Driving east or west on I-10 or I-20 or 90 is to
barrel along with the steady flow of big rigs, pickup trucks, RVs and SUVs;
driving north-south, on the other hand, it gets very lonely, very strange, very
fast.
Here is a photo* I took with my iPhone through
the windshield while heading south on US-385 from Fort Stockton to
Marathon. That jumble of hills over to the left is the Sierra Madera, which
sits on the vast La Escalera Ranch, one of
the largest ranches in Texas. Although I did not know it at the time, the
highway was about to blaze me right through the Sierra Madera Astrobleme.
[*Normally I would never fool around with my smartphone while driving, but I had been driving out here for sometime and not seen a single vehicle, in either direction. I daresay I could have taken got out of the car and taken a siesta in the middle of the road.]
The Sierra Madera Astrobleme in Far West Texas
The Sierra Madera Astrobleme, off US-385 between the towns of Fort Stockton and Marathon
The Sierra Madera is indeed on Google maps, but
neither of the maps I carried with me that day, the AAA and the Geological
Highway Map of Texas, noted it, so I was wholly unprepared for the sight, on
the open plains, well before the Glass Mountains, of the strange-looking huddle
of the Sierra Madera off to the east– and all bathed in the
golden-orange glow of sunset. Alas, my photo does not do its stunning
gorgeousness a shred of justice.
It turns out that the Sierra Madera is an
extremely rare “cryptoexplosion structure,” in this case, a crater
with a central mountain range raised not by volcanic or tectonic forces, but by
the rebound from the impact of an unknown extraterrestrial
object. The mountains and the approximately 6 mile-in-diameter
crater, so eroded over some nearly 100 million years that I did not recognize
it as I drove through it, are together known as the Sierra Madera Astrobleme.
An astrobleme is an eroded remnant of a large
crater made by the impact of a meteorite or comet. The term, first used in the
mid-20th century, is from the Greek astron, star, and blema, wound.
What was that object that slammed into the earth
those nearly 100 million years ago? I searched the literature but could not
find any description beyond “approximately spherical.” So I wrote to
Dr. Robert Beaufort, who host the United States Meteorite Impact
Craters website. He kindly answered:
“Identifying the class of meteorite that caused a particular impact crater is a genuinely difficult task… Because we are talking about gargantuan numbers of nuclear bombs worth of heat and shock energy, the impacting body itself, which is pretty tiny compared to the size of the crater, winds up distributed as parts per million or billion among the melted and/or redistributed target rocks remaining in and around the crater. Finding traces of the impactor is pretty straightforward if you have a mass spectrometer to play with (which I don’t), but actually telling which specific type of asteroid and associated meteorite you are dealing with is much more difficult. Scientists have looked at differences in bulk elemental ratios and at differences in isotope ratios in different classes of meteorites, and found cases where the same characteristic ratios could be discerned, even though they were diluted to parts per gazillion in the earth rock at an impact site. It is tricky work, and depends upon being able to clearly evaluate terrestrial background abundances, and so forth, but we are getting better at it with each passing decade. I don’t think it has been done for Sierra Madera. There is a very good chapter on the subject in Osinski and Pierazzo’s book, Impact Cratering: Processes and Products. Dr. Christian Koberl springs to mind as one of the world’s notable authorities on the subject of projectile identification at impact crater sites.”
What was going on 100 million years ago? This
would have been the Late Cretaceous or Early Tertiary, when Tyrannosaurus
roamed and Quetzalcoatlus
northropi, a pterosaur the size of a small jet airplane, cast
his shadow from overhead. (Seems the flora and fauna had a few more million
years to go… 66 million years ago came Chicxulub
and the great extinction.)
The literature I could Google up on the Sierra
Madera Astrobleme has a great deal of detail on shatter cones and various types
of rock, as well as gravitational and magnetic anomalies. But as for a
description for the layman, or shall we say, the average Tyrannosaurus Rex, of
what the impact might have sounded like and how it might have affected the
atmosphere, or caused mega-tsunamis, no dice.
Would the Sierra Madera have appeared as an
island? It seems that those many millions of years ago the area was then
underneath the so-called Western Interior
Seaway. The Davis Mountains—
the Texas Alps– lying beyond the horizon to the northwest, would not emerge
until the volcanic frenzy of (gosh, only) 35 million years ago.
Dear reader, if you have more information about
the Sierra Madera Astrobleme, please do write.
> United States Meteorite Impact Craters: Page on the Sierra Madera Crater Good variety of photographs and information by Robert Beauford, PhD. He writes:
“This is one of the largest impact craters in the United States, and even after having worked on 4 to 5 km craters for several years, I found it challenging to take in the scale of the structure. It defines the shape of the vast, open landscape in every direction.”
SOME NOTES & ETC ON PEYOTE FROM THE RESEARCH FOR MY BOOK IN-PROGRESS ON FAR WEST TEXAS >> Read about my book in-progress >> Listen in to the 20 “Marfa Mondays” podcasts (mainly interviews) posted to date >> View my maps of Far West Texas
Lophohora williamsii, or peyote
Far West Texas, an area approximately the size of West Virginia, includes a goodly patch of the territory that stretches deep into Mexico where peyote, or lophophora williamsii grows… oh so very… very… very… v-e-r-y… slowly. A runty, dull-gray spineless cactus with wispy white hairs, when found, peyote– an Anglicization of the original Nahautl name, peyotl— is usually growing in clusters. What certain indigenous peoples have done for an eon is slice off the tops– the “buttons”– and eat them. Calories and dietary fiber are not the point; apparently the taste is puckerlips nasty. But adepts claim that this humble-looking plant is no less than “the divine cactus,” and eaten as a sacrament, as “holy medicine,” it can bring one’s mind into a mystical realm where psychedelic visions can help one see across time and space and heal one’s thoughts about oneself and the cosmos. As one participant in a peyote ritual reported, echoing so many others, he found “profound gratitude for his life” as it was.
PEYOTE AND THE HUICHOLS The Huichols, who live in Mexico’s Sierra Madre, are the indigenous group best known for their peyote ritual.
PEYOTE IN FRAY BERNARDINO SAHAGUN’S GENERAL HISTORY OF THE THINGS OF NEW SPAIN The first known written mention of peyote is in Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, or General History of the Things of New Spain. The original 16th century manuscript, which contains 2,468 colorful illustrations and text in both Spanish and Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs phonetically transcribed using Latin), is also known as the Florentine Codex because it is in the Medicea Laurencziana Library in Florence, Italy.
>> To view the digitized manuscript which contains many intriguing and colorful illustrations, but, alas, not one of peyote, click here.
Pages from the Florentine Codex. This does not show peyote, alas.
“On him who eats it or drinks it, it takes effect like mushrooms. Also he sees many things which frighten one, or make one laugh. It affects him perhaps one day, perhaps two days, but likewise it abates. However, it harms one, troubles one, makes one besotted, takes effect on one.”
(By the way, you may have noticed that I never link to wikipedia, aka The Maoist Muddle, unless there is absolutely, but absolutely, nothing else and a link really would be better than none. FYI: When I checked wikipedia for this post on the Florentine Codex, the images shown were from the wrong book.)
PEYOTE ALSO MENTIONED IN DR. FERNANDO HERNANDEZ’S DE LA HISTORIA PLANTARUM NOVAE HISPANAE In 1570 King Felipe II sent medical doctor Fernándo Hernández (1514-1587) to New Spain to survey and report on the natural resources of the colony, including plants that might be put to medical uses. In his seven years in the Valley of Mexico (Mexico City and environs), Dr. Fernández documented a multitude of plants and a long-standing and elaborate tradition of Aztec herbal medicine. Dr. Fernández’s report on 3,000 plants, in various editions and languages, did not appear in print until some decades after his death.
“Hernández died before he could publish his Natural History, and the materials were placed in the Escorial, where they were extensively consulted, copied, abstracted, and translated by generations of scientists, medical specialists, and natural philosophers before they were destroyed by fire in 1671. Hernández’s work was still regarded as authoritative on a number of New World botanical topics as late as the nineteenth century, and his writings remain in use in popular form in Mexico today.”
I have yet to get my hands on a copy of The Mexican Treasury, but as quoted in Stewart’s Peyote Religion, in turn quoting a translation from a 1916 article by William E. Safford in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, of peyote Dr. Fernández writes:
“Wonderful properties are attributed to this root… It causes those devouring it to be able to foresee and predict things; such, for instance, as whether the weather will remain favorable; or to discern who has stolen from them some utensils or anything else; and other things of like nature which the Chichimecs really believe them have found out. On which account this root scarcely issues forth but conceals itself in the ground, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover and eat it.”
FIRST IMAGE OF PEYOTE IN DR. HERNANDEZ’S MAGNUM OPUS, POSSIBLY… OR IN CURTIS’ BOTANICAL MAGAZINE — OR, POSSIBLY, IN THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT?
According to Stewart in Peyote Religion, the earliest known botanical illustration of peyote is from 1847, in Curtis’ Botanical Magazine. Hat tip to peyote and cactus blogger Lophophora, here is that very illustration, a lovely one, from the Botanicus Digital Library, Missouri Botanical Garden.
>> See the utterly fascinating 2013 paper by John D. Comegys, “The Voynich Manuscript: Aztec Herbal from New Spain.” Comegys
also notes some possible influence from the work of Dr. Hernández.
Comegy’s paper is fascinating read, and I highly recommended it for
anyone interested in rare book history, botany and/or Mexico.
From the Voynich Manuscript. Peyote? Possibly…
PEYOTE IN THE LOWER PECOS CANYONLANDS
The archaeological
record shows that peyote has been used many groups and many thousands
of years into the past in what is today northern Mexico and remote areas
along the Rio Grande on both sides of the US-Mexico border in Texas.
>>
For a novelist’s take on ancient peyote ritual in what is now the Lower
Pecos Canyonlands of Texas, see Mary S. Black’s Peyote Fire.
