ciboleros

Alvina cracked her whip over the head of the horses pulling the wagon she drove for Don Moises Chavez. The wagon train was underway, headed for the Llano Estacado. It was boom-time for residents of the upper Pecos River Valley. Los Americanos had taken over twenty years before, establishing Fort Bascom up on the Canadian River. As Alvina hollered at her horses, the Civil War was raging in the eastern United States. Some of the officers sent to lead the troops in defending “the territories” were the incompetent, untrustworthy, and shirkers that could not perform on the battlefield.

Fort Bascom had some of the worst of the Union Army. Captain Bergmann, and Lieutenants Healy, Jennings, Wood, and Vose began manipulating the Comancheros and Ciboleros that ventured out on to the plains, making money “hand over fist” dealing in buffalo hides, stolen Texas cattle, liquor, and even the “captive” trade – ransoming Confederate Texas kids from the Comanches. After two centuries of living on the barter system, hard cash had a magnetic appeal to the Pecos Valley folks. Don Moises had upgraded from carretas (wooden carts) to wagons with his growing annual profits.

Everybody laughed at Alvina’s husband – he always found an excuse to not go on the annual buffalo hunt. She desperately wanted the meat, hides and tallow for her kids – children of los ciboleros have a better life. Marquitos had been a bad choice for a husband – the only boy in a family of girls and doted upon.

“I will do it if you won’t,” she had shouted at Marquitos. She marched down to where Don Moises had been readying the expedition – and she had been in luck.  Pedro de Urdemales had broken his leg and his wagon needed a driver. Don Moises first said no – it had to be a man with courage, not a woman, but Alvina had been insistent, and finally grabbed Pedro’s horses and hitched them to the wagon. El Cacahuate and Senor Cantinflas were tricky horses, fractious and prone to getting into unpredictable and comedic situations (comedic when it was all over with.) They had obeyed her every command, and when Don Moises saw that… well, he had to say okay. Alvina left her children with her widowed mother.

The wagon train moved south of Puerto de Luna on the west side of the Pecos and made the crossing where the Maxwell hacienda and trading post offered a chance to stock up on cheap trade goods for the Comanches. They might or might not run into members of Mow-way’s band.  El Pelado, the guide, was kin by marriage to one of his wives. El Pelado was a strange character. He had lived as a Comanche for years, but when cholera swept the camp and his kids died, his wife (a sister of one of Mow-way’s wives) had gone crazy. “You brought me misery! It would have been better if we had not had kids. Go away!” He came to Puerto de Luna, where he had been born. He lived alone and spent most of his time herding sheep far from any one else.

El Pelado had told Don Moises that big thunderstorms had been forming almost daily down toward the sandy Los Medanos region. The playa lakes would be full south of the trail to Muchaque, and buffalo drifted towards the big thunderclouds, knowing grass would be green when they got to where it had rained. El Pelado mocked anyone in which he detected officious, arrogant or presumptive behavior, saying the most outlandish things. Don Moises knew his worth, and despite his irreverent and often caustic repartee, knew that they would be going where few other Comancheros and Ciboleros go, where the hunting might be good.

El Pelado took a liking to Alvina. “You do the unexpected, you think for yourself.” He appointed himself brown round and white flat (dung) and wood gatherer for her nightly cookfire. He unexpectedly riding up now and then and chucking a sackful of the precious material on to the wagon as they traveled along. “Hijita, I love your hot panocha (mush of ground up sprouted grains ;). You know the herbs of the field so well – your cooking is such a pleasure!”

After a week and a half on the trail, El Pelado told Alvina, “Tomorrow we scratch la ceja” (literally “the eyebrow,” for the llano was for days a dark line on the eastern horizon as they traveled) “and venture up on top of the Llano. Things will not be what they seem. It is a land of mirage, a land of subtlety. There will be lakes where you don’t expect them, and the lakes that you see for hours will not be there. Most of the time the area south of the Valle de Simanola is antelope range. We will feast well tomorrow night!”

The next day El Pelado rode off away from the wagon train. About a mile away, he dismounted, and crawled on his belly, then started waving white cloth on a yucca stalk. By the time the wagon train had gone a mile, his rifle spoke once. In another 20 minutes he came back with the gutted and bled carcass. Everybody got a piece of fresh meat that night while enjoying a musical performance by El Cuate. The best of the ciboleros that did the actual killing of the buffalo, El Cuate was also a talented minstrel.

He sung a sad corrido he had composed about Manuel Maes, who had lost his life last year when his new horse shied as he prepared to jab the 12 foot lance into a buffalo. The blade hit a shoulder bone and like a chain reaction, the butt of his lance had been jammed hard into his belly and up under his ribcage at the solar plexus. “Caballo alazan tostado, que tu la muerta me dites en este llano estacado -- vienes a hacer calavera – Oh, my sorrel horse, will you deliver death to me on the llano estacado – you come to make me a skeleton!”

El Cuate was the most flamboyant of the cibolero hunters. Like most, he wore leather trousers and jacket, but his had embossed designs and bead work. His flat straw hats had several colors of ribbons along the sweatband. His carcage (quiver of bow and arrows) was of white buffalo hide first carried by his French-Comanche grandfather. His 12 foot long lance was in a case suspended from the pommel of the saddle and anchored to the girths. All around the scabbard for the lance were more dancing ribbons. Shiny tin milagros set into the leather twinkled in the sun. His new American rifle was suspended in a similar fashion at his other knee.

In another week they reached a base camp at Lagunas Sabinas (present day Cedar Lake near Seagraves.) El Pelado cautioned the members of the wagon train not to use the dozens of “abandoned” tipi poles as firewood. “This is the birthplace to an up and coming leader of the Comanches – a half-Anglo hombre by the name of Quanah. He has gotten a strong reputation, never losing a man on a raid, and bringing back honor and goods for everyone. Mow-way is his mentor. He listens to a dreamer by the name of Isa-tai, who sees the Comanche living free forever on and around the Llano. Most of them are probably over at Muchaque, hunting for winter meat at the headwaters of the Rio Colorado. Their presence there will increase the numbers of buffalo here.”

In the morning three bands of buffalo came to the playa for water. After watching the behavior of the first two groups, the ciboleros gathered the 70 or so buffalo of the third group into a corrida bunched tightly together, causing the running herd to jostle together and slow down. The ciboleros took turns dashing to the edge of the herd and lancing or sending arrows into the flanks of the fattest cows. El Cuate lanced two, sent five tumbling with arrows, and killed yet another with his rifle –killing twice as many as any other ciboleros.

Alvina became one of his skinners. She quickly learned how to slice the meat into tasajo – long strips of meat that dried on racks as the hunting continued for two weeks. Her culinary skills enhanced by her herbal knowledge made her a popular figure in camp.  During a feast on the last night before the ciboleros headed for home she told El Pelado, “When I get home, I will place Marquitos’ belongings outside the door.” She paused and then asked, “You think he will understand the significance of that Comanche custom?”

When they returned home, he did understand that she was divorcing him. Marquitos killed Alvina, screaming as he stabbed her that she had shamed him by breaking the laws of his Penitente morada. He then ran away across the Pecos to Alamogordo Creek near the llano. El Pelado and El Cuate followed, and caught him. They hung Marquitos to the tallest cottonwood in the bosque along the only running water in that valley. El Pelado took her children and their grandmother far away, and cared for them as his own. 

descansos

          Someone vandalized a descanso on Highway 80 west of Midland. Descansos are a familiar sight on the roads of west Texas, as they are in almost every other state. The tradition of placing memorials at the site of someone’s death is centuries old and not culture-specific.  Roadside memorials can be found in Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Greece, and many other countries.  Descansos proclaim to the world that the deceased deserves to be remembered, and that the victim’s passing will not be unnoticed.

            For many people, a site takes on a sacred quality once human blood has been spilled. The spontaneous memorials that appeared at Ground Zero in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City are examples in a grand scale of the human urge to commemorate tragedy. The act of leaving an offering helps the mourner to process their personal reactions to death.

            Some writers believe the tradition has its roots in the crusades of the middle ages. The graves of soldiers that died along the way to the Holy Lands were marked, and on their return, the crusaders would refurbish the graves and pray for their souls.  In colonial times, conquistadors and emigrants often died from sickness and Indian attack. The dead had to be buried where they died. Travelers could not return the body to the sanctified ground of a graveyard.

            According to Rudolfo Anaya in “Descansos: An Interrupted Journey,” the term descanso originated in northern New Mexico during the 1600’s.  Anaya, one of the best ever writers born on or near the Llano Estacado, says that the first descansos were resting places where those who carried the coffin from the church to the graveyard paused to rest. Led by a priest, and followed by women dressed in mourning black, four to six men would carry the coffin. When they rested, the priest prayed, the women wailed, and all contemplated the effects of death upon others. Someone would break a juniper sprig and stick it into the ground to mark the spot. Others would fashion a rough cross of pinyon wood and plant it in the ground. With time, these resting places, used many times, would become an altar for every funeral procession.

