpretation of the black-jack
country of eastern Oklahoma, close to the Osages, in which John Joseph
Mathews lives. Not primarily about coyotes, the book illuminates
them more than numerous books on particular animals illuminate their
subjects.

MURIE, ADOLPH. _Ecology of the Coyote in the Yellowstone_, United States
Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1940. An example of
strict science informed by civilized humanity. _The Wolves of Mount
McKinley_, United States Government Printing Of ice, Washington, D. C.,
1944. Murie's combination of prolonged patience, science, and sympathy
behind the observations has never been common. His ecological point of
view is steady. Highly interesting reading.

YOUNG, STANLEY PAUL (with Edward A. Goldman). _The Wolves of North
America_, American Wildlife Institute, Washington, D. C., 1944. Full
information, full bibliography, without narrative power. _Sketches of
American Wildlife_, Monumental Press, Baltimore, 1946. This slight book
contains pleasant chapters on the Puma, Wolf, Coyote, Antelope and other
animals characteristic of the West. (With Hartley H. T. Jackson) _The
Clever Coyote_, Stackpole, Harrisburg, Pa., and Wildlife Management
Institute, Washington, D. C., 1951. Emphasis upon the economic status
and control of the species, an extended classification of subspecies,
and a full bibliography make this book and Dobie's _The Voice of the
Coyote_ complemental to each other rather than duplicative.


PANTHERS


Anybody who so wishes may call them mountain lions. Where there were
Negro mammies, white children were likely to be haunted in the night by
fear of ghosts. Otherwise, for some children of the South and West,
no imagined terror of the night equaled the panther's scream. The
Anglo-American lore pertaining to the panther is replete with stories of
attacks on human beings. Indian and Spanish lore, clear down to where W.
H. Hudson of the pampas heard it, views the animal as _un amigo de
los cristianos_--a friend of man. The panther is another animal as
interesting for what people associated with him have taken to be facts
as for the facts themselves.


BARKER, ELLIOTT S. _When the Dogs Barked `Treed'_, University of New
Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946. Mainly on mountain lions, but firsthand
observations on other predatory animals also. Before he became state
game warden, the author was for years with the United States Forest
Service.

HIBBEN, FRANK C. _Hunting American Lions_, New York, 1948; reprinted
by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Mr. Hibben considers
hunting panthers and bears a terribly dangerous business that only
intrepid heroes like him-self would undertake. Sometimes in this book,
but more awesomely in _Hunting American Bears_, he manages to out-zane
Zane Grey, who had to warn his boy scout readers and puerile-minded
readers of added years that _Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon_ is true
in contrast to the fictional _Young Lion Hunter_, which uses some of the
same material.

HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. A chapter
in this book entitled "The Puma, or Lion of America" provoked an attack
from Theodore Roosevelt (in _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_);
but it remains the most delightful narrative-essay yet written on the
subject.

YOUNG, STANLEY PAUL, and GOLDMAN, EDWARD A. _The Puma, Mysterious
American Cat_, American Wildlife Institute, Washington, D. C., 1946.
Scientific, liberal with information of human interest, bibliography.
We get an analysis of the panther's scream but it does not curdle the
blood.


{illust}





30. Birds and Wild Flowers

NEARLY EVERYBODY ENJOYS to an extent the singing of birds and the
colors of flowers; to the majority, however, the enjoyment is casual,
generalized, vague, in the same category as that derived from a short
spell of prattling by a healthy baby. Individuals who study birds and
native flora experience an almost daily refreshment of the spirit and
growth of the intellect. For them the world is an unending Garden of
Delight and a hundred-yard walk down a creek that runs through town
or pasture is an exploration. Hardly anything beyond good books, good
pictures and music, and good talk is so contributory to the enrichment
of life as a sympathetic knowledge of the birds, wild flowers, and other
native fauna and flora around us.

The books listed are dominantly scientific. Some include keys to
identification. Once a person has learned to use the key for identifying
botanical or ornithological species, he can spend the remainder of his
life adding to his stature.


BIRDS


BAILEY, FLORENCE MERRIAM. _Birds of New Mexico_, 1928. OP. Said by those
who know to be at the top of all state bird books. Much on habits.

BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_ (1947) and
_Karankaway Country_ (1950), Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y. These are
books of essays on various aspects of nature, but nowhere else can one
find an equal amount of penetrating observation on chimney swifts, Inca
doves, swallows, golden eagles, mockingbirds, herons, prairie chickens,
whooping cranes, swifts, scissortails, and some other birds. As Bedichek
writes of them they become integrated with all life.

BRANDT, HERBERT. _Arizona and Its Bird Life_, Bird Research Foundation,
Cleveland, 1951. This beautiful, richly illustrated volume of 525 pages
lives up to its title; the birds belong to the Arizona country, and with
them we get pines, mesquites, cottonwoods, John Slaughter's ranch,
the northward-flowing San Pedro, and many other features of the land.
Herbert Brandt's _Texas Bird Adventures_, illustrated by George Miksch
Sutton (Cleveland, 1940), is more on the Big Bend country and ranch
country to the north than on birds, though birds are here.

