prairie point

I’ve been reading A Texas Frontier by Ty Cashion. It’s the story of the “Clear Fork Country” in the 19th century, and in particular Ft Griffin which was the center of that region. The “clear fork” is the Clear Fork of the Brazos which rises in the Rolling Plains and joins up with the Salt Fork just above Possum Kingdom Lake.

This is the land of western movies and pulp novels. It is the land of cowboys and Indians and buffalo hunters and range wars. It is the land just to the west of the Cross Timbers where I live myself. But it differs a lot from this country in its geography and its history.

One thing that has always been of interest to me is how the various regions of Texas have such different cultures. According to Cashion the Clear Fork country was settled primarily by southerners. He even describes the cow ranch as a variation on the plantation model, something that had never occurred to me and yet suddenly seems very obvious. To this day the region remains about as pure a concentration of white anglo-saxon Baptists as one could ever expect to find.

The sensibility evolved into a western culture instead of a southern culture. During Reconstruction ranchers felt themselves under attack from Indians and, in contrast to the South, welcomed federal occupation. Also there was the democratizing effects of a small population in a big hostile environment.

To my own mind this homogeneous background has made the area less interesting than the Hill Country, which shares much the same kind of rustic beauty of the land. The German immigrants who settled that area and the Mexicans who bumped up against them in the south just produced a richer and more congenial culture.

Most of the reviews of this book point out how much the author downplays the old myths and tales of violence and lawlessness. However being new to the area, I never heard those tales and I don’t miss them. The story Cashion does tell is colorful enough itself.