American frontier

The previous post omitted a couple of things to do with the Texas cattle industry before the Civil War. The drives then were small compared to the ones that came later; but the Shawnee Trail, or Texas Road, from East Texas through Indian Territory, wasn’t the only cattle route, as I inadvertently made it seem….

The Flower-Fed Buffaloes is a slow and rhythmic poem, which uses many aural effects, emotive language and techniques to create a powerful lament on the destruction of the world. Lindsay often portrays the destruction with scenes from the American ‘Wild West’. Lindsay writes, “Ranged where the locomotives sing and the prairie flowers lie low”. Here…

When the Aztec Cattle Company  first got to northeastArizona, they found knee-high grass as far as they could see. They moved cattle fromTexas to Arizona and just kept bringing in more and more. They ran those cattle onabout 2 million acres of land between Flagstaff and New Mexico. The cattle grazed thegrass off and the…

During his lifetime, Howard traveled widely thoughout Texas, visiting both large and small towns. The two largest cities in north Texas are Forth Worth and Dallas and Howard spent time in both of them. The cities are located next to each, but possess vastly different personalities and dynamics as Howard details in a letter to August…

Robert E. Howard surely had a passionate feeling for his native southwest and its history. Even in a dark fantasy like “The Valley of the Lost” he gives the tale an anchor in savage reality with his description of a Texas feud – of, I don’t doubt, the exact sort that took place often, “short,…