>>And
for more about the Lower Pecos Canyonlands and the magnificent rock art
there, see my guest-blog post for Mary S. Black here.
PEYOTE IN THE INQUISITION It is often said that the Mexican Inquisition focused on heretics, in particular conversos secretly practicing Judaism, but not indigenous. But the Inquisition did prosecute some indigenous and their use of peyote was often the issue.
Quoted in Stewart’s Peyote Religion (p. 20), in New Spain, in 16th and 17th century Catholic priests asked their parishioners:
Hast thou eaten the flesh of man? Hast thou eaten the peyote? Do you suck the blood of others? Do you adorn with flowers places where idols are kept?
(For
those not familiar with Mexican history, the first and third questions
might seem extreme. All I can say is, read the history.)
And, according to Stewart, in 1620 “the Inquisition was brought to bear against peyote.”
From American Anthropologist 44, 1942:
Irving A. Leonard, “Peyote and the Mexican Inquisition, 1620”
A quote from Leonard’s translation of a Spanish document:
“We, the Inquisitors against heretical perversity and apostasy in the City of Mexico, states and provinces of New Spain, New Galicia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Yucatan, Verapaz, Honduras, Philippine Islands, and their districts and jurisdictions, by virtue of apostolic authority, etc. Inasmuch as the use of the herb or root called Peyote has been introduced into these Provinces for the purpose of detecting thefts, of divining other happenings, and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.
“This is certain because neither the said herb or any other can possess the virtue or inherent quality of producing the effects claimed, nor can any cause the mental images, fantasies and hallucinations on which the above stated divinations are based. In these latter are plainly perceived the suggestion and intervention of the Devil, the real author of this vice, who first avails himself of the natural credulity of the Indians and their tendency to idolatry, and later strikes down many other persons too little disposed to fear God and of very little faith.
“Because of these efforts the said abuse has increased in strength and is indulged in with the frequency observed. As our duty imposes upon us the obligation to put a stop to this vice and to repair the harm and grave offense to God our Lord resulting from this practice, we, after consultation and conference with learned and right-minded persons, have decreed the issuing of the present edict to each of you, one and all, by which we admonish you and summon you to obedience by virtue of your holy submission [to the Church] and under penalty of anathema…and other pecuniary and corporal penalties within our discretion. We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank or social condition can or may make use of the said herb, Peyote, nor of any other kind under any name or appearance for the same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other person take them, with the further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us, in addition to the penalties and condemnation above stated, to take action against such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our Holy Catholic Faith.”
In Peyote Religion, Stewart also includes a map (p.23) of the Inquisition hearings that specifically involved peyote, which were concentrated in Mexico City and surroundings, as well as scattered around what is now the main trunk of the Mexican republic (excluding the Baja California and Yucatan peninsulas). There were two cases in Manila (Philippines) in 1617 and 1639, as well as a case in 1632 as far north as Santa Fe. The case in Santa Fe involved someone who took peyote in order to divine who had stolen some of his clothing.
(For those wondering, why Manila? The answer is the China trade, wherein Spanish merchants brought the Manila Galleon or Nao de China, across the ocean to Acapulco on the Pacific Coast, and from there, by burro train and tameme, brought the goods inland to Mexico City, parts elsewhere, and via Veracruz on the Gulf, across the Caribbean and Atlantic to Spain.)
Mexico City’s Palacio de la Inquisition is now the Museo de la Escuela de Medicina (part of Mexico’s National University). You can visit that museum, see the original building, and also an exhibition on cells used by the Inquisition.
The Inquisition on Youtube — who needs The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when you can surf around for all that infinitely more creative and toe-curlingly wicked gross-out stuff about Inquisition torture now on the Internet? For those with blood pressure issues, may I suggest Monty Python instead:
Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación also has a large collection on the Inquisition. Alas, at the time of this writing the website was down.
PEYOTE IN THE NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH North of the US-Mexico border– into Texas and beyond– peyote is used as a sacrament in the ritual of the Native American Church (NAC). Is this legal? Yes, for members of the NAC, and only after a century of bitter struggle, with the 1994 amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which protects the use of peyote in religious ceremonies. (Not that you, dear presumably non-Native American reader, can commence cultivating, selling, and scarfing down peyote as you please. For details, check out the current DEA status.)
Omer C. Stewart’s Peyote Religion: A History and Edward F. Anderson’s Peyote: The Divine Cactusboth provide a a history of the founding of the “peyote church” on Plains Indian and other Indian reservations in the United States.
THE PEYOTE RITUAL ARRIVES FROM MEXICO IN TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA
Chevato was a Lipan Apache born in northern Mexico who, long story short, became a member of the Mescalero Apaches roaming both Mexico and Texas, and later, of the Comanches on that tribe’s reservation in Oklahoma, thanks to his friendship with chief Quanah Parker.
His 2007 biography by his grandson, William Chebahtah, and Nancy McGown Minor, Chevato: The Story of the Apache Warrior Who Captured Hermann Lehman is both a major contribution to Comanche, Lipan Apache and Mescalero Apache history, and a gem-packed fascinating read– a must for any collection on the history of Northern Mexico and the Southwest.
Apropos of peyote, Minor writes (p.73) that the Lipans stayed near Zaragosa (in Coahuila, northern Mexico) because of its proximity to a hill where peyote grew in abundance. “The Western Lipans had been using peyote in their ceremonies since at least the 1780s, and as the Lipans were dispered out of Coahuila and into New Mexico, they brought with them their special peyote rituals.”
Apart from doing all the Wild West things Apache warriors did in those days, Chevato was a shaman and a “peyote singer,” singing special songs during the all-night ritual. Chevato’s great-grandfather was the first Lipan to make use of peyote in Mexico. Minor:
“Although the Mescaleros had used peyote in their religious ceremonies… it was the Lipan Apaches who created the form of ceremony practised by the Mescaleros by 1870 and the Comanches after 1875.”
Why 1875? The year prior to that the Quahada and other bands of Comanches had been defeated in a contest over “Anglos” taking the buffalo hunting grounds at The Second Battle of Adobe Walls, which was in the Texas Panhandle, prime buffalo hunting country. This defeat was the end of the end for the Comanches, and I believe that Quanah Parker’s adoption of the peyote ritual needs to be seen in this context.
So who was Quanah Parker? One
cannot write about Far West Texas without writing about Comanches, and
one cannot write about Comanches without writing about Quanah Parker,
and one cannot write about Quanah Parker without writing about the
Native American Church and peyote. So you can be sure, in my book I will
be writing about them.
It seems that everyone in Texas and Oklahoma already knows about Quanah Parker, the son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped as a child from her family’s farm in Texas and raised as a Comanche.
(The John Wayne / Natalie Wood movie The Searchers is loosely based on the novel that was, in turn, loosely based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker.)
Although
it has little to say about peyote, one of the best books on the
Comanches and Quanah Parker and an all-star crunchy fun read is S.C.
Gywnne’s Empire of the Summer Moon. Humongously recommended.
Quanah Parker in the first two-reel western ever filmed (in 1907): “The Bank Robbery”
(zip about peyote as far as I can tell)
Screenshot of Quanah Parker from “The Bank Robbery,” 1908
UPDATE September 2, 2016 Thanks to Gene Fowler, none other, who very kindly sent me the link, I have added to that blog post this link (embed rather) to “Amada of the Gardens” a fascinating documentary on peyotera Amada Cardenas (1904-2005).
ON THE SPREAD OF PEYOTE RELIGION From the article “The Native American Church” in the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, hosted by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“While the exact origins of the Native American Church and its incorporation of peyote as a sacrament of communion are shrouded in oral history, Native believers generally agree that it began in the Southwest and worked its way up from Mexico. Among the Plains Indians, the Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagos, and Sioux readily accepted the belief system of the Native American Church.”
>>“With the Peyoteros” by Karen Olsson for The Texas Observer, March 2, 2001. Strong demand, plus fences and ranches plowed over for deer hunting, make finding peyote in the wild increasingly challenging.
“Indians from Mexico would come across hunting medicine plants and, above all, the cactus peyote. Six or seven of these men would walk up to the house wanting something to eat or water. The Indians were great beggars and always wanted you to give them anything that they could carry off. Sometimes they’d show me the different medicine plants they’d gathered and what each plant was for in curing. I learned lots from them and also from the old men and women that were my neighbors living in Mexico that came to see me at different times. One bunch of Indians came to see me from Oklahoma. They were looking for the cactus peyote. And as we talked, one said, ‘If you have faith, an ordinary rock could cure you.'”
PEYOTE TESTIMONY: YOUTUBERIE AND MORE
“Sacred Peyote”: a short documentary film about peyote and the Native American Church.
GERMAN-MEXICAN AMIGO GIVES TESTIMONY
My friend Hans Lens’ memoir. More about this anon.
GRINGOS GIVE TESTIMONYTara from “40BelowFruity” on her experience ingesting peyote
“Not
as easy experience… I was feeling a lot of nausea… deep-seated,
buried issues… I was resisting it… I started to become
overwhelmed… peyote brought [memories] to the surface…I felt like I
had been completely ripped apart and put together again… like a new
person, reborn… It has the power to heal people.”
“The Mind Divided” shares his reflections on his peyote experience and what he believes was the beautiful lesson: “Lighten up… embrace and enjoy life.”
Blogger Sara Brooke shares her experience with peyote in this post. A quote:
“It is conscious medicine, a consciousness that is far more intelligent than our own. It needs to be treated with respect and care and it honestly is something that isn’t for everyone. Psychologically, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually you have to be ready for it. It gives you an opportunity to face ALL parts of yourself, especially the shadow aspects. It is one of the most confronting, yet profound and worthwhile experiences I have ever had. I am eternally changed.”
(WHAT ABOUT CARLOS CASTANEDA? He did write about peyote in his several best-sellers. Alas, dude, not on my wavelength.)
