Folklore America: Bad Men, Blue Oxen, and Stetson Hats

"The other replied: 'I am an alligator, half man, half horse, and I can whip any man on the Mississippi, by G-d!'"-- The Pocket Treasury of American Folklore, B A Botkin, editor, New York, 1950

Nations have at least two histories...

One history is cobbled together by scholars who examine documents and contemporary chronicles so they can tell us what great kings and generals did.  The other is told by we the people.  It becomes songs and legends, tall tales of heroes in magical lands...

Although the United States is a relatively young nation, its people are creative and more prone than not to enjoy a good tall tale.  This week we visit a few of the rough and ready men who populate the secret history of America: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, Staggerlee, Mike Fink, and Davy Crockett...

The legend of Paul Bunyan, a gigantic logger, appears to have
originated in Canada during the 19th century.  The character came
to the attention of the Red River Lumber Company of Minnesota
circa 1914.  One of the firm's employees wrote a booklet which
embellished the older stories and created the character of Babe
the Blue Ox.  As the American economy took new directions, the
logger also became an oil driller.

 

 

"Paul was mad!  He swore around for two or three days and smashed the derrick into kindling wood and was about to quit drilling (for oil) when he saw an advertisement in the paper by some bird out on the plains that wanted to buy some post holes.  Ten thousand post holes it was he wanted.  Ten thousand holes three feet long.

Well, Paul he hitched a chain around this duster hole and hooked up Babe, that big Blue Ox of his, and pulled fifteen thousand feet of that hole right up out of the ground.  He got mad again 'cause the hole broke off and left half of itself in the ground."*

Pecos Bill is entirely an invented "fakelore" character
who didn't exist before he appeared in short stories in
the early 1900s.  Here, Bill lassoes a tornado for a ride
into town.  He also dug the Rio Grande and invented
Western movies.

 

 

"According to the most veracious historians, Pecos Bill was born about the time Sam Houston discovered Texas.  His mother was a sturdy pioneer woman who once killed forty-five Indians with a broom handle and weaned him on moonshine liquor when he was three days old. He cut his teeth on a bowie knife and his earliest playfellows were the bears and catamounts of east Texas...

It wasn't long until he was famous as a bad man.  He invented the six shooter and train robbin' and most of the crimes that was popular in the old days of the West."*

 

John Henry symbolizes the struggle of the working man to stay
employed as technology makes his skills irrelevant.  His legend
originated about 1873 when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad
constructed the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia.  He may or
may not have actually existed.  Most versions of the story, save
some from Kentucky, portray him as a black man.

 

"Boss man told John Henry/John Henry damn your soul/You'll beat this steam drill of mine/When the rocks in this mountain turn to gold/Lord, Lord, when the rocks in this mountain turn to gold."

"John Henry was the best driver on the C & O.  He could drive steel with two hammers, one in each hand.  People came from miles around to see him drive with those two 20 lb. hammers."*

 

"God help your children and I'll take care of your wife" are the
words said to Billy Lyons by Staggerlee in one version of a song
based on an 1898 murder (see link below).  Staggerlee shoots Billy
in a dispute over a John B Stetson hat in most versions of the tale.
Students of modern folklore have noted Staggerlee's evolution into
a trickster figure.

 

"Now like I told you, Staggerlee was popular with the women folks cause he could whup the blues out on a guitar and beat out boogie woogie music piano bass and the like of that, but what they liked about him most was he was so stout he could squeeze the breath out of them almost.  And his favorite one was a voodoo queen down in New Orleans French Market.

Anyway, after the devil had saved him from Jesse James, Staggerlee, knowin' the law was hot after him, lit out again, headin' west...He run into two deputies on the lookout for him in order to collect the $5000 reward for his arrest.  Staggerlee drawed his gun first 'fore they caught on as to he was and asked them their names.  When they told him, he took his 45 and shot their initials in their hats, changed hisself into a horse, galloped away with little baby red devils ridin' on his back.  Them deputies run the other way.  They was so skeered they run through a graveyard, knockin' over tombstones like pins in a bowlin' alley."*

http://www.legacy-america.net/2011/12/27/this-day-in-history-december-27/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4scedJs6hC8

 

Mike Fink, a real life cargo hauler on the Ohio
and Mississippi Rivers had a reputation for brawling
and sadistic pranks.  He was eventually murdered
by a man named Talbot who was not prosecuted for
the crime in part due to popular belief that Fink had
been killed to punish him for killing a friend of
Talbot's.

