Update: This Blog Now Redirects to the Revamped "Madam Mayo" Blog

The past few months have been taken up with various projects, among them, a batch of website and blog redesigns and overhauls. From here on out new posts apropos of the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, the general region of Far West Texas / Big Bend / Traspoecos, and my various works about it, will be posted at my main blog, Madam Mayo, and archived under "Texas."

One of the excellent things about having launched the migration of "Madam Mayo" from blogger to self-hosted WordPress is that I finally figured out how to make "pages," so there is a now a page devoted to all posts on Texas. 

Again, look for new posts over at Madam Mayo, category "Texas," and with tags including "Marfa" and "Big Bend."


This blog archive here on blogger will remain as is for as long as Google allows it. 

See also the main Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project page, with links to listen in anytime.


> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Claudio Saunt's WEST OF THE REVOLUTION

In his spendid and thoroughly original West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, historian Claudio Saunt does not get into Texas history (there is a lengthy chapter on an expedition out of New Mexico, however), but his book is nonetheless vital (and astonishing and entertaining) reading for anyone who would attempt to understand Texas. My review is now live at Literal magazine here. 

Notes on Tom Lea and his Epic Western, THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY

Over on my main blog, which posts every Monday, some notes on the great artist's novel of El Paso, that is, Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country.

The podcast series, after numerous elephantine interruptions, will resume shortly. Listen in anytime to the 20 podcasts that have been posted so far. Four more to go. Next up with be a visit to Bracketville.

MARFA FOR THE PERPLEXED by Lonn Taylor, Illustrated by Avram Dumitrescu

This is a mirror post from my main blog, Madam Mayo.

If you have any interest in Marfa, grab this book, and if you have never heard of Marfa, grab this book and you will be fascinated! I have yet to grab it myself, for it is hot off the presses from the Marfa Book Company, but I have already read most of it, as I have been an avid and long-time reader of historian Lonn Taylor's "Rambling Boy" columns, many about Marfa and its denizens, for the Big Bend Sentinel.

> Taylor also reads his columns for NPR here.

Taylor is a deeply knowledgable historian-- he made a distinguished career at the Smithsonian Institution before retiring to Far West Texas-- and a most elegant writer, ever curious and clear-eyed, and one--how rare this is!-- with a gentlemanly heart bigger than the world.

As for artist Avram Dumitrescu, two of his wild-eyed chicken paintings, red-white-and-blue like the Lone Star State's flag, are hanging on the wall in my Texas Bibliothek, exuding their magic "dino energy"! Viva!

From the catalog copy:

Marfa for the Perplexed, by Lonn Taylor, is a collection of 60 essays about people and places in and around Marfa, Texas. Due to the work there of the minimalist artist Donald Judd between 1972 and his death in 1994, Marfa (population 2,000), located 200 miles from the nearest commercial airport in Texas’s isolated Big Bend region, has become an international art center and, more recently, a hip tourist destination. Marfa for the Perplexed reveals that Marfa and the surrounding country has always been a place of refuge for eccentrics and individualists, many of whom you will meet in the book’s pages. It exposes the rich mix of cultures that underlies the current Marfa art scene - the real Marfa beyond the buzz.

Marfa for the Perplexed is illustrated by Alpine, Texas artist Avram Dumitrescu. The foreword is by Marfa’s Sterry Butcher, a frequent contributor to Texas Monthly and other publications. 

I am proud to say that Taylor and Dumitrescu both granted me interviews (Taylor here, in 2015, and Dumitrescu here in 2012) for my Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, which is apropos of my book in-progress-- despite the title of the podcast series, my book covers not only Marfa but the wider Big Bend / Trans-Pecos region, that is to say, Far West Texas.

> Lonn Taylor and Avram Dumitrescu talk about their book for Marfa Public Radio

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here. 