DAWSON, WILLIAM LEON. _The Birds of California_, San Diego, etc.,
California, 1923. OP. Four magnificent volumes, full in illustrations,
special observations on birds, and scientific data.

DOBIE, J. FRANK, who is no more of an ornithologist than he is a
geologist, specialized on an especially characteristic bird of the
Southwest and gathered its history, habits, and folklore into a long
article: "The Roadrunner in Fact and Folklore," in _In the Shadow of
History_, Publication XV of the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1939.
OP. "Bob More: Man and Bird Man," _Southwest Review_, Dallas, Vol.
XXVII, No. 1 (Autumn, 1941).

NICE, MARGARET MORSE. _The Birds of Oklahoma_, Norman, 1931. OP. United
States Biological Survey publication.

OBERHOLSER, HARRY CHURCH. The Birds of Texas in manuscript form. "A
stupendous work, the greatest of its genre, by the nation's outstanding
ornithologist, who has been fifty years making it." The quotation is
condensed from an essay by Roy Bedichek in the _Southwest Review_,
Dallas, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1953). Maybe some day some man
or woman with means will see the light of civilized patriotism and
underwrite the publication of these great volumes. Patriotism that does
not act to promote the beautiful, the true, and the good had better pipe
down.

PETERSON, ROGER TORY. _A Field Guide to Western Birds_ (1941) and _A
Field Guide to the Birds_ (birds of the eastern United States,
revised 1947), Houghton Mifflin, Boston. These are standard guides for
identification. The range, habits, and characteristics of each bird are
summarized.

SIMMONS, GEORGE FINLEY. _Birds of the Austin Region_, University of
Texas Press, Austin, 1925. A very thorough work, including migratory as
well as nesting species.

SUTTON, GEORGE MIKSCH. _Mexican Birds_, illustrated with water-color
and pen-and-ink drawings by the author, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1951. The main part of this handsome book is a personal
narrative--pleasant to read even by one who is not a bird man--of
discovery in Mexico. To it is appended a resume of Mexican bird life for
the use of other seekers. Sutton's _Birds in the Wilderness: Adventures
of an Ornithologist_ (Macmillan, New York, 1936) contains essays on pet
roadrunners, screech owls, and other congenial folk of the Big Bend
of Texas. _The Birds of Brewster County, Texas_, in collaboration with
Josselyn Van Tyne, is a publication of the Museum of Zoology, University
of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1937.

_Wild Turkey_. Literature on this national bird is enormous. Among books
I name first _The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting_, by Edward A. McIlhenny,
New York, 1914. OP. McIlhenny was a singular man. His family settled on
Avery Island, Louisiana, in 1832; he made it into a famous refuge for
wild fowls. The memories of individuals of a family long established
on a country estate go back several lifetimes. In two books of Negro
folklore and in _The Alligator's Life History_, McIlhenny wrote as an
inheritor. Initially, he was a hunter-naturalist, but scientific enough
to publish in the _Auk_ and the _Journal of Heredity_. Age, desire for
knowledge, and practice in the art of living dimmed his lust for hunting
and sharpened his interest in natural history. His book on the wild
turkey, an extension into publishable form of a manuscript from a
civilized Alabama hunter, is delightful and illuminative reading.

_The Wild Turkey of Virginia_, by Henry S. Mosby and Charles O. Handley,
published by the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries of Virginia,
Richmond, 1943, is written from the point of view of wild life
management. It contains an extensive bibliography. Less technical is
_The American Wild Turkey_, by Henry E. Davis, Small Arms Technical
Company, Georgetown, South Carolina, 1949. No strain, or subspecies, of
the wild turkey is foreign to any other, but human blends in J. Stokley
Ligon, naturalist, are unique. The title of his much-in-little book is
_History and Management of Merriam's Wild Turkey_, New Mexico Game
and Fish Commission, through the University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1946.


WILD FLOWERS AND GRASSES


The scientific literature on botany of western America is extensive. The
list that follows is for laymen as much as for botanists.


BENSON, LYMAN, and DARROW, ROBERT A. _A Manual of Southwestern Desert
Trees and Shrubs_, Biological Science Bulletin No. 6, University of
Arizona, Tucson, 1944. A thorough work of 411 pages, richly illustrated,
with general information added to scientific description.

CARR, WILLIAM HENRY. _Desert Parade: A Guide to Southwestern Desert
Plants and Wildlife_, Viking, New York, 1947.

CLEMENTS, FREDERIC E. and EDITH S. _Rocky Mountain Flowers_, H. W.
Wilson, New York, 1928. Scientific description, with glossary of terms
and key for identification.

COULTER, JOHN M. _Botany of Western Texas_, United States Department of
Agriculture, Washington, 1891-94. OP. Nothing has appeared during the
past sixty years to take the place of this master opus.

GEISER, SAMUEL WOOD. _Horticulture and Horticulturists in Early
Texas_, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1945.
Historical-scientific, more technical than the author's _Naturalists of
the Frontier_.