AN ESOTERIC HYPOTHESIS
ABOUT PEYOTE WHICH I DO NOT INTEND TO TEST
My drug is coffee! My own
ventures into the esoteric have not been psychedelic but literary–
primarily by way of the Himalayas of reading I did for my most recent
book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Indeed
I read so much esoterica that my sense of cognitive dissonance went
from geyser to sputter, then a little puddle, then, well… that dried
up. So now, no problemo, I could read about oh, say, aliens tokin’ peyote. That doesn’t mean I am saying anything about aliens tokin’ peyote. I am unaware of any such report.
Scion of a wealthy family in Coahuila, Francisco I. Madero was
the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from
1911-1913. I am often asked what he knew about indigenous shamanistic
traditions. I
did not find any evidence that Madero had any interest in or experience
with peyote nor, indeed, with indigenous healing traditions other than
an association, late in his short life, with his Masonic brother and
fellow Spiritist and doctor, the Mexican-German spy Dr Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, aka “Maestro Huiracocha,” author of a number of works, including El zodiaco de los incas en comparación con los aztecas, 1910.
Madero’s personal library
contained mainly French and Ango-American (some in the original, some
in Spanish translation) literature on Spiritualism, Spiritism,
Theosophy, hypnotherapy, French occultism, the Bhagavad-Gita, adventures
into Tibet, and the like. His work that I translated, Manual espiritaof 1911, references many of these works.
Educated
in France, where he discovered Spiritism and other esoteric ideas then
in vogue, Madero would have been familiar with the Hindu concept, as
conveyed to the West through the writings of various Theosophists, of
the human body as having interpenetrating “energy bodies” and specific
energy vortices known as “chakras.” Under this paradigm, my hypothesis–
and take this with a truckload of salt, I am not sure I have a clue
what I am talking about– is that ingesting peyote removes certain
neuro-filters in the pineal gland and actives a chakra so that one can clearly perceive blockages and other auric debris, and one’s own emotional body. Which chakra might that be? Heart– I guess. Just a guess.
Continuing
to follow my understanding of what could have been Madero’s
hypothetical paradigm for understanding peyote, there may also be one or
more conscious and intelligent astral entities / spirit guides
associated with the plant. This concept is eloquently articulated in
Eliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine.
Most
modern doctors and scientists would focus on peyote’s botanical,
chemical, medicinal pharmacological aspects, and specifically, their
measurable effect on the brain and body. Several chapters are devoted to
these topics in Anderson’s Peyote: The Divine Cactus.
Extra-Astral Texiness. First, what do I mean by “astral”? I don’t mean “of the stars,” but the old-fashioned esoteric concept of the imaginal realm. Yes, I am a mite old-fashioned, and apropos of my most recent book, about the secret book by the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution, I plowed through a sizable library of antique tomes on various aspects of the astral. So that’s a word I like to sling around!
Whether you believe in the astral or not, I think you will agree that (1) everyone has an imagination and (2) the imaginal realm, aka the astral– or whatever you have a notion to call it– includes works of fiction and movies. Imagine those works, if you will, floating like little bubbles through the ether. (Well, porquoi pas?) Or big baggy-wobbly monsters– (duck, here comes War and Peace...)
Speaking of Texas-sized astral bubblies, apropos of my book in-progress about Far West Texas, of course my horse (as they say in Mexico) I have a long list of “to dos” that includes grokking Giant, the Rock Hudson-Elizabeth Taylor-James Dean mashup filmed in Marfa and parts thereabouts. I have watched it and read the Edna Ferber novel it was based on, too. And now I’ve finished reading Don Graham’s Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas, in which I first came across the term “Texiness.” Writes Graham:
“The Texas Chic-urban cowboy version of the old Western legend offered a sexier version of Texas. Call it Texiness. Frontier values, however romanticized they might have been in Red River or Giant, were supplanted by fashion value, by hype.” (p.6)
I hereby redefine “Texiness”:
I say all that hyper-appealing high-heeled cowboy boot clickin’ movie fah-shun goes back to Giant’s Rock Hudson and James Dean, and indeed, decades yonder: the Founding Pope of that Whole Hamburger-Helper Enchilada was John Wayne. And a big tip of the sombrero (along with a shake of the pepper flakes), to Italian director Sergio Leone for corralling Clint Eastwood. (Maestro of the concept, Leone himself was definitely not Texi.)
(Film historians: sorry, Tom Mix looks
pasty-faced and nerdy, and antiques including Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers don’t
count. Nope, movies based on Karl May and Louis L’Amour novels and Buffalo Bill
shows neither.)
In The Air-conditioned House of Mirrors
If you’re at all familiar with my work on Mexico, you know that I like to take cliches, stuff them in a cannon, and light the fuse. That this “Texiness” stuff exemplifies the real world of Texas…. let’s just say I am preparing to launch that idea, along with its ostrich-leather Luccheses, into orbit around, say, one of the moons of Neptune.
Says Graham, and rightly: “Texans have two
pasts: the one they lived in and the one Hollywood created.”
What I’m saying is, Astral Texas isn’t Texas, exactly; it’s a bunch of fancies about “Texas” concocted by a jostling Chinese puzzle of a crowd of screenwriters, novelists, costume designers, executives, and bean-counters of all stripes, many of them New Yorkers, or Danes or Germans or Italians or whatever, who aimed to put butts in seats from Rome to Tokyo and all parts in between, or, to put it in more elegant terms, sell their product, which was international entertainment. The Alice-in-Wonderland thing about it is that Texans watched those movies too, with consequences for their ideas about themselves– or at least concepts of fashion.
(Yes, the house of mirrors goes back to Zane Gray
dime novels. Who was Zane Grey? Never mind. He’s hanging out with Mr Mix &
Co. in the astral.)
Ten Tropes in Pictures Drippin’ with Astral
Texiness
1. The leading character is a man of apparent
western European descent who wears dusty boots, a hat, and more often than not
a pistol and holster on a second belt slung around the hips;
2. He has a languid gait;
3. He squints a lot and says little;
4. With counted exceptions he and other leading
characters are of reproductive age, and any leading female characters are of
prime reproductive age;
5. Frequent sudden loud noises (mainly from
gunshots but also oil gushers, cars exploding, cannon blasts, dynamite,
galloping, train whistles, and miscellaneous ferocious banging);
6. There may be guitar music, preferably languid
but with some loud banging;
7. Multitudinous scenes of extreme physical peril
(enhanced by frequent and sudden loud noises);
8. Ditto extreme emotional peril;
9. Ditto super fast motion (on horses, in cars,
on planes and/or trains);
10. Characters not of apparent western European
descent may or may not be played by Jewish or Italian actors and with counted
exceptions, said characters are helpless victims, cyphers, comic relief, or
else very bad.
(My actual experience of non-astral Texas is that
it involves highways where drivers generally stay within the speed limits and
there are lots of exits to lots of shopping malls. On the Texas highways, even
in Far West Texas, it is always possible within about an hour to find either a
gas station with hot coffee and Snickers bars and/or a Dairy Queen and/or a
McDonald’s. As for all them guns, I’ve spent a lot of time in Far West Texas
over the past few years and the one and only occasion anyone took out their gun
was when, on a private ranch, after touring some rock art, a lawyer and a
professor of medieval history commenced popping targets from the back porch.
The BBQ expert I
interviewed in Pecos carried a pistol in a holster, but that
was because he was also the sheriff. Last I checked, among sheriffs that
practice is not exclusive to those of the great state of Texas.)
Herewith, in chronological order, my top bakers
dozen of trailers for movies with Extra-Astral Texiness. (I’m not necessarily
recommending these; just pointing out a characteristic.)
1. Giant (1956)
James Dean steals the show. Based on Edna
Ferber’s novel, Giant. Ferber was born in
Kalamazoo, Michigan and was a long-time resident of New York City’s Park
Avenue.
#
2. The Searchers (1956)
John Wayne versus the Comanches with the incongruous albeit magnificent scenery of Arizona, California, Canada, and Utah. Loosely based on a novel by Indiana native Alan LeMay which was in turn loosely based on the true story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured by Comanches in Texas.
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3. The Alamo (1960)
John Wayne as Davy Crockett. Do not have a mouthful of popcorn in process when he tells his Mexican sweetheart, “There’s right and there’s wrong, you got to do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You do the other and you’re walking around but you’re dead as a beaver hat.” Filmed in Brackettville, Texas.
#
4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Another shoot ’em up directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne (very Extra-Astral Texi), James Stewart (not Texi) and Lee Marvin (eww).
#
5. Hud (1963)
An actor’s actor Paul Newman was, though Millennials know him better as that old gent who, though passed away, still lends his name and handsome visage to the Newman’s Own brand of salad dressings and dog food. As the bully Adonis Hud, Newman exudes Extra-Astral Texiness in the extreme. Based on Larry McMurtry’s novel Horseman, Pass By.
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6. The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
“Four brothers who met gunfire with gunfire!” More John Waynerie.
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7. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
“The man with no name: Danger fits him like tight black glove.” Not lacking for firearms! The first Sergio Leone “spaghetti western” starring Clint Eastwood in that poncho was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai flick Yojimbo.
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8. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The ultimate Spaghetti western. Pow, boom, whack,
crack, pow! The ne plus ultra in Extra-Extra-Uber-Astral Texiness!
Californian Clint Eastwood does the hat-poncho-gun-cigar thing in Spain. Watch
out, the music by Italian composer Ennio Morricone — a
masterpiece–can turn into an earworm. (Listen to the score here.)
#
9. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
There was a Judge Roy Bean but his biography was more than a bit different from that of the movie character played by Paul Newman. If you can get past Jacqueline Bissette shouting that she is a Bean (oof), you’ll hear Anthony Perkins, his hair ablowin’ in the wind, assert that “This land abounds in ruffians and varmints.”