On Organizing (and Twice Moving) the Texas Bibliothek

[ The Texas Bibliothek, Ready to Ship.
Yes, it is big. Yes, I devour books like a ravenous owl.
Yes, this is my process.
I accumulated similar-sized working libraries
in writing some of my other books, e.g.,
Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California (2002);
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (2009); and
Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution (2014). ]

File this post under Future Reminder to Take My Own Advice, and if some or all of these ideas also work for you, gentle reader, verily I say unto you: Wunderbar!

Late last September, having finally rearranged and set up my working library in my new office in Mexico City-- the work in question being a book on Far West Texas-- I had to pack it all back up again and ship it across the Atlantic. (Why? Well, that story would make an epic novel I'm not going to write).

Now that I've got my Texas books resettled on their second set of new shelves in less than six months, I'm ready to take on 2018! But whew, I've got biceps after this job for a Hercules. The thirty-eight boxes of books comprising what I now call the Texas Bibliothek-- I have landed in German-speaking Switzerland-- arrived in mid-January. And a couple weeks later, every tome and paperback and pamphlet and back-issue of Cenizo Journal is in place, and I can carry my bike over head! I could scoop up and toss dessicated Christmas trees, small donkeys and their Schmutzlis out windows, too, should I take a notion!... ... Continue reading this post over at my main blog, "Madam Mayo"

Over at "Madam Mayo" Blog, "Three Fabulous Things About Ciudad Juárez"

New at my main blog, "Three Fabulous Things About Ciudad Juárez".

More anon.

Some Postcards from the Border Circa 1916

New at my main blog, Madam Mayo, "More Postcards from the US-Mexico Border."

More anon.

Notes on John Bigelow, Jr., Lieutenant in the Tenth Cavalry

Because of multiple household moves this year I am behind schedule with the podcasts and the book project, but it does march on. In the meantime, here is a post over on my main blog, Madam Mayo, about John Bigelow, Jr., an officer in the Tenth Cavalry and a person, as I will argue, of far more importance than has been previously recognized. He will appear in my book, and also in a paper I will be presenting at this month's Center fo Big Bend Studies Conference at Sul Ross State University.

(Stay tuned for podcast 21 on the Seminole Scouts, podcast 22 on Sanderson, 23 an interview with archaeologist Andy Cloud, and 24 on the Blue Lady, Maria de Agreda-- meanwhile, as always, I invite you to listen in any time to the 20 podcasts posted to date.)

NOTES ON JOHN BIGELOW, JR. AND "GARRISON TANGLES IN THE FRIENDLESS TENTH: THE JOURNAL OF FIRST LIEUTENANT JOHN BIGELOW, FORT DAVIS, TEXAS"

As those of you who follow this blog well know, I live in Mexico City and have been at work on a book about the Trans-Pecos (that, is Far West Texas) for more than a spell. Books on the Trans-Pecos are sparse on the ground south of the border, so when I travel to Texas I always try to scour a bookshop or three. Thus have I accumulated a working library, including not a few rare and unusual books. 

For this sort of project, archival research is also important to do-- and I have done some-- but it can be woefully expensive to travel to and spend time working through archives. So whenever an historian has taken the trouble to transcribe and publish anything relevant from any archive of interest to me, I am triply grateful for such a find.

One example is the work by Douglas C. McChristian, a retired research historian for the National Park Service: "Garrison Tangles in the Friendless Tenth: The Journal of First Lieutenant John Bigelow, Jr, Fort Davis, Texas," published as a chapbook of about 60 pages by J.M. Carroll & Co in 1985. The copy I found is in excellent condition with, halleluja, a mylar cover and autographed by the editor.

Why is this excerpt from Lieutenant Bigelow's diary, from 1884-1885 in Fort Davis, Texas, so interesting and important?