 

"In ascending the Mississippi above the Ohio, Mike Fink saw a sow and a couple of pigs about a hundred feet distant on the river bank.  He declared in boatman fashion that he wanted a pig and took up his rifle to shoot one but was requested not to do so.  He, however, laid the rifle close to his face, and as the boat glided along under easy sail, shot off the tails of the pigs close to the rump without doing them any other harm."*

 

Davy Crockett had already become an American legend by
the time of his death at the siege of the Alamo in 1836.  A
year before this, many backwoodsmen fully expected Crockett
to climb the highest peak in the Allegheny Mountains and
pull the tail off Haley's Comet to save the world from fiery
destruction.

 

"I was out in the forrest wun afternoon and had got to a place called the Grate Gap when I seed a rakkoon sittin' all alone up a tree.  Well, I klapped the breech of Brown Betty to my sholder an' was just gonna put a piece of led 'tween his sholders, when he lifted up one paw and said 'Is your name Crockett?'  Sez I, 'You are right, sir.  My name is Davy Crockett.'  'Then, sir,' sez the rakkoon, 'you need take no further trubble, for I might as well cum down without another word.'   And then the cretur wauked rite down from the tree for he considered hisself already shot."*  

Pecos Bill met his girlfriend, Sluefoot Sue, when he saw her riding
a giant catfish down the Rio Grande after Bill had dug the river.  Sue
is seen here in a scene from a Disney feature about Pecos Bill.

 

 * see Credits below

THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.

http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

Louis Nugent: Eat A Peach

 

Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

 

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by sixteen artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

Steve Bailey: Santa Elena Canyon

 

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/cajun-country-louisiana.html

 

CREDITS

Note: All text in this essay, except for introductory comments and links, is taken directly or adapted from The Pocket Treasury of American Folklore, edited by B A Botkin, New York, 1950. All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Stagger Lee from jasonhouchen.com, Pecos Bill lassoing a tornado from tumblr.com; Paul Bunyan children's record from ioffer.com; Mike Fink from contentreserve.com; Davy Crockett March from tennessee.gov; Slue Foot Sue rides a Catfish down the Rio Grande from vegalleries.com

Alligator People, Pirates, And Streetcars Named Desire

One of the benefits of visits to family and friends are occasional gifts which find their way into one's suitcase on the journey back home...

For me, one of these occasional gifts collected during a recent visit to my family was a book, Louisiana Curiosities, written by Bonnye Stuart, who teaches at the university level and whose family has lived in New Orleans for some nine or ten generations.  Ms Stuart is also a poet and playwright and author of textbooks about communications...

Good luck had come my way, I realized, as I began thumbing through the book.  There was an entry about the Caddo Lake Drawbridge at Mooringsport, possibly the only bridge in the United States to have been bombed with sacks of flour during World War II as part of maneuvers aimed at preparing American troops for an inevitable invasion of Nazi-dominated Europe.  Even should it not be unique in having been pelted with flour, surely no other bridge which utilized Alexander Low Waddell's vertical-lift design made similar contributions to the war effort...

Caddo Lake Drawbridge:  Mooringsport, Louisiana

Bonnye Stuart's book might serve as a source of ideas for many weeks of future blogs...

Louisiana, my home state, has more than its share of historical and culture uniqueness.  How many other places were home to characters like Jean Lafitte, a man whose exact birth and death dates remain as unknown as the exact places of his birth and death...

Pirate or privateer, that's another question about Lafitte for which there are no quick or easy answers.  He and his brother Pierre likely came to Louisiana as children or very young men in the 1780s.  Within a decade or so, they operated a lucrative smuggling operation in New Orleans.  After the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the brothers Lafitte found it advantageous to move their base of operations to an island in Barataria Bay...

Jean Lafitte, The Gentleman Pirate

By 1812, Pierre and Jean Lafitte had grown more restless and more ambitious.  They purchased a schooner and hired a captain named Trey Cook to command her.  A Spanish brig sailed Cook's way in January 1813 and he did what came naturally to him: he captured the ship.  The sale of the Spanish brig's cargo netted the Lafittes $18,000 and guaranteed their devotion to the business of capturing ships without official or legal authority to do so...