            Descansos remind travelers to stop and say a sudario (prayer for the dead) for the souls in purgatory. Descansos are the beads, and the road is the rosary. For some, a cross must be erected on the spot where a person dies, where the soul leaves the body, or otherwise the soul will not be able to rest and will wander aimlessly, haunting those whose duty it was to put up the cross.

            Some descansos are merely piles of rock, others a cross adorned with plastic flowers. Others feature a concrete marker. Some are built from the wreckage of the car in which the victim was killed. Water bottles are frequently placed next to the cross as well. I have seen descansos ornamented as graves are during “El Dia de los Muertos,” with food, wreaths of marigolds, and candles. The descansos are often well tended, with family members coming and cutting weeds, arranging rocks, adding flowers, religious figures and more. Descansos are not only reminders of a journey never completed, but also a form of folk art. They are created and maintained with love.

            Although descansos are expressions of private grief, they have a public aspect. They always face the highway, to be seen by passing strangers. Their emotional power calls out to travelers. They are reminders for motorists to drive safely, to never leave the house without kissing loved ones goodbye, and to not leave angry.

            Roadside memorials are not without controversy. In Florida a disc jockey decided that local descansos were tacky, macabre, and nasty. He encouraged listeners to uproot the memorials and bring them to the station to be trashed. North Carolina recently passed a law banning them. In Colorado, an atheist brought suit, claiming that public property was being used to endorse religion. He told the state troopers that arrested him late at night with a pickup full of flowers and crosses that he was “cleaning up the interstate of discarded refuse.”

            Most states protect the right of citizens to erect descansos. In New Mexico they are respected as “traditional cultural properties.” In West Virginia, the memorial can remain if the people that erect the memorials register them with the state. In Arizona in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the state Highway Patrol erected crosses to mark the location of traffic fatalities. In Montana, the American Legion Highway White Cross Program was launched in 1953. In these states, construction crews will carefully preserve the sites while road maintenance is done. As long as the memorials do not cause traffic hazards, state employees leave them alone. As “traditional cultural properties,” descansos can be considered protected resources and eligible for the National Register of Historic Sites.

            In Texas, various local chapters of Mothers Against Drunk Driving erect markers for the victims of drunk driving. The state of California does the same for similar victims. The driver of the car that caused the death must put up the descanso. The community of Alton, Texas erected a memorial for 21 schoolchildren that died when their bus plunged into a water-filled pit beside the road. In Florida the Department of Transportation will erect a marker with the words “Drive Safely” and the name of the deceased.      

            The American Friends Service Committee has begun an “Adopt a Cross” project in Tijuana to commemorate all those that have died during attempts to enter the United States. Yearly averages of 320 mojados or alambristas die in boxcars, semi-truck trailers, and in the desert heat during long illegal treks to find jobs. During the 50^th anniverasary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a Christmas posada procession occurred there, with the names of the dead called out in witness.

            Que descansen en paz. May they rest in peace in their interrupted journey.

             

botanical references in local landscapes

If the Cline Shale oil play is as big as Prudhoe Bay, water will become even dearer. Many more people will be moving here, wanting housing with some sort of attractive landscaping. The amount of water we have available for irrigating home landscapes will continue to shrink – some sort of public water restrictions will be in place forever.

Xeriscaping has become more and more a fact of life for West Texans. Unfortunately some of the landscapes installed have been Zeroscapes… dull fields of rocks and a few plants. There are some local landscape designers with some knowledge of the plant material available, and more importantly, knowledgeable about some of the stories of the plants.  Landscape design becomes an art form the more that is known about what each plant “has to say” – how it has been used by people, where it is from, how long it has been cultivated, and so on.

The most excellently planned and executed landscapes will have elements from around the world – the Indian, Hispanic, Angloamerican/European, African, Mediterranean, Asian and even Australian botanical influences. We have botanical references to every continent surrounding us, throughout our community. The choice of a particular plant in a landscape is more than just for a form or shape or color.

A Xeriscape does not have to have a gravel base. During the first couple of years of experimentation and implementation people have had to grapple with the “paradigm shift” and “rock mulch” seemed to be one of the basic parts of a “xeric-scape, a xeriscape.” It is not the only choice. Another choice is using other materials for mulch, and planting for a more varied texture based on leaf color and form, as well as unusual sizing and heights.

Trees do not have to be thirty feet tall to cast shade. Fifteen tall is taller than any of us! Smaller trees take less water. A pomegranate in the yard ties its owner to the eastern Mediterranean and its rich history and culture. A pinyon ties its nurturing human to the foothills of the sky islands of the deserts of North America, and centuries of harvest by Puebloan peoples.  A Mexican persimmon unites us with the Texas Hill Country and provides us with a sweet treat to pluck from the tree when the fruit has blackened.  

Desert willows, Mexican redbuds, Goldenball Leadtrees, Eve’s Necklace Sophora, Crataegus, Acacia, and more are part of a landscape designer’s palette for small trees. Underneath these smaller trees, shrubs and perennials from Texas sage, to bird of paradise Caelsapinia species, to lantanas, rosemary, rue, salvias, pavonias, and artemisias (and more) can be mixed in, with native grasses (both short and tall), providing a colorful landscape with nary a span of gravel in sight. 

 

genizaro trading

Fidencio yawned as he exited the door of the adobe. The first gray light of day had lightened the eastern horizon. To the east, at the eastern edge of the salt playa, he watched a small herd of buffalo standing at the water’s edge. He and his wife had been waiting for his friends for two weeks. She had wanted shelter, so he had built a small adobe for them to get out of the sun, and for protection in case the Apaches wandered by. Their food was about gone. He had killed a pronghorn just five days ago, but with 5 dogs in camp, meat did not last long.

The year before, Fidencio had met his wife on the River of Pearls. He had come with some Spanish soldiers as one of their arrieros (mule packers). His Apache mother, a slave, had died during a smallpox epidemic, and his Spanish father did not recognize him as a son, so he had no one back in Northern New Mexico. When the Spanish soldiers returned to northern New Mexico, he stayed behind. His wife was beautiful and sweet. She was in awe of him, for he knew how to handle horses and mules, and her people had never owned one. The Spaniards called her people Jumanos, but they were a little different than the Jumanos of Gran Quivira, or the trader Jumanos that came from the Rio Bravo far to the south.

Those Jumanos lived in adobe pueblos, but her people lived in long grass huts. Some of her grandparents came from far to the east, where everyone lived in grass houses, but they had intermarried with the pueblo dwellers. At the River of Pearls were many trees with wonderful sweet nuts, and the trader Jumanos came every year to haul big bags away on the back of their pack dogs. Other people liked the pearls, too, so when the trader Jumanos came her people were happy to get black obsidian for arrowheads, abalone shell for jewelry, and pottery from the Pueblo dwellers far to the northwest in exchange for the nuts and pearls. 

His sweet wife was pregnant. He had promised her that he would trade pearls and nuts for a horse. His friends had promised to bring two horses for him – a stallion and a mare. Their Spanish bosses were unaware that some of the mestizo arrieros had some horses hidden with their Apache kinfolk. Some of the Apaches would trade with the Spanish, but not all did. The Spanish sometimes would raid an Apache rancheria to take men to work as slaves in the mines far to the south, or to take women to serve as servants in the houses in Nuevo Mexico.

Fidencio walked slowly along above the draw that led to the playa. He had dug a hole in the loose sand of the draw, and about three feet down he hit water. The hole would keep about six inches of water in it at all times, but if his friends came with horses, they would have to dig a larger hole. It was sweeter water than what was in the salt playa, and a lot closer. He was surprised that buffalo had appeared. His wife’s father had told him that buffalo did not come to the western edge of the flat country.

His Apache mother had taught him how to use a bow and arrow by making a toy bow when he was a child. She taught him to make bigger ones when he became a teenager that helped the other genizaro (mestizo) men herd the thousands of sheep the Spanish ricos owned. It was all they had to keep the wolves away from the flocks, and the only defense when unfriendly Apaches came to raid the Spanish settlements. He returned to the small adobe to get his bow.

His wife awakened at his entrance and sleepily asked him what he was doing. “Be careful, my husband. My grandfather died when a buffalo trampled him after being wounded. My grandfather had thought it was dead and came too close too quick. You will be successful, my husband, for I know it. This trip has been very good. All of the grass is green, and now that the buffalo are here, I know your friends will come. The earth is in agreement with us. We are doing the right thing. We will own some horses soon!”