>> CONTINUE READING

Hiking and Haiku in the Guadalupe Mountains

This is a mirror post from my main blog, Madam Mayo:

McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Photo: C.M. Mayo

As those of you who follow this blog well know, I am at work on a book about Far West Texas and, as part of this work, back in May of this year, I was the artist-in-residence at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. About an hour and half drive east of El Paso, the Guadalupe Mountains are little visited, especially outside of holidays and weekends in the fall and spring seasons. Although I was there for the crush of Memorial Day weekend, it wasn't much of a crush; for the rest of my stay I often had trails all to myself-- except for the rattlesnakes. I happened upon two rattlesnakes in my two weeks, one curled up in the middle of the trail; the other darted out right in front of me, rattling loudly, from the brush. It's not Disneyland out there.

I'll be writing about the Guadalupe Mountains at length, but here I'd like to share a photo of my official donation to the park. All artists-in-residence give a workshop, and donate a work or art-- in my case, it will be a framed letterpress broadsheet of seven haiku, "In the Guadalupe Mountains."

The first haiku from "In the Guadalupe Mountains" by C.M. Mayo

This letterpress printing was done by Matthew Kelsey of Saratoga, California. Poets and others, I warmly recommend Matt Kelsey, he is a master craftsman and a pleasure to work with. The frame, being made here in Mexico City, is in-progress.

The seventh haiku from "In the Guadalupe Mountains" by C.M. Mayo

> Visit my poetry page here. I'll be posting the haiku there.

P.S. Last fall one of the artists-in-residence  in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park was one of my very favorite painters, Mary Baxter of Marfa, Texas. Listen in to my interview with her here. Check out her landscapes, many of the Guadalupe Mountains, here.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

For the Vivid Dreamer: 

Notes for My Writing Workshop in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park

My Review of Patrick Dearen's 

BITTER WATERS: THE STRUGGLES OF THE PECOS RIVER

Blood Over Salt in Borderlands Texas:

Q & A with Paul Cool about SALT WARRIORS

Nature and Travel Writing in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park

El Capitan from the Pine Springs Station,
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas

(This is a mirror post from my main blog, Madam Mayo.)

This past weekend for my workshops as artist-in-residence at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park I offered this handout which includes three brief, fun, easy-peasy and yet powerfully effective exercises to rev up your writerly perceptions.

We can think of the best writing about nature and travel, whether fiction or nonfiction, as instructions for the reader to form in his or her mind a "vivid dream," an experience of the world. How do we, whether as readers, or as any human being (say, folding laundry or maybe digging for worms with a stick), experience anything? Of course, we experience the world through our bodies, that is to say, through our senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing-- and I would add a "gut" or intuitive sense as well... CONTINUE READING

P.S. Loads more resources for writers on my workshop page.

> Some of my travel writing is here, here, and here.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Q & A with Mary S. Black about Her Book "From the Frio to Del Rio"

Just posted over on my main every-Monday blog, Madam Mayo:

One of my very favorite places not just in Texas but in the galaxy is the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, so I was delighted to see that Texas A & M Press has published Mary S. Black's splendid and much-needed guidebook, From the Frio to Del Rio: Travel Guide to the Western Hill Country and Lower Pecos Canyonlands. 

From the catalog:

"Each year, more than two million visitors enjoy the attractions of the Western Hill Country, with Uvalde as its portal, and the lower Pecos River canyonlands, which stretch roughly along US 90 from Brackettville, through Del Rio, and on to the west. Amistad National Recreation Area, the Judge Roy Bean Visitors’ Center and Botanical Garden, Seminole Canyon State Park, and the Briscoe-Garner Museum in Uvalde, along with ghost towns, ancient rock art, sweeping vistas, and unique flora and fauna, are just a few of the features that make this distinctive section of the Lone Star State an enticing destination.

Mary S. Black
Author of Peyote Fire
and
From the Frio to Del Rio

"Now, veteran writer, blogger, and educator Mary S. Black serves up the best of this region’s special adventures and secret treasures. From the Frio to Del Rio is chock-full of helpful maps, colorful photography, and tips on where to stay, what to do, and how to get there. In addition there are details for 10 scenic routes, 3 historic forts and 7 state parks and other recreation areas."