Jean Lafitte enjoyed few friends in the American government of Louisiana.  Governor Claiborne, initially indifferent to Lafitte misdeeds, found their open flouting of the law extremely tiresome and prejudicial to good order.  Thus began a campaign against the two which resulted in Pierre's arrest, conviction, and sentencing to jail on piracy related charges...

Then came the British to the city of New Orleans in the War of 1812, Jean Lafitte's offer to put himself in the service of the United States and Andrew Jackson in exchange for a pardon for himself and his men, Pierre's "escape" from jail, and the now famous Battle of New Orleans fought several weeks after the 32 month conflict ended with the Treaty signed at Ghent...

Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans

Any decent encyclopedia or history book provides a fairly detailed look at Jean Lafitte's activities in the period immediately before, after, and during the War of 1812.  But what none of them can actually state with authority are answers to questions about his origins or demise.  Lafitte reportedly claimed at various times to have been born in France at Bordeaux or Bayonne.  Other accounts from the time place his birthplace at other towns in France, the city of Orduna in Spain, and even Westchester, New York.  Some of his biographers think his eyes first saw light in in what was then called Saint-Domingue and is now called Haiti.  He was born in 1776.  Perhaps it was 1780...

He was a Catholic, or so they say.  One probably fraudulent document that claims to be Lafitte's autobiography suggests an entirely different background...

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/36420/yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-manischewitz-historical-account-of-jewish-pirates-/

In 1817, Lafitte sailed to Galveston to act as a Spanish agent.  Here his fate becomes as murky as polluted waters.  A persistent rumor claims he rescued Napoleon from his exile and brought him to Louisiana where they both died.  Others say Jean Lafitte was dead by 1843, or 1823, in Spanish Texas or South Carolina or Illinois or the Yucatan or Nicaragua or the Azores...

The Buccaneer, a Hollywood version of Jean
Lafitte's saga, was the only film directed by
actor Anthony Quinn

A century or so after Lafitte's death, a privately funded search in the mid-1920s for his pirate's treasure concentrated on the Natalbany River near Springfield, Louisiana.  It ended suddenly after several weeks of work and the finding of a Native American canoe which was placed on display in New Orleans.  For reasons never known, the workmen broke camp one night and never returned to the site...

Ms Stuart's book contains a list of horror movies set in or filmed in Louisiana in addition to her account of a patriotic drawbridge at Mooringsport and references to the infamous Monsieur Lafitte...

Cat People has a place on the list.  There are actually two films so entitled.  A 1942 effort directed by French born Jacques Tourneur (who sometimes worked in the US as Jack Turner) chronicles the travails of a Serbian immigrant, Irena Dubrovna, who goes to New York and becomes an American housewife.  Unfortunately, she believes she suffers from an ancient curse that will transform her into a killer panther whenever, ah, shall we say, certain passions are aroused...

Movie Poster: Cat People, 1942

Forty years later, erotic thriller meister Paul Schrader turns Simone Simon's haunted character into Irena Gallier who travels to New Orleans at the behest of her brother, Paul.  Nastassja Kinski takes on the role of Irena to Malcolm McDowell's Paul.  The brother understands a dark truth of which his sister is but dimly aware: he and she are were-creatures, beings who turn into black leopards when sexually aroused, who must kill before they can resume human form.  He sees her as his perfect (and only possible) mate...

Alas for Irena.  She has no desire for her brother.  But passions burn deep in her soul for zoo director Oliver Yates...

Director Paul Schrader's 1982 remake of Cat People relocates
the story to New Orleans and emphasizes the erotic and violent
elements hinted at in the 1942 story set in New York

The Schrader tale has no happy ending despite lovely eerie music by David Bowie and a number of delightful nude scenes in which Ms Kinski tromps about the swamps in search of snacks not named Oliver.  Nor is there a happy ending for Beverly Garland's misfortunate character, Joyce Webster, in 1959's science fiction clunker The Alligator People.  Her husband disappears from a train on their honeymoon.  Doggedly, Joyce travels to his family's remote estate in the Louisiana bayou country.  It would've been better had she stayed home.  Not only is she nearly raped by a brutish servant played by Lon Chaney, Jr, but she learns her man is the victim of a medical experiment gone horribly and terribly awry...

[Two years earlier, in 1957, Garland made television history as star of the single season Decoy, the first program featuring a woman as the star of a police procedural drama.  A goodly number of Beverly Garland's roles were in B movies as a strong and emotionally tough woman.  Late in her career, she returned to television as Kate Jackson's clueless mother in the spy comedy Scarecrow and Mrs King.]

