Old-time lingo of West Texas

“You will be heard on the baldies.” People in big cities have to talk loud and fast even to be heard – interrupting at every indrawn breath – giving rise to the arts of jiving and rapping. In Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81, two cowboys howdy at a water tank in the small town. It is a classic true-life scene of west Texas. They briefly talk, but take long seconds (many long seconds) between each utterance. Out here, the naked plains (the bald prairie) can be empty of humans for miles, two people working together won’t have any interruptions, so there is no reason to quickly answer in a conversation. I think the style partly originated in the Indian style of discourse. In council, a person had the right to say whatever they wished, for as long as they wished, and would not be interrupted.  In discourse on the baldies, a person can take time to answer honestly and with heart-felt emotion, or to choose the very best words (and even to make up words that seem to fit just a bit better.)

West Texans like word play – sometimes vocalized in self-deprecation and uttered with a drawl that broadcasts “this is a joke” loud and clear. “Fearsome” is such a made-up word. I looked in several dictionaries for it. It means malovently awe-inspiring – and is mostly used to describe huge thunder-banging storms with hail, high winds, and flashfloods. Lots of west Texas folks use the word “ideal” when folks elsewhere would use the word “idea.” That seems “plumb ignorant,” but I think there is a history to its use. Somebody, when out working, has an idea, and then describes it. The other person mulls the idea over and states their own interpretation, and the first person acknowledges the agreement and its variations, and says – “That would be ideal,” instead of saying, “that’s the idea.” Over time, the regional variant of usage became popularly accepted.

            The lingo of west Texas is not just in English. Spanish adds to the rich culture of our region. Some 6^th graders came all the way from Balmorhea to hang out and attend a lecture of mine,I  created a “bioregional quiz” that focuses on their local landscape. I started off with, “What is the name of biggest mountain due west of Balmorhea?” (Gomez Peak) I followed with,  “What are the names of the springs in the neighborhood?” (Most are Spanish names.) Next, “What is the name of the creek that leads north from Fort Davis?” (Limpia) I followed that with, “There is a unique habitat found in the mountains that the state park at Balmorhea tried to duplicate -- what is it?” (Cienaga) Next I asked, “What are an alamo and a mimbres? What do you make with trompillo? Popotillo?” (cottonwood, willow/desertwillow, purple nightshade – asadero cheese, ephedra – tea)

            History is part of the language of a region as well. With the bioregional quiz for the Balmorhea kids, I asked. “Who was Gomez?” (A Mescalero Apache leader in the Davis Mountains that ran into Robert Neighbors, Rip Ford, Bigfoot Wallace, and Henry Skillman in the years before the Civil War.) Next I asked, “Can you name two other Apache chieftains famous in the area?” (They are Espejo; east of the Davis Mountains in the late 1860’s, and Alsate; in the Davis Mountains and the Chisos Mountains at the same time. Alsate”s ghost “still walks the mountains.”) 

            I continued with, “Who was El Cibolero?” (He was a resident along the Rio Grande in the Big Bend in 1800 who got crossways with the Spanish authorities and ended up becoming a Comanche.) “Who were Mucho Toro and Bajo del Sol?” (They were Comanche chieftains infamous along the Comanche War Trail from Ft. Stockton through Big Bend and well into Mexico in the 1830’s and 1840’s. They were possibly El Cibolero’s sons. Their momma, a big and forceful woman even when old, was the true leader of the raids.)

            Each bioregion develops its own terms to describe physical things or certain happenings. “Lake-time” speaks of when the playas fill, for example. Four terms have been used to describe the edge of the Llano Estacado; “the breaks” for the headwater valleys on its eastern edge, “the Cap” meaning the “caprock” edge of the Lllano, “Mescalero Escarpment” for the western edge by oilfield geologists, and la ceja, meaning “the eyebrow” for how the edge looks from far to the west – a dark ridge on the horizon.

            Read the following; “After the greenover, I put out hi-life. I grounded my cayuse near a chittim. Stepping around the prairie coal and brown rounds, I gnawed on some carneseca, noticing all the winter wood under the chittim on the north side of the playa. I lit a cinco as I walked around the dogtown. After I was done, I found a dogie that I had to dope for screwworm. A couple of scissorbills from the next ranch over rode up to augur a while, stepping down. We weren’t far from one of Causey’s chozas, close to the living water at Mescalero Spring, right on la ceja of the yarner. We visited about how some dang-fool mover had let his campfire get away at the edge of the shinnery – dang lints don’t know anything! One had to gotch his potro to get on. How’s that! Talk about a rank broomtail! After they rode on, I opened an air-tight of peaches, and luckily finished it just before an early blue norther rolled in with lots of polvo. The boss’s wife just planted a little orchard at the tank-dump at headquarters, so maybe we’ll get fresh peaches in a few years.”

            The above is a construction drawn from the memoirs of early local cowboys who were trying to tell later-day folks what life was like at the end of the 19^th century. Regional vocabularies once flourished, before the “dumbing down” by the “zombie tube” that makes all us Americans sound the same! We should have lots of names and stories to go with our local surroundings, about our landscape, plants, and animals – it is how we love our “home.” 

It is good to honor the memory of those that have served their people

When Colonel Shafter explored the sanddunes in 1871 his scouts interviewed an old Apache woman at Willow Springs. She told them that his command had just missed a meeting between the Comanche Mow-way and the Lipan Apache Magoosh. Also present had been Mescalero Apaches, but their leader was not named in the official report. It might have been Juan de la Paz, for it is recorded that he did lead buffalo hunting trips away from the Mescalero Reservation in the Sacramento Mountains that year. Juan de la Paz led a group of young men desirous of the prestige offered only to warriors. He had conceived the buffalo-hunting trip as a way to satisfy their restlessness. A Comanchero had also been present, to trade bars of lead to the Comanches. This was surely Jose Piedad Tafoya or one of his most trusted associates.

The old Apache woman had been “left behind to die.” The Apache woman left behind to die may or may not have been the Mescalero Lozen, the namesake of the Ojo Caliente Apache Lozen who rode with Victorio, Nana, and Geronimo. “History” does not record her name.  Shafter’s report expressed disgust at the inhumanity of the “savages,” aghast at the brutal throwing away of a human life.  I have been thinking about her recently. The emotional upheavals that death incurs has struck two people I know within the last week. A mentor of mine died last week (and this essay is in honor of him.)

In the 1700’s Spanish documents refer to a group of Apaches known as Llaneros that lived along the Pecos River and the sanddunes between the river and the western edge of the Llano Estacado. The invasion of Comanches early in the century had disrupted Plains Apache culture. During the 1700’s the Lipans went south, first to Muchaque Peak and the headwaters of the Colorado River, and then on to the San Saba River, and finally to the Nueces River. The Jicarilla went west to the Sandia and Sangre de Christo Mountains first, and then to the Tres Piedras/Chama region and finally even further west. The Llaneros, like the Lipans, wished to remain near their favorite food – the vast herds of buffalo and pronghorn of the grasslands.

The Comanches possessed enough guns through trade from the Pawnee (who received them from French traders) to be almost invincible in battle. The Comanches had also built up substantial horse herds. This allowed them to travel great distances by each man having a “string of ponies.” They would ride one horse at a gallop until it tired, and then switch to another, and then to another. This allowed them to use the tactic of the blitzkrieg lightning attack. They would strike without warning, disrupt the Apache village life, and then be out of reach of pursuit. Faced by such a harrying force, the Apaches slowly left their former homeland of the upper Canadian, Red and Brazos rivers during the first half of the 1700’s.

It is understandable that the Llaneros wished to remain near the buffalo. Plains Apaches were the original partners in the buffalo economy with the Spanish settlers of northern New Mexico. They often came to great trade fairs at the Pecos Pueblo where they offered dried buffalo meat and robes in exchange for metal arrow points, kettles, and blankets. Without buffalo, they would lose their most valuable commodity for trade.