Herewith an interview with the author:

C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write this book? 

MARY S. BLACK: I think what inspired me was the land itself, and the history. The Lower Pecos Canyonlands are not well known by most people, but the landscape is incredibly majestic and unexpected. You can be driving 70 miles per hour down the highway through the desert, when, wham, a huge canyon veers off to the left like a sudden tear in the earth.  ... CONTINUE READING 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

P.S. For the second half of this month I am artist-in-residence at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. I'll be giving a free travel and nature writing workshop, probably over Memorial Day weekend. Details to be announced shortly. And yes, the Marfa Mondays podcasts will resume ASAP. Twenty have been posted to date, four more are in-process for a total of 24. Listen in anytime here.

Curly Tail Panther and White Shaman, 

Two Stunning Rock Art Sites in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on 

the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

Blood Over Salt: Q & A with Paul Cool about "Salt Warriors"

Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River by Patrick Dearen

When I closed the cover of Patrick Dearen's Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River it was with both gratitude and the unsettling sense of having arrived into new territory— raw, rich, appalling—in my understanding of Far West Texas. This is no minor thing to acknowledge; for some years now I have been at work on a book about that very region.

But first, for those who don't have a jones for, shall we say, Wild Westerie, why bring Far West Texas into the cross hairs? And why give a hoededo about its skinny river so salty, to quote one of Dearen's informants, that "a snake wouldn't drink it"?  CONTINUE READING

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

A Visit to "The Equestrian" in El Paso

This finds me working on the book on Far West Texas, and about to resume the Marfa Mondays podcasts (20 podcasts posted so far, 4 more to go, listen in anytime). I just posted a brief video of my visit last November to see, among other wonders and curiosities, a most extraordinary and controversial statue at the El Paso International Airport.

Because of the way it is placed, directly behind a grove of extra-fluffy trees, and at the entrance where most drivers, speeding in, are on the lookout for signs, such as rental car return, departures, arrivals or parking, I daresay few passersby would even notice the statue. I myself drove by it more times that I would like to admit before I realized it was there.

Here's my 3 minute video:



... Continue reading this post my main blog, Madam Mayo.

The Mexican Revolution at the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas

[[ WASHI & ULI, stop those suitcases! ]]

I have been visiting Alpine, Texas for the annual Center for Big Bend Studies conference to talk about Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Check out the conference, which is rich with archaeology and history and more on the Big Bend but also the wider region of West Texas and encompassing parts of the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, here. 

>> Continue reading this post over at my main blog, Madam Mayo

A Visit to Allá in Santa Fe

Yes, the focus of this "Marfa Mondays" blog, the podcast series, and the book-in-progress is Far West Texas or Trans-Pecos Texas. But this region is economically, culturally and altogether every way connected to that string of towns and pueblos along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, and that includes Santa Fe, New Mexico. So with that as justification I present this brief blog post on Allá-- excerpted from a longer post over on my main blog, Madam Mayo, about the recent Women Writing the West conference.

A VISIT TO ALLÁ, THE BEST SPANISH LANGUAGE BOOKSTORE NORTH OF THE BORDER

So many writers and translators over the years have told me about Allá (I mean you, José Skinner, Raymond Caballero, Patricia Dubrava...) I could not imagine visiting Santa Fe without seeing it. I had heard that Allá was on the southwest corner of the Plaza, but on my previous visit to Santa Fe, I couldn't find it. This time, armed with the precise address, 102 West San Francisco St, and my smartphone's map app, I discovered that it is a little ways past southwest corner of the Plaza, and you won't find a sign on the street. However, as you can see in the photo below, there is a reference— Allá Arte- Libros - Música— pasted in between some steps on the stairs. 

So head on up to the second floor, hang a right, and there you may enter into the bright warren of rooms all filled with tesoros, both literary and scholarly—and if you're lucky, meet the owner himself, James J. Dunlap.