JAEGER, EDMUND C. _Desert Wild Flowers_, Stanford University Press,
California, 1940, revised 1947. Scientific but designed for use by any
intelligent inquirer.

LUNDELL, CYRUS L., and collaborators. _Flora of Texas_, Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1942-. A "monumental" work, highly
technical, being published part by part.

MCKELVEY, SUSAN DELANO. _Yuccas of the Southwestern United States_,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1938. Definitive work in two
volumes.

_Range Plant Handbook_, prepared by the Forest Service of the United
States Department of Agriculture. United States Government Printing
Office, Washington, 1937. A veritable encyclopedia, illustrated.

SCHULZ, ELLEN D. _Texas Wild Flowers_, Chicago, 1928. Good as a
botanical guide and also for human uses; includes lore on many plants.
OP. _Cactus Culture_, Orange Judd, New York, 1932. Now in revised
edition.

SILVIUS, W. A. _Texas Grasses_, published by the author, San
Antonio, 1933. A monument, of 782 illustrated pages, to a lifetime's
disinterested following of knowledge "like a star."

STEVENS, WILLIAM CHASE. _Kansas Wild Flowers_, University of Kansas
Press, Lawrence, 1948. This is more than a state book, and the
integration of knowledge, wisdom, and appreciation of flower life with
botanical science makes it appeal to layman as well as to botanist. 463
pages, 774 illustrations. Applicable to the whole plains area.

STOCKWELL, WILLIAM PALMER, and BREAZEALE, LUCRETIA. _Arizona Cacti_,
Biological Science Bulletin No. 1, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1933.
Beautifully illustrated.

THORNBER, JOHN JAMES, and BONKER, FRANCES. _The Fantastic Clan: The
Cactus Family_, New York, 1932. OP.

THORP, BENJAMIN CARROLL. _Texas Range Grasses_, University of
Texas Press, Austin, 1952. A survey of 168 species of grasses, their
adaptability to soils and regions, and their values for grazing.
Beautifully illustrated and printed, but no index.

WHITEHOUSE, EULA. _Texas Wild Flowers in Natural Colors_, 1936;
republished 1948 in Dallas. OP. Toward 200 flowers are pictured in
colors, each in conjunction with descriptive material. The finding lists
are designed to enable novices to identify flowers. A charming book.


{illust. caption = Paisano (roadrunner) means fellow-countryman}





31. Negro Folk Songs and Tales

WEST OF A WAVERING line along the western edge of the central parts
of Texas and Oklahoma the Negro is not an important social or cultural
element of the Southwest, just as the modern Indian hardly enters into
Texas life at all and the Mexican recedes to the east. Negro folk songs
and tales of the Southwest have in treatment been blended with those
of the South. Dorothy Scarborough's _On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs_
(1925, OP) derives mainly from Texas, but in making up the body of a
Negro song, Miss Scarborough says, "You may find one bone in Texas, one
in Virginia and one in Mississippi." Leadbelly, a guitar player equally
at home in the penitentiaries of Texas and Louisiana, furnished John A.
and Alan Lomax with _Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly_, New York,
1936 (OP). The Lomax anthologies, _American Ballads and Folk Songs_,
1934, and _Our Singing Country_, 1941 (Macmillan, New York) and Carl
Sandburg's _American Songbag_ (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1927) all give
the Negro of the Southwest full representation.

Three books of loveliness by R. Emmett Kennedy, _Black Cameos_ (1924),
_Mellows_ (1925), and _More Mellows_ (1931) represent Louisiana Negroes.
All are OP. An excellent all-American collection is James Weldon
Johnson's _Book of American Negro Spirituals_, Viking, New York, 1940.
Bibliographies and lists of other books will be found in _The Negro and
His Songs_ (1925, OP) and _Negro Workaday Songs_, by Howard W. Odum and
Guy B. Johnson, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1926,
and in _American Negro Folk-Songs_, by Newman I. White, Cambridge, 1928.

A succinct guide to Negro lore is _American Folk Song and Folk Lore: A
Regional Bibliography_, by Alan Lomax and Sidney R. Crowell, New York,
1942. OP.

Narrowing the field down to Texas, J. Mason Brewer's "Juneteenth,"
in _Tone the Bell Easy_, Publication X of the Texas Folklore Society,
Austin, 1932, is outstanding as a collection of tales. In volume after
volume the Texas Folklore Society has published collections of Negro
songs and tales A. W. Eddins, Martha Emmons, Gates Thomas, and H. B.
Parks being principal contributors.





32. Fiction--Including Folk Tales

FROM THE DAYS of the first innocent sensations in Beadle's Dime Novel
series, on through Zane Grey's mass production and up to any present-day
newsstand's crowded shelf of _Ace High_ and _Flaming Guns_ magazines,
the Southwest, along with all the rest of the West, has been represented
in a fictional output quantitatively stupendous. Most of it has betrayed
rather than revealed life, though not with the contemptible contempt
for both audience and subject that characterizes most of Hollywood's
pictures on the same times, people, and places. Certain historical
aspects of the fictional betrayal of the West may be found in E. Douglas
Branch's _The Cowboy and His Interpreters_, in _The House of Beadle
and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels_, by Albert Johannsen in two
magnificent volumes, and in Jay Monaghan's _The Great Rascal: The Life
and Adventures of Ned Buntline_ Buntline having been perhaps the most
prolific of all Wild West fictionists.