Lozen had been born at Willow Springs in the late 1700’s. She had often visited there as a child, and also as a young married woman. The place held many happy memories for her. Her knowledge of the landscape there had served her well when she took her legendary revenge ride. Comanches had killed her husband in camp, and Lozen had pursued the Comanches alone. After trailing them for weeks she finally snuck into one of their camps and killed her husband’s murderer and stole his best horses. The Comanches pursuit was thwarted by her purposefully disappearing into the “trackless” dune region on a windy day. Her parents and grandparents had been Llanero Apaches, but a few years after her revenge ride, the Llaneros abandoned the buffalo hunting as a way of life, and had decided that the different family groups would join Mescalero groups (related by marriage) scattered throughout the Guadalupe, Davis, and Sacramento Mountains.

Lozen knew she was about to die, and she wished to die where she had been born. Magoosh and Juan de la Paz understood her wishes. Magoosh was headed back to Nascimiento, Mexico, returning to his family. Juan de la Paz and fifteen others were headed to hunt buffalo, if they could find any before being discovered by Comanches. From the Sacramento Mountains they had watched huge spring thunderheads build up along the western edge of the Llano Estacado. With the filling of the playas of the shortgrass country of the western Llano, buffalo might be present. If the rains had fallen on the eastern side of the Llano, then the Comanches would focus their attention on the cattle drives and wagon trains on the southern Llano. There, just east of Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing, these would be at their weakest at the dry end of the three-day’s distance between the Concho River and Horsehead. 

The arrival of first the Comanchero and then of Mow-way’s thirty Comanches had been a surprise. Magoosh had convinced Mow-way not to attack the Mescaleros by virtue of a trade (but the nature of that trade is a whole different story.) 

Lozen had lived a good life. Her bravery had inspired others. She had served all of her people as a respected and beloved healer and advisor, and had never remarried. As the Apaches had sat in council with the Comanches and the Comanchero, a scout had reported the approach of the black Seminole scouts riding in advance of Colonel Shafter. She volunteered to serve her people one last time. While everyone made their escape, she would tell the soldiers that Apaches and Comanches (historically mortal enemies) had agreed to fight together to preserve the buffalo hunting grounds.  Upon leaving, every Apache present rode his horse slowly by her and saluted her, with tears in their eyes. 

Connecting to the natural world means more than learning names

               For people in hunting cultures, a plant, an animal, or a rock is more than the literal real object. The name of the object more than identifies it, but also signifies all of the ideas and meanings the object symbolizes. This  way of thinking is a thinking oriented to essence, not form. Meaning comes when in contemplation -- listening, watching, and waiting. It is "seeing with the eyes shut"-- it is the connections that the mind makes as the physical object is seen (and after.) Some names are possessive, (like Wilson's Warbler) but the best are referent. Referent names comes from its appearance,  relationship to another organism, or  community of organisms (black-tailed gnatcatcher.) This way of thinking promotes a mutual courtesy between human and other members of the ecosystem that surrounds us

               The corporeality of what is visible is only the beginning. The hunter's eye seeks to understand, so identification is only the beginning. Observation is the key.  Appearance and behavior can be more than cause and effect. The human mind adds metaphysics in the search for understanding.

               For example, quail are secretive, their calls when unstressed quiet, soft, and gentle. Such calls become symbolic -- when a hunter knows that he/she is moving through a habitat as a part of the surroundings, not as an intruder. The calls are a symbol of the balance a hunter must find to be in tune with the surroundings. Successful hunters in a hunting culture say, "I felt as one with what surrounded me."

               Turkey need water to survive. A turkey feather becomes a remembrance of water. A turkey feather was often used by American Indians as an offering to a spring, a prayer that the spring will always be there, and a prayer of thanks for the water. The mind takes another step -- a turkey feather becomes an offering for the hope of rain. Rain brings the germination of seeds, so turkey feathers become symbols of germination.

               Swallows are symbols of water as well. They drink on the wing, swooping over a waterhole. They personify rain, for their graceful swoops are like light rain in gusty winds. Swallows are like the cool breezes after a rain, soft and gentle. their voice is a soft twittering -- the gentleness and articulate voices are like the murmurings of happy babies. Babies thrive in established secure lives. Swallows live in villages - clusters of mud nests on cliffs (and now highway overpasses and buildings.) The mud nests are like Southwestern adobe houses, so swallows become guardians of house and village, a symbol of civilized life.

               Hummingbirds display in an arc, like the arc of a rainbow. Their iridescent colors flash briefly, like the colors of a rainbow. They feed on flowers, the result of rain, so they become symbols of the glories of rain and its life-giving force.  Metaphysical thought is fleeting, quick glimpses at understanding what is too large to comprehend. Hummingbirds, by their fleet flight are symbols of metaphysical thoughts. Metaphysical thoughts are ephemeral, incorporeal, of the spirit world, therefore hummingbirds are messengers of the spirit world.

               Birds (and other organisms) are food, as well as symbols. Ritual connects the two paths. Ritual is more than human. In animal behavior it is phylogenetically adapted motor patterns of communication. It is displacement, the discharge of aggression, or bond formation. When a redwing blackbird bows and lifts its epaulets, and another points his beak to the sky, the cattails resound with ritual. The wild is full of ritual.

                Science is a ritual. The act of gathering information has a purpose of its own. There needs to be no goal or reason for research, no overlying economic necessity. Science helps us understand corporeality. We can never know all  of how organisms are interrelated. We can never know enough to control and direct life.  Science can help us be less ignorant and arrogant, although science has proven in the past to make us arrogant and hurtful. Our hurtful acts, however, have come from ignorance of the interrelationships that surround us.

               For millennia humans said to the earth "we are yours," not having the history or technology to see more than our immediate surroundings, like babies. For the last century we have been adolescent, learning the tools of knowledge and telling the earth "You are mine!" Now, with the expanding science of ecology, and the development of ecopsychology, ecopedagogy,  and ecocriticism, we are beginning to say with the earth, "We are one!"

Sometimes the birds come to watch the birdwatchers

A sparkling creek led the way under huge cottonwoods, then under sheer cliffs.  The way became difficult.  A boulder field dammed the narrows where another canyon joined.    For a number of years the compilers of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count assigned me to walk this wild stretch of canyon on a private ranch.  I walked the canyon with my mother, alone, with friends and with strangers.  Varying conditions of snow, strong winds or beautiful and perfect 70^o days have enlivened the hikes.

           One year my companions were a recently retired New York couple, just transplanted to Alpine.  The man dominated the first thirty minutes of the walk with interminable bragging about the many exotic places where the couple had birded.  His storytelling was trumped by a covey of Fools Quail and the encounter was the first true birding we experienced of the morning.

           The clown kachina mask of the quail gave the species another oft-used name, Harlequin. Their erratic behavior led to their colloquial name. Our group of three had reached the rock clamber of the boulder field, which lay in a cold shadowy narrows. My companions (in their 60’s, and I in my early 30’s) voted to rest before tackling the strenuous path ahead. Sun hit a grouping of boulders nearby suitable for seating. Warmed by the morning sun, we drank water and nibbled snacks from our small packs.

           We had seen few birds – mostly because the chill of the morning still penetrated the landscape. On a cold morning birds take their time before moving to feed, remaining warmly ensconced in brushpiles and dense thickets. We had also not become “attuned” to the landscape. The ecology of a landscape is “revealed” to “naturalists.” Our perceptions were still dominated by our attention to the rugged beauty and the cold. We had not begun to pay attention to detail.

           Our rest was interrupted by whistles that none of us could identify. The hollow whistles whispery notes came from several directions, or so it seemed. We fingered our binoculars, peering this way and that. “Whatever they are, they are coming to the sun, and maybe the water.” My companions shushed me with a finger wagging before their lips.