Fidencio headed into the sunrise, hoping to go around the buffalo and be hidden by the rising sun when they left the water. A hundred yards from camp, he looked back. His wife was standing in the door, and she waved. He admired her beautiful shape, now swelling with their first child. He was a lucky man, indeed. In thirty minutes, he was in place, and sure enough, the buffalo came back up a draw leading from the east. He hid himself behind an old mesquite and watched. He let the lead cow go by, but the third cow had an arrow sticking out of its right hip. Apache arrows! As it neared, he saw screwworm fly maggots eating the flesh around the wound.

This told him that the wound was several days old. The buffalo were acting very calm, not skittish at all, not looking around, so the Apaches had not followed the group. They must have had a successful hunt further east, and maybe north, and this group must have panicked and run from the hunting grounds. The buffalo were headed to the valley where his Jumano friends lived, but they would not arrive for another month or more. The Jumanos feasted all winter, for thousands upon thousands of buffalo would fill the three valleys of the River of Pearls.

His Jumano relatives had told him stories of the first Spaniards they had seen – three bearded white men, and one bearded black man. The four were great healers and had helped their people. In his father-in-law’s youth, the Jumanos had seen a ghostly woman dressed in blue who had helped them in their time of need. His father-in-law had walked to Gran Quivira and found a black robe man to tell him about the woman in blue, and the black robe man had come with him and spent a summer with the Jumanos. Many of the Jumanos wore little crosses in memory of that visit long ago.

Fidencio let go two arrows into the side of the wounded cow. Both hit behind the front shoulder, and at least one pierced its heart. It thudded to the ground as the other buffalo stampeded away. Fidencio and his wife would eat well until his friends arrived.

This story is based upon the discovery (in the 1960’s) of a small adobe structure near a salt lake not more than fifty miles from Midland. Archaeologists did not find any artifacts to date the structure, but some of them have wondered if it dated to the 1650’s, the time of this story.    

   

Charles Wright

During my career as a naturalist/interpreter I took a book from the Living History re-enactments, and gave programs as historical figures. Being a plant nerd, I identified with Charles Wright.

" Good evening. I am Charles Wright. I was born in Wethersfield Connecticut October 29^th, 1811. I graduated from Yale University in 1835 and after two years in Natchez Mississippi, moved to Texas. I became a teacher and in 1845 was the principal at the first college in Texas, the Methodist Rutersville College near La Grange. Because of a course in botany at Yale, I often taught botany to my students and by 1844 was corresponding with Asa Gray at Harvard. Dr. Gray helped me immensely – he bought my specimens, sent me supplies, and gave me letters of introduction to other botanists, including George Englemann in Saint Louis and Ferdinand Lindheimer in San Marcos. In 1847 I moved to Austin, still teaching, but also spending much more time making botanical collections. I was also hired as to survey Mason County.

In 1849, Dr. Gray arranged for me to travel with Captain S.G. French to El Paso and back beginning May 21st in San Antonio. I was with the supply train for a battalion of men led by Major Van Horn, who was to establish a fort at El Paso. We had 275 wagons and 2500 head of livestock. At least two parties of ‘49ers had traveled our route earlier, as well as Lt. Whiting expedition three months before us. Rip Ford and Texas Indian Agent Robert Neighbors traveled our way a month earlier than us, but started from Austin. Captain Randolph Marcy would soon travel north of our route on his return trip after surveying the Fort Smith to Sante Fe route, and we would utilize part of his route past the Guadalupe Mountains on our return.

 To the east of the Pecos, we had several encounters with friendly Lipan Apaches led by Castellito, but west of the Pecos, we ran into unfriendly Mescalero Apaches under Espejo (looking glass). Our scout was a friend of Jose Policarpo Rodriguez, Whiting’s assistant scout. Richard Howard was Whiting’s chief scout. Our scout, Jose Ruiz, was a relative of the great Texas patriot Antonio Navarro and he knew the Lipan Apaches we had earlier met, and served as interpreter. He had been a go-fer on one of Richard Howard’s surveying crews that I had served on in Mason County – Policarpo had been Howard’s chief hunter.  Ruiz was never mentioned in Captain French’s report, although Ruiz did a superb job during our trip. Although we were following a large command, his reconnaissance forewarned our wagon train of the presence of Espejo’s scouts.

Captain French made me walk. I did not mind, not that much. The wagons only traveled six to eight hours a day, and at the same rate as I walked. With a wagon train that stretched out sometimes over a mile, I could wander away from the road when I spotted something and still catch up. French felt that I was placing myself in danger and would fuss at me for wandering off the way. This evening I would like to tell you of one of my adventures during the trip on August 12th.

On the 12^th we left the Pecos River (which we crossed 30 or so miles below Horsehead Crossing) and headed to Escondido Creek. We traveled up a wide valley, with a large mesa to our north. The road led up a hill beyond, and angling slightly southwest would pass into another valley – that of the Escondido. As we climbed up the hill between the watersheds I found a showy Oenethera that I had not seen before, and was not in Thomas Drummond’s collections west of Austin during the mid-1830’s. Nor had I seen it before during my explorations with the surveying party.

It was an unusual Oenethera – a perennial with a long tubular calyx. It formed wonderfully floriferous clumps. Like many evening primroses, the flowers wilt by mid morning, but with this species the flowers hang on the plant and slowly turn orange during the heat of the day. Although it grew in limestone soils, it seemed to be more prolific in a white chalky soil. Young Ruiz later called the soil caliche – the first time I had heard this Spanish word. He said it was common in northern Mexico. He said it often was underneath the soil a few feet down in places where people tried to farm in regions with little rainfall.

Intrigued by the soil, I wandered about examining the other flora. Being the heat of summer, the landscape was dry. Dry for the most part, that is. Rainfall comes by thunderheads during the summer, so isolated areas were as green as can be. The wagon train and cattle disappeared over the hill – but I was not worried – I could see the dust rising from it, even after it crested the hill.  

I found the dried remains of an Orobanche or broomrape, under a green mound of fine leaves on a multi-trunked perennial. Broomrape species are parasitical, but I had no clue what the little green mounds were. I kept looking, hoping to find blooms and seeds, but the rains that had greened up the Oenethera had only caused new green growth on the little mounds. Before I left the caliche I shifted my vasculum (a field collecting container) to my other shoulder and viewed the trail behind me.

In the far distance I saw two horsemen. I immediately knew (or felt in my heart) that they were Indians. I also felt in my heart that these men were not Lipans – I cannot explain why I felt dread at their sight.

Even at the distance of three or four miles, I believed I could see tension in their postures, so I looked in the direction their horses faced. Ruiz was skylined on the mesa to the south of the valley, and was headed my way. I decided to skedaddle and began jogging up the hill. After ten minutes I neared the top of the hill and turned to look back. I could no longer see either the strange horseman, or Ruiz. I went on over the top and alternated jogging with walking and constantly looked back. I jogged among a number of large Spanish bayonets standing taller than a man on horseback. I kept noticing a number of small round cactus in the crevices of the areas where bedrock was exposed and wished I could collect them – one variety was in bloom, and the blooms were quite variable, with shades ranging from pinkish to reddish to even hints of orange.

When I reached the point I could see down into the valley of the Escondido, I could see the wagons and cattle spread out along several ponds. Around the ponds were cattails and reeds, but there were almost no trees. Scattered here and there were a number of dwarfed mesquite bushes. Instead of forming multi-trunked bushes or trees as they did on the other side of the Pecos, here most were in the form of hillocks, as if blowing dirt had collected at their base and somehow kept their height down.

Feeling safer, I decided to take a short rest. I sat on the last outcropping of rock of the hill, above the long slope to the valley. The late afternoon sun was about to be blocked by a towering thunderhead far to the west -- where Ruiz said tall mountains were to be found. I had asked him how he knew that, and he had replied that he had met a scout that had lead Dr. Connelly’s wagon train from Chihuahua City in 1845.As I sat there, I heard the sound of hooves. When I looked back, I could see Ruiz coming, so I waved him down and asked him about the two horsemen.

“They are Mescaleros – some of Espejo’s bunch, I am sure. He is a young leader how to prove himself to Chief Gomez who lives in the mountains ahead. Gomez gave Whiting a big scare a few months ago. The Apaches are not happy to have so many visitors to their territory. They have dealt with the soldiers at the presidios along the river for years, but they don’t have much experience with U.S. army soldiers. I imagine Espejo will have people watching us, and then Gomez will too. If a small group gets separated from this wagon train, then they might be in danger.”