Some "Westerns" have a kind of validity. If a serious reader went
through the hundreds of titles produced by William McLeod Raine, Dane
Coolidge, Eugene Cunningham,. B. M. Bower, the late Ernest Haycox,
and other manufacturers of range novels who have known their West at
firsthand, he would find, spottedly, a surprising amount of truth about
land and men, a fluency in genuine cowboy lingo, and a respect for the
code of conduct. Yet even these novels have added to the difficulty
that serious writing in the Western field has in getting a hearing on
literary, rather than merely Western, grounds. Any writer of Westerns
must, like all other creators, be judged on his own intellectual
development. "The Western and Ernest Haycox," by James Fargo, in
_Prairie Schooner_, XXVI (Summer, 1952) has something on this subject.

Actualities in the Southwest seem to have stifled fictional creation.
No historical novel dealing with Texas history has achieved the drama of
the fall of the Alamo or the drawing of the black beans, has presented
a character with half the reality of Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, or Sallie
Skull, or has captured the flavor inherent in the talk on many a ranch
gallery.

Historical fiction dealing with early day Texas is, however, distinctly
maturing. As a dramatization of Jim Bowie and the bowie knife, _The Iron
Mistress_, by Paul Wellman (Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1951),
is the best novel published so far dealing with a figure of the Texas
revolution. In _Divine Average_ (Little, Brown, Boston, 1952), Elithe
Hamilton Kirkland weaves from her seasoned knowledge of life and from
"realities of those violent years in Texas history between 1838 and
1858" a story of human destiny. She reveals the essential nature of
Range Templeton more distinctly, more mordantly, than history
has revealed the essential nature of Sam Houston or any of his
contemporaries. The wife and daughter of Range Templeton are the most
plausible women in any historical novel of Texas that I have read. The
created world here is more real than the actual.

Among the early tale-tellers of the Southwest are Jeremiah Clemens, who
wrote _Mustang Gray_, Mollie E. Moore Davis, of plantation tradition,
Mayne Reid, who dared convey real information in his romances, Charles
W. Webber, a naturalist, and T. B. Thorpe, creator of "The Big Bear of
Arkansas."

Fiction that appeared before World War I can hardly be called modern.
No fiction is likely to appear, however, that will do better by certain
types of western character and certain stages of development in western
society than that produced by Bret Harte, with his gamblers; stage
drivers, and mining camps; O. Henry with his "Heart of the West" types;
Alfred Henry Lewis with his "Wolfville" anecdotes and characters; Owen
Wister, whose _Virginian_ remains the classic of cowboy novels without
cows; and Andy Adams, whose _Log of a Cowboy_ will be read as long as
people want a narrative of cowboys sweating with herds.

The authors listed below are in alphabetical order. Those who seem to me
to have a chance to survive are not exactly in that order.


FRANK APPLEGATE (died 1932) wrote only two books, _Native Tales of New
Mexico_ and _Indian Stories from the Pueblos_, but as a delighted and
delightful teller of folk tales his place is secure.

MARY AUSTIN seems to be settling down as primarily an expositor. Her
novels are no longer read, but the simple tales in _One-Smoke Stories_
(her last book, 1934) and in some nonfiction collections, notably _Lost
Borders_ and _The Flock_, do not recede with time.

While the Southwest can hardly claim Willa Cather, of Nebraska, her
_Death Comes for the Archbishop_ (1927), which is made out of New
Mexican life, is not only the best-known novel concerned with the
Southwest but one of the finest of America.

Despite the fact that it is not on the literary map, Will Levington
Comfort's _Apache_ (1931) remains for me the most moving and incisive
piece of writing on Indians of the Southwest that I have found.

If a teller of folk tales and plotless narratives belongs in this
chapter, then J. Frank Dobie should be mentioned for the folk tales in
_Coronado's Children, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, and _Tongues of the
Monte_, also for some of his animal tales in _The Voice of the Coyote_,
outlaw and maverick narratives in _The Longhorns_, and "The Pacing White
Steed of the Prairies" and other horse stories in _The Mustangs_.

The characters in Harvey Fergusson's _Wolf Song_ (1927) are the Mountain
Men of Kit Carson's time, and the city of their soul is rollicky Taos.
It is a lusty, swift song of the pristine earth. Fergusson's _The Blood
of the Conquerors_ (1931) tackles the juxtaposition of Spanish-Mexican
and Anglo-American elements in New Mexico, of which state he is a
native. _Grant of Kingdom_ (1850) is strong in wisdom life, vitality of
character, and historical values.

FRED GIPSON'S _Hound-Dog Man_ and _The Home Place_ lack the critical
attitude toward life present in great fiction but they are as honest and
tonic as creek bottom soil and the people in them are genuine.

