At this point I have three of Moore's excellent "Savage Frontier" series of four books minutely detailing the Texas Fronter 1837-45. I'm waiting on "Volume Two: 1838-39", with the intent of trying to piece together a coherent narrative of Jack Hay's rangering career, something which appears to be otherwise sadly lacking in print.
But if anyone in print has it it would be Moore, him being a real historian, guys like me merely reading books by guys like him.
Speaking of books, I came across this in Frederick Law Olmstead's "A Journey Through Texas". Olmstead, the guy who would later design NYC's Central Park and the park around Niagara Falls, travelled clear across the State as it was in 1856-57 and left us a wonderfully detailed narrative.
In the Spring of 1857 he travelled from San Antonio to Eagle Pass, 100 miles upriver (west) of Laredo, and then crossed the river and travelled maybe fifty miles into Mexico, south of the Border.
Bear in mind this was Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras, at one time ground zero for Comanche incursions into Mexico, Northern Mexico by this time in the popular Texas narrative being a depopulated, terror-stricken wasteland ravaged by Comanches.
Yet from Olmstead, describing his return to the Piedras Negras/Rio Grande area, we get this....
They had no horses for sale, but further back from the river there were large stocks, whence herds were constantly driven into Texas. They were sold at six dollars the head, a mare with her colt counting as one, and one stallion being added without charge to every twenty head purchased.
They are broken on the road, the Mexican drivers receiving one dollar per day for this work.
Sorta reminiscent of those Mexican ox carts quietly plying their trade across South Texas throughout the worst of the Frontier era, that freighting trade being the economic lifeline of San Antonio:
Here also we have the spectacle of herds of horses "constantly" (and peaceably) driven into Texas by Mexicans for purposes of trade, from the area south of Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras almost certainly for sale in San Antonio.
In the popular, two-dimensional Texas narrative, this doesn't happen.
Birdwatcher