#
10. Lone Star (1996)
A deft and complex film by writer-director John Sayles, starring Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson, and Matthew McConaughey, the then Prince Imperial of Extra-Astral Texiness.
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11. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
This is by a section the best of all the films about and filmed in Texas– a much longer list than this one. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga. Filmed in the Big Bend.
#
12. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Shooting, more shooting, even more shooting and loud crashes plus some more shooting with Texan Tommy Lee Jones, and Spanish actor Javier Bardem with creepazoid hair. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel.
#
13. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Once again, radiating super human intensity, English actor Daniel Day Lewis nails the accent. Gushers o’ the black stuff! And the red stuff!
So where are The Wild Bunch (William
Holden, too old) and Urban Cowboy (John Travolta, too silly)? Alas, they
lack Extra-Astral Texiness.
UPDATE: I
debated about The Magnificent Seven, which was filmed in Mexico.
Steve McQueen, yes.
UPDATE:
Texan friends recommend Lonesome Dove. I didn’t count it because it was
a TV series about taking cattle north and the leads, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert
Duvall, struck me as a couple of very un-astral-Texi granpaws. But my opinion
isn’t the only one. You can check out the trailer for Lonesome Dovehere.
UPDATE: I might have included The Wonderful Country starring Robert Mitchum. But having read the novel by Tom Lea, which I greatly admire, I found the movie jarringly small and the lead miscast.
As those of you following this blog well know, I’m at work on a book about Far West Texas (that’s Texas west of the Pecos) and so reading deep into the history of the wider region that is now Texas and northern Mexico– for it all connects. I’m not reporting on each and every book I come across, but now and then I read one that, in taking both my understanding and my curiosity to a fresh level, prompts me to order my thoughts with a review and/or interview the author, should he or she be alive and willing. (See for example, Q & As with Raymond Caballero, Paul Cool, and John Tutino). Carolina Castillo Crimm’s deeply researched De León: A Tejano Family History is one of those.
We often hear about the Tejanos (Mexican Texans or, as you please, Texan Mexicans) in Mexican and Texas history, but who were they? Crimm’s De León provides an intimate glimpse of one of the first and most influential Tejano families though several generations, beginning with Don Martín de Léon and his wife Doña Patricia de la Garza, the founders of the de Léon colony and the town of Victoria on the coastal plains of Texas in the early 19th century. They and their descendants weathered Mexican civil wars; Comanche attacks; cattle rustlers; cholera; the Texas Revolution of 1835-36; the massive influx of “Anglo” immigrants; exile and legal battles to reclaim their land; the US Civil War and Reconstruction; and, into the late 19th century, the rise of the railroads and the cattle ranching industry.
C.M. MAYO: As historian Arnoldo de León commented, your study of a Tejano family “confirms what other historians have said (but not buttressed with this kind of detail) about Mexican Americans in history: that they are resilient in the face of adversity, that they adjusted to an Anglo American political environment after 1836 with a degree of success, and that their absence in Texas history books is explained by a neglect of the primary sources.”
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM:
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the De León family of Victoria,
Texas, one of the early founding families of Texas. As far as I know, Arnoldo
de León is not related to the De León family of Victoria although you never
know. He has been influential in encouraging many students to study the
Hispanic world both past and present.
I am grateful to be part of a growing field of
historians focusing on early Hispanic settlement in Texas. These so-called
Borderlanders were originally inspired by Arnoldo de León and David
Weber. Since then, there have been many more scholars who have delved into
this area and produced excellent studies on this period. Among them are Dr.
Frank de la Teja, Dr. Andrés Tijerina, Dr. Armando Alonso, Dr. Francis X.
Galan, among many others.
There are also dozens of new, up-and-coming young
historians working in the field of the Borderlands. It is thrilling to see so
many people searching through primary sources to discover the histories of
these early settlers.
C.M. MAYO: And a related question: You mention in your acknowledgements that Nettie Lee Benson had been one of your mentors. She was such a towering figure among historians of Latin America that the University of Texas Library’s Latin American collection is named after her. Can you share a memory or two about Nettie Lee Benson, how you met her, what you remember of her?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
was fortunate enough to arrive at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989
while Dr. Benson, or Miss Nettie as one of my fellow students called her, was
still teaching her course on Mexican History and the Borderlands. I had
mistakenly assumed that the Latin American Collection at UT had been named for
her because she was the wife of some oilman who had donated millions to the
University. I was wrong.
As it turned out, she had been a librarian at UT
during the 1940s. She made it her mission to take the funds she was given by
the university and invest the money in books and materials from Mexico and
Latin America. Each summer, she would take what, in reality, was a pittance and
travel throughout Mexico. She bought, traded or salvaged materials everywhere
she could. On one occasion she found a stack of old dissertations from the UNAM
at a pawn shop. They were about to be destroyed but she bought them for fifty
cents each, thereby rescuing a precious heritage. Each evening, she would go
back to her room and wrap up her finds in brown paper and string and send them
back to the library at UT. She did this every summer for years.
At last, Eugene C. Barker (for whom the Texas
collection was named) encouraged her to begin work on a Ph.D. in Mexican
History. Working part-time, she completed her degree and became a professor in
the History Department. She continued to work at the library and to add to the collection
which eventually was renamed in her honor. Students still remember her falsetto
voice echoing through the stacks as she asked what each of us was working on
then led us directly to some seminal book on our particular topic. She spent
her life helping students explore the stacks that she created.
Dr. Benson was awarded the Aguila Azteca by the
Mexican government, the highest honor that can be given to a foreigner, for her
work on the Provincial Deputations of the 1820s. Her on-going encouragement of
students working in the field has led to the production of hundreds of works on
Mexican and Borderlands History.
There have been some Mexican scholars who have
resented the removal of so much material from Mexico. They maintain that the
books should be in Mexican libraries, not in the United States. As I have seen,
however, Mexican libraries often do not have the funding to protect these
priceless treasures. I have been in archives in Matamoros where there are bugs
eating away at the paper, or in Saltillo where burned archives were only
rescued by accident when a historian/diner at an out-door restaurant noticed
the bits of burning paper sifting down from next door. The material at the University
of Texas has been preserved and protected and is accessible to scholars from
all over the world. Admittedly, Mexicans do have to travel to Austin to find
the materials, but at least it is available.
C.M. MAYO: You also write that Nettie Lee Benson set you on your path. Can you talk more about that, and what inspired you to write De León?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
started on my Ph.D. at the University of Texas without any sure direction or
goal in mind. As a Mexican, I wanted very much to focus on the early Hispanics
of Texas. Miss Nettie Lee suggested I work on Martín de León, the only
successful Hispanic Empresario in early Texas. The problem then, and now, was
the lack of sources. There were no diaries or letters, but with Nettie Lee’s
help, I began to discover court records, county records, land records, and the
last will and testament of Doña Patricia de León. I was also fortunate to find
many of the descendants of the De León family who provided invaluable
assistance in writing the book.
C.M. MAYO: You tell the story of the matriarch of the de León clan, Doña Patricia, who lived a long life filled with success but also struggle and heartbreak. And one of the key contributions of De León is to underline the role of Hispanic women settlers in Texas and, by their example, their influence on Texas laws pertaining to women. Can you talk about that a bit?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
had not originally focused on Doña Patricia or the women of the De León clan.
As with many studies of Texas history, the women were often relegated to
background roles. As I explored the sources, however, I began to see that the Victoria
settlement would not have existed without the efforts of Doña Patricia and her
daughters and daughters-in-law.
Patricia, evidently from a very good family at
Soto la Marina, had received an immense dowry of $9,000 pesos. This was at a
time when most dowries in Monterrey averaged less than $5,000. Some might say she
gave up the money to her husband, Martín, to fund the ranches in Texas.
Considering her later careful use of money, I prefer to think she invested the
money in the future of her family. And it paid off handsomely. She was able to
recoup the money when she needed it most by selling the Texas family ranch in
1836 to a New Orleans real estate broker for a handsome profit. But Patricia
also donated land. The lovely St. Mary’s Catholic Church sits on land donated
by Doña Patricia to the Catholic Church.
Doña Patricia taught her daughters to fight for
their rights when they returned to Texas in 1845. Not only did she enter the
American courts to regain family land, but she encouraged her offspring to
regain land that had been usurped by unscrupulous settlers. She held mortgages
on land and taught her daughters to do the same. Luz Escalera, wife of
eldest-son Fernando, and Matiana Benavides, a grand-daughter, held a mortgage
on land owned by an uncle. When he didn’t pay up, family or no, they foreclosed
on him, leaving him only the 20 acres around his ranch house.
At a time when Hispanics could not borrow from
Anglo banks, Hispanic women were often the money-lenders within the Mexican
community. They learned to be tough business women. It will remain a mystery
why she turned on her eldest son, Fernando. In her will, she forgives all the
debts owed to her by her descendants, except for the money owed her by
Fernando. That money was to be collected by his brothers and sisters.
C.M. MAYO: What comes through clearly to me in De León is that the early Tejano settlers, such as Martín de León, were neither wealthy nor campesinos (peasants), but part of an emerging and literate middle class. Yet throughout many decades of the 19th century the Tejanos had to fight both the Comanches and, depending on where they placed their loyalties, various factions for or against Spain, Mexico City, the Texians, and then the Confederacy. What stands out is that these decisions were not unanimous in the Tejano community, and they were fraught with terrible risk.
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Yes,
as Dr. de la Teja has pointed out, the Texas ranchers were not wealthy but they
were not poverty-stricken either. The de León family employed a teacher on the
ranch to educate their children. And not all the children agreed on which side
to choose. I suspect Patricia’s Christmas gatherings were a trifle tense during
the years of Mexican Independence when some of her offspring sided with the
Liberals while others chose the Conservatives. Things got even worse during the
Texas Revolution.