           A lone Fool Quail stepped into the sunlight from behind a boulder at the edge of the cold shadows. We admired his goofy mask through our binoculars. With voiceless consensus, we remained motionless. The quail whistled in quick succession, and was answered by an excited chattering of sibilant notes. Ten more quail filed into a patch of bermuda grass. Bermuda grass can be found even in a wild canyon brought by wind, a hiker’s cuff, or washed from an upstream cattle-feeding location.    

           For three or four minutes, the quail fluffed their feathers, grooming and preening, blinking against the light. One quail nuzzled another in affection. Their black and white faces bobbed back and forth, then up and down. Harlequin quail are meek creatures in the wild.

           Nowadays a birder seeking to add the species to his or her lifelist knows to visit a feeding station for them in the Davis Mountains State Park, but 25 years ago the sighting of the species was strictly serendipitous for visiting birders. The family of Pansy Espy, the compiler of the count, owned a ranch in the mountains, but did not have a “home covey” of the Fool Quail as did her co-compiler and fellow rancher Jody Miller from the Sierra Vieja. Pansy’s home, on a grassy hilltop, is in the wrong habitat.

           Early scientists gave the species other names; Montezuma Quail, and Mearn’s Quail. In the United States it is only found in Trans-Pecos Texas and the corners of southeast Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.  Mearn’s Quail need oak trees and tall grass and have special dietary needs. Unlike other quail they do not feed on forb and grass seeds. Instead, they scratch at the ground, digging up bulbs, corms, and fleshy rots of plants such as nutgrass, onion, and oxalis. These plants usually need clay soils that retain moisture, or shady humus in oak and hackberry groves, or in wet soil. Until the 1890’s Harlequin Quail were found in isolated regions of the western Texas Hill Country.

           The covey crossed the bermuda grass patch, walking directly at us. We remained motionless. The birds stopped ten feet from us and began scratching along a bare cattle trail, still whispering a cheerful conversation.  One entered my shadow. It stared up at me. It seemed to realize my shadow was something new intruding into its morning landscape. Still puzzled, it walked closer, peering up in each direction so each eye could examine me. The bird whistled – a longer tone of a different pitch. The other birds froze. The bird at my feet seemed to stretch his neck abnormally far, myopically inspecting me. In unison all eleven birds exploded into the air, scattering in every direction.

           Their departure disturbed other birds. A spotted towhee fussed from the litter under a grove of gnarled hackberries. A flock of bushtits ascended the hackberries to look for the source of the disturbance. A rock wren bounced up on a rock still in shadow, fussing as it twitched. More and more birds revealed themselves. A pair of robins burbled and chuckled from their roosting site in the middle of the hackberries. A flock of white-crowned sparrows popped up from the ground to perch at the top of a small thicket of wispy beebrush.

           The combined chatter of all the species brought a scrub jay. Jays are sentinel birds. Several jay species come to disturbances in different southwestern montane forests. If the disturbance is a predator, a jay will announce the predator’s presence. If the predator is an owl or hawk other birds will come to mob it (fussing until it leaves in discomfort.) If the predator is a mammal, the jay will follow it, giving traffic reports until it leaves the communal territory of the winter resident birds’ multi-species flocks.

           For five minutes more, dozens of birds appeared. The towhee ended it, when it attempted to land on the rock I was on and panicked when it decided I was a threat.

           “The birds came to us – so many species, so many individuals. They presented themselves to us. Totally amazing.” The man shook himself, as if waking up. His wife spread her arms wide, palms upward. “This is incredible -- it is magical!”

Indians of the Jornada-Mogollon culture on the Llano Estacado – 1100-1300 A.D.

Water Wolf had just endured another long painful night, unable to sleep soundly because of his aching shoulder.  During the wee hours he had risen from his bed, being careful to not disturb his wife of thirty years. He went out of the door of the pithouse and sat down, facing the east, waiting for sunrise. A half-dozen other pithouses were nearby, dimly visible in the starlight. Two of them belong to the families of his daughters – his sons had married girls in other communities along the salty river to the west, on the other side of the sanddunes.  The other houses belonged to his wife’s sisters and their families. One structure was reserved for storing ceremonial equipment and attire, and the last structure was a community storehouse.

Thirty years before, he had convinced his wife and her sisters to move closer to the plains where pronghorn were plentiful, and buffalo sometimes roamed in the rainiest years. He and his brother’s-in-law hunted in the fall, harvesting far more meat than they could use. They took the excess to the settlements on the salty river for trade, their dogs dragging travois laden with the dried meat and hides. Their community also served as a waystation for traveling traders.

Sometimes a trader would go no further than the community – especially the traders from the grass house peoples far to the east. Once a year a trading party from far to the southwest, from a great city known as Paquime, stopped overnight on their way to visit the grass house people far to the east. They returned to their home via a different route. These traders told incredible stories, stories that stuck in the mind. Water Wolf had painted two giant horned serpents in the ceremonial house as a mnemonic device to remember some of their stories. Horned serpents guarded water – especially springs.

Water Wolf had received his name for roaming the sand dune country and finding water in many places. He discovered that water could be found by digging near certain plants, and then waiting overnight – and he found where animals maintained “wells” in the dunes. Until he had, few of the people in the communities along the salty river ever ventured into the dune country. He had disproved some of the stories told about the “bad spirits” of the dunes.

Some of the settlers along the salty river believed that the people that left the giant spearpoints among the bones of giant buffalo in the region of his community would someday return. They believed that Water Wolf’s community would be destroyed. Water Wolf decided that the relicts were very old – he had found the artifacts deep in the soil along one of the draws that led to one of the salt lakes of the region. If the artifacts had been buried that deep, it would have had to happen many lifetimes ago.

Water Wolf’s shoulder and arm hurt all the time, and would make the rest of his life miserable. Once he had been known for feats of strength. He could chop wood day with a stone axe to shape the timbers for the pithouses from the junipers along the edge of the plains. His bow was strung tighter than bows of most other men. He used a bow made from the orange-wood tree of the grass-hut people, and the bow was famous among the people of the salty river. It hung in his house, unusable, now. He hated not being able to use his arm – to raise his arm above his head would bring pain to him that sent him to his knees.

This fall he would not be going with his sons and their cousins on the fall hunt. One of his brother-in-laws would not be going either, due to a knee that no longer allowed him to run. On the fall hunt, the group would run for a full day to the east, to a large playa with a spring. A small herd of buffalo was always there, even if the lake basin did not have standing water. They had found the bones of the giant buffalo there, too, along with the curved tusks of some giant animal, tusks longer than a man. Other old bones were there, too – a giant cat with huge fangs, along with other bones that belonged to no animal that existed today.  

The one elder that would be going on the hunt was not a good leader. He told his oldest son-in-law to go along with the elder, but to realize that he may have to convince his cousins to disobey their father if the elder made a bad decision. The group would be leaving not long after daybreak – so Water Wolf began praying for their success when the morning star cleared the horizon.

 Water Wolf did not worry about the village being attacked while the hunters were gone. The plains to the east were a formidable barrier. It was a featureless expanse of grass that took a five-day walk to cross, where travelers went with out water, if not guided by someone who knew about the hidden waters.  In the draws of the plains, there were places a person could dig and let water seep into a hole, and some of the playas had small springs at their edge.

To the west were people of his culture. Water Wolf had heard stories from the traders that some of the farming people in the big towns far to the northwest were in the middle of a war fueled by religious differences. A new religion, the kachina religion, had begun, influenced by the Paquime traders. He did not think that his little village would matter, even though they had begun worshiping in the manner of the kachina religion. The traders from the northern towns did not pass through his village. They went to visit the grass house people by going along the river that bisected the plains in a canyon far to the north.    