I took Ruiz’s hint and started walking toward the encampments being formed up in the valley. About a half mile from the first camp I noticed another plant I had not seen before. It vaguely resembled a Sphaeralcea common further east, but the blossoms were paler, and the leaves had broader lobes. I couldn’t resist – after not collecting the cactus, I had to collect this species. When I knelt down, Ruiz chuckled and told me, “You’ll probably be safe – I hope my mess has some food hot.” He rode on and I dug in the tight gray clay of the valley."

***The Indians were Mescalero Apaches, but they did not catch Wright.  Charles Wright returned to San Antonio with over 2500 specimens. Of these, 67 were type specimens – the first ever collected of those species, including the species mentioned above, now known as Calylophus tubicula. He later became one of the foremost botanical explorers of the 19^th century. The trip mentioned above was one of the first ever co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.  

fencecutters

"My greatgranddaddy was a fencecutter along the Colorado River in the 1880's. I'm one, too, by God, and for the same reason. He hated the rich capitalists from up north fencing off the free range, and I hate the high game fences. It is the same old story, the have-nots against the deep-pocket rich bastards. I am the Texas version of an Earth-firster monkeywrencher." The self-avowed eco-terrorist glared at me. We were standing along a highway in the hill country, and the tall game fences lined both sides of it as far as could be seen.

"It is getting so a person has to have five to ten grand in his pocket for a weekend of deer hunting. I'm a mean son of a bitch -- I was driving along a road the other night and saw a big trophy buck just behind one of those goddamned fences. I just happened to have my rifle with me, and being drunk and not giving a shit, I blasted that deer, just so there would be one less rich bastard bragging about the big buck he shot. Wimpy-assed city pricks don't know what real hunting is. Hunting behind a game fence is nothing but slaughter-house killing.  How can anybody be proud of shooting half-tame critters?"

I had accidentally run into him along the highway where I had stopped to photograph a flower. He had walked up, carrying a bag of tin cans over his shoulder, carrying a stabbing stick. When he had jabbed a can with what seemed to be excessive vigor I had commented, "I hate the assholes that toss their crap out the windows, too," as a way of greeting him.

"I don't hate 'em -- they keep me in beer money. I'm just pissed at this fence -- " and he slapped the 8 foot tall fence with his stick. "Look at this, this was not here last year -- and to build it they cut down one of the largest tickletongues along this road. It had strands of old Spur Rowel barbed wire buried in its wood."

 I asked about his fence cutting ancestor, "I heard a little about that fencecutting. Was your grandfather up toward the little town of Robert Lee?" 

"My grandfather was a mercenary that fought for Pancho Villa and died in Spain fighting against Franco. His brother joined the Farmers’ and Laborers’ Protective Association, and some members of that were tried for treason in World War One, just because they were socialists. The history of the folks that fought for worker's rights in the United States is always glossed over by the oligarchy's educational system.  But you were asking about my great-grandfather, right?"  I nodded. 

"My great-great-grandfather came to Texas as part of an Utopian community known as La Reunion, near Dallas. He'd been part of the group that later formed the International Workingman's Association cofounded by Karl Marx in 1864. A bunch of like-minded folks tried to create their socialist paradise here in Texas in 1855 but it fell apart in a decade. A bunch of them went back to Europe, but he stayed and went to the frontier and claimed some land, but died at age 40 from cholera. Like a lot of folks, my great-grandfather started branding mavericks and building up a herd as a teenager. And being at the edge of the frontier with all the country being free range, he saw it as a chance to make something of himself. He threw in his stock with others and went up the Chisholm Trail, and then the Western Trail and did pretty good for a few years. Then Comanches killed his first wife and their three kids, and stole his herd. After that, he just worked for wages for other men, running cattle on the open range."

As he talked, I was trying my darnedest to recollect what years the trails were used, and as far as I could remember, the guy's story seemed to fit what I knew of history. I knew for sure that open range ranchers south and west of Brownwood and on further west filled up the Colorado River valley to its headwaters in the late 1870's and early 1880's.

"In 1879 a rich Kentucky girl by the name of Mabel Doss married William Day and helped him buy 130 sections of land in Coleman County. One or the other of them had listened to "Bet-a-million" Gates and decided barbed wire was a good thing. By 1881, Day died, and a year later Mabel sold a half-interest in the ranch to other Kentuckians. By then, almost the entire ranch had been fenced off -- the largest ranch behind fence in Texas. Other outfits started doing the same. The free range boys were a mite unhappy, to say the least. In 1883 a drought dried up the country, and to get water for their cows, they sometimes had to cut fences to keep their stock alive. The conflict escalated, and the fencecutters started going after every fence. Over at Robert Lee the fencecutters burned a thousand fenceposts and threw rolls of wires on the fire -- you can still see that mass of melted together metal in the old jail museum there. "

"My greatgrandpappy, with his socialist background, printed up broadsides that read "Down with monopolists" and "Down with foreign capitalists." His buddies printed up others that read "The soil of Texas belongs to the heroes of the Confederacy," and they plastered them all on every fence in town. When they rode out fencecutting, they often wore white hoods, so they became known as the "White Caps." Some of his compatriots were the justice of the peace and the constable of Brownwood -- and they got shot while cutting fence and were found wearing false moustaches. Things got pretty hairy -- Mabel Day hired a gunslinger to protect her ranch while she went to Austin. After almost a year of lobbying she got fencecutting and malicious pasture burning made felonies."

"And in an interesting sidenote, my great-granduncle married a Mexican gal up on the upper Pecos, and with the old free range Spanish sheepherders also cut fences trying to protect their common grounds -- the old Spanish land grants. They were known as Gorras Blancas, which means white caps. You ought to read about the Gorras Blancas in "The Devil's Hatband" by Daniel Aragón y Ulibarrí to learn how ruthless the capitalists of the late 1800's really were. And, interestingly enough, one of those capitalists was Mabel Day’s new husband – Captain Joseph Lea, who had been Bloody Bill Quantrill’s righthand man."

When he finished his speech, the fellow was rocking back and forth on his heels and holding on to his old shirt as if it had lapels like a coat. I decided to prod him a bit on the reasons he had for his modern-day fencecutting.

"The main reason I have heard against high fences is that they restrict animals and their ability to roam naturally -- and that without careful management the genetics of the deer will deteriorate, and the gene flow of other animals will be totally disrupted. If there is too many deer on a place, then disease can wreak havoc, or so I've heard. It sounds like part of your reasons are based on the unfair economics of the situation -- that it makes hunting a rich man's game."

"No lie! You have to pay a minimum of a grand to hunt deer on the cheapest of those ranches, and the price goes up and up. I have heard that each point and each extra inch of inside spread adds another 400 bucks to the price of the deer. These ranchers buy deer semen at 500 to 2000 bucks a sample so they can genetically engineer bigger and bigger bucks. They buy breeding bucks for 5 grand a head. The fences cost 10 to 20 grand a mile. The deer are raised in pens and only released into bigger pastures just before the hunt -- and don't have a bit of their natural wariness -- they have been handfed, for God's sake! Other places charge 4 or 5 grand a deer."

He pressed his nostril with a finger and blew a wad of snot on the ground. "Some of these gamefarm ranchers will show videos of each individual deer on the place to their prospective clients, just so that the "guest" can select the very animal they want to shoot.Deer factories, that is what they are, not ranches! The wild animals of Texas belong to us all, and it is dead wrong to turn deer into a  commercial product. No wonder that there is fewer and fewer local Texas hunters going to the field -- ninety-nine percent of us can not afford it! Rich punks from all over come to hunt the game ranches -- foreigners and Yankees, but damn few Texans -- we are getting shut out from our own landscape. There is 70 miles of nonstop high fences from Uvalde to Junction, by God!" He was getting on a roll, jabbing a finger at my face.

"Dr. Deer, Dr. James Kroll, director of the Forestry Resources Institute at Stephen F. Austin, is the guru of "private deer management." He was quoted in the Texas Monthly as saying that game management by the state is "the last bastion of communism." Hell, in communist Russia only the rich and powerful could hunt  -- I'd say he's got it "backasswards." The reason for these high fences is to create large, multipoint sets of antlers to have hanging over a fireplace -- and that has nothing to do with what hunting is all about -- the meat, the chase, or the relationship with nature that a hunter can feel. It is cold-blooded testosterone posturing -- "Mine is bigger than yours!" Deer-queers and their  trophy bucks! Shoot -- the deer blinds on some of those places are climate controlled and have a wet bar!"  I was surprised he didn't honk up a big wad of disgust to spit.

"The Boone and Crockett Club refuses to certify deer shot inside high fences. Dr. Robert Brown at A&M calls game ranches "deer feedlots." I'm not the only one that feels the way I do. I don't buy any of the arguments of the apologists for the game farms -- that mountain lions climb the fences and javelinas dig under them. They say it preserves the land -- giving an incentive to restore the land to that fabled "original state" -- which original state do they mean  -- back when buffalo roamed this far south? After the brush came in after fire control?" He shook his head.

