By happy chance, official business brung me through Bastrop today, and the locales of this narrative are sorta between Bastrop and San Antone. Finishing in early afternoon, I was able to cover the route in daylight, though the skies were grey with rain (a pleasant sight around these parts).
First off, for reference, here's the map again."
If you should heed the comment made by a poster earlier in this thread about writing your own book,your penchant for actually visiting the places you write about will serve you well.You won't make as many stupid statements as are found in "Empire of the summer moon".
Rivers and mountains don't move much over the course of a hundred years and when an author is careless enough with the placement of them,I question the authenticity of other un-documented statements he makes.Even Gwyne's choice of source material is suspect.He titles one of his chapters,"The Salt Creek Massacre" , and in his notes he mentions that it is often called;"The Warren Wagon Train Massacre".
A minimum amount of research , or a visit to the area would instantly reveal that "Warren" is the correct reference for the event he describes.The real "Salt Creek Massacre" actually happened , but was several miles to the WNW of the Warren event.What Gwyne has done with this error in his popular book is to obliterate the real Salt Sreek event by giving it's name to the Warren event.
His other errors-such as placing the Wichita River in Oklahoma - are just bothersome but won't likely perpetuate the error by future writers.[No,it wasn't a typo where he meant "Washita",in his narrative he runs the Wichita Northeastward into Indian Territory]
When he lets his imagination fill in the gaps between two sources,he displays his geographical ignorance in quite a few places.Here are just a few corrections:
The Red River didn't "carve out Palo Duro Canyon" like the Colorado carved out the Grand Canyon.The Red [arguably] originates in the Palo Duro.
You can't reach Ft Belknap by "traveling 8 miles on South after crossing the Red".
I gotta go pick up "Punkin",she's too sick to go to daycare.