The Alligator People

Literary Louisiana gets several nods in Stuart's potpourri of Bayou State oddities in her book which both informs us that Tennessee Williams' original working title for A Street Car Named Desire was Poker Night AND offers a photograph of a statue celebrating Ignatius J Reilly, a character in John Kennedy Toole's critically acclaimed (and posthumously published) A Confederacy of Dunces...

Dunces caught the eyes of senior editor Richard Gottlieb when Toole submitted it to Simon and Schuster in 1964.  Gottlieb had taken another writer, Joseph Heller, in whom he saw much promise and worked with Heller until he produced the satiric and classic anti-war novel, Catch 22.  The editor believed Toole had the potential to be a very good writer but couldn't convince the New Orleans born writer that his story failed to come to a satisfactory conclusion that tied its various episodes together satisfactorily.  Despite several years of correspondence, neither Gottlieb nor Toole could reach an agreement on what to do with the novel...

Once common in New Orleans, the Lucky Dogs vending stands
found their way into A Confederacy of Dunces as "Paradise Hot
Dogs" 

Eventually, after showing increasing signs of mental illness, Toole committed suicide in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1969, by using that time-honored device of a hose attached to the exhaust pipe of an automobile...

His mother eventually badgered writer Walker Percy into taking a look at A Confederacy of Dunces.  Percy had trained as a medical doctor and was a formidable figure in the world of Twentieth Century American literature.  The Moviegoer, his first novel, became a critical success after its publication in 1961.  The story-- like much of Percy's other work-- married themes of a declining Southern aristocracy in a modern age to existential explorations ala Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky...

A postcard view of New Orleans' Canal Street as John Kennedy
Toole and Ignatius Reilly would have known it

 

Percy, to his surprise, liked what he read and began a campaign to have Toole's odd tale of an odd man named Ignatius Reilly published.  The Louisiana State University Press finally agreed to a print run of 2500 copies.  But, then, A Confederacy of Dunces received a Pulitzer Prize.  To date, it has sold over one and a half million copies in eighteen languages...

 

Beverly Garland in a publicity photo for Killer Leopard

 

 

THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.

http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

Louis Nugent: Fan Dancer

Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by twenty artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

Karen Slagle: Getting The Kinks Out

 

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:

 

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/cajun-country-louisiana.html

 

CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Caddo Lake Drawbridge from caddolakedrawbridge.com; Jean Lafitte from experiencejefferson.com; Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans from floridamemory.com; poster for The Buccaneer (1958) from iceposters.com; poster for The Cat People (1942) from doctormacro.com; still photograph of Nastassja Kinski disrobing from Cat People (1982); scene from Alligator People from Alligator People (1959); Beverly Garland publicity still for Killer Leopard (1954) from tadtoomuchtanfortaupe.blogspot.com; Lucky Dog Cart from Louisiana State Museum, Baton Rouge

Postcard America: Scenes from the Drylands

In the madness of movement/We lose the center/And bid dragons enter-- Louis Nugent, "The Madness of Movement"

Commercial art troubles some who consider themselves artists...

 

Passions run deep on the subject.  Many of us who work in this field prefer to think of ourselves as creators of beauty, interpreters of deeper truths which we convey in a symbolic language.  But the wolf knocks on the door and we must feed ourselves and those courageous enough to stand by our side...

 

Thus it is that painters and photographers and novelists and poets find themselves at play in the fields of commerce.  We create illustrations to sell products like frying pans and washing machines, pen prose to capture the imagination of a slightly overweight person in Peoria in search of a dietary miracle.  Some do it grudgingly, others proudly claim their work...

 

Of all the fields in commercial art, one of the most spiritually rewarding may be that of the postcard maker.  He or she lures us to enchanting lands, captures scenic memories that elude our own cameras, transforms us into the envy of those left behind to trudge towards a mailbox on a frigid day...

 

Gray lives can peek through windows at magical worlds... all for the price of a postcard...

 

 

 

THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.

Untitled (Rectangular Patterns for Lucy's Diamond Sky)

 

http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

 

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by twenty artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.  Featured this week:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/cajun-country-louisiana.html

CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: none.