FRANK GOODWYN'S _The Magic of Limping John_ (New York, 1944, OP) is a
coherence of Mexican characters, folk tales, beliefs, and ways in
the ranch country of South Texas. There is something of magic in the
telling, but Frank Goodwyn has not achieved objective control over
imagination or sufficiently stressed the art of writing.

PAUL HORGAN of New Mexico has in _The Return of the Weed_ (short
stories), _Far from Cibola_, and other fiction coped with modern life in
the past-haunted New Mexico.

OLIVER LAFARGE'S _Laughing Boy_ (1929) grew out of the author's
ethnological knowledge of the Navajo Indians. He achieves character.

TOM LEA'S _The Brave Bulls_ (1949) has, although it is a sublimation of
the Mexican bullfighting world, Death and Fear of Death for its dominant
theme. It may be compared in theme with Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge
of Courage_. It is written with the utmost of economy, and is beautiful
in its power. _The Wonderful Country_ (1952), a historical novel of the
frontier, but emphatically not a "Western," recognizes more complexities
of society. Its economy and directness parallel the style of Tom Lea's
drawings and paintings, with which both books are illustrated.

_Sundown_, by John Joseph Mathews (1934), goes more profoundly than
_Laughing Boy_ into the soul of a young Indian (an Osage) and his
people. Its translation of the "long, long thoughts" of the boy and then
of "shades of the prison house" closing down upon him is superb writing.
The "shades of the prison house" come from oil, with all of the world's
coarse thumbs that go with oil.

GEORGE SESSIONS PERRY'S _Hold Autumn in Your Hand_ (1941) incarnates
a Texas farm hand too poor "to flag a gut-wagon," but with the good
nature, dignity, and independence of the earth itself. _Walls Rise Up_
(1939) is a kind of _Crock of Gold_, both whimsical and earthy, laid on
the Brazos River.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER is as dedicated to artistic perfection as was A.
E. Housman. Her output has, therefore, been limited: _Flowering Judas_
(1930, enlarged 1935); _Pale Horse, Pale Rider_ (1939), _The Leaning
Tower_ (1944). Her stories penetrate psychology, especially the
psychology of a Mexican hacienda, with rare finesse. Her small canvases
sublimate the inner realities of men and women. She appeals only to
cultivated taste, and to some tastes no other fiction writer in America
today is her peer in subtlety.

EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES died in 1934. Most of his novels--distinguished
by intricate plots and bright dialogue--had appeared in the _Saturday
Evening Post_. His finest story is "Paso Por Aqui," published in the
volume entitled _Once in the Saddle_ (1927). Gene Rhodes, who has a
canyon--on which he ranched--named for him in New Mexico, was an artist;
at the same time, he was a man akin to his land and its men. He is the
only writer of the range country who has been accorded a biography--_The
Hired Man on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, his wife. See under "Range
Life."

CONRAD RICHTER'S _The Sea of Grass_ (1937) is a kind of prose poem,
beautiful and tragic. Lutie, wife of the owner of the grass, is perhaps
the most successful creation of a ranch woman that fiction has so far
achieved.

DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH'S _The Wind_ (1925) excited the wrath of chambers of
commerce and other boosters in West Texas--a tribute to its realism.

_The Grapes of Wrath_, by John Steinbeck (1939), made Okies a word
in the American language. Although dated by the Great Depression, its
humanity and realism are beyond date. It is among the few good novels
produced by America in the first half of the twentieth century.

JOHN W. THOMASON, after fighting as a marine in World War I, wrote _Fix
Bayonets_ (1926), followed by _Jeb Stuart_ (1930). A native Texan, he
followed the southern tradition rather than the western. _Lone Star
Preacher_ (1941) is a strong and sympathetic characterization of
Confederate fighting men woven into fictional form.

In _High John the Conqueror_ (Macmillan, 1948) John W. Wilson conveys
real feeling for the tragic life of Negro sharecroppers in the Brazos
bottoms. He represents the critical awareness of life that has come
to modern fiction of the Southwest, in contrast to the sterile action,
without creation of character, in most older fiction of the region.





33. Poetry and Drama

"KNOWLEDGE itself is power," Sir Francis Bacon wrote in classical Latin,
and in abbreviated form the proverb became a familiar in households
and universities alike. But knowledge of what? There is no power in
knowledge of mediocre verse.

     I had rather flunk my Wasserman test
     Than read a poem by Edgar A. Guest.

The power of great poetry lies not in knowledge of it but in
assimilation of it. Most talk about poetry is vacuous. Poetry can pass
no power into any human being unless it itself has power--power
of beauty, truth, wit, humor, pathos, satire, worship, and other
attributes, always through form. No poor poetry is worth reading. Taste
for the best makes the other kind insipid.

Compared with America's best poetry, most poetry of the Southwest is as
mediocre as American poetry in the mass is as compared with the great
body of English poetry between Chaucer and Masefield. Yet mediocre
poetry is not so bad as mediocre sculpture. The mediocre in poetry is
merely fatuous; in sculpture, it is ugly. Generations to come will have
to look at Coppini's monstrosity in front of the Alamo; it can't rot
down or burn up. Volumes of worthless verse, most of it printed at the
expense of the versifiers, hardly come to sight, and before long they
disappear from existence except for copies religiously preserved in
public libraries.