"After high school I worked on the oil rigs in the Gulf with my daddy, and bought an old rundown house to fix up when I retired, at the edge of town --" and he gestured down the road. "After twenty years I got hurt, so now I live alone on a disability pension. My house is full of books, and I spend a ton of time on-line. Sorry about the speech."

He suddenly lost steam and looked half-bewildered. I had the feeling I could stimulate a lecture on ecological history, but before I could say something, he shrugged and started to walk away, saying, "Ah, hell -- I know I am a clueless Luddite and can't change a thing, but I can for goddamn sure disrupt things!" With that, he marched off down the fenceline, whacking it with his jabbing stick with every step.

 

I watched him go, and wondered how many other people hated high fences -- and later found online a result of a poll that a hunting magazine had done -- almost 60% of the respondents said they did.

 

stomp dance and seminole politics...

Luther rode up to the stomp dance near Wewoka, Oklahoma late in the night. Folks had been drinking and singing for hours.  Couple of Sac and Fox men with a long history of being with the same woman alternatively had a good fight and the crowd was laughing, taking bets.  Luther had heard that one of the Payne’s from Mexico was in the neighborhood. The Payne’s were one of the families that rode with Wildcat and John Horse back in the 1840’s. After Wildcat died in the mid 1850’s, a number of the Mascogos, the Seminole Blacks, had come back to Oklahoma and made a personal peace with the responsibility of trying to adjust to “civilized” behavior.

Luther’s wife, Maynee, was the daughter of the trader who sold Seminole products to a wider market. Her daddy had been adopted by the Seminoles, for his fair and honest dealings, and one of his wife’s closest friends was Alice Brown Davis, sister of the leader of the tribe at the time. Her mother was the daughter of the Boston missionary that joined John Bemo in schooling the just transplanted ex-Floridians in reading, writing, and “righting” (which meant religious instruction in a private family story.)

As Luther tied his horse to a wagon wheel belonging to C.M. Wilson (one of the Anglo ranchers married to a Seminole woman. He was looking for Isaac Payne who had come this time, so he had heard. The family in Oklahoma had sent word to Fort Clark that one of matriarchs was dying. Isaac was one of the patriarchs. Isaac had won a Medal of Honor saving Capt. Bullis’ life. The members of the Seminole Scouts  (both active and retired) served as a dispatch service between ranchers, bankers, army officials, and law enforcement.  (a nephew of Isaac, John,  would become a renowned fighter in the  exhaustive Villa years). 

One of his cowboys was yet another Payne family member. The Payne’s had been economically tied to Osceola’s people back in Florida, prospered and had many children who all came to Oklahoma and eventually even much farther beyond.  Samson Payne finished tying his horse and touched Luther’s shoulder and pointedly glanced at a lean figure in a Seminole turban leaning up against a blackjack oak at the edge of the clearing. Half dozen elder men and women were gathered there.

Samson pointed at some women cooking at some pots and both went and filled up bowls and found a place to sit to watch the dancing and the rest of the “going-ons.”  His wife’s mother wanted to see Isaac.  The Mexican government was moving the Mascogo people from Nasciemento to near Musquiz. Families had been raised in Nasciemento, and many of their people were buried there. The Catholic Church had even built a chapel for future encouragement to replace the people’s Gullah roots with a veneer of Christian indoctrination. People were contemplating moving to Oklahoma. His mother-in-law wanted to hear how many, and be sure to encourage her husband to lay in important supplies in case they arrived destitute.   

Samson and Luther went back for seconds, and then returned to their spot a third time after getting a small flask of whiskey from Samson’s older brother.  Some of Samson’s friends dragged him over to where folks were talking about some folks gone bad and taken to raiding other towns for things to sell at yet another town. Luther stuck the flask in his pocket.  Several men stopped by to talk, wanting to hear a report on who might be needing extra hands soon. They were farmers, looking for a few extra bucks when it was time to ship the herds being wintered for Texas cattlemen. C.M Wilson dropped by, saying that Bull Shannon from down near the old Fort Concho was getting ready to go to Kansas City and start dickering for the highest price. Luther had a few head thrown in with Wilson and helped him keep an eye on the herd all winter, and would soon accompany the herd to the KC stockyards. Wilson agreed to give him some money Maynee could come on the next passenger train.  It might be the best chance for a truly special honeymoon- like trip. 

They had been married a couple of years. Maynee was a big help, riding her big horse Ben would let  nobody else ride. Being and in love with no babies taking his best girl away from him had been the happiest time of Luther’s life. Things were about to change. Maynee had told him she was pregnant.

The stomp dance ended at daybreak. People headed home, back to milking cows, cutting wood, back to the everyday routine. Folks would move slow all day, but for the most part it had been a great time, exchanging news from up and down Gar Creek and a half dozen valleys in every direction.  After a while Luther and Isaac were about the only ones left.  Alice Brown Davis rode up in a surrey (Luther had been a surrey driver for a Seminole woman with an Anglo husband when he was a young teenager.) Both men recinched their saddles and slipped bridles on their horses, and swung up after brief polite greetings. 

the breaks trail for the people of Indian Territory

Maynee and Alice were the best of friends. Maynee was with her parents, Reverend John Lilley and wife Mary. Alice was with her family but she and her brother John Brown roamed along the wagon train on ponies, helping keeping stray stock headed in the right direction for a while, then galloping ahead to find out road conditions. Sometimes she and Maynee took messages to the Seminole Indians in the wagons from the handsome Army official Elijah Brown in charge of the move from Kansas by the Northern Seminoles back to their homes in Indian Territory after the Civil War ended. Maynee spoke Seminole and Creek, having been raised in her father’s Presbyterian mission school. She rode astride, as did Alice, much to her mother’s patrician dismay. Alice was Seminole.

The mission school had burned, but Reverend John Ramsey was opening a new school. She would teach there, after their arrival. Over a thousand of the Seminoles had died in Kansas during the war. Supplies from the government had not come in a timely fashion, and their quality had been horrendous. Sanitation had been inadequate, with resulting epidemics.  Many of them had left producing farms and solid homes when the Indian Territory had become a battleground between the North and South. Many Indians of many tribes had been enlisted on both sides.

In the late 1840’s many Seminoles had moved to Mexico. Some members  of their families had stayed in Indian Territory, and during the war had stayed put, eking out an existence labored with roving bands of gunmen looting and killing, and groups of militia from both sides that appropriated their food. The horrors of the last four years were finally coming to an end. Everyone was filled with hope for the future, although knowing that it was like starting over again, as they had in the late 1840s after the Seminoles were forced to leave Florida.

When they neared the North Canadian River, a rider from the south eased into the wagon train as it circled up for the evening camp. It was one of the sons of John Horse, who had been under Maynee’s mother care during an epidemic just after their arrival. John Horse was the leader of the black Seminoles (escaped slaves and their descendants) who had come with the Seminoles who had helped them survive the Floridian swamps.

When traveling from Mexico to the Indian Territory, the Seminoles and the Seminole blacks traveled up the Devil’s River, then down the South Concho River, up the North Concho, over the divide to the Colorado River, then thru the badlands to the Brazos, and on up to the little Wichita and Red, to the Wichita Mountains and home.  Traveling through Comanche territory along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado was safer than along the roads of Texas and its slave trade and anti-Indian attitudes.

Their guest had been sent to help relatives who had gone with the Seminoles that had accepted the protection of the Union. It would be the first they had heard of their relatives in Mexico for three years. After he had been introduced to Army official Brown, Maynee went with him. His older sister had been captured by slavetraders as the black Seminoles headed to Mexico, but had managed to escape and return to Indian Territory. She had helped at the school and was another of Maynee’s friends.

After greetings, their guest told his story. He had some bad news, fresh on his mind. He had been with one of Wildcat’s sons, who had died on the way. To avoid the big winter camp of the Comanches at the head of the Colorado River southeast of Muchaque Peak, they had swung west, counting on the freshwater spring on Sulphur Springs Draw, and the seep springs at Tahoka Lake before coming down the Pease River. 

 At Sulphur Springs draw waterhole his friend had developed a great pain in his side, and died in agony the next day.  Maynee knew to call it appendicitis. Nothing could have been done. (The first appendicitis surgery came 25 years later.) She had to leave then, for Mr. Brown had requested her interpretative services. With the Seminole lands on the other side of the river, what would be the best course of action? Who needed help – who could manage on their own? For the next three hours she sat with the Seminole and Seminole black elders’, becoming more and more impressed with the officer’s respectful handling of his charges. He spoke with his heart, and carefully thought out his duties.