Antonio López de Santa Anna
C.M. MAYO: Until recent times the story of the fall of the Alamo came across as a simple story of brave Texians vs dastardly Santa Anna. Do you see your book as part of the impetus to enrich that particular narrative?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Yes,
certainly. During the Texas Revolution, half the De León family sided with the
Texians while others supported the legally constituted Mexican government, even
if it was Santa Anna.
The decades from 1800 through the Civil War,
were a time during which there were dangerous decisions to be made. The wrong
decision could result in being shot by one side or the other. Many of the
Mexican ranchers learned from bitter experience to keep their heads down and
their mouths shut or get out of the way. General Joaquín de Arredondo’s 1813
attack at the Battle of Medina and the later executions of Liberals, or
Revolutionaries, in San Antonio was a difficult time for everyone in Texas.
Doña Patricia had good reason to insist on removing her family to Soto la
Marina for safety during these years, and again in 1836 to escape to New
Orleans during the lawlessness of the Republic of
Texas. But she always came back.
C.M. MAYO: You mention that during the US Civil War many Tejanos, including members of the de León family, engaged in the cotton and transport trades to benefit the Confederacy. I note that Evaristo Madero, grandfather of the subject of my recent book, also made his first fortune in this trade. My question is, do you see the de Leóns as part of the broader fabric of a culture of entrepreneurship found throughout the north of Mexico?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: The
Spanish and then the Mexican government had restricted trade for generations
(1713 to 1821) thereby preventing much in the way of entrepreneurship for the
ranchers of Texas. They could sell hides and lard but there was little else of
value in Texas that could be transported and sold. The Anglo settlers, in
particular the Irish from the Refugio area, learned to profit from the sale of
cattle from their Mexican rancher neighbors.
Once the borders were opened to trade after 1836,
the Mexicans improved on their cattle trade and profited by selling corn and
vegetables to the incoming colonists. They also made a profit by carrying goods
in carts to the coast. As soon as the Texians saw there was a profit to be
made, however, the Cart Wars of
the 1850s broke out, and the Tejanos were cut out of the trade. They continued
to profit wherever they could, and wherever the Texians would permit.
C.M. MAYO: It is impossible to read Texas history without the mention of the strains and struggles between the so-called Anglos and Tejanos, as if the two communities were sealed off from one another under two bell jars. Yet of course they were not. You mention the tensions and the struggles the de León family faced in defending their dignity and their land titles against Anglo newcomers at various points in the 19th century, but you also mention their long-time friendship with the Linn family.
Can you talk a little more about the Linns?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Martín
de León needed settlers to establish his Empresario grant. He brought some from
Mexico, but there were some settlers already squatting on the land he had been
granted. Rather than get rid of them, he simply incorporated them into his
colony. Although some said he was a “cranky old man” as an Empresario (he was,
after all, in his 60s), he accepted people of all nationalities into his
colony. Fernando, his eldest son, became very close to the Linn family. Just as
the De León family helped the Linns during the Mexican period (Edward Linn
became their surveryor), they returned the favor when Texas became a State.
Fernando was able to count on the Linns (John Linn
became a Texas Senator) for help with legal problems.
I found that the early settlers, both Texian and
Tejano, who had helped each other survive Indian raids and droughts and hard
times in the years from 1821 to 1836 became loyal friends, regardless of
nationality. The arrival of new settlers after 1836, however, who had not
had those close relationships, created an atmosphere of antipathy and racial hatred
against the Mexicans. Fortunately, there were still a few of the supportive old
Texian families who protected their Tejano friends and called them the “Old
Spanish Families.” This didn’t prevent the killings of the Mexican families by
mobs during the 1870s or the mass murders by the Texas Rangers
during the 1920s.
C.M. MAYO: At various points you mention a slave owned by Fernando de León and later inherited by his adopted son Frank, and that Frank tried to manumit him but the laws of Texas at that time would not permit it. Do you know his name and what became of him?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Unhappily,
I do not know what happened to the slave. It is possible that Frank’s will, if
one were able to find it, might indicate a name or what happened to him. Most
Mexicans were opposed to slavery which made the years of the Civil War
difficult for them. Unlike the Germans, however, they kept their opinions to
themselves and avoided getting hung. They created guard units to protect the
coast from Union troops, but only one of the de León grandsons actually fought
with the Confederate troops.
C.M. MAYO: You managed to keep straight several generations of a sprawling family. I can only begin to imagine how much work it must have been just to keep your research in order! For readers who may be working on their own opus, can you offer your best organizational tip?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Any
genealogical study that covers several generations is challenging. Rather than
just tracing one line, where one can safely ignore all but one of the children
of each generation, I created a large wall chart with all of the various
children, each of their spouses, and their descendants. Where it gets
complicated is with the families of the in-laws who are equally important as
brothers- or sisters-in-laws. More charts, more wall space.
As anyone in South Texas will tell you: “Todos
somos primos.”* And it is true. Once you connect in-laws and
godparents, the network of relations is truly a Gordian knot. I found out, to
my surprise, that my Castillo family who lived in the Refugio area from the
1790s to the 1870s, were distantly related to the de León family as well.
*We’re all cousins.
C.M. MAYO: Your book came out in 2003. What are the reactions that surprised you, and what are the ones that gratified you?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
was very pleased to receive several awards from the Sons of the Republic of
Texas, from the San Antonio Conservancy, and from the Catholic scholars. To
have Arnoldo de León say such kind things about the book was a real
honor.
I should probably not have been surprised to find
that some Tejano scholars were opposed to my book. They felt that a blonde
Gringa should not be writing books about Mexican land loss. I don’t “pass”
since I don’t look Hispanic. I had a rather heated altercation with one of my
colleagues at a conference about whether I understood how difficult it had been
for Mexicans in Texas at the time. They were certain I was just another
do-gooder Anglo trying to put a better light on the challenges facing Tejanos
during the 1800s and their survival in spite of the difficulties. I was glad to
be able to prove them wrong.
In the course of my research, I had learned that
my Castillo family had lost their Refugio land in an 1870s court case to a
(now) wealthy Texan family. A gunfight resulted in which one of the Anglos was
shot. A lynch mob was formed and the Castillo brothers had to make a run for
the border to avoid the noose. The Castillo family left Texas and lost their
land. Some say it was sold, others that it was stolen. They reestablished a
large ranch outside Reynosa at Charco Escondido on the Mexican side and
continued to prosper as ranchers until the Mexican Revolution when they
returned to the United States. So, yes, I may not look Mexican, but my family
does understand land loss.
C.M. MAYO: What are you working on now?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: As you can imagine, my interest is still focused on writing about Hispanics on the border and in Texas. I have started to write the story of the Castillo land loss and have already gotten several chapters into it. However, inspired by Americo Paredes, I wanted to go back and look at what formed the early Tejanos. Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter has certainly helped.
Bernardo de Gálvez
Scandalizing though it is for a historian, now
that I am retired, I have kicked over the traces and turned to fiction. I am
working on a series of three novels on the 1770s in New Spain and the impact of
the Bourbon Reforms. I’ve based my characters in large part on the social gulf
that existed between the criollos
or mestizos,
like Martín who may have been a low class muleteer who made good, and
Patricia, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish family. Since the story (in the
third book) carries us into 1777, Bernardo de
Gálvez and his defense of the American Revolution plays a part as
well. The first two novels are finished and are in the editing stages. The
third should be done soon. Now, I just need to find an agent and publisher. My
usual publishers–the university presses–don’t do fiction.
Thanks for the opportunity to share the story of
the De León saga with your readers. My website is at www.carolinacastillocrimm.com
and De León is available through my web site or through amazon.
C.M. MAYO: Immense thanks to you, Carolina, and mucha suerte with your novels.
Remote as they are, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of the US-Mexico border have a strangely magnetic pull. That may sound like a wild assertion, but the evidence comprises over 200 shamanistic rock art sites, many of them thousands of years old, and the fact that dozens of rock art enthusiasts, including myself, find themselves returning again and again.
It was on a meltingly hot August day in 2014 that I made my first foray into the canyonlands for the Rock Art Foundation’s visit to Meyers Spring. A speck of an oasis tucked into the vast desert just west of the Pecos, Meyers Spring’s limestone overhang is vibrant with petrographs, both ancient, but very faded, and of Plains Indians works including a brave on a galloping horse, an eagle, a sun, and what appears to be a missionary and his church.
I took home the realization that with Meyers Spring I had taken one nibble of the richest of banquets. In addition the rock art of the Plains Indians—Apaches and Comanches— of historic times, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands are filled with prehistoric art, principally Pecos River, Red Linear, and Red Monochrome. Of the three, Pecos River is comparable to the best known Paleolithic rock in the world, the caves of Lascaux in France.
I would have to return to the canyonlands— alas for my book’s time and travel budget! Not that the Rock Art Foundation charges more than a nominal sum for its tours. The individual tour to Meyers Spring, which lasted four hours, cost a mere 30 dollars. Everyone involved, including the guides, works for the foundation for free.
By December of 2014 I was back for another Rock Art Foundation tour, this one down into Eagle Nest Canyon in Langtry. Apart from rock shelters with their ancient and badly faded petrographs, cooking debris, tools, and even a mummy of a woman who—scientists have determined— died of chagas, Eagle Nest Canyon is the site of Bonfire Shelter, the earliest and the second biggest bison jump, after Canada’s Head Bashed-In, in North America. Some 10,000 years ago hunters drove hundreds of prehistoric bison—larger than today’s bison—over the cliff. And in 800 BC, hunters drove a herd of modern bison over the same cliff, so many animals that the decaying mass of unbutchered and partially butchered carcasses spontaneously combusted. In deeper layers dated to 14,000 years, archaeologists have found bones of camel, horse, and mammoth, among other megafauna of the Pleistocene.
DESCENT INTO EAGLE NEST CANYON, DECEMBER 2014
Then in the spring of this year I visited the Lewis Canyon site on the shore of the Pecos, with its mesmerizing petroglyphs of bear claws, atlatls, and stars, and, behind a morass of boulders, an agate mirror of a tinaja encircled by petrographs.