Weak fiction goes the same way. But a good deal of very bad prose in the
nonfiction field has some value. In an otherwise dull book there may
be a solitary anecdote, an isolated observation on a skunk, a single
gesture of some human being otherwise highly unimportant, one salty
phrase, a side glimpse into the human comedy. If poetry is not good, it
is positively nothing.

The earliest poet of historical consequence the only form of his
poetical consequence--of the Southwest was Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. He
led the Texas cavalry at San Jacinto, became president of the Republic
of Texas, organized the futile Santa Fe Expedition, gathered up six
volumes of notes and letters for a history of Texas that might have been
as raw-meat realistic as anything in Zola or Tolstoy. Then as a poet
he reached his climax in "The Daughter of Mendoza"--a graceful but
moonshiny imitation of Tom Moore and Lord Byron. Perhaps it is better
for the weak to imitate than to try to be original.

It would not take one more than an hour to read aloud all the poetry
of the Southwest that could stand rereading. At the top of all I should
place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same
title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove
Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of
men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to
all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry
to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry."
I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a volume of the same title.
Margaret Bell Houston's "Song from the Traffic," which takes one to the
feathered mesquites and the bluebonnets, might come next. Begging pardon
of the perpetually palpitating New Mexico lyricists, I would skip most
of them, except for bits of Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, Haniel Long,
and maybe somebody I don't know, and go to George Sterling's "Father
Coyote"--in California. Probably I would come back to gallant Phil
LeNoir's "Finger of Billy the Kid," written while he was dying of
tuberculosis in New Mexico. I wouldn't leave without the swift,
brilliantly economical stanzas that open the ballad of "Sam Bass," and
a single line, "He came of a solitary race," in the ballad of "Jesse
James."

Several other poets have, of course, achieved something for mortals
to enjoy and be lifted by. Their work has been sifted into various
anthologies. The best one is_ Signature of the Sun: Southwest Verse,
1900-1950_, selected and edited by Mabel Major and T. M. Pearce,
University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Two other anthologies
are _Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp_, by John A. Lomax, 1919,
reprinted in 1950 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York; _The Road to
Texas_, by Whitney Montgomery, Kaleidograph, Dallas, 1940. Montgomery's
Kaleidograph Press has published many volumes by southwestern poets.
Somebody who has read them all and has read all the poets represented,
without enough of distillation, in _Signature of the Sun_ could no doubt
be juster on the subject than I am.

Like historical fiction, drama of the Southwest has been less dramatic
than actuality and less realistic than real characters. Lynn Riggs of
Oklahoma, author of _Green Grow the Lilacs_, has so far been the most
successful dramatist.





34. Miscellaneous Interpreters and Institutions


ARTISTS

ART MAY BE SUBSTANTIVE, but more than being its own excuse for being,
it lights up the land it depicts, shows people what is significant,
cherishable in their own lives and environments. Thus Peter Hurd of
New Mexico has revealed windmills, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri has
elevated mules. Nature may not literally follow art, but human eyes
follow art and literature in recognizing nature.

The history of art in the Southwest, if it is ever rightly written, will
not bother with the Italian "Holy Families" imported by agent-guided
millionaires trying to buy exclusiveness. It will begin with clay
(Indian pottery), horse hair (vaquero weaving), hide (vaquero plaiting),
and horn (backwoods carving). It will note Navajo sand painting and
designs in blankets.

Charles M. Russell's art has been characterized in the chapter on "Range
Life." He had to paint, and the Old West was his life. More versatile
was his contemporary Frederic Remington, author of _Pony Tracks, Crooked
Trails_, and other books, and prolific illustrator of Owen Wister,
Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Henry Lewis, and numerous other writers of
the West. Not so well known as these two, but rising in estimation,
was Charles Schreyvogle. He did not write; his best-known pictures
are reproduced in a folio entitled _My Bunkie and Others_. Remington,
Russell, and Schreyvogle all did superb sculptoring in bronze. One of
the finest pieces of sculpture in the Southwest is "The Seven Mustangs"
by A. Phimister Proctor, in front of the Texas Memorial Museum at
Austin.

Among contemporary artists, Ross Santee and Will James (died, 1942) have
illustrated their own cow country books, some of which are listed under
"Range Life" and "Horses." William R. Leigh, author of _The Western
Pony_, is a significant painter of the range. Edward Borein of Santa
Barbara, California, has in scores of etchings and a limited amount of
book illustrations "documented" many phases of western life. Buck Dunton
of Taos illustrated also. His lithographs and paintings of wild animals,
trappers, cowboys, and Indians seem secure.