Yes, here you can find Mexican writers such as Agustín Cadena and Mónica Lavín. And bless his corazón, he had books on Mexico in English by my amigos, Bruce Berger and David Lida and... drumrrrrrrroll... he had two of my books sitting out on the table, Mexico A Traveler's Literary Companion and Sky Over El Nido, and he said he had just recently sold another title, Miraculous Air, my memoir of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. 

[[ JAMES J. DUNLAP, ALLÁ IN SANTA FE ]]

Speaking of miracles, my luggage accommodated the pile of books I hauled out of there, including some Mexican scholarly works on the Apaches and Comanches that, from Mexico City, I have been trying to hunt down for over a year. Somehow I also took home a fat hardcover first edition of a memoir of life among some indigenous people in Tierra del Fuego. Visit Allá at your own risk! If you dare, tell Jim that Mayo told you to ask about a-gogo and psícadelico. 


> See also the article by Uriel J. Garcia in Santa Fe New Mexican, "Allá Bookstore is Santa Fe Man's Portal to Latin America"
> Your comments are always very welcome. Write to me here.

> The much-delayed Marfa Mondays Podcast 21 is almost ready to post. Meanwhile, listen in to the other 20 podcasts anytime here.

Peyote and the Perfect You

Podcast #20 Raymond Caballero on 

Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas

Podcast # 13 Looking at Mexico in New Ways:

An Interview with John Tutino

Literary Travel Writing: Notes on Process and the Digital Revolution

[[ Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site in Far West Texas.

Confession: After I snapped this photo with my iPhone I checked my email
-- just to see if I could! Alas, I could.]]

The aim of literary travel writing was-- and remains-- to bring the reader to deeply notice, that is, get out of her head and into the world of specific sounds, smells, tastes, textures, colors, ideas, histories, geographies, geologies... In the words of Kenneth Smith, "You have to open space, and deepen place."  >> CONTINUE READING AT MY MAIN BLOG, "MADAM MAYO"

Cymru & Comanche: Cyberflanerie

So "Cymru," the name for Wales in the Welsh language, is pronounced kum-ree. (Whodathunk?)

I have finished reading the excellent albeit doorstop-esque The Last of the Celts by Marcus Tanner. If you have been following this blog, you know that I am at work on a book about Far West Texas, so you might be wondering, why the interest in the Celts? Of course, many Texans are descendants of Celts-- Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, above all. 

But it's more than this.

Sometimes one's thinking, stuck in a cultural rut, needs to unlimber.  Reading into deep and/or lateral history gives one a freshly off-kilter look at what it means to be human, and it highlights forgotten or overlooked connections among now diverse peoples. Such as among, oh, say, Texians and Comanches.

>> CONTINUE READING OVER AT MY MAIN BLOG, "MADAM MAYO"

The Sierra Madera Astrobleme (What's an Astrobleme?)

[This is a mirror post from my main blog, Madam Mayo.]

[[ Sierra Madera Astrobleme. Photo by C.M. Mayo. ]]

As those of you who have been following this blog know, I am at work on a book about Far West Texas and, apropos of that, hosting the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project. So in addition to reading about Far West Texas and related subjects, and interviewing artists and many other interesting people, I've been doing a heap of driving all over the place out there. 

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.]

[ Sierra Madera Astrobleme ]

[ Sierra Madera Astrobleme, 
off US-385 etween Fort Stockton and Marathon, Texas ] 

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 have been searching the literature and have yet to come upon any description beyond "approximately spherical."

What was going on at the time? 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. 

The literature 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, no dice. Undoubtedly, the blast was analogous to some flabbergastingly large quantity of TNT.

Dear reader, if you have more information about the Sierra Madera Astrobleme, please do write.

Informative links:

> University of Texas of the Permian Basin webpage on the Sierra Madera Astrobleme
All the crunchy geology. Plus the hypothetical reconstruction of the event.