********** This story is set in the 1200’s. Water Wolf’s people were the eastern Jornada-Mogollon Indians. When pottery shards are found on West Texas ranches, it is evidence that the Jornada-Mogollon people may have utilized the landscape. By the 1300’s the pithouse villages along the Pecos and Hondo River were abandoned. (One village, west of present day Roswell, was destroyed by warfare.) Some of the people became Jumano Indians, following a similar lifestyle, and others became people that followed the buffalo that became more plentiful in the region at that time. Remains of small pithouse settlements have been found along the western edge of the Llano Estacado, and even near some of the playas on top of the Llano.

A fairy bouquet can teach about runny noses, slime, limestone, and caliche

I went outside the other day in a cold wind looking for fairy bouquets. As I walked around, I found one – the wildflower filaree. But the cold wind caused my nose to run. When I came back in, I became curious about why this happened, so I spent some time on the Internet. What I found, amazed me.

Slime is the glue that holds the biosphere together. An immense variety of long molecules are collectively called “slime.” Slime molecules are carbohydrates with a negative charge. Those carbohydrates join together to form chains which tie molecules together. The more numerous the links, the more syrupy the slime. The molecules in the chains of slime are mostly water, so a little bit of the carbohydrates goes a long way.

In us slime forms a veneer covering the surface of the digestive, respiratory, urinary, and other tracts. It harbors antibodies and presents a barrier to infectious microbes. If the stomach were not lined with slime, the acid within would eat away the stomach wall. Slime is indispensable, even to a single cell. Each cell is covered with slime. In a zygote, slime triggers cell diversification – the biochemical machinery of a cell changes when its slime touches the slime of another cell.

People are revolted by slime. A person that is “a slimy &%#*” is a lowdown good for nothing. Slime is a good thing. Fish and amphibians are slimy, but the slime protects them. Snot is slimy. (Someone that is bratty and talks back to others is labeled snotty.) Snot more often than not protects us from disease, washing out airborne bacterial diseases unless an infection sets in, and then the slime in snot breeds the bacteria.  

 Mollusks farm their slime. The trail of slime left- behind as they move grows microbes that photosynthesize into a luxuriant garden that the animal harvests as it returns. Since cryptogamic soil is an important feature in arid landscapes, this poses the question about what role our tiny native snails (that live in ant nests) play in creating the cryptogamic soils. (Go to our website and type in cryptogamic soils in the website search engine to learn more about cryptogamic soils.)

Slime unites bacteria. Bacteria never work alone --- they collaborate. Bacteria are not restricted to passing their DNA only to their offspring. They can give it to their neighbors, and often do so in slime. Some scientists say that the entire bacterial community can be considered one earth-embracing organism, continuously reorganizing itself, adapting to the ever-changing conditions of the biosphere. Bacteria cleanse the biosphere and keep it fit for life, transforming carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and even heavy metals and petroleum.

Bacteria are everywhere. They pervade our soils and mudflats, cover deserts and dunes, helping capture and retain water. When soils are examined with an electron microscope, the soil is revealed to be connected by microbial mats of bacteria, unified by slime.

Some minerals (processed by bacteria) make it to the ocean where they become either necessities for organisms or collect in sediment. One organism in the sea is Emiliana, a single cell algae that biochemically envelops itself with calcite crystals (not normal rectangular calcite crystals, but glittering wheels of calcite.) Guess what holds the calcite wheels together – Slime!

What rock is mostly calcite? Limestone. Was limestone present on the earth when it formed? No! Limestone is a rock created by life. Emiliana can reproduce every two hours. The hotter it is, the faster it reproduces. Sometimes there are blooms of Emiliana. Satellite photographs sometimes reveal thousands of square miles of ocean slowly becoming whitish. Emiliana also die quickly, so tons of calcium carbonate go filtering down to the ocean floor.

Through plate tectonics this calcium carbonate is sucked into the earth’s interior. The calcium-enriched lava, when ejected in eruptions, blows the carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. In the Cretaceous period carbon dioxide built up until there was ten times as much in the atmosphere as there is now. Forests grew in Antarctica and there were no glaciers anywhere in the world.

But remember the Emiliana blooms covering large areas of the ocean? It is theorized that those patches grew and grew until they began reflecting solar radiation back through the surface water, increasing evaporation and producing glaring white clouds (shielding, cooling clouds) tempering the temperatures of the Cretaceous period. Maybe Emiliana will temper man-caused global warming (providing slime does its work!) 

Caliche is another rock that is continually being created. When rain percolates through arid soils, the calcium carbonates in the soil are collected together and unified by slime, and slowly harden over time when the soils dry out again. The “Cap” of the Caprock of the Llano Estacado was created by slime, too.

As my nose dried up in the warm building, I remembered that several years ago I had decided to research filaree. In programs on wildflowers I tell folks that it came with the churro sheep brought by Don Juan de Onate in 1598 when the Spanish colonized New Northern New Mexico. It may have come to the Llano Estacado even earlier, for Francisco Coronado had sheep with him as he looked for the Seven Cities of Cibola. The little curly haired seeds were trapped in the fleece of the sheep. As I checked my notes, I found I had forgotten that earlier I had learned that the name originated in Morocco. The Moors that conquered Spain gave it the name al feria, and alferillo is the Spanish name. The plant came to Spain with the Moors, probably in the hair of sheep, too. Filaree is the English twist to the common name.

Filaree is just one of the fairy bouquets of spring. I doubt that I will find Draba this year, a native “belly flower” only two to four inches tall that appears after wet winters with plenty of snow. A person has to lie on their belly to truly admire the fairy bouquets!  I probably will find some “quail pea,” another tiny native fairy bouquet of spring. A little bit later, I should also find dwarf verbena in clay soils, such as that in the playa here at Sibley. This spring, I have already seen another fairy bouquet in the yards in town – the “weed” henbit, which is another European introduction that probably did come in hay to the New World.

A search for a fairy bouquet led to learning something new about slime, snot, limestone, and caliche!

how well do you know west texas? a test for fun......again...750 took a look at it last time...

1.      Winter storms on the Llano Estacado are called? A. howling westerlies B. blue northers C. banshees of the baldies D. scuzzy sandstorms

2.      John Bullis led which group?  A. Lipan scouts  B. Tonkawa scouts C. Seminole Negro scouts D. Texas Rangers

3.      The Indian tribe that preserved the customs of the sweat lodge is? A.  Apache B. Cherokee C. Lakota Souix D. Pawnee

4.      Dodder is a wildflower that looks like? A. a clump of yellow string B. a mass of green thorns around a waxy flower C. a yellow daisy D. a brillo pad

5.      Cotton picking is? A. picking the flowers B. removing the boll of cotton at the stem C. removing the lint from the boll D. weeding a cotton field

6.      Endemic plants are A. plants that only live in one small area of the world B. plants that carry disease C. plants with medicinal uses D. are plants used by animals

7.      The river that runs through Coke County is? A. Brazos B. Concho C. Colorado D. Pecos

8.      The camps of the Comanche Indians were usually found? A. on the west side of the Llano Estacado B. on the Pecos River C. On the San Saba River D. along the eastern side of the Llano Estacado, below the caprock

9.      The Llano Estacado became the world’s most prolific cotton producing region in? A.1937 B. 1957 C. 1947 D. 1967

10.   The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s arboretum is? A. in Chihuahua Mexico B. in Alpine C. in Presidio  D. in between Fort Davis and Alpine

11.   German settlers created orderly towns throughout Texas, and the nearest to Midland is                        A. Fredericksburg B. Nazareth C. Windthorst D. New Braunfels

12.   At the Davis Mountains State Park, a person can see? A. Pinetrees and nightjars B. Cactus and cactus wrens C. Oak trees and phainopeplas D. Mesquite trees and painted buntings

13.   Which institution of higher learning “southwest collections” is producing a photographic exhibit of the Llano Estacado? A. Angelo State? B. UTPB? C. Texas Tech D. College of the Southwest in Hobbs

14.   Chihuahuan ravens are? A. the noisy black birds with long tails B. the big black birds that most commonly perch on telephone poles to the northwest of Midland C. the small black birds that whirl in flocks of 10,000 around livestock feeding areas D. the black birds that get iridescent speckles on their chest in their breeding plumages