Journey To The Desert's Edge, Part 9

Note: this is the ninth in a series of occasionally appearing entries focusing on deserts in general and the drylands of West Texas in particular

 

Benjamin Henry Grierson developed a deathly fear of horses when, in 1834, he was an eight year old boy growing up in Pennsylvania.  One had kicked him and he nearly died from the injury.  He certainly had no intention of spending much time with equines if his decision to move to Illinois and become a music teacher offers any reliable clues about his goals in life...

Fate had other plans for Ben Grierson.  Well into his thirties when the Civil War broke out, the Illinois musician volunteered for military service, enlisting to become the aide-de-camp for Major General Benjamin Prentiss.  He found himself reassigned to the 6th Illinois Cavalry as its regimental commander less than two years later.  So much for a fear of horses...

Colonel Grierson leads his Buffalo Soldiers deep into the
Trans-Pecos in search of Victorio and his Apache warriors

[Civil War historians cite Grierson, who earned battlefield promotions to a rank of Major General, as one of the most brilliant cavalry commanders on either side during the Civil War.  He played a key role in severing the communications lines from Vicksburg to the Confederacy's Eastern Theater.  Throughout the war, Grierson's seemingly invincible forces demoralized Southern soldiers and civilians with daring attacks on railroads and property in their line of march.  Choosing to remain on active military service following Robert E Lee's surrender at Appomattox, he received a post-war rank of Colonel.]

Much of Grierson's career in the post-Civil War Army revolved around assignments in the barely populated Southwest.  For three years, 1878-1881, he commanded the vast Military District of the Pecos from his headquarters at Fort Concho in western Texas.  This district stretched across nearly four hundred miles of desert and desolation, from the small settlement at present day San Angelo to the outskirts of El Paso.  It included both the western Concho Valley and the Trans-Pecos...

The Military District of the Pecos had  three forts-- Concho, Stockton and Davis-- as well as a number of sub-posts scattered throughout its area of responsibility.  The most populous location  protected by the forts was the village of Santa Angela (renamed San Angelo in 1883) in Tom Green County where Camp Hatch was established in 1867.  It being something of an area tradition to rename settlements and facilities, Camp Hatch was transformed into Fort Concho a year later...

Muralist Stylle Read created this map as part of his Military
Heritage mural in downtown San Angelo, Texas.  The Military
District of the Pecos is shown in light red (coloring added by
the author).

In 1880, residents of Tom Green County told the US Government's census takers that their numbers included 3020 whites, 1132 Mexicans, and 142 blacks.  Most lived near Fort Concho but a few residents resided elsewhere in a county that was still the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.  (When the state legislature created Tom Green County in March 1874, it covered over 60,000 square miles.  Two years later, legislators redrew its boundaries to encompass a much smaller area encompassing the present day counties of Coke, Crane, Ector, Glasscock, Irion, Loving, Midland, Reagan, Sterling, Tom Green, Upton, and Ward counties.  Tom Green County is today slightly larger than Rhode Island.  Its current boundaries came in 1903 following the creation of Reagan County in the western most part of the Concho Valley)...

Primary mission responsibilities for Fort Concho soldiers included scouting and mapping West Texas, building roads and setting up telegraph lines, escorting stage coaches and cattle drives through hostile Indian territory, surveying potential railroad routes, acting as a police force for a lawless land known throughout the rest of the country as a haven for outlaws.  One suspects they occasionally encountered descendants of camels imported into the area in 1856 at the direction of then United States Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later the sole President of the rebellious Confederacy) who thought the "ships of the desert" would be useful supply animals in the southwestern drylands...  

Forts Stockton and Davis were truly in the midst of that vast desolation which is West Texas...

Fort Davis as it appeared in the late 19th Century

Over 160 miles of desert separated Colonel Grierson from his headquarters along the Concho River and Fort Stockton.  Beyond that, it was another 100 miles to Fort Davis...

Not very many people of European descent lived in this country where Native Peoples hunted and gathered.  Nor were there a tremendous number of these indigenous folk.  Among the earliest of them were the Jumanos who lived between the Rios Concho and Pecos during the time of Spanish settlement in the Southwest.  In 1629 and 1632, the missionary Juan de Salas traveled to the area of present day San Angelo at the request of the Jumanos to instruct them in the Roman Catholic faith.  Nearly two decades later, Hernán Martín and Diego del Castillo, came in search of rare freshwater pearls found in the Concho.  A few more explorers followed--  Diego de Guadalajara in 1654, Father Nicolás López and Juan Domínguez de Mendoza in 1684-- and all were impressed by the friendliness of the Jumanos...