I cannot name and evaluate modern artists of the Southwest. They are
many, and the excellence of numbers of them is nationally recognized.
Many articles have been written about the artists who during this
century have lived around Taos and painted that region of the Southwest.
Some of the better-known names are Ernest L. Blumenschein, Oscar
Berninghaus, Ward Lockwood, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ila
McAfee, Barbara Latham Cook, Howard Cook. Artists thrive in Arizona,
Oklahoma, and Texas as well as in New Mexico. Tom Lea, of El Paso, may
be quitting painting and drawing to spend the remainder of his life in
writing. Perhaps he himself does not know. Jerry Bywaters, who is at
work on the history of art in the Southwest, has about quit producing
to direct the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Alexandre Hogue gives
his strength to teaching art in Tulsa University. Exhibitions, not
commentators, are the revealers of art.

A few books, all expensive, reproduce the art of certain depicters of
the West and Southwest. _Etchings of the West_, by Edward Borein, and
_The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_ have been noted in other chapters
(consult Index). Other recent art works are: _Peter Hurd: Portfolio of
Landscapes and Portraits_, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,
1950; _Gallery of Western Paintings_, edited by Raymond Carlson,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1951 (unsatisfactory reproduction); _Frederic
Remington, Artist of the Old West_, by Harold McCracken, Lippincott,
Philadelphia, 1947 (biography and check list with many reproductions);
_Portrait of the Old West_, by Harold McCracken, McGraw-Hill, New York,
1952 (samplings of numerous artists).

In February, 1946, Robert Taft of the University of Kansas began
publishing in the _Kansas Historical Quarterly_ chapters, richly
illustrated in black and white, in "The Pictorial Record of the Old
West." The book to be made from these chapters will have a historical
validity missing in most picture books.


MAGAZINES


The leading literary magazine of the region is the _Southwest Review_,
published quarterly at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The
_New Mexico Quarterly_, published by the University of New Mexico at
Albuquerque, the _Arizona Quarterly_, published by the University of
Arizona at Tucson the _Colorado Quarterly_, published by the University
of Colorado at Boulder, and _Prairie Schooner_, University of Nebraska
Press, Lincoln, are excellent exponents of current writing in
the Southwest and West. All these magazines are liberated from
provincialism.


HISTORICAL SOCIETIES


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


HISTORIES


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


FOLKLORE


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

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

In 1947 the New Mexico Folklore Society began publishing yearly the _New
Mexico Folklore Record_. It is printed by the University of New Mexico
Press. The University of Arizona, Tucson, has published several folklore
bulletins. The California Folklore Society publishes, through the
University of California Press, Berkeley, _Western Folklore_, a
quarterly. In co-operation with the Southeastern Folklore Society, the
University of Florida, Gainesville, publishes the _Southern Folklore
Quarterly_. Levette J. Davidson of the University of Denver, author
of _A Guide to American Folklore_, University of Denver Press, 1951,
directs the Western Folklore Conference. The _Journal of American
Folklore_ has published a good deal from the Southwest and Mexico. The
Sociedad Folklorica de Mexico publishes its own _Anurio_. Between 1929
and 1932, B. A. Botkin, editor of _A Treasury of Southern Folklore_,
1949, and A _Treasury of Western Folklore_, 1951 (Crown, New York),
brought out four volumes entitled _Folk-Say_, University of Oklahoma
Press. OP. The volumes are significant for literary utilizations of
folklore and interpretations of folks.


MUSEUMS


Museums do not belong to the DAR. Their perspective on the past is
constructive. The growing museums in Santa Fe, Tucson, Phoenix, Tulsa,
Oklahoma City, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Denver, and on west
into California represent the art, fauna, flora, geology, archeology,
occupations, transportation, architecture, and other phases of the
Southwest in a way that may be more informing than many printed volumes.





35. Subjects for Themes

THE OBJECT OF THEME-WRITING is to make a student observe, to become
aware, to evaluate, to enrich himself. Any phase of life or literature
named or suggested in the foregoing chapters could be taken as a subject
for an essay. The most immature essay must be more than a summary; a
mere summary is never an essay. The writer must synthesize, make his own
combination of thoughts, facts, incidents, characteristics, anecdotes,
interpretations, illustrations, according to his own pattern. A writer
is a weaver, weaving various threads of various hues and textures into a
design that is his own.

"Look into thy heart and write." "Write what you know about." All this
is good advice in a way--but students have to write themes whether they
have anything to write or not. The way to get full of a subject, to
generate a conveyable interest, is to fill up on the subject. As clouds
are but transient forms of matter that "change but cannot die," so
most writing, even the best, is but a variation in form of experiences,
ideas, observations, emotions that have been recorded over and over.

In general, the materials a student weaves are derived from three
sources: what he has read, what he has heard, what he has observed and
experienced himself. If he chooses to sketch an interesting character,
he will make his sketch richer and more interesting if he reads all he
can find that illuminates his subject's background. If he sets out to
tell a legend or a series of related folk tales or anecdotes, he will
improve his telling by reading what he can on the subjects that his
proposed narratives treat of and by reading similar narratives
already written by others. If he wishes to tell what he knows about
rattlesnakes, buzzards, pet coyotes, Brahma cattle, prickly pear,
cottonwoods, Caddo Lake, the Brazos River, Santa Fe adobes, or other
features of the land, let him bolster and put into perspective his own
knowledge by reading what others have said on the matter. Knowledge
fosters originality. Reading gives ideas.

The list of subjects that follows is meant to be suggestive, and must
not be regarded as inclusive. The best subject for any writer is one
that he is interested in. A single name or category may afford scores
of subjects. For example, take Andy Adams, the writer about cowboys and
range life. His campfire yarns, the attitude of his cowboys toward their
horses, what he has to say about cows, the metaphor of the range as he
has recorded it, the placidity of his cowboys as opposed to Zane Grey
sensationalism, etc., are a few of the subjects to be derived from a
study of his books. Or take a category like "How the Early Settlers
Lived." Pioneer food, transportation, sociables, houses, neighborliness,
loneliness, living on game meat, etc., make subjects. Almost every
subject listed below will suggest either variations or associated
subjects.

The Humor of the Southwest Similes from Nature (Crockett is rich in
them) The Code of Individualism The Code of the Range Six-shooter Ethics
The Right to Kill The Tradition of Cowboy Gallantry (read Owen Wister's

 _The Virginian_ and _A Journey in Search
 of Christmas;_ also novels by
 Eugene Manlove Rhodes)

Frontier Hospitality Amusements

 (shooting matches, tournaments, play parties, dances,
 poker, horse races, quiltings,
 house-raisings)

The Western Gambler

 (Bret Harte and Alfred Henry Lewis have
 idealized him in fiction; he might
 be contrasted with the Mississippi
 River gambler)

Indian Captives The Age of Horse Culture

 (Spanish, Indian, Anglo-American; the
 horse was important enough to
 any one of these classes to
 warrant extended study)

The Cowboy's Horse The Cowboy Myth

 (Mody Boatright is writing a book
  on the subject)

Evolution of the Frontier Criminal Lawyer

The Frontier Intellect in the Atomic Age

British Chroniclers of the West Civilized

Perspective in Writings on the Old West

The Indian in Fiction

Fictional Betrayal of the West

The West in Reality and the West on the Screen

Around the Chuck Wagon: Cowboy Yarns Stretching the Blanket

Authentic Liars

Recent Fiction of the Southwest (any writer worth writing about)

Literary Magazines of the Southwest Ranch Women Mexican Labor (on ranch,
farm, or in town)

Mexican Folk Tales Backwoods Life in Frederick Gerstaecker "The Old
Catdeman" in Alfred Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ Books

Mayne Reid as an Exponent of the Southwest (see estimate of him
in _Mesa, Canon and Pueblo_,
by Charles F. Lummis)

The Gunman in Fiction and Reality

 (O. Henry, Bret Harte, Alfred
 Henry Lewis; _The Saga of Billy
 the Kid_, by Walter Noble Burns;
 Gillett's _Six Years with the Texas
 Rangers;_ Webb's _The Texas
 Rangers;_ Lake's _Wyatt Earp)_

Character of the Trail Drivers Cowboy's Life as Reflected in His Songs
"Wrathy to Kill a Bear" (the frontiersman as a destroyer of wild life
"I Thought I Might See Something to Shoot at" Anecdotes of the Stump
Speaker Exempla of Revivalists and Campmeeting Preachers The Campmeeting
Stagecoaching Life on the Santa Fe Trail The Rendezvous of the Mountain
Men In the Covered Wagon Squatter Life No Shade From Grass to Wheat From
Wheat to Dust Brush (a special study of prickly pear, the mesquite, or some other
form of flora could be made)

Cotton (whole books are suggested here, the tenant farmer being one
of the subjects)

Oil Booms Longhorns Coyote Stories Deer Nature, or Whitetails and Their
Rattlesnakes, or Rattlesnake Stories Panther Stories Tarantula Lore
Grasshopper Plagues The Javelina in Fact and in Folk Tale The Roadrunner
(Paisano) Wild Turkeys The Poisoned-Out Prairie Dog Sheep Vanishing
Sheep Herders The Bee Hunter Pot Hunters Buffalo Hunters The Bar Hunter
and Bar Stories Indian Fighter Indian Hater Scalps Squaw Men Mountain
Men and Grizzlies Scouts and Guides Stage Drivers Fiddlers and Fiddle
Tunes Frontier Justices of the Peace (Roy Bean set the example)
Horse Traders Horse Racers Newspapermen Frontier Schoolteacher
Circuit Rider Pony Express Rider Folk Tales of My Community Flavorsome
Characters of My Community Stanley Vestal Harvey Fergusson Kansas Cow
Towns Drought and Thirst Washington Irving on the West Witty Repartee
in Eugene Manlove Rhodes Bigfoot Wallace's Humor Charles M. Russell as
Artist of the West (or any other western artist)
Learning to See Life Around Me Features of My Own Cultural Inheritance
I Heard It Back Home Family Traditions My Family's Interesting Character
Doodlebugs in the Sand Bobwhites Blue Quail Coachwhips and Other Good
Snakes Mockingbird Habits Jack Rabbit Lore Catfish Lore Herb Remedies

"Criticism of Life" in Southwestern Fiction

Intellectual Integrity in________________ (Name of writer or writers or
some locally prominent newspaper to be supplied)

{pages 197 - 222 are an Index -- not included}