15.   Landfarms are places where?  A. road materials are dug out of the ground B. where topsoil is produced for sale C. organic material recycling and composting facilities D. where petroleum or salt contaminated soil is remediated        

16.   The wonderful drought adapted ornamental plants Bouvardia and esparanza are found growing wild in which mountain range? A. Davis Mountains B. Guadalupe Mountains C. Delaware Mountains D. Sacramento Mountains

17.    The South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center is in? A. Midland B. Odessa C. San Angelo D. Lubbock

18.   Halophytic and gypsophilic plants grow in? A. sanddunes B. draw bottoms C. clay playa basins D. salt playa basins

19.   Killdeer and nighthawks are among the creatures that prefer the habitat of? A. the urban forest B. oil well pads C. the pocket forests of the Llano Estacado draws D. Mesquite brushland

20.   Frank Buckalew was a captive in 1866 of which Indian tribe? A. Kickapoo B. Comanche C. Tonkawa D. Lipan Apache

21.   Lubbock Lake Landmark preserves? A. the site of the Yellowhouse Canyon fight between buffalo hunters and Comanches B. Francisco Coronado’s winter camp in 1541 C. fossils of Triassic age dinosaurs D. fossils of Pleistocene animals

22.   Caprylic acid is produced by? A. stink beetles B. oak leaves C. ants D. skunks

23.   In the Monahans State Park a person can find? A. gum bumelia trees B. pinyon pine C. willow trees  D. live oaks

24.   The Texon Scar is? A. where a meteorite hit B. a practice bombing range of World War II C. where windblown sand collected during the Pleistocene D. where salt water from early oil wells ruined land

25.   Which of the following does not happen after a rainstorm in west Texas? A. red rainbugs walk on the ground B. millipedes come out of ant holes C. termites swarm by the billion D. lady bugs appear by the thousands

26.   Jane Gilmore Rushing wrote books about life near? A. Snyder B. Lubbock C. Monahans D. Pecos

27.   Ethie Eagleton started which town’s historical museum? A. Stanton B. Midland C. O’Donnell            D. McCamey

28.   The individual that serves as the sentinel in a coterie of prairie dogs is?  A. the oldest male B. the oldest female C. the female with the most babies D. a female without babies

29.   Select the one predator of the following that does not attack bird nests in trees? A. Kingsnakes B. Gray foxes C. Grackles D.  Red foxes

30.   Which is the improper translation of the following Spanish words? A. Trompillo – purple nightshade B. Popotillo – Mormon tea C. Mimbres -- mesquite D. Alamo -- cottonwood

31.   Lagunas Sabinas is the Comanchero name for which salt lake? A. Shafter Lake B. Tahoka Lake         C. Pleasure Lake D. Cedar Lake

32.   Gomez Peak at the northern end of the Davis Mountains was named for? A. the first person to dig irrigation canals along the Pecos River B. a Texas Ranger C. a Mescalero Apache chief D. the first Hispanic member of the Texas State Legislature

33.   What business establishment in Girvin, Texas was written about in Texas Monthly? A. the new post office B. the old school that is now a community center C. the power plant D. the social club

34.   Muchaque Peak is near ? A. a favorite winter camp of Quanah Parker B. on the famous black rancher 80 John Wallace’s land C. Horsehead Crossing D. Rath City – a buffalo hunter’s depot in the 1870’s

35.   The name of the railroad built by Andrew Fasken was? A. The Midland-Hobbs Railway B. Midland and Northwestern Railroad C. Texas and New Mexico Railroad D. Midland to Smackover Railroad

36.   Which of the following  is not one of the reasons Hispanic settlers came to west Texas before 1940?   A. to build railroads B. to work in cotton fields C. to work in the oilfield D. to build the brick streets of the towns of the region    

heat can make a person crazy

 I took a lower branch of the creosote bush next to me, and rolled the sprig in my fingers. I love its "smell of rain." Thinking of the smell of rain made me thirsty. I remembered an old story, from the days that Captain Jack Hays, Bigfoot Wallace, and Robert Neighbors rode through West Texas trying to get an estimate of the population of Indians in the far western reaches of the new country (Texas.)  Captain Hays was also scouting for a road to El Paso, too. They had a doctor from Boston with them, a tenderfoot, not knowledgeable about self-sufficiency or proper behavior in hot arid climes.

After filling all available containers from the springs along the Middle Concho, the group headed west for Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing. The Doctor drank all of his water before the day was done. After a nap around sundown, the group continued the march into the night. The next morning, the Boston doctor was nowhere to be found. One of the Lipan Apache scouts rode back, but returned a few hours later with the doctor's clothes. He had found them draped over an allthorn bush, but no sign of the doctor. The dried buffalo grass, tobosa grass, and fluff grass had not revealed a trail.

Some ten months later the Boston doctor showed up in San Antonio, delivered by a group of Lipan Apaches. The doctor had no memory of what had happened to him and was a changed man. When brought back to San Antonio, he stayed in a dark room and cried. Sounds made him jump. One of the doctors of the town who had hosted him as a guest on the way west took him in after his return, and in an effort to "quiet his nerves" gave him laudanum. He did not improve, so finally arrangements were made to take him back to Boston.

I have wondered about the doctor, and have imagined different scenarios for what transpired. The source for the story indicated dehydration, exhaustion and possibly even heat stroke had destroyed the man.  Remembering the story brought the story of the lost buffalo soldiers between Tahoka Lake and Silver Lake. Four men died of dehydration in 1878, and in recent years Morton, Texas has honored their memory, inviting buffalo soldier re-enactors out during  their "Frontier Days" celebration.

I am sure there are other stories of people dying from the heat and lack of water on the Llano Estacado.  With almost no surface water and less than .0001 percent of the area having any trees (just pocket forests in the draws), the Llano Estacado was a tough place to cross in the summer before railroads and then finally roads for automobiles. 

I sniffed the creosote bush sprig I had been rolling, inhaled deeply, and waded into the heat again, headed back to the air conditioning  and a comfortable chair. People still get heatstroke, and sometimes take years to return to health, after all.  

Living with heat has changed for most of American society

Heat is an enemy, a force much stronger than humans -- heat is a heavy weight grinding a person against stone. Heat is hated. Heat can kill. A number of tropical and subtropical cultures preserve the "siesta, the afternoon nap."  Modern society can be foolish at times, and it seems that there should be laws against working outside when the air temperature is 105 in the shade, and bare ground radiates 150+ degrees.   Most native animals are underground during the heat of the day. Two feet down the temperature stays 55 degrees Fahrenheit year around. During the times of dry heat, the only chance of moisture in any form is underground.

The soapberry flowers are falling. This year's bloom brought few butterflies, despite a much more colorful spring than last year.  It seems that when they fall, a Llanero's mind feels the first oppression of summer's heat, announcing, "The heat has arrived, and there will be no relief for three more months!"

My grandfather raised cattle much of his adult life, and when the Depression sent him job hunting in the city he ended up doing jobs either early in the morning or late into the night. He believed the summer afternoon was made to be beyond quiet and somnolent.  As I have become older I think I now realize that was a time when he could meditate and to let go of tensions of everyday life.

 My father preserved the tradition the best he could. He would leave downtown and drive out to where Lee High School appeared 20 years later, bouncing down the dirt road that became Neely. His mother was living in his house, and she always had a meal of meat, potatoes, salad, and dessert waiting for him. He would go to my parents bedroom and sleep for 30 minutes, and then drive back to town.

When I worked for myself as a nurseryman, I preserved the tradition. I'd be at the job by first gray in the east, and work nonstop until after the noon hour, then head for the house, lunch and then a book, after a hot bath. Come evening, I would return, and water plants until after dark. 