This is a fictionalized version of the beginning of my great-grandparent’s long relationship

1599 on the Llano Estacado

Fifty red and white tepees were clustered under the outer edge of the cottonwood grove.  The clamor of hundreds of dogs greeted Vicente de Zaldivar and the 59 men with him, as they rode down the Canadian River (just northwest of present day Fritch). In the year 1599, the mid-September air was cool, and the vast prairies they traveled after leaving the settlements near present day Espanola, New Mexico were delightfully adorned with many colorful flowers.  They had met a member of the band on the Gallinas River, as he headed home, and he had agreed to show them the way.  Zaldivar hoped to capture buffalo and domesticate them, as ordered by Don Juan Onate, the leader of the new settlements.

The Indians were Querechos or Vaqueros (later determined to be of Apache affiliation.)  The Indians used the dogs to haul travois – two poles with webbing in between then loaded with everyday essentials from the tipi covers to bundles of dried meat and dried medicinal plants.  They hunted the buffalo on foot, using the ancient tricks of wearing calf hides to enter the herds and shoot selectively, and sometimes organizing the exciting activity of driving the herd off of a cliff.

Their guide introduced Zaldivar and his officers to the head men of the village. In the conversation (in sign language), Zaldivar learned that a trading party had just returned from the Taos Pueblo, well satisfied with their cotton blankets, bags of dried corn, collection of pottery, and some beautiful turquoise jewelry.  They had delivered buffalo hides and dried buffalo meat, bags of buffalo tallow and suet, and bags of salt from the salinas of the Llano Estacado.

They indicated the first time their people had seen Spanish men and their horses was the expedition of Coronado 50 years before.  In more recent times, in 1581 the Rodriguez-Chamuscado expedition of three priests, nine soldiers and sixteen Indian servants had introduced the tenets of Christianity. After the expedition had left, the two priests who had purposefully stayed behind were soon killed in a pueblo to the west.  The priests had named the vast plains now known as the Llano Estacado “Los Llanos de San Francisco” after their Catholic order. The next year Antonio de Espejo’s expedition had confirmed their martyrdom.

For a month and a half Zaldivar tried to corral adult buffalo, and after failing at that, corralled calves, which struggled so mightily to escape they died. The expedition turned to killing buffalo, processing over a ton of tallow (along with dried meat and hides) to bring back to their struggling settlement in the valley where the Rio Grande meets the Rio Chama. Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagra took notes, and in 1610 published an epic poem in Spain about the beginning years of settlement and exploration with its first ever published description of the Llano Estacado; “All seems to be a peaceful sea, with no sort of valley or hill, where a man can in any way, limit his vision or rest it.”  

The expedition was idyllic. The Apaches were friendly, trading small items and were helpful at times. It was the first of almost 300 annual buffalo hunts by the Spanish settlers of Northern New Mexico. The men that did the hunting each year became known as Ciboleros, hunting the buffalo each fall with lances and bows and arrows, then processing the hides, meat, and tallow for transport, 

sometimes trading the products as far south as Chihuahua. For a hundred years they traded and fought with the Apaches, and in the early 1700’s the Comanches arrived and replaced the Apaches, who moved southeast or southwest or northwest to become the Lipan, Mescalero, and Jicarilla Apaches when the region became under United States control. The term “Llano Estacado” became the most used term for the region around 1800, where one had to bring stakes to tie horses from wandering away and to hang meat from ropes stretched between posts as it dried.

In the 1840’s Santa Fe trader Josiah Gregg in “Commerce of the Prairies” described the Ciboleros as open and friendly, colorfully dressed, wearing flat straw hats, and with horse and weapons gaily decorated with tassels and pennants. They roamed the plains in groups of over a hundred men, with women and children along.

I have seen two museum displays about the Ciboleros, but I don’t remember ever seeing mention of them in any text book for primary or secondary level students. Why is this exciting economic endeavor of many years never taught to our children? It is our history!

charlie goodnight and jose piedad tafoya

"El Llano Estacado es un mundo nuevo, Charlie -- no?" Jose Tafoya sadly shook his head. "I remember seeing this valley black with buffalo thirty years ago. On this trip all I saw was an old sign hanging loose, flapping in the wind, with the words "Buffalo Bones." Underneath the sign were fragments of bone turning to powder." Walter Prescott Webb later estimated five million buffalo ranged from the Arkansas River in the summer to the Concho River and beyond in the winter during Tafoya’s Comanchero days.

In 1893 Texas ranchers including Charlie Goodnight sued the State of Texas to recover the value of horses and cattle stolen by Comanches who traded them to Comancheros from northern New Mexico. Charlie and Jose might have hunkered down in the shade of one of the sapling courthouse trees in Clarendon the afternoon of Jose's testimony. Both had traveled the Llano Estacado and Pecos River Valley extensively when much younger. In the 1920's Goodnight told his biographer J. Evetts Haley, "Tafoya was a wonder, and knew the Plains from the Palo Duro to the Concho by heart." 

"The buffalo aren't all gone. Have you seen the buffalo I gave the Taos Pueblo? Mrs. Goodnight was sickened by the slaughter. In 1878 I roped a few calves and put them on Texas cows. They hated the calves. I had to walk into the pen carrying a fence post so they could get their clabber in peace. The first bull buffalo I had was “old Sikes,” and he busted every barbwire fence I put up. He'd come charging to the horse corral, hook his head under the gate and lift it off its hinges and get his fill of corn. The ponies stifled themselves getting away."

Tafoya cackled at the image. "More than buffalo are gone. One time when I was down between Lagunas Cuates and Laguna de Tahoka on my way back from Muchaque, I ran into thousands upon thousands of turkeys walking across the llano. The flock stretched from horizon to horizon and was a half-mile across. A dozen or more coyotes were flanking them like drovers, hoping for one to get tired. I decided los pavos were headed for the sandhills along the Valle de Simanola to feed on shinnery acorns. They might have been after the big swarms of migrating grasshoppers -- a little further west we found a place where the ground was bare, except for thousands of dead grasshoppers. One of my wagondrivers once thought a swarm of grasshoppers was a snowstorm without clouds, because of the way they glittered in the sun! Now neither the turkey nor grasshoppers migrate as they once did. It was a heck of a sight -- turkeys migrating like buffalo.

Tafoya smiled at the memory, and reflected about the last years of the buffalo. "The hunters chased the buffalo out of the breaks and up on the Llano. They used to only come up on it in wet years, but about the time you were fussing with old Sikes, George Causey was killing them as far west as El Bolson de San Simon and Los Medanos. (Near Hobbs, New Mexico.) A nephew of mine says there is still five buffalo down on the Pecos north of Fort Stockton. He's riding for the "W," living in the open and using his saddle for a pillow. His brother is riding for Add Jones on the LFD and says that old black cowboy knows more about horses than anybody. He says the big herds of pronghorn there are now heavily hunted. I can remember seeing herds of 500. Back in my trading days, there were many more antelope than buffalo on the western Llano Estacado."

Goodnight shook his head. "I hardly ever saw buffalo along the Pecos -- a few old bulls, mostly. Colonel Shafter said he found no sign of buffalo until he got past the sandy country north of Mustang Draw in 1875 -- of course he was there in a wet year!”

"Those bars of lead that Shafter captured on that trip in Los Medanos, the sanddunes below Blue Mesa, I'd traded to Mow-way just a few weeks earlier.  As I told the folks inside, I got most of my tradegoods off the commander at Fort Bascom and the fellow at the Hatch Ranch, including the lead. Mow-way met with Magoosh a few days before Shafter came along and they made a treaty. By teaching him the use of peyote, that old Lipan got Mow-way to agree to not kill him. Mow-way taught Quanah Parker, and Quanah is now the biggest "roadman" of the peyote church. When Quanah came to Ft. Davis in 1884 I was there. I stayed in the house the whole time for fear of my life -- he blames me for telling Colonel Mackenzie about the big camp in Palo Duro. He was visiting the oldest son of that Cibolero who sent 250 wagons full of dried buffalo meat to Chihuahua and Mexico City in 1876. He hired the young man to gather the cactus for him down along the Rio Grande."

Goodnight nodded. "Quanah says peyote has kept his people from getting ruined by drinking too much. I asked him how the old Comanche term for red-headed man became the name for the cactus. He didn't know, but said that for years a redheaded captive was one of their best warriors.

"Speaking of plants -- where did this new tumbling weed come from? This wasn't here before." Tafoya pointed down an alley where a drift of tumbleweeds lined a fence.