LEWIS CANYON PETROGLYPHS, MAY 2015
LEWIS CANYON TINAJA SITE WITH PETROGRAPHS, BY THE PECOS RIVER, MAY 2015
Not all but most of the Lower Pecos Canyonland rock art sites— and this includes Meyers Spring, Eagle Nest Canyon and Lewis Canyon— are on private property. Furthermore, visits to Meyers Spring, Lewis Canyon, and many other sites require a high clearance vehicle for a tire-whumping, paint-scraping, bone-jarring drive in. So I was beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the privilege it is to visit these sites. At Lewis Canyon, as I stood on the limestone shore of the sparkling Pecos in utter silence but for the crunch of the boots of my fellow tour members, I learned that less than 50 people a year venture to float down its length.
This October I once again traveled to the Lower Pecos, this time for the Rock Art Foundation’s annual three day Rock Art Rendezvous. Offered this year were the three sites I had already visited, plus a delectable menu that included White Shaman, Fate Bell, and—not for those prone to vertigo— Curly Tail Panther.
WHITE SHAMAN, OCTOBER 2015
Just off Highway 90 near its Pecos River crossing, the White Shaman Preserve serves as the headquarters for Rock Art Rendezvous. After a winding drive on dirt road, I parked near the shade structure. From there, the White Shaman rock art site was a brief but rugged hike down one side of cactus-studded canyon, then up the other. I was glad to have brought a hiking pole and leather gloves. No knee surgery on the horizon, either. When I arrived at White Shaman, named after the central luminous figure, the sun was low in the sky, bathing the shelter’s wall and its reddish drawings in gold and turning the Pecos, far below, where an occasional truck droned by, deep silver.
The next morning, at the Rock Art Foundation’s tour of the Shumla Archaeological and Research Center in nearby Comstock, I heard Dr. Carolyn Boyd’s stunning talk about her book, The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, which is forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press. Dr. Boyd, whose work is based on 25 years of archaeological research in the Lower Pecos and a meticulous study of Mexican anthropology, argues that White Shaman, which is many thousands of years old, may represent the oldest known creation story in North America.
FATE BELL, OCTOBER 2015
From the White Shaman Preserve, Fate Bell is a few minutes down highway 90 in Seminole Canyon State Park. More than any other site, this shelter in the cake-like layers of the limestone walls of a canyon, reminded me of the cave art I had seen in Baja California’s Sierra de San Francisco. Inhabited on and off for some 9,000 years, Fate Bell is the largest site in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. It has various styles of petrograph, including a spectacular group of anthropomorphs with what appear to be antlers and wings.
CURLY TAIL PANTHER, OCTOBER 2015
Curly Tail Panther is a scoop of a cave about the size of a walk-in closet, but as if for Superman to whoosh in, set dizzyingly high on a cliff-side overlooking the Devils River. The back wall has an array of petrographs: red mountain lion, anthropomorphic figures, and geometric designs. The only access to Curly Tail Panther is by way of a narrow ledge. Drop your hiking pole or your sunglasses from here, and you won’t see them again. You might lose a character, too—in the opening of Mary Black’s novel, Peyote Fire, a shaman stumbles to his death from this very ledge. The Rock Art Foundation’s website made it clear, Curly Tail Panther is not for anyone who has a fear of heights. But who doesn’t? My strategy was to take a deep breath and, like the running shoes ad says, Just do it.
Crisply entertaining and chock-full of crunchy research by a food historian, this apparently delicious little book on America’s native nut— (and isn’t the cover charming?)— is a horror story.
It opens, as the darkest do, with a sunny scene of innocence. Clustered along river bottoms in what would one day become Texas, groves of pecan trees rained down their bounty for wildlife and indigenous peoples. For centuries, pecans were their superfood, dense with calories and nutrition. In the 16th century, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the conquistador who shipwrecked en route to Florida and wandered west, found the Guadalupe River “a river of nuts”— although he had no word for them but “walnut.” The name “pecan” dates from the late 18th century.
Those are not pecan trees at Monticello.
The pecan did not do well further north. Thomas Jefferson planted some 200 pecan trees in Monticello; none survive. Where nuts were wanted, European walnut varieties proved more popular and versatile, so the pecan was left to do what it had always done, thrive in its wild state along river bottoms, mainly in what is today Texas. Notes McWilliams, “unlike any other fruit-bearing tree in the age of cultivation, the pecan managed to evade the cultivating hand of man for centuries after humans began exploiting it for food.”
Yum!
In the nineteenth century, as ranching and cash crops such as cotton, corn and wheat spread across the South and Midwest, many pecan trees disappeared; nonetheless, a large number of pecan groves survived, especially in Texas, because they clung to riverbanks and bottoms, and proved able to survive a flood other crops could not.
Farmers found wild pecans not only delicious as snacks for themselves, but good pig feed, and bags of them, easily gathered, could be sold in new markets in San Antonio, Galveston, and New Orleans. In the second half of the 19th century, Texas took the lead in pecan production, but not from formal orchards; for the most part, farmers gathered wild pecans.
How to sell more pecans? The market wanted uniformity, thin shells, and dense nut meats. Even the most magnificent pecan tree’s seed, however, would not “come true,” that is, bring forth a tree producing equivalent quality nuts. The solution was grafting. As early as 1822 one Abner Landrum detailed his own successful experiments with pecan grafting in the American Farmer. It seems no farmer bothered to emulate that experiment. The market for pecans was still marginal and, as McWilliams ventures, “it was simply more macho to run a ranch with cattle than to turn that land over to pecans.”
The Big House at Oak Alley Plantation
In the mid-century 19th century, in the Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana, a slave gardener named Antoine successfully grafted an orchard of more than 100 fabulously productive pecan trees. Decades later, the plantation’s new German owner, Herbert Bonzano, brought the nuts of those grafted pecans to Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition. And thus, like so many other fruits before it, the pecan was at last, if slowly, on the road to industrial production— a road, like that to Hell, paved with good intentions.
For a time, farmers relied on wild pecans, resisting experts’ advice to graft pecans, perhaps out of innate conservatism and a reluctance to becoming dependent on nurserymen. Attitudes soon changed. After a series of insect plagues in the last three decades of the 19th century decimated major cash crops, the USDA championed chemical insecticides that, “lo and behold, worked.” Writes McWilliams, “The USDA was no oracle, but as pecan farmers recognized, history showed it could make life much easier for those who tilled the soil for a living. So long as they would listen.” Listen they did.
The 20th century brought increasing industrialization in pecan production. After World War I, writes McWilliams, “pecan trees were becoming carefully managed commodities rather than natural aspects of the southern landscape.” As for shelling, an important source of employment in San Antonio in the 30s, after some labor unrest, this was given over to machines.
In World War II the U.S. government gave the pecan industry a push, promoting the nuts as nutritious replacements for meat; and after imposing price ceilings to help promote consumer demand, buying up millions of pounds of surplus pecans (many fed to schoolchildren). By the late 1940s, pecans were no longer holiday treats or just for pralines, they were in everything from cakes to cookies to pies, even salads. McWilliams: “The aristocrat of nuts had become a commoner.”
McWilliams brings the pecan through the rest of its 20th century history with mail order, frozen foods, processed foods, chain restaurants, granola, and ice cream; its oil extracted for lubricants in clocks and guns, its wood milled for basketball court flooring, its shells collected for mulch, barbecue chips, plywood, pesticides, and more. By 2011, when the author tours a Texan pecan farm, he is stuck with dark wonder:
“First, the entire operation is a streamlined model of mechanization. Vehicles designed to fit snugly between seemingly endless rows of perfectly aligned pecan trees spray pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides; they lay mulch, prune trees, apply fertilizer, and harvest nuts. Other machines disk the soil and smooth the turf between the trees so that fallen nuts do not elude harvest. At times helicopters are even brought in for the purpose of keeping frost from icing the nuts. Propane cannons are on hand to scare off crows. It occurred to me as we drove from orchard to orchard that there was nothing ‘natural’ about a contemporary pecan orchard.I was looking at a factory in the field.”
Oh, but it gets stranger. The money isn’t so much in the pecans as it is in shipping trees from the nursery to China. In 2001, Chinese did not have a word for pecan. Today pecans are a popular health food in China, available everywhere from airports to gas stations. It seems a question of time before the Chinese outstrip the U.S. in pecan production.
The future of the pecan, a “chemically saturated activity,” whether in the U.S. or China or elsewhere, looks grim. Arsenals of insecticides are increasingly necessary to combat aphids, beetles, weevils and more. These chemicals also threaten bees and other pollinators (and without them, our food supply as we know it may collapse). Plant diseases are also becoming increasingly resistant to chemical assault. The soil degrades. At some point— perhaps when China has become the top producer; perhaps when some insect or fungus has wiped out enough orchards; or in the wake of some ecological or economic jolt— it may become unprofitable to continue producing pecans in the U.S., the grafted and chemically attended ones for the mass market, that is.
What then will have become of the now few stands of wild pecans? The good intentions of many decades—ye olde single-minded “economic development”— have brought this once thriving wild nut tree to a state of such fragility that, concludes McWilliams, “we may well lose yet another natural thread to the past.”
How Texas Will Transform America By Richard Parker Pegasus, November 2014 pp. 352 ISBN-10: 1605986267 ISBN-13: 978-1605986265
Book Review by C.M. Mayo
Texas Exceptionalism (TE): I would give it the knee-jerk reject but for the fact that after more than 25 years of living in another country (Mexico), if I’ve learned anything, it’s that empathy for others’ notions of themselves, off-kilter as they may seem, is not only the more politic but oftentimes the wisest stance (because the other thing I’ve learned is that there’s always more to learn). Plus, as my birth certificate says, I’m a Daughter of the Lone Star State, so nudge its elbow and my ego is happy to hop along, at least a little ways, with that rootin’- tootin’ idea. But I was not raised in Texas and, to put it politely, I’ve yet to grok TE. The way I see it at present, yes, Texas is a special place full of proud and wonderful people, with a unique history and an awesome landscape, and once we look with open eyes, ears, intellect, and heart, so is just about every other place, from Baja California to Burma.