By 1750, the Jumanos had essentially disappeared from the historical record.  Some likely died from new diseases imported to the New World by white men.  Others fell in battle against the encroaching Apaches who controlled southwestern Texas until they were forced deeper and deeper into the desert around 1800 by invading Comanches...

Lipan Apaches, originally a Great Plains people, migrated
southward into the area of modern-day Central and West
Texas before being displaced by nomadic Comanche warriors.

Comanche domination over the rugged and empty country between the Rivers Concho and Pecos faced no real challenge for more than six decades until the end of America's Civil War triggered an Anglo-American westward expansion.  In hindsight, the Indians likely knew what would happen after the United States annexed Texas in 1845 and sent soldiers to build forts, protect settlers, and eradicate the Native American threat.  By 1852, Army men had established Camp J E Johnston in what is now northwestern Tom Green County and Fort Chadbourne in modern day Coke County.  Butterfield Overland Mail Stage line coaches arrived several years later in 1857, going through today's small settlement of Carlsbad, crossing the Middle Concho River, and then swinging down to the Horsehead Crossing of the Pecos...

African-American soldiers, the so-called Buffalo Soldiers, from Fort Concho took part in three major campaigns of the Indian Wars fought in the American West and Southwest following the Civil War.

[Among these Buffalo Soldiers was Henry O Flipper, the first African-American officer to receive a West Point commission into the Regular Army.  Second Lieutenant Flipper reported to Fort Sill in Oklahoma following his graduation from the Military Academy in 1877.  Like many a soldier before him, he arrived at his duty station only to learn his orders had been amended and he was being sent to an infinitely less desirable locale.  In Flipper's case, this was Fort Concho in the West Texas desolation.

Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Georgia, became the
first African-American graduate of the United States Military
Academy at West Point.  His career ended with a court-martial
on dubious charges likely motivated by racial prejudice.

Flipper's brief career in the military showed the Army of the Republic was infested with the same racism that informed the souls of many who fought for the South in the Army of the Rebellion less than fifteen years earlier.  Many objected to sharing a meal table with him at the officer's mess.  In 1881, some months after he'd been transferred to the even more remote Fort Davis, Flipper was court-martialed on a charge of embezzling $2000 while serving as the post's Quartermaster.  He was acquitted of the accusation but convicted of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" when prosecutors added this catch-all charge during his trial and introduced into evidence letters written by him to a white woman.] 

Westward expansion by white settlers, slow in the pre-Civil War era, picked up rapidly as men disillusioned or displaced by the conflict looked towards the frontier for a new beginning.  Fort Concho troops engaged Native Americans in Mackenzie's 1872 campaign, the Red River War of 1874, and the Victorio campaign of 1879 and 1880...

One of the more shameful events in Fort Concho history was the imprisonment of more than 100 Indian women and children in a stone corral in 1872 and 1873...

Although the barren Llano Estacado of the Texas Panhandle fell
outside the Military District of the Pecos, soldiers from Fort Concho
had the additional responsibility of maintaining order in this dry
and empty country.

This degrading of non-combatants took place during Ranald Mackenzie's command of Fort Concho.  Described by Ulysses S Grant as the "most promising young officer" in the Union Army during the Civil War, Mackenzie was a harsh disciplinarian (called the "Perpetual Punisher" by men serving under him) who did not have the love of his troops.  In late September 1872, Mackenzie ordered soldiers to attack a Comanche camp that showed no sign of immediate hostility.  Twenty-three Native men died, unprepared to defend themselves.  Their wives and children, herded to Fort Concho, spent the winter in and outdoor pen.  In the spring, all were shipped to the Oklahoma Territory to enjoy the Great White Father's hospitality at a reservation near Fort Sill...

[Mackenzie, incidentally, provoked an international incident in 1873 when his men rode across the Rio Grande into Mexico in pursuit of Lipan Apache and Kickapoo raiders.]

Victorio proved to be the last major challenge of the Indian Wars for Fort Concho and its soldiers.  As a young man, he rode with Geronimo and Mangas Colorado, two of the Apache Nation's greatest warriors.  After Mangas Colorado died in 1863, Victorio slowly assumed leadership of a band of about 300 Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches.  With no real desire for continued and ultimately futile bloodshed, Victorio moved his people in 1869 to a location near Fort Craig, New Mexico, to await completion of the reservation at Ojo Caliente...