My house had lots of windows, and lots of plants around it. The north side of the house was a favored shade-up place for doves.200 or more came to the pine trees. Doves make interesting noises in the hot afternoon. They gurgle, make white noise buzzes, as well as have a number of different cooing notes.

They are often social, seeming to comment to each other about a possibly scary movement in the leaf litter below, or the BRRRRRT of a roadrunner from the shade of a prickly pear in the pasture. One branch was the main view from the recliner where I read.  Sometimes the doves would do "the wave" with their little pin heads, one after the other turning to look at what approached up the walkway to the house.

We had no air conditioners, just open windows, and a ceiling fan. Enforced afternoon lassitude made the old-time Llaneros take the long view,  and made them feel that time could not be wasted in careful thought and deliberation.

I finally joined the modern world about five years ago and moved to  a house in town with central air-conditioning and a thermostat.  Previously, at the old house, we had installed window unit air conditioners in 1998, when the temperatures topped 110 for several days.  I learned to love to sleep under the cool stream of air. Air conditioning costs money and maintenance, and the wait for a maintenance man can be long.  Air conditioners changed how we live, in more ways than people may realize, I believe.

 My internal thermostat is now erratic. I used to be able to do light physical work (like pruning) without breaking a sweat in the summer morn, but now, I sweat profusely. My internal histamines respond, so I believe my body is radiating, and my skin becomes flushed.

I have heard of a town in Australia, (Coober Pedy) where the houses, stores, and offices are all underground (but I have no idea of constituted streets). I wonder if they have courtyards that serve as rainwater collectors and feed underground cisterns? It might be a more energy efficient and cheaper way to live. Last year's heat brought rolling blackouts of electricity to some here in Texas. Last year's heat overloaded the system. It will probably happen again.  Heat is implacable... as implacable as a rattlesnake poised to strike.

    

   

the gangsters of Wink

Sheriff Will Priest sat in his office in Kermit, his gut twisted up inside. It was not something he ate, no sirree! He was caught up in a whirl of overpowering forces he could not escape. "Sheriff," he thought. "What a joke, I'm a joke, I'm no sheriff. I'm just a pawn. The boomtown bullies have taken over Wink and I'm a dead man if I go against them. My hands are tied, because even if I arrest them, Mayor Ostrom will kick them loose."

Sheriff Priest knew that the only way to prevent the bullies from taking over Wink would have been to kill them when they first came to town, without the benefit of the law. And that would have been wrong, so wrong he knew he was incapable of doing it. He knew that gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes had taken over Hendrick Street. With hundreds of roughnecks working in the new oilfield needing to blow off steam after dangerous and exhausting work, the underworld had come to town to soak up the river of money pouring out of the ground. He had heard what had happened up at Borger and a dozen more oil boomtowns all across Texas and Oklahoma. Heavy Brackeen, now firmly established in town, had been at Borger, but somehow had escaped prosecution when the Texas Rangers finally did clean up that town.

"Dang fools, those sharecropper young'uns from the breaks, making more money than their parents ever saw, and blowing it on drinking and gambling and such. How come people want to escape the drudgery on the installment plan? What is wrong with them? If they toughed it out and saved their money, they could leave the oilfields for good. Blowing their money keeps them trapped." The sheriff sighed. He was trapped as they were, but it wasn't his doing -- it was the fault of all the strangers filling the streets of Wink. A cowtown sheriff did not belong in an oil boomtown.

"I wonder if my new deputy in Wink will get killed. He is the only law for the town. He is such a gung-ho and righteous boy. It is black and white for him, good and evil. He shut down a couple of the gambling parlors there a few hours ago, and is now at the boarding house, sleeping the sleep of the just. And I am sitting here, wondering if Heavy will blame me. I realize all I can do is break up fights and keep the rowdies from killing each other, but that boy doesn't know the power of greed."

The door suddenly swung open. Hot Shot Ash stood there, with gun in hand. "Heavy wants to talk to you," said the small and wiry right-hand man of Brackeen. As Hot Shot and the sheriff drove a half hour down the sandy county roads to the City Café in Wink, from which Brackeen ran his operation, the sheriff thought about the reasons he stayed. Was owning land and a house free and clear enough reason to stay?  He might be able to sell it. He was too old to find a new line of work, too old to go to work in the oilfields some place else, and as far as he could determine, he just did not have any options.

The City Café had a big and ornately carved mahogany bar that had been shipped out of El Paso. Bars in a boomtown were for "booze, broads, and brawls."  Fistfights were a nightly occurrence. Booze first makes a man sing like a bird, then become like a bull on the prod, and finally turn into a swine in the gutter.  Many of the fights were among friends, repeated often, and considered to be more like play, never rancorous, just sport and good exercise.

As Hot Shot and the sheriff walked in, a fight was in progress. The men stopped when they saw the badge shining in the light, but after the sheriff walked by, went back to whomping on each other. The other patrons present did not even stop their conversations. In the back room office, Heavy and several other men were sitting around, smoking cigars, sipping whiskey, and playing poker. He did not turn his double-chinned sullen face towards the sheriff until the hand was finished.

Roger and Diana Olien wrote "Oil Booms, Social Change in Five Texas Towns," the source material for this story. Although they interviewed Hot Shot many years later, the book does not report what transpired as Heavy and his men talked to Sheriff Priest for the next few hours. Their mention of the interchange does not go beyond the one phrase, "held the sheriff at gunpoint for several hours explaining the salient facts of Wink life." When I read the phrase, I put down the book, and began to imagine Sheriff Priest's history, his character, and what he felt, as he endured that evening.

This story occurred in the latter part of the 1920's. Many people now living were kids during similar dramas in a number of boomtowns of the west Texas oilfields. Law enforcement sometimes did look the other way or become part of the corruption during those days. When they confiscated a bootlegger's product, for example, they gave it to family and friends, instead of destroying the goods. Law abiding citizens, powerless to change things, endured the troubles, and when the towns were finally brought under control, did not talk about the times with their children. Sometimes it is better to "put things behind you."

Such stories should be told, however. People today, especially kids, still get trapped in situations created by bullies. The "gangsta life" immortalized by rap music, operates in the same brutal way, with drive-by shootings, murders for "turf" or illegal drug markets. Pressure politics exist in corporate life, political life, social life, and even family life. People endure such situations, with resentments building and their souls withering.  

The people of Winkler County soon learned of Brackeen's little talk with the sheriff. Sheriff Priest endured their criticism, and decided to not stand for reelection. A couple of years later, however, he became sheriff again. For most of the 1930's, until his death, he remained the sheriff, and "continued to show considerable toleration of gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes," as the Oliens wrote.

Sheriff Priest was not a hero. He was an average man, trapped by circumstance. He must have believed that he did do some good for the folks of the county, keeping them reasonably unaffected by the squalid behavior "managed" by Brackeen and his ilk. To be reelected, the people of Winkler County must have believed he was acting in their best interests, as well. His story illustrates in bold relief the similar tragic psychological degradation that many people have to endure when bullied by others. A person enduring such pressures often suffers silently for years, as he did until his death. His story also helps us understand stories on the grand scale -- a person can see Saddam Hussein as Heavy Brackeen!  I think the next time that I am in Kermit I will try to find Sheriff Priest's grave.

   

Oaks in our gardens enriched the ecology of our Urban Forest

                                            

               A few years back some of our local birdwatchers found a mountain chickadee. Normally found in the mountains of the western United States, it was quite unexpected. I didn't rush out to see it like most of the birders, but instead it lead to some contemplating and theorizing.

               Why have Mountain and Carolina Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches appeared in Midland.  The first thought – this chickadee was in an oak tree.  Were the others also in oak trees?  Yes, they were first found in areas of the city where there are many live oak trees, and each of them foraged in oak trees much of the time.  In the Hill Country Carolina Chickadees live in oaks; in the mountains of West Texas, Mountain Chickadees live in oaks.  Shin oaks, the only oaks in Midland County before landscaping with oaks became popular, are usually less than five feet tall and have no chickadees.  They prefer tall oaks and if we had no big oaks, the chickadees would not stop over in their wanderings.