"Supposedly some Russians brought it in accidentally with some flax seed to North Dakota in the 1870's and it's been rolling south every winter ever since. There is nothing between here and there but prairie, and when the blizzards of winter blow just about everything heads south. A fence full of tumbleweeds becomes a sanddune after a sandstorm or two. When us cattlemen started putting up drift fences to keep the cattle from going down to the Pecos it caused antelope to become trapped by the fences and die by the thousands. What a sad sight -- critters that could jump the fences but don't -- never having needed such an instinct, they just don't understand. "

"I was talking with my nephew from the LFD, and he was telling me how some of the settlers to the east are killing the prairie chickens. He'd heard that a group of farmers got together during a drought and to make ends meet starting sending the prairie chickens to Fort Worth by the train carload. The farmers had already begun to hate the fat birds -- for they came out of the shinnery covered sanddunes by the thousands and ate up the seed they'd planted."

Goodnight stroked his graying goatee. "A surveyor told me a story about those prairie grouse. It was over in the Brazos breaks, south of Los Lenguas Canyon where you had your trading post "choza" (rock house that was half underground). A grass fire had blackened the country for miles, but a triangle of land between two creeks did not get burned. In that three-mile long strip, every prairie chicken for miles had come to forage. He said they acted unafraid -- they would walk up and clobber them with a stick to get a meal! Talk about fine dining, huh?"

"I like to eat another tasty bird -- those long-legged birds with long curved bills -- I think the word for them in English is curlew -- right?" Goodnight nodded. Tafoya spoke and wrote in Spanish and English, as well as being a fluent speaker of the Comanche language. "When we wingshot them, they fell to the ground and broke apart because they were so fat. I still see quite a few along the Pecos sacaton flats early in the winter, but it seems like there is not nearly as many as there used to be. Flocks used to number in the hundreds and thousands, but it is rare I see more than 50 at any one time nowadays."  

The two men sat silently for a few minutes, lost in personal memories, absently watching a freight wagon train roll past the courthouse. Tafoya suddenly straightened up and exclaimed, "That is Casimero Romero!" The man in question waved and hollered over at them in Spanish -- "I will join you two in a drink when we get settled in!" Tafoya glanced at Goodnight. "Charlie, you treated him with respect when you moved to the Palo Duro south of his sheep range, and for that, you are well thought of by our people. Some of the other sorry sons-of-bitches that came after you, though, I guess they will never pay for their treatment of "los pastores." Tafoya shook his head, and spat on the ground, emphatically punctuating his disgust.

Goodnight nudged Tafoya, "Did you see that pony he was forking? What a fine looking stud!

The Romero plaza at Tascosa was a grand place. He had a trunk full of fine crystal and lace that he said came from Spain over a hundred years ago.  I guess the stories are true, that he has switched to freighting, but I thought he did the Fort Dodge road… I wonder what he is doing here?"

"You ever eat horse?" Goodnight shook his head in the negative. "It is pretty good. The Comanches ate it, and sometimes served it like "fatted calf." They had so many horses… so, so many -- I can not remember the name of that one huge fat old Comanche who could no longer even ride a horse, but still he had over a thousand in his own herd." Tafoya chuckled at the memory.

Charlie kept passing along the news. “I have heard all the ponies that roamed the Wild Horse Desert a ways east of the Medicine Mounds have all been captured or killed. Burk Burnett is ranching that country, now, and has worked out a deal with Quanah to graze even more up on Comanche land near Fort Sill. I saw him at last year's Association meeting (Cattlemen's Association). He was full of stories of stallions that were hard to run down." That comment got Jose in a storytelling mood.

"Chacho Valdez was a mestenero from San Miguel del Vado on the Pecos. He used to come up on the Llano and walk the wild horses down, following them day and night until they were exhausted. Often he killed the stallions and kept the mares, which he crippled by cutting a ligament, then slowly herd them back and use them for breeding stock.  He told me a story about a white stallion at Casas Amarillas that refused to be caught -- have you heard it? It has become a tale told often at cow camps."

"The one that kept getting away from him, day after day, and finally he and his men had cornered on the bluff above the playa?" Tafoya grinned at Goodnight's question, and finished up the story.

"I love his description of how the stallion turned and watched as the men cut off all the escape routes, and then reared and pawed the sky over and over. He said the stallion gave the most anguished neigh he had ever heard from a horse as he stood facing them after the last time he reared. With a shake of his head and mane, the stallion turned around and ran faster than he ever had before and when he came to the edge of the bluff he jumped up higher than he'd ever seen a horse jump. When Valdez got to the edge of the bluff and looked down, the stallion was sinking in the salty mud and only his head was visible. As he told the story, the horse had somehow turned far enough around he was looking Valdez in the eye. Chacho said the pride in his haughty glare made he and his men weep. Chacho never went mustanging again." Both men sat reflecting on the story, until Charlie offered a more cheerful thought.

"I have heard of a handful of wild horses running wild, still. That big open country west of the Concho supposedly still has a few -- but how they live, I do not know. You know as well as I that wild horses rarely got more than five or six miles from water. Anytime you saw thickets of mesquite, you knew you were that close to water -- I guess sometimes that during droughts the wild horses had to eat mesquite beans and they caused it to grow that far out of the draws, leaving the seeds in their droppings as they searched for grass."

"I was amazed to hear the other day that mesquite was supposed to come to the Llano with Spanish cattle. How in the world did that story get started? Every valley with deep soil in the whole region always had mesquite -- and how in the world would that story explain the Ghost Forest of the Breaks?"

Goodnight sat up a tiny bit straighter. "Yeah -- I've never heard a story that explains the Ghost Forest. An old Tonk at Fort Griffin said that region of dead mesquite near the Double Mountains was there when he was a kid, and that must have been in the late 1700's. That region could be downright spooky when it was foggy -- riding among all those old trunks reaching 15 feet or higher, their branches sticking up like arms over the good sideoats and bluestem. One time when I was exhausted after chasing Indians during the Civil War, I rode through in a fog and it seemed like the old trunks were dancing."

"You and me, Charlie, we have seen a lot of things that are now ghosts, you know. How about the bears of the breaks? I bet they have all been killed by now. And the wolves, they too will become only ghosts of memory."

"The ghosts ride with us like that lobo I saw along the Pecos. It was the only wolf I ever saw along the Pecos.  On cattledrives I often would ride a couple miles or more ahead of the herd to pick the best route. That old lobo followed me for over a week, from Toyah Creek to the area along Seven Rivers where Ma'am Jones has her place. I decided it was lonely, and I bet ghosts get lonely if nobody knows their stories. I wonder if in a hundred years anybody will remember the incredible numbers of animals once here?"      

the Solanaceae

Dag-nab it, it has turned out to be another dry dry dry dry dry dry DRY spring.  The pastures are full of dead bladderpod carcasses beginning to shatter in the incessant hot hot hot hot HOT wind. What is a wildflower nut to do? Geez!

            Well, we end up in the bar-ditches, drainage ditches, and floodwater retention depressions.  We walk along singing “we are the ditchmen” instead of the Beatles’ “I am The Walrus” lyrics.

            On a recent traipse near our home south of town, we became fascinated by one particular family of plants (the second most common in the plant kingdom) of which we found eight members in bloom.  I am referring, of course, to Solanaceae, which includes scary and infamous poison plants, some wonderful medicinal plants which are still used in surgical applications today, and some of our most favorite food crops.

 Some members of the family contain powerful alkaloids.  These chemicals assist the plants that contain them in their never‑ending battle to protect themselves from herbivores.  The more potent the brew of alkaloids present in the plant’s constituents, the fewer the species of pests that can safely ingest it.  The most infamous member of the family is tobacco, but it also includes tomatoes, eggplant, and potatoes.

            If you have ever gardened in West Texas, you are familiar with “trompillo,” or Purple Nightshade.  The blooms are oh‑so‑pretty blue stars with yellow stamens, and it produces a pretty green fruit that turns yellow and then dries black.  Sounds nice?  Not with long spiky, gnarly, poky, nasty, horrible spines up and down its stem, and a root that just keeps going down‑down‑down.  It is nearly impossible to pull up, and when broken off, it sends two or three new shoots to the surface.  Wait -- it gets worse!  This demon is a shape-shifter that can make itself look just like any number of  plants it grows next to.  It is hated, vilified, yanked, sprayed, mowed, burned, stomped and cursed every day of every growing season, somewhere on the Llano Estacado. 

Another Solanaceae we found is Datura.  Atropine and scopolamine are two of its chemical constituents which have been used to produce surgical drugs.  Although the concentration of these chemicals varies from plant to plant in response to such stresses as heat, wind, hummingbird moth caterpillar damage, and soil types, it should always be considered poisonous.  Even so, it has been found to pull heavy metals from the soil and the government has done some experimental plantings of Datura in an effort to decontaminate soils that have been polluted with uranium and plutonium.