Victorio

Apache willingness to submit to changing times ended in 1877 when the United States government ordered Victorio and his people moved to Arizona.  Protests by the Indians that their crops weren't ready for harvest were ignored.  Despite the hardship imposed, the Apaches relocated.  Conditions at the new reservation were extremely unpleasant and Victorio decided that enough was enough.  For three years, his band waged war in the deserts of New Mexico, West Texas, and Mexico...

Hearing reports in August 1880 that Victorio and his warriors had ridden across the Rio Grande once again and were now camped in the Guadalupe Mountains of Far West Texas, Colonel Grierson and his Tenth U S Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers headed west.  Black men from Fort Concho and the red men led by Victorio met in the Sierra Diablo range and then again at Rattlesnake Springs.  Grierson's troops prevailed after a three hour battle.  Victorio's band headed back to Mexico where they died in a confrontation with Mexican soldiers on October 15, 1880...

Exploring and mapping West Texas were, as noted previously, a key part of the Fort Concho mission...

Detail from Stylle Read's Military Heritage mural in downtown
San Angelo depicts a Buffalo Soldier patrolling the West Texas
desert country west of the city.

In 1875, William Rufus Shafter (one wonders if he was named for that wicked son of William the Conqueror so hated by the Church) and his men hunted for Indians in the barren Llano Estacado of the western Texas Panhandle.  In doing so, they came to know the area topography and the locations of its scarce water supplies, details of which were included in Shafter's official report.  His account encouraged settlement in the Panhandle through his descriptions of endless grasslands and countless bison...

Pioneers moving to the area obviously glossed over Shafter's mention of the extreme trouble he and his men had locating water.  On one occasion, the 450 men under his command rode for forty hours in hopes of reaching the Pecos River before thirst and summer heat killed them.  This desperate bid for survival earned Shafter a nickname:  Pecos Bill...

An earlier posting in this blog discussed how the search for relatively quick land routes across the Southwest took on a new importance in the aftermath of the California Gold Rush.  One expedition, tasked with determining the practicality of an "upper road" from San Antonio to El Paso through the Concho Valley, traveled the distance between the two cities from June 19, 1849 to July 29, 1849... 

Paisano Pete, the world's largest sculpted roadrunner, greets
visitors to contemporary Fort Stockton, Texas.

Its leader, Lieutenant Francis T Bryan, reported, in the words of historian J B Burnett writing in his 1970 Trans-Pecos Texas: A Study of Exploration, "that except for the dry region between the head of the Concho and the Pecos River, the route offered easy passage for wagons"...

Hardy Anglo-Saxon men and sturdy Anglo-Saxon women venturing into the western Concho Valley in late 1880 had little to fear from either Victorio or his men... 

Untold ages ago, a meteor struck the earth in what would become
the creosote flats dry country near Fort Stock.  The mountains in
the background of this photograph are at the rim of the impact area.

Colonel Grierson and his Buffalo Soldiers had accomplished their mission well.  They,  mayhap, encountered an occasional camel-- there were reported sightings of them in the desert country until around 1900.  But they surely saw no bison.  Even before the herds had been slaughtered to near extinction, the magnificent animals did not range south of the Twin Mountains near San Angelo and were total strangers to the Trans-Pecos if State Geologist S B Buckley reported accurately in his 1876 report to Texas legislators...

But, as the endless wind whipped across the hot and dry country, perhaps one or two of these hardy Anglo-Saxon men and sturdy Anglo-Saxon women saw the proud ghosts or heard the lost voices of the proud Jumanos and Apaches and Comanches who traveled the vast southwest Texas despoblados before them...

 

Future Confederate States of America President Jefferson
Davis envisioned a Camel Corps to facilitate exploration of
the American Southwest in the days before the Civil War
when he was Secretary of War for the United States.

 

THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.

http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

 

Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by nineteen artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

 

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/cajun-country-louisiana.html

 

CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Fort Davis from nps.gov; Henry O Flipper from vitia.org, Benjamin Grierson tracking Victorio, Lipan Apache camp, and Victorio from texasbeyondhistory.net; Sierra Madera astrobleme near Fort Stockton from geologyabout.com; Camel Packtrain from thesocietypages.org; Caprock Sunrise from Texas Parks and Wildlife