That said, though in Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America, Richard Parker serves up a heaping helping of gnaw-worthy TE, it is an elegantly-written and important book examining trends and challenges for Texas — Texas first, Parker argues— and the nation.
“an elegantly-written and important book examining trends and challenges for Texas — Texas first, Parker argues— and the nation.”
Migration is changing Texas at warp-speed, and
here, with an overview of the history of migration into the area, Parker makes
the most vital contribution.
It was the Fifth Migration, from the Rust Belt of
the 1970s and 1980s, that brought northerners with their Republican-leaning
politics; the Fourth, Southerners, many of them Yellow Dog Democrats, coming in
to work in the oil and related industries in the early 20th century; and the
Third, Southerners arriving in the 19th century to farm and ranch in what was
originally Mexican territory, then an independent Republic, then a slave state,
then a member of the Confederacy, then, vanquished, reabsorbed into the
Union. (The Second and First Migrations telescope thousands of years of
immigrations from elsewhere in indigenous North America and, originally, from
Asia.)
The current wave of migration, the Sixth, is
bringing some 1,000 immigrants into the state each day, from Mexico, points
further south, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and all across the United States
itself. And because of this, the over a century-long “Anglo”
dominance is about to crumble. Soon the idea of Texas itself may
morph into something denizens of the 20th century might no longer
recognize.
J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) was considered the first recognized and professional literary writer in the state. From the Wittliff Collections biography: “Many Texas writers openly credit Dobie with giving them the inspiration not only to be a writer but also to feel comfortable using their home state as a subject.”
Yet where did that idea of Texas— this great
state for big men in cowboy boots— and the related TE— come
from? How did it become an image fixed in not only the Texan imagination, but
the national and international? I would have ascribed it merely to a mash-up of
anti-Mexican Texan and US-Mexican War propaganda, the tales of literary legend
and folklorist J. Frank Dobie,
Southern wounded pride, and splashy bucketfuls of Hollywood fantasy, until I
came to Parker’s riveting detour into the history of the marketing of the
World’s Fair of 1936. That fair, held the same year as Texas’ centennial, was
celebrated with all get-out in Dallas. For its leading citizens, this was,
Parker writes,
“the opportunity to recast Texas: No longer a broken-down Southern state of impoverished dirt farmers, but one with oil and industry— an inspiration if not a beacon to hungry Americans looking for opportunity in the midst of the Great Depression…. Copywriters, journalists, and artists were hired to tell tales of cowboys, oil, and industry in the years leading up to the World’s Fair.”
But alas, this came with the racial nonsense of
the time. Parker:
“Gone was the Mexican vaquero, the African American, and the Native American, or at least they were relegated to the role of antagonist…. A centennial exposition [Theodore H. Price, a New York PR man] argued, would teach attendees that the cowboy story was really a story of racial triumph…”
Giant, the 1956 movie based on Edna Ferber’s novel, starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.
Some of Texas history is painful to read, painful
as those punches Rock Hudson’s character, Bick Benedict, took at the end of Giant,
in defending his Mexican-American daughter-in-law (from being refused
service in a café because of the color of her skin). Parker doesn’t shy away
from discussing some ugly and enduring racial problems in Texas, including in
Austin, its capital and haven of liberalism, music, and righteously organic
breakfast tacos.
At the time Lone Star Nation went to press
in 2014, according to Parker, “nearly one in three people who call Texas
home have arrived from elsewhere in the United States in the last year.”
The gas and oil boom have since collapsed along with the price of oil, so I
would expect those numbers to have dropped; nonetheless, as Parker stresses,
the overwhelming majority of immigrants end up not in the oil fields, but the
“triangle,” the area in and around Dallas, Austin-San Antonio, and
Houston. The draw? “Better-paying jobs and bigger homes for less
money.”
Parker argues that better jobs are a function of
education, and that therefore one of the challenges Texas faces is adequately
funding its schools and universities while keeping tuition at affordable
levels, especially for the working class and recent immigrants. But the
political will may not be there; neither has it been adequate to cope with
water shortages, both current and looming.
Parker’s political analysis is seasoned but
unabashedly biased. My dad, a California Republican, would have called it
“Beltway Liberalism,” and indeed, until returning to Texas, Parker, a
journalist, was based in the Washington DC metropolitan area. I happen to agree
with much of what Parker argues, but as someone trying to get my mind around
Texas, I would have appreciated his making more of an effort to explore, if not
with sympathy then at least empathy, the various strains of conservatism.
To illustrate the trends and challenges for
Texas, Parker offers two scenarios for 2050: one in which Texas has not
invested in education, nor maintained a representative democracy, nor addressed
environmental issues, and so degenerated into a nearly abandoned ruin (think:
Detroit meets Caracas meets the Gobi Desert); in the other, challenges
addressed, Texas is a super-charging China-crushin’ hipster Juggernaut. My own
guess is that the Texas of our very old age will fall somewhere in between,
vary wildly from one region to another, and be more dependent on developments
south of the border than the author or, for that matter, most futurists,
consider.
On this last point, in discussing the tidal wave
of migration from Mexico, Parker mentions the Woodlands, a once upscale Anglo
suburb outside of Houston, still upscale, but now predominantly Mexican. I
would have liked to have learned more about this slice of the sociological pie,
for in my recent travels in Texas, and from what I hear in Mexico, I’ve also
noticed that a large number of well-off Mexicans have been moving to Houston,
San Antonio, and Austin. I’m talking about Mexicans who speak fluent English,
play tennis and golf, and have studied and traveled abroad in, say, New York,
Vancouver, Paris. There’s a bigger story there, for many of them are the
wives and children, but not so many husbands, who spend weekdays at their offices
in Monterrey, Guadalajara, or, say, Mexico City. These families have not come
to Texas for the jobs, nor the wonders of that great state (whose loss still
makes many Mexicans bristle), but primarily for their safety— and,
in many cases, for business opportunities. Should security improve in Mexico, I
would expect many of these families to return and quickly. Whether that is
likely or not is another question.
In sum, Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America is a rich, vivacious read that provides a sturdy framework to think about the past, present, and prospects of a state that is as much a place as it is, in the words of John Steinbeck, “a mystique approximating a religion.” And if the author is a true blue believer in TE, well hell, bless him. Highly recommended.
C’est moi on (whew) August 30, 2014 at Meyers Spring, an important rock art site of the Lower Pecos, on the US-Mexico border near Dryden, Texas. As you can see, in my left hand, I am carrying a white umbrella. So I didn’t need the hat. And that black backpack wasn’t the best idea. I also should have worn a lightweight bandana. Oh, and more sunblock. Always more sunblock. The long-sleeved white shirt and hiking trousers were both excellent choices, however.
Just returned from hiking with the Rock Art Foundation in to see the spectacular rock art at Meyers Spring in the Lower Pecos of Far West Texas (yes, there will be a podcast in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, in which I exploring the Big Bend & Beyond in 24 podcasts. More about that anon).
I got a few things very right on this trip and a few things, well, I could have done better. Herewith, for you, and for me– this will serve as my own checklist for my next rock art foray– 12 tips for summer day hiking in the desert:
1. Don’t just bring water, lots of water, more water than you think you can possibly drink– bring it cold and keep it cold.
Everest Lumbar Waistpack
Of course, not drinking enough water can be seriously dangerous. But warm water when it’s this hot is just bleh–and if you’re carrying a plain old plastic water bottle in your hand, out here in Texas, boy howdy… (Last year, I hiked this way over Burro Mesa in the Big Bend National Park. Six hours. Head-slapper.)
The thing is, you don’t just want to hydrate; you want to keep your core from overheating, so every swig of cold water really helps. Before heading out, fill your insulated water bottles with lots of ice. In your car, keep them in an ice chest or, if that’s not possible, wrapped in a blanket, or whatever’s handy, until the moment you have to take them out. I did this for the first time, and wow, what a difference.
Yes, sun block stinks and feels gross, but if you’re like me — a descendant of those who once roamed the foggy bogs of the British Isles– if you don’t, you may end up helping your dermatologist buy his ski condo. And no, he probably won’t invite you.
> Watch this fun video, “How the Sun Sees You.”
> For those with actinic keratosis (that’s the fancy term for seriously sun-damaged skin), try Perrin’s Blend. If that doesn’t work, off to the dermatologist you must go.
This protects you against the sun, keeps you cool (the white reflects the sun), protects you from bug bites and scratches. Light clothes always beat dark! Flip the collar up to protect your neck. About scratches: the desert tends to be filled with cactus and thorny scrub.
4. Knot a light-colored scarf around your throat.
This protects you from the sun. A bandana works fine. Mike Clelland (more about the guru in a moment) suggests cutting the bandana in two, so it’s lighter. Porquoi pas? But I didn’t do this. Alas. Bring on the Perrin’s.
5. Wear tough but lightweight trekking trousers.
For the same reason you want to wear the long-sleeved white shirt: trousers protect your body parts, in this case, calves and knees, from sun, scratches, and bugs. Do not wear shorts unless, for some reason you probably should be working on with your psychiatrist, you don’t mind scarring and blood.
And do not wear jeans. I repeat, do not wear jeans.
6. Keep your pack as light as possible, in both senses.
Hey, you’ve not only gotta stay cool, but you’ve gotta hump all that water!
A few specifics:
> Use a lightweight pack and carry it on your hips, rather than the flat of your back (see photo of lumbar waist pack above). This helps keep your back cool. But I don’t speak from experience on this one: I’m going to try this for next time.
> Carry lightweight insulated water bottles.