>  "Hydrocone Modeling of the Sierra Madera Impact Structure" by Tamara J. Goldin et al. Meteoritics and Planetary Science, 2006.
Extra-crunchy.

> "Geology of the Sierra Madera Cryptoexplosion Structure, Pecos County, Texas" by H.G. Wilshire, et al. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 599, 1972.
Extra-extra-crunchy with shatter cones.

> 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."

> Purdue University's Impact Earth! Famous Craters page. 
Alas, it does not include the Sierra Madera Astrobleme. But fascinating nonetheless.

> Astronaut's Guide to Terrestrial Impact Craters by R.A.F. Grieve, et al. LP Technical Report Number 88-03, Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA, 1988
(See Sierra Madera, p. 13.)


P.S. Wiggy synchronicity du jour: Given that the Sierra Madera Astrobleme is near the Glass Mountains, it raised my eyebrows, rather somewhat, to come upon this webpage with the Ames Astrobleme Museum and the Gloss Mountains of Oklahoma:

> Your comments are always most welcome. Write to me here.
> Newsletter goes out soon-ish. I welcome you to sign up here.

Cyberflanerie: Solitario Dome Edition

Marfa Mondays #9: Mary Baxter on Painting the Big Bend

Marfa Mondays #16: Tremendous Forms: 

Paul V. Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape

THE COMANCHE EMPIRE by Pekka Hämäläinen

(This is a mirror post from my main blog, Madam Mayo.)

Book Review by C.M. Mayo
August 1, 2016

THE COMANCHE EMPIRE
by Pekka Hämäläinen
Yale University, 2008
ISBN 978-0-300-15117-6

The cover of Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire, of a ghost-white warrior with a trio of blood-red slashes down his cheek, is as arresting as the argument that, as it opens, the Comanches' was "an American empire that, according to conventional histories, did not exist."
In the United States public discourse conflates wildly heterogenous groups into easy categories— Native American, white, black, and so on and so forth— and then, with school board-approved narratives as mortar, we construct colossal political edifices. In their shadows, alas, many of us are blind to the complexities in our society and history. The complexities are riotous. And when we shine a light on but one of them— as Finnish historian Hämäläinen has in this brilliant study of Comanche hegemony— suddenly our easy categories and well-worn narratives may look strange, deeply wrong.

As those of you who follow this blog well know, I am at work on a book about Far West Texas, that is, Texas west of the Pecos River. Anyone who heads out there, especially to the remote Big Bend, hears about Comanches, e.g., they crossed the Río Grande here, they watered their horses there. But the Comanches, an equestrian Plains people who hunted the buffalo, were latecomers to the Trans-Pecos. They did not settle there; they trekked through it on the Comanche Trail (more aptly, network of trails) on their way to raid in northern Mexico. They returned driving immense herds of horses and kidnapped Apache and Mexican women and children in tow, for markets up north around Taos, New Mexico, and Big Timbers on the Arkansas, which garnered them metal tools, cooking pots, corn and other carbohydrates, textiles, and above all, guns and ammunition.

The Comanche were raiding south of the Río Grande as early as the 1770s, but their large-scale raiding in northern Mexico commenced in the 1820s, plunging deep into Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Durango, Zacatecas and, in the 1840s, as far as Jalisco and the major central market and manufacturing city of Querétaro. This systematic "mass violence" which left the northern realm of the Mexican economy crippled and its people demoralized, turned it into what Hämäläinen terms "an extension of Greater Comanchería." Hence, by the late 1840s, when the U.S. Army invaded Mexico, what they were really invading was, to quote Hämäläinen, "the shatterbelt of Native American power." But this is to get ahead of the story. >>> CONTINUE READING

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

> Newsletter here.

Peyote and the Perfect You: Some Notes

Brief video of Casa Piedra Road, part of the Comanche Trail

Brief video of Plains Indian (and other) rock art at Meyers Spring

Tremendous Forms: 

Paul V. Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape