Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest Part 3

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5. Apaches, Comanches, and Other Plains Indians

THE APACHES and the bareback Indians of the Plains were extraordinary _hombres del campo--_men of the outdoors, plainsmen, woodsmen, trailers, hunters, endurers. They knew some phases of nature with an intimacy that few civilized naturalists ever attain to. It is unfortunate that most of the literature about them is from their enemies. Yet an enemy often teaches a man more than his friends and makes him work harder.

See "Indian Culture," "Texas Rangers."

BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, London, 1892. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. A truly great book, on both Apaches and Arizona frontier. Bourke had amplitude, and he knew.

BUCKELEW, F. M. _The Indian Captive_, Bandera, Texas, 1925. Homely and realistic. OP.

CATLIN, GEORGE. _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, Written during Eight Years'

Travel, 1832-39_, 1841. Despite many strictures, Catlin's two volumes remain standard. I am pleased to find Frank Roe, in _The North American Buffalo_, standing up for him. In _Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of George Catlin, Painter and Recorder of the American Indian_, New York, 1948, Loyd Haberly fails in evaluating evidence but brings out the man's career and character.

CLUM, WOODWORTH. _Apache Agent_, Boston, 1936. Worthy autobiography of a n.o.ble understander of the Apache people. OP.

COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON. _Apache_, Dutton, New York, 1931. n.o.ble; vivid; semifiction.

DAVIS, BRITTON. _The Truth about Geronimo_, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1929. Davis helped run Geronimo down.

DEs.h.i.+ELDS, JAMES T. _Cynthia Ann Parker_, St. Louis, 1886; reprinted 1934. Good narrative of noted woman captive. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Mustangs_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1952. The opening chapters of this book distil a great deal of research by scholars on Plains Indian acquisition of horses, riding, and raiding.

GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. _The Cheyenne Indians_, New Haven, 1923. This two-volume work supersedes _The Fighting Cheyennes_, 1915. It is n.o.ble, ample, among the most select books on Plains Indians. _Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People_, 1892, shows Grinnell's skill as storyteller at its best. _p.a.w.nee Hero Stories and Folk Tales_, 1893, is hardly an equal but it reveals the high values of life held by representatives of the original plainsmen. _The Story of the Indian_, 1895, is a general survey. All OP. Grinnell's knowledge and power as a writer on Indians and animals has not been sufficiently recognized.

He combined in a rare manner scholars.h.i.+p, plainsmans.h.i.+p, and the worldliness of publis.h.i.+ng.

{ill.u.s.t. caption = George Catlin, in _North American Indians_ (1841)}

HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier_, San Angelo Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Mainly a history of military activities against Comanches and other tribes, laced with homilies on the free enterprise virtues of the conquerors.

LEE, NELSON. _Three Years among the Comanches_, 1859.

LEHMAN, HERMAN. _Nine Years with the Indians_, Bandera, Texas, 1927.

Best captive narrative of the Southwest.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _The Apache Indians_, Macmillan, New York, 1938.

Factual history.

LONG LANCE, CHIEF BUFFALO CHILD. _Long Lance_, New York, 1928. OP. Long Lance was a Blackfoot only by adoption, but his imagination incorporated him into tribal life more powerfully than blood could have. He is said to have been a North Carolina mixture of Negro and Croatan Indian; he was a magnificent specimen of manhood with swart Indian complexion.

He fought in the Canadian army during World War I and thus became acquainted with the Blackfeet. No matter what the facts of his life, he wrote a vivid and moving autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian in whom the spirit of the tribe and the natural life of the Plains during buffalo days were incorporated. In 1932 in the California home of Anita Baldwin, daughter of the spectacular "Lucky" Baldwin, he absented himself from this harsh world by a pistol shot.

LOWIE, ROBERT H. _The Crow Indians_, New York, 1935. This scholar and anthropologist lived with the Crow Indians to obtain intimate knowledge and then wrote this authoritative book. OP.

MCALLISTER, J. GILBERT. "Kiowa-Apache Tales," in _The Sky Is My Tipi_, edited by Mody C. Boatright (Texas Folklore Society Publication XXII), Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1949. Wise in exposition; true-to-humanity and delightful in narrative.

MCGILLICUDDY, JULIA B. _McGillicuddy Agent_, Stanford University Press, California, 1941. Dr. Valentine T. McGillicuddy, Scotch in stubbornness, honesty, efficiency, and individualism, was U.S. Indian agent to the Sioux and knew them to the bottom. In the end he was defeated by the army mind and the bloodsuckers known as the "Indian Ring." The elements of n.o.bility that distinguish the man distinguish his wife's biography of him.

MCLAUGHLIN, JAMES. My _Friend the Indian_, 1910, 1926. OP. McLaughlin was U.S. Indian agent and inspector for half a century. Despite priggishness, he had genuine sympathy for the Indians; he knew the Sioux, Nez Perces, and Cheyennes intimately, and few books on Indian plainsmen reveal so much as his.

MARRIOTT, ALICE. _The Ten Grandmothers_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1945. Narratives of the Kiowas--a complement to James Mooney's _Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians_, in Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1893. Alice Marriott, author of other books on Indians, combines ethnological science with the art of writing.

MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1932. This book of essays on the character of and certain n.o.ble characters among the Great Osages, including their upright agent Leban J. Miles, has profound spiritual qualities.

NEIHARDT, JOHN G. _Black Elk Speaks_, New York, 1932. OP. Black Elk was a holy man of the Ogalala Sioux. The story of his life as he told it to understanding John G. Neihardt is more of mysteries and spiritual matters than of mundane affairs.

RICHARDSON, R. N. _The Comanche Barrier to the South Plains_, Glendale, California, 1933. Factual history.

RISTER, CARL C. _Border Captives_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1940.

RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_, London, 1847. Vivid on Comanche raids. See Ruxton in "Surge of Life in the West."

SCHULTZ, J. W. _My Life as an Indian_, 1907. OP. In this autobiographical narrative of the life of a white man with a Blackfoot woman, facts have probably been arranged, incidents added. Whatever his method, the author achieved a remarkable human doc.u.ment. It is true not only to Indian life in general but in particular to the life of a "squaw man" and his loved and loving mate. Among other authentic books by Schultz is _With the Indians of the Rockies_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1912.

SMITH, C. L. and J. D. _The Boy Captives_, Bandera, Texas, 1927. A kind of cla.s.sic in homeliness. OP.

VESTAL, STANLEY. _Sitting Bull_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1932.

Excellent biography. OP.

WALLACE, ERNEST, and HOEBEL, E. ADAMSON. _The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. A wide-compa.s.sing and interesting book on a powerful and interesting people.

WELLMAN, PAUL I. _Death on the Prairie_ (1934), _Death in the Desert_ (1935); both reprinted in _Death on Horseback_, 1947. All OP. Graphic history, mostly in narrative, of the struggle of Plains and Apache Indians to hold their homelands against the whites.

WILBARGER, J. W. _Indian Depredations in Texas_, 1889; reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1936. Its stirring narratives made this a household book among Texans of the late nineteenth century.

6. Spanish-Mexican Strains

THE MEXICAN Revolution that began in 1910 resulted in a rich development of the native cultural elements of Mexico, the art of Diego Rivera being one of the highlights of this development. The native culture is closer to the Mexican earth and to the indigenes than to Spain, notwithstanding modern insistence on the Latin in Latin-American culture.

The Spaniards, through Mexico, have had an abiding influence on the architecture and language of the Southwest. They gave us our most distinctive occupation, ranching on the open range. They influenced mining greatly, and our land t.i.tles and irrigation laws still go back to Spanish and Mexican sources. After more than a hundred years of occupation of Texas and almost that length of time in other parts of the Southwest, the English-speaking Americans still have the rich acc.u.mulations of lore pertaining to coyotes, mesquites, p.r.i.c.kly pear, and many other plants and animals to learn from the Mexicans, who got their lore partly from intimate living with nature but largely through Indian ancestry.

See "Fighting Texians," "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."

AIKEN, RILEY. "A Pack Load of Mexican Tales," in _Puro Mexicano_, published by Texas Folklore Society, 1935. Now published by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. Delightful.

ALEXANDER, FRANCES (and others). _Mother Goose on the Rio Grande_, Banks Upshaw, Dallas, 1944. Charming rhymes in both Spanish and English in charming form.