> Ditch the hat and ditch the heavy hiking boots (more about that below. There are, of course, other places and times when a hat and hiking books would be advisable).
> Skip the camera or use a lightweight camera (I use my iPhone).
> Eat a light breakfast and bring only a little food– since this is a day hike, you can eat a big dinner when you get back. But you will need sustenance on the trail. I recommend date, fruit and nut bars– love those Lara bars— that is, food that is high in energy but won’t spoil in the heat, and that doesn’t require any dishes or utensils. Don’t bring anything with chocolate in it. (I brought a Snicker’s bar. Ooey… gooey.)
>Bring a white plastic grocery bag and use it to cover your pack. Two advantages: the white reflects sunlight and keeps it cooler than, say, an unprotected black or other dark-colored pack, and, in case of rain, will help keep it dry.
> Highly recommended: Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpackin’Tips, a superb resource for keeping it lighter-than-light, yet making sure to bring what you need for comfort and safety.
> And be sure to visit Clelland’s blog for many helpful videos and more.
7. Watch out for killer bees!
Africanized bees have arrived in some desert locales north of the Mexican border. What do bees want? Sweet things and water. So don’t carry around open cans or bottles or suddenly pick up open cans or bottles– bees may smell the water or soft drink from afar, crawl inside, and then, if you do anything they don’t like, such as pick up that can, they will go bezerk, and call in their buddies who will also go bezerk and might sting you hundreds of times.
No kidding, people and animals have died from killer bee attacks.
So be especially careful around any blooming plants where bees might be feeding. Ditto any open water, such as a tank, spring, or any puddle. And whatever you do, if you see a hive, don’t go anywhere near it. Normal honey bees, however, are not a problem. Unless you have a severe allergy, a few stings might actually be good for you! (Read more about bee sting therapy on the Apitherapy Association webpage). Your real problem is, it’s hard to tell the killers from the honeys until they attack.
8. Wear gaiters.
I followed Mike Clelland’s tip and bought a pair from Dirty Girl Gaiters (they’re for guys, too). They weigh about as much as a feather, they’re easy to attach to your lace-up running shoes and indeed, they keep the dust out.
Their biggest advantage is that you can therefore avoid wearing those ankle-high and heavy hiking boots. You’ll exert yourself less and therefore, on the margin, stay cooler. (I’ll admit however that on this last hike, a loose ball of bubble-gum cactus went right through the gaiters and stabbed me in the ankle. Oh well!)
www.dirtygirlgaiters.com
9. Forget the hat and trekking pole; use a white umbrella.
Really! Who cares if it looks nerdy? It’s nerdier to pass out from heat stroke or end up looking like a tomato. So let those guys in jeans, black T-shirts, and baseball caps cackle all they want, as they sweat & burn & chafe.
The white umbrella protects you from sun and the rain and– crucially– helps keep your head cool. A hat will trap heat on your head– not what you want out here. Plus, in a tight spot, you can also use the umbrella as a trekking pole. Added bonus: scares mountain lions. I would think. Don’t take my word for that, however. Also good, once folded, to toss a rattlesnake or tarantula. Not that I’ve had to do that, either. Just saying.
In shade, if possible. (Oh, right, you have your umbrella!)
12. In your car, leave a reflector open on your car’s dashboard and another over your stash of cold water.
If you’ve had to park outside, after a day of baking out in the desert, it’s going to be an authentic Finnish sauna in there– unless you use a dashboard reflector. In which case it will still be a chocolate-bar-melting warm, but infinitely more bearable. I picked up my pair of dashboard reflectors at Walgreen’s for $3.99 each and I was glad indeed that I did. Certainly, you could also just use ye olde roll of aluminum foil.
As the subtitle indicates, most of Thomas M. Settles’ splendid biography of John Bankhead Magruder (1807 – 1871) is dedicated to a detailed examination of his role in the U.S. Civil War, specifically, his audacious if nonetheless inevitably doomed defense of Richmond, and later, Galveston. Though this part of the narrative does not have direct bearing on Mexican history, it informs the portrait of an unusually flamboyant Confederate who, in defeat, looked south to a future in Maximilian’s Mexican Empire.
Based on three decades of archival research, this biography must have been a titanic task, for Magruder left no diary and many of his most important papers were lost in a San Francisco fire. Worse, he was much maligned during his lifetime, victim of both malicious gossip from his Confederate rivals and less than sympathetic Federals– just the sort of thing to send a biographer down blind alleys. In addition, there were misunderstandings, as when earlier historians, in recounting what appeared to be a less-than honorable leave-taking from Washington DC at the start of the Civil War, confounded Magruder with a relative.
General John Bankhead Magruder was, as Settles convincingly argues– backing every point with what sometimes seems a forest of footnotes– a Civil War general whose tactical ingenuity and tenacity are deserving of far greater respect than he has been accorded. Most of the book details his early military career, from West Point to a garrison duty and recruiting at various army posts from the Carolinas to Maine, until, with the invasion of Mexico in the late 1840s, his fortuntes took a radical turn. Along with many of the men who would later play major roles in the U.S. Civil War– Grant, Lee, and McClellan, among them– Magruder distinguished himself in several major battles against the Mexicans. (Magruder’s artillery was, in fact, the first to fire upon Chapultepec Castle.) Following the U.S.-Mexican War, Magruder served in California, where in Los Angeles, briefly, he ran a saloon.
He was on a visit to Europe when recalled to Washington DC in 1861, only a month before his native state of Virginia seceded. He had not wanted to leave the U.S. Army, but as “he could not fight against his own people,” he resigned, calling it “the most unhappy moment of my life.” He walked across the Potomac, offered his services to the Confederacy and, in short order, was reporting to Robert E. Lee.
Settle’s treatment of Magruder’s return to Mexico in 1865, in the final chapter, “Postwar Odyssey,” is a relatively brief one; nonetheless, it is an important contribution to understanding the nature and role of the ex-Confederates in Maximilian’s government.
At the end of the U.S. Civil War, General Magruder was one of several thousand ex-Confederates who pulled up stakes for Mexico. In 1865 the French Imperial Army, considered the greatest in the world, occupied most, if not all of Mexican territory, while the ex Archduke of Austria, Maximilian, a direct descendant of the King of Spain during the Conquest, reigned as Emperor. Though by the late summer and fall of 1865, when the ex-Confederates began arriving en masse, the French occupation was beginning to fray at the edges, Maximilian and his consort, Carlota, still presided over a court and elaborate palace balls and other festivities that were, to Americans at that time, considered the height of glamor. In the words of journalist William V. Wells, this was the “high noon” of the empire, when it was impossible for many to even imagine the catastrophe that would, in only a matter of months, befall the “cactus throne.”
Some ex-Confederates came to Mexico because they could not bear living in a defeated South, others, because they had expected to participate in a dynamic plantation economy under the French-backed Maximilian (who, to entice the ex-Confederate colonists, proclaimed slavery legal in Mexico). But others, such as General Magruder, simply felt pushed out. As Settles writes:
“It must have been extremely difficult for so proud a man as John Bankhead Magruder to have signed the articles surrendering the Trans-Mississippi Department. But when the Federals began arresting and imprisoning high Confederate officials, he resolutely refused to submit to such personal humiliation. He was not eligible for the amnesty proclaimed by President Lincoln on December 8, 1863, or that proclaimed by Andrew Johnson on May 29, 1865”
Although I had spent several years researching Mexico’s Second Empire under Maximilian for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, until recently, I was flummoxed as to the background of the author of the exceedingly rare English language memoir, Sketches of the Last Year of the Empire, Henry R. Magruder. It turns out he was the son of General John Bankhead Magruder and I now know, from Settles’ biography, that father and son did not arrive in Mexico via the same route. General Magruder came down overland from Houston with General Shelby, while his wife, son Henry, and unmarried daughter, Kate Elizabeth, arrived via Veracruz, for they had come from Florence, Italy, where they had been residing for some years. As Settles explains,
“[B]ecause of the hardships of travel, uncomfortable living conditions, and extremes of climate found in the remote locales where magruder was stationed during his military career, [Mrs Magruder] found it more practical to live and raise her children in the comforts of Baltimore, where she could stay closer to family business interests. She remained there until 1850 when, as a consequence of [daughter] Isabella’s ill health, she took her children to Europe. Mrs Magruder had relatives in Germany, but she moved to Italy, living briefly in Rome, then in Florence.”
From Texas, not yet reunited with his family, Magruder headed straight down to Monterrey and then to Mexico City, arriving in the summer of 1865. Writes Settles:
“Magruder checked into a room on the first floor of the fashionable Iturbide Hotel, and there he received several distinguished visitors, including Matthew Fontaine Maury and his old friend Marshal Francois-Achille Bazaine, now in command of the imperial forces in Mexico. He also met with the British minister to Mexico, Sir Peter Campbell Scarlett, whose nephew, Lord Abinger, had married Magruder’s niece, Helen Magruder, in Montreal several years earlier.”
It appeared Magruder felt as at home as an American could be in Mexico City. He bought himself a new wardrobe, “‘a cut-a-way suit of salt and pepper color, with a tall dove-colored hat and patent leather boots,’ and then went to the palace of Montezuma [the Imperial Palace], which Scott’s army had victoriously occupied eighteen years earlier.”
Soon after a successful interview with Maximilian and Carlota, Magruder, now a naturalized Mexican citizen, was appointed head of Maximilian’s Land Office of Colonization. The idea was to establish colonies along the main route inland from Veracruz to Mexico City, on land Juarez (under the Republic) had expropriated from the Church.
Settles covers the rapid collapse of the scheme along with Maximilian’s government, and Magruder’s return to the U.S. In 1867– surprisingly, for memories of the Civil War remained fresh— he attempted to set up a law office in New York City. His family had returned to Italy, but he remained in the U.S. to work the lecture circuit with a crowd-pleasing talk on Maximilian and Carlota. He was on that tour when, in a Houston hotel in 1871 he died of a stroke.