               That is a thought that needs to be pursued – chickadees wandering.  Why would they? Why would they leave their preferred ecological community?  They are not migratory.  Was there an ecological catastrophe?  No, no fires, no mass habitat destruction of any sort in their homelands.  Would chickadees leave because there were too many for their habitat – did every fledgling survive in a bountiful spring?  Could a droughty fall have caused the food supply to be inadequate for a bumper crop of chickadees?  Could it be that a percentage of the population of chickadees is genetically programmed to seek out and find new chickadee-friendly habitat?  Or could a few just have “worms in the brain” and behave in un-chickadee fashion?

Could it be that oaks have introduced other fauna and flora to Midland? Many of the oak trees in Midland were dug up in the wild and transplanted.  With the soil around their roots came a number of other plants.  The most common is Briar.  Usually the homeowner chops it down, but in more informal landscapes a number of the Briars have been allowed to grow.  They produce berries and birds have spread them.  Mistletoe grows on oaks and its berries are designed to be spread by birds.  Mistletoe berries are composed of a very sticky liquid.  If a bird that has been eating them cleans its bill on a branch, a seed hanging to its bill will be glued to that branch and another clump of mistletoe started. Carolina snailseed, a vine with red berries, may have arrived with oaks, as did poison ivy.

               Oak Decline, a disease of oaks, have been recorded.  The disease may have come on a wild dug tree, or in oak firewood.  Firewood has also introduced several types of fungus, lichens, moss and algae.  In old firewood and in rootballs, imported fire ants keep arriving in Midland.  So far fire ants have been found here only in disturbed and irrigated soil in town.  No fire ant mounds have yet been found in pastures where soils are harder.

              

               Many new species of gall forming insects also arrived with the oaks.  Over 800 species of gall insects live on oaks.  Most are tiny wasps but gnats, midges and flies also cause galls.  (Do chickadees eat these gall insects?  Do they break open the galls to eat the larvae?)  Aphids and scale which attack oaks have also arrived.

               What about vertebrates?  Did the Mediterranean Geckos that have proliferated the last few years come in the oak trees?  Did the Gulf Coast Toads at Hill Park arrive in an oak rootball?  How about Green Tree Frogs and the Green Anole?

               Nuthatches, creepers and kinglets, gleaners all, rejoice in bark crevices laden with insects associated with oaks.   Acorn and Red-headed Woodpeckers feast on acorns.  Forty years ago there were no Blue Jays in Midland.  Now they remain all year.  Acorns are one of their chief foods.  The winter population of Yellow-rumped Warblers has quadrupled since the 50’s and crushed acorns are favorite foods.

               Oaks have without a doubt caused an increase in the number of species of plants and animals in the towns of West Texas.  This review only skims the surface of the changes.  Keep your eyes open!

bioregional education

Human imagination defines the landscape. “Flat, brown, and ugly,” or “cactus infested armpit of an industrial wasteland” are two of the more common negative descriptions of the area around Midland. In most places, there is little education that helps us connect to the place where we live (the town, its watershed, its economy, its socioeconomic dynamics, its history or ecology.) Even here, we are often alienated from the land, as evidenced by the quotes above. We tell ourselves we are here for the money, and that same money can buy us anything, including a sense of being at home. With enough money we can buy a second home where it is pretty, and go there on long weekends and vacations, and someday retire there.

A person becomes a native by actively participating in defining and shaping how we perceive our home. Being a native, a citizen of one place, means understanding a place’s history of social behavior, and like most places today, our economy is driven by powers operating on a global scale. Being local and being global simultaneously is a challenge, but modern technology makes it easier. Having most of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips via a smartphone at any place or time is revolutionizing how we educate ourselves.

We live in what is known by the chamber of commerce appellation “Permian Basin.” An older name for the region, El Llano Estacado, is almost never used.  There is a longer history of European exploration here than in Plymouth and Jamestown, but local history is only superficially taught. Few people know the most common native organisms and their habitats of their surroundings. A good number do know the geology and hydrology, for that knowledge is useful in the local economic engine.

Since there is not an organized way of learning about our home, a person has to do it on their own. Print media and educational institutions teach more about things on a state and national scale, than a local scale. All local print, radio, and television everywhere presently publish a limited perspective, based on what “sells” – crime and scandal first and foremost. Publishers of books have always had to sell to the state and national level, as well, so over the last 60 years we have forgotten how to be local, or how to be native.

A number of educators from around the world are pondering how to shift the educational paradigm, writing books, holding conferences, and organizing. An Amazon.com search turns up 130 books with the word bioregional in the title. Over 1200 groups have joined the “Leave no child inside” coalition, which encourages people to explore their own home landscapes in a myriad ways. Educators are also learning to deal with shifting pedagogical paradigms – from “knowledge retention” to “project-driven.”

People from both sides of the political spectrum have come to the conclusion that it would be a good thing for people anywhere to know a lot more about their own home – not only from a management and planning aspect, but also as part of a social contract that binds people closer together as well as enriching their life. Some are convinced it helps unify people of different religions, races, and cultures that must live together (as happens in many towns all over the world) because of the needs of the global markets, and the tragedies of human politics.

Here, on the Llano Estacado, one of the many ways to learn about one’s home is make an effort to conserve our most limited resource –water. It is not just book learning about what needs to be done, but also learning a new way to garden, a new way to handle wastewater, and new ways of collecting water. Everyone has been learning – from various governmental agencies having to work together to develop a water pipeline to the city, to every homeowner.

 The issue of limited waters has encouraged us to think more bioregionally and more long term than we have in the past. With modern extraction techniques we have another fifty years or more of the oil industry shaping our landscape. It behooves us to know how our bioregion is important to other bioregions, and which bioregions are most important for our survival – for we are not self-sustaining.

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jornada mogollon culture

“Pottery associated with the Jornada-Mogollon culture, such as El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero black-on-white were found at the site.” This quote came from a State of New Mexcio document that outlined research problems that future archaeological research in Southeast New Mexico should examine.  It discussed an archaeological report of a site on the southern Llano Estacado on private land in Texas, and that the landowners did not allow the researchers to give the site’s location in the report.

 I was vaguely familiar with the Jornada-Mogollon culture – I knew that from 1000 A.D. to 1300 A.D they lived in pithouses and farmed corn, as well as hunted game and harvested wild plants. Archaeologists have decided that the artifacts of the people of that time that lived in the area from Chupadera Mesa in central Mexico, down to near Casa Grandes in Mexico, and from the Arizona border to the Texas-New Mexico border had enough similarities to be lumped together in what is named the Jornada-Mogollon culture.

A week or two later, while browsing in the Midland Archaeological Society’s (MAS) library, I picked up another journal with an essay by Polly Schaafsma, whose book “Indian Rock Art of the Southwest” is a comprehensive review of the artistic expressions of the prehistoric cultures of the region.

 In this essay, I found, “The site in the Hondo Valley near Roswell has two painted, horned, and feathered serpents painted on the walls of a rectangular room. Nearby were rounded pithouses. It was as if a mission of one culture was in a village of another culture.” This ignited my imagination – did one prehistorical Indian group proselytize another Indian group in the manner of the Spanish missions in historical times?   

I returned to the MAS library and found a special issue of the El Paso Archaeological Society authored by a Dr. Kay Sutherland. Within a few minutes I wondered if what I found might be “cuckoo science,” so I quickly googled her. I found that she and Schaafsma believed that the Jornada-Mogollon adopted elements of Mesoamerican (the cultures of the Toltec, Maya, Olmec) and began what is now known as the kachina religion of the Pueblo Indians in northern New Mexico. I also found that their theories were not widely accepted by academic archaeologists. They were not the first to propose the theory. Elsie Parsons first proposed the idea in the 1930’s.