We also found a round‑leafed groundcover that is often the only plant growing on bare soil slopes:  the wild version of tomatillo.  Everybody knows tomatillo – sί?  Salsa verde con tomatillos may not be as popular here as in the Rio Grande Valley, pero la planta es muy importante to our multicultural heritage!  It has yellow, bell-like flowers hanging beneath its leaves, which later develop into many‑pointed, green, papery bladders that each contain a tiny replica of a green tomato.  Doves, quail, meadowlarks, and bossy curve-billed thrashers harvest the majority of the fruit.

We found three members of a genus similar to Physalis, to which tomatillo belongs.  Dr. Barton Warnock, who produced three wonderful plant identification books for west Texas in the early 1970’s called the Chamaesaracha “False Ground Cherry,” since tomatillo is also known as ground cherry.  Deborah and I call it Saracha because we like to shorten long Latin names into sweeter sounding slang names.  The three species are hard to tell apart.  All of them have hairy leaves and hug the ground, so they are usually half-covered with small particles of sand clinging to their leaves.  Instead of hanging down like the tomatillo, the pale yellow blossoms point straight up at the sky, bright, cheerful anomalies that seem to pop from a plant that otherwise looks dead from all the sand on it.

Along the ditch in tight, gravely soil, we found purple ground cherry, too.  Quincula has potential for use as a landscape ground cover.  Several Llaneros have attempted to decipher its horticultural needs.

The last member of the family we encountered was buffalo bur.  The yellow, star‑shaped flowers are pretty, but the plant is covered with spines.  The leaves, stems, and fruit are all covered with spines, too – and who knows?  Maybe the root is, too, but the heat of this ditch-trudge caused Deborah to declare that it was not worth testing that bit of hyperbole.

We did not find the brown-centered ground cherry, nor any Nicotiana.  Wild tobacco grew in Midland County in the drought of the 1950’s, during which my mom photographed it while documenting the flora and fauna of the county.  We looked for it in every drought since then, but never found it again.  Any time I find myself in an area with sandy, disturbed soil, I still look for it.

Next time you drive by a ditch, look for one these bizarre and wonderful members of the Solanaceae family.  It is a lot more fun than dismissing what is seen with one glance and grimacing, “What a bunch of ugly weeds.  Yuck.”

have rattlesnakes stopped rattling?

Because humans and feral hogs kill every rattler that rattles, the only rattlers left aren’t rattling anymore.”  I have heard that from lots of folks – from folks that call in to the radio show “The Rugged Llano Estacado” on KWEL1070 AM on Friday mornings at 8 a.m., in many emails to me, and from folks asking if it is true on my Facebook page.  Some of the people are very adamant about the truth of the statement. Somehow it has attained the level of “unimpeachable truth” for some people. I have always called it “urban myth.”

Deborah loves to make sure I am doing due diligence on my responses to questions from folks on our local ecology and history, so she went online and searched for opinions on the subject. She found heads of herpetological associations saying it was true, and other such folks saying no.  I love Deborah dearly – and her ability to mentally challenge me (and often times dance circles around me) is one of the many reasons! I am thankful for every time she “shakes a finger at me” and challenges me to verify what comes out of my mouth.

What follows is an excerpt from a story in Arizona;  “Steve Reaves, owner of Tucson Rattlesnake Removal, said rattlers have stopped rattling in recent years in order to avoid being killed. “Normally when a rattlesnake announces its presence, people kill it,” Reaves said. “The snakes that aren’t genetically predisposed to rattling are the ones that are left to breed. They rely on their natural camouflage and stay still so predators won’t notice them. Basically what’s happening is we’re breeding a rattlesnake that doesn’t intend to rattle.” Jerry Feldner, sergeant-at-arms in the Arizona Herpetological Society thinks he first noticed the non-rattling behavior six or seven years ago. “The rattlesnakes people see are the ones where they walk or hike,” Feldner said. “Snakes alongside the trails have learned that rattling gets them in trouble.”

Stéphane Poulin, curator of herpetology at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, said the theory that snakes have recently stopped rattling is a myth.“In the last 25 or 30 years I haven’t seen any change overall with rattlesnakes,” Poulin said. “Overall, rattlesnakes just don’t rattle very often. Most of the time they use their camouflage and try not to be seen. Rattling and striking are unconnected.  A snake can rattle all it wants without striking or strike without rattling.”

Randy Babb, a biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department says, “Most of the work that has been done indicates rattlesnakes actually seldom rattle,” he said. “Their primary defense is not being seen. As long as they feel they’re not being seen, they lie quiet and let whatever potential predator there is wander by. Only when the animal has been disturbed or it’s quite clear they’ve been spotted will they go ahead and rattle.”

On Facebook there are several “groups” mostly made of up of professional biologists, and at least one that is just for herpetologists.  I posted a query to one of the groups, as in – “is there any validity to the theory…” – and it was reposted to another.    Dr.  Harry Greene, professor of ecology at Cornell University, posted; “I don't think there's a shred of published evidence, though the idea has been around since the 19th century.” Dr. Ivan E. Parra-Salazar, who consults for a number of organizations and governmental agencies in both the United States and Mexico, commented; “There is also an individual "personality": siblings kept under the same conditions can have extremely different behavior. Most of the time, rattlesnakes do not rattle, unless they feel threatened.”

It appears there is a general consensus among academic biologists that it is unlikely that rattlesnakes have become quieter and have stopped rattling. Among the avocational herpetologists there seems to be a divided opinion. I couldn’t hear rattlesnakes for several years until I got some good hearing aids, but the few that I have seen since then have rattled when annoyed, but have not rattled if left alone. There is an old West Texas saying – “Never be the third in line walking down a trail. The first person wakes the rattler up, the second makes it mad, and the third person gets bit.”

5 species of squab...

AT the time of the settlement of Midland, only one dove species lived in the area. Mourning doves nested in the pocket forests of mesquite, soapberry, and hackberry in the draws. During the fall migration thousands upon thousands would land in the sunflower covered shinoak sandune habitat and stoke up for moving further south where the ancient oak mottes of the Pecos Canyons gave them winter succor. Their voice is a soft coo, sounding somewhat like an owl. West Texas has long been known as a great place to hunt doves.

In the late 1940s Inca doves moved north, establishing year around residences in towns with plentiful Siberian elm trees to nest in, and in thicker shrubbery. Inca doves are much smaller, and reddish under their wings. Their call has been portrayed as "cold cokes! cold cokes!" They did not colonize the pocket forests, and rarely went to an exurban yard in the cotton farming areas, and almost never to a rural ranchhouse.

In 1980 whitewinged doves also moved north, and again colonized the town. Inca dove and mourning dove populations began declining due to the fierce competition offered by the much larger white-winged doves. Mourning doves not only nested in the pocket forests of the draws, but also the huge prickly pear thicket on 1788 which originated with the cattle drives of the droughty 1930's where the cactus was brought on trucks as emergency feed, while the cattle waited to board trains to greener pastures.

In the late 1990s Eurasian collared doves arrived after escaping captivity in Florida only a decade before, but they first began nesting in cemeteries and exurban yards, before finally moving to the urban forest about 2005. Whitewinged doves still dominate, but the even larger collared doves are steadily increasing. Eurasian collared doves are legal to hunt year around, but by finding safety within the city limits, their numbers have increased.

Pigeons are doves, too, and came to Midland by the 1920's with pigeon fanciers, but not more than a few thousand have ever colonized the rooftops of the taller buildings, large billboards, and other man-made nesting and roosting sites. They have not nested beyond the constructions of man yet in West Texas.

All doves build flimsy nests. Rarely are the nests more than a few dozen sticks seemingly haphazardly thrown in a pile in a fork of a tree branch. They began nesting in March and nests have been found in November, indicating there might be as many as 6 sets of 2 young each year, which allows for the possibility of quick population growth. As a major prey species for several species of hawk, and as targets for tree-climbing mammals like gray fox and bobcat, doves in the wild have controls, but in town, only hawks do the work, and only in the winter. Few house cats learn to shinny out on the skinny limbs where the doves nest.

When the population of doves reaches a saturation point, all of the species are prone to respiratory diseases. Lots of people feed birds, and if the feeding areas are not kept relatively clean, their droppings "turn on them" and disease lowers their numbers -- a standard ecological response to overpopulation. Other birds, especially house finches (the males with red on their head and chest) often get the respiratory disease as well. Canker is a deadly respiratory disease characterized by the swelling in the throat and cheesy growth in the mouth of the birds. It is caused by a protozoan. 

Poor doves... their role is prey if the diseases of overpopulation do not get them. They also slam into windows, thinking reflected sky is safe.  No wonder the white winged doves sing que lastima all day!