Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest Part 7

10. Fighting Texians

THE TEXAS PEOPLE belong to a fighting tradition that the majority of them are proud of. The footholds that the Spaniards and Mexicans held in Texas were maintained by virtue of fighting, irrespective of missionary baptizing. The purpose of the Anglo-American colonizer Stephen F. Austin to "redeem Texas from the wilderness" was accomplished only by fighting.

The Texans bought their liberty with blood and maintained it for nine years as a republic with blood. It was fighting men who pushed back the frontiers and blazed trails.

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

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

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

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

BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924.

Forceful retelling of the story of the Mier Expedition and of other activities of the "fighting Texans." OP.

CHABOT, FREDERICK C. _The Perote Prisoners_, San Antonio, 1934.

Annotated diaries of Texas prisoners in Mexico. OP.

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

DUVAL, JOHN C. _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, 1870; _Early Times in Texas_, 1892. Both books are kept in print by Steck, Austin. For biography and critical estimate, see _John C. Duval: First Texas Man of Letters_, by J. Frank Dobie (ill.u.s.trated by Tom Lea), Dallas, 1939.

OP. _Early Times in Texas_, called "the _Robinson Crusoe_ of Texas," is Duval's story of the Goliad Ma.s.sacre and of his escape from it. Duval served as a Texas Ranger with Bigfoot Wallace, who was in the Mier Expedition. His narrative of Bigfoot's _Adventures_ is the rollickiest and the most flavorsome that any American frontiersman has yet inspired.

The tiresome thumping on the hero theme present in many biographies of frontiersmen is entirely absent. Stanley Vestal wrote _Bigfoot Wallace_ also, Boston, 1942. OP.

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

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

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

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

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

LEACH, JOSEPH. _The Typical Texan: Biography of an American Myth_, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1952. At the time Texas was emerging, the three main types of Americans were Yankees, southern aristocrats, Kentucky westerners embodied by Daniel Boone. Texas took over the Kentucky tradition. It was enlarged by Crockett, who stayed in Texas only long enough to get killed, Sam Houston, and Bigfoot Wallace.

Novels, plays, stories, travel books, and the Texans themselves have kept the tradition going. This is the main thesis of the book. Mr. Leach fails to note that the best books concerning Texas have done little to keep the typical Texan alive and that a great part of the present Texas Brags spirit is as absurdly unrealistic as Mussolini's splurge at making twentieth-century Italians imagine themselves a {ill.u.s.t. caption = John W. Thomason, in his _Lone Star Preacher_ (1941)} reincarnation of Caesar's Roman legions. Mr. Leach dissects the myth and then swallows it.

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

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

MORRELL, Z. N. _Fruits and Flowers in the Wilderness_, 1872. OP.

Morrell, a circuit-riding Baptist preacher, fought the Indians and the Mexicans. See other books of this kind listed under "Circuit Riders and Missionaries."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Texas Rangers

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

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

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

GAY, BEATRICE GRADY. _Into the Setting Sun_, Santa Anna, Texas, 1936.

Coleman County scenes and characters, dominated by ranger character. OP.

GILLETT, JAMES B. _Six Years with the Texas Rangers_, printed for the author at Austin, Texas, 1921. He paid the printer cash for either one or two thousand copies, as he told me, and sold them personally. Edited by Milo M. Quaife, the book was published by Yale University Press in 1925. This edition was reprinted, 1943, by the Lakeside Press, Chicago, in its "Lakeside Cla.s.sics" series, which are given away by the publishers at Christmas annually and are not for sale--except through second-hand dealers. Meantime, in 1927, the narrative had appeared under t.i.tle of _The Texas Ranger_, "in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs,"

a professional neutralizer for school readers of any writing not standardized, published by World Book Co., Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York.

All editions OP. I regard Gillett as the strongest and straightest of all ranger narrators. He combined in his nature wild restlessness and loyal gentleness. He wrote in sunlight.

GREER, JAMES K. _Buck Barry_, Dallas, 1932. OP. _Colonel Jack Hays, Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder_, Dutton, New York, 1952.

Hays achieved more vividness in reputation than narratives about him have attained to.

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

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

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

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

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

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