Trade existed between the ancestral Pueblos and the city-states of Mexico without a doubt. Macaw feathers and copperbells from Mexico have been found in many Anasazi sites. Turquoise and obsidian from New Mexico have been found in Mesoamerican sites. 

Sutherland bases her theory on the multi-colored pictograph masks found at Hueco Tanks 30 miles east of El Paso. She believes them to be representative of Tlaloc, a Mesoamerican diety of rain. Twenty-four such masks are found there. Masks with similar design elements, but not the colors, are found throughout the Jornada-Mogollon region, and variations of the theme are found throughout the Pueblo region of  Northern New Mexico.

Both Sutherland and Schaafsma consider feathered and horned serpent images to be derived from Quetzalcoatl, another Mesoamerican diety associated with underground waters, springs, and irrigation. Rock art horned serpents are found near water throughout the region. Another image in common between the rock art of the Jornada-Mogollon and the Pueblo peoples is that of the “stepped cloud,”  which has two steps on both sides of the blocky image.

It is my understanding that both Sutherland and Schaafsma believe that as the Anasazi culture began to decline because of drought, war, and environmental degradation in the 1100’s the Chaco Canyon complex lost its role as the major trading center of the items mentioned above, and that Casa Grandes (Paquime) in northern Mexico began to flourish in that role. They believe that priest traders began traveling the region, not only bringing macaw feathers and copper bells but also better strains of corn. As they traded the items they talked of their gods and their associated rituals.

The western Jornada-Mogollon had learned irrigation techniques of the Hohokam of Arizona, who had already adopted some of the religious elements of the Mexican city-states. The Jornada-Mogollon retained their egalitarian social structure (whether this was in response to the decay of the elitist Anasazi societies or the continuation of lifestyles of the hunter-gather is unknown.) Over time the Jornada-Mogollon developed the kachina religion and when it was introduced to the Northern New Mexico Anasazi refugees  the new pueblos along the Rio Grande adopted it because they remembered the abuses of the priest-kings of the Anasazi. They also adopted the irrigation techniques of the western Jornada-Mogollon.

The pueblos there remained politically independent, and religion became part of every individual’s life. Every member of every pueblo participates in rituals throughout the year, portraying the kachinas as masked dancers, and in the dance trance enter the spirit world. The elitist priest kings were the only ones that entered the spirit world of the Anasazi (and the Mesoamerican cultures.) No pueblo became all powerful. 

It makes for a good story – it sounds logical. It probably can never be proven, and archaeologists will probably debate the theory for years. The eastern Jornada-Mogollon towns along the Pecos disappeared by 1300. The Jumanos of the 1500’s and 1600’s might be descendants of the eastern Jornada-Mogollon. Buffalo increased on the Llano Estacado during the 1300’s, and some of the farmers might have become hunters again, and traded buffalo meet to the Pueblo peoples, while others began living near Presidio del Norte, the Concho River Valley, and Gran Quivira where the Spanish found them. 

How has the landscape changed over time? Who were the people that lived and visited here? How did they comprehend the world? What were some of the issues they dealt with as interacted with other people?  Envisioning a trader from Casas Grandes wandering onto the Llano Estacado promoting a new religion makes a filled-in pithouse under a mesquite come alive!

the camp of 7 Comanche women...

“The women with Sanaco included Santa Anna’s widow, who still mourned her loss, always dressing in black. She formed a band of seven women, widows like herself, and separated from the tribe. A haughty woman, she owned a large herd of horses and was a most successful hunter.”  This quote (paraphrased) from Thomas Kavanaugh’s “Comanche Political History” captured my imagination.

Santa Anna was one of three Panetekha Comanche chiefs (along with Old Owl and Buffalo Hump) during the 1830’s and 1840’s who all died from smallpox in 1849. Sanaco and Ketumsee then became the Panetekha leaders through the early 1860’s. By the late 1860’s the Panetekha people either settled on the reservation in Oklahoma or had become Quahadis living in the breaks and canyons of the Llano Estacado.

I like the image of seven women (with kids) roaming about West Texas on their own. As a result, I had to make up a story!

Summer Sun always awoke before the dawn. Every morning she relieved the night herder as the sky began to brighten in the east. It was her favorite time of day. Morning brought possibility and hope after a night of sad dreams after which she would awaken and reach for her husband and find only emptiness. Mornings were beautiful. The horses would begin to stir and graze. The youngest horses would play, cantering and galloping, their manes and tales flowing behind them with youthful and unconscious grace.

The night herder was her youngest son, the only son left of three. He was old enough to join raiding parties against the Tejanos to the east or the Mexicanos far to the south. He did not feel the need to earn honor by joining the raiders, for everyone already knew of his valor. The previous summer he had acted as a decoy and led a column of soldiers from Camp Cooper (led by Robert E. Lee, but the name meant nothing to him)  away from his mother’s camp. The soldiers had suddenly entered the watershed of the Double Mountain river from the south, but they came from the plains between the head of the Colorado and the hills to the east, dropping down into the hidden valley that Summer Sun favored for a summer camp. The soldiers had almost caught him. It took months for him to heal from the five bullet wounds that he had collected.

The hidden valley had only a few groves of hackberries and soapberries not far from a series of low rock cliffs. Below the rock were a few large pools of water that never dried in the hottest of summers. Downstream at the confluence with another draw another pool never dried, but no other water could be found for over fifteen miles, not until the major course of the Double Mountain river. The soldiers and Texas Rangers normally never came to the hidden valley for their Tonkawa and Lipan Apaches scouts had never been told of the valley’s existence. Her son had prevented the soldiers from learning of its existence by his brave actions.

One morning Summer Sun was troubled.  Sanaco had promised that he would send a supply of gunpowder and bullets to her. She had held her end of the bargain and had supplied two dozen horse-packs of medicinal herbs. Her sister had returned with only Sanaco’s promises, and now he was more than a month overdue. The other six women of the camp were angry. None of them could use the bow and arrow like Summer Sun. They were decent hunters when using a rifle, but had never learned the methods of stalking needed for archery.

“Sanaco has not lived up to his promise. We should go to his camp and shame him. As a leader, it is his fault. We will never receive what we have been promised. They will keep it for their own needs, or they wish to force us to return to their camp.  We should leave right now! He has to pay. He has to do as he said, and he has to do it now!” Summer Sun had heard the same refrain for days but she had refused to break camp.

“The others believe we are being disrespected,” she mused. “Is respect only earned by being angry? Is that truly our only course of action? Or, if we react and let our feelings be known, will we lose the respect of Sanaco and the rest of the Panetekhas? If we stormed into his camp, he might find reason to not share what he has promised. That might happen. What do I do?” She paced along the ridge above the horse herd, deeply troubled, not watching where she stepped.

“We banded together out of grief. We wanted to be left alone, but we have grown beyond that. We are raising the younger children out of harm’s way. We are away from the politics of dealing with the Tejanos or the soldiers. We are living a good life. We will join with the others of our tribe when the oldest girl is of age to marry and make sure she is wise in her choice. Maybe my son will wish to marry her, so we can stay separate even longer. The soldiers have built forts along the wagon road, and they chase the young men when they raid the travelers on the road. Sanaco thinks he can fool the soldiers and Tejanos by acting friendly and saying he can not control the young men, but someday he will pay the price.” Summer Sun stopped her pacing and stared at the horse herd.

“Our primary job is our children. I can teach the methods of stalking. We can eat horseflesh. Gunpowder and bullets makes our job easier, but our job is not reliant on them.  This summer we are hosting four girls from our relatives in other camps and we have taken in five orphans in the last two years. We even have a Kotsoketa Comanche child from far to the north. All Comanches respect how we honor our ancestors and teach our stories to the young.

If you were Summer Sun, what would you do? Is it best to react with anger? Or is it best to keep doing the job one is called upon to do, and trust that promises will be fulfilled?