The Hunting of the Buffalo, originally published in 1929, tells all about the marvelous and useful animal that once roamed the American plains. Its gradual extermination is chronicled by E. Douglas Branch, who drew on rich materials, including Indian legends, old letters and diaries, and tales of frontier travelers. No one has ever written more memorably about the great herds, their habits and haunts, their importance to the Indians, their discovery by awed whites, their decimation by huge cultural and economic forces. E. Douglas Branch (1905-1954) is also the author of The Cowboy and His...

J. Frank Dobie's history of the "mustang"-from the Spanish mestena, an animal belonging to (but strayed from) the Mesta, a medieval association of Spanish farmers-tells of its impact on the Spanish, English, and Native cultures of the West. J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) was for many years secretary-editor of the Texas Folklore Society, taught at universities in Texas and Oklahoma as well as in England, Germany, and Austria, and wrote seventeen books on Texas and southwestern life, including The Voice of the Coyote, available in a Bison Books edition. Dayton O. Hyde is a rancher, conservationist,...

In The Voice of the Coyote, J. Frank Dobie melds natural history with tales and lore in articulating the complex and often contentious relationship between coyotes and humans. Based on his own life experiences in Texas and twenty-five years of research, Dobie forges a sympathetic and nuanced picture of the coyote prefiguring later environmental and conservation movements. He recognizes the impact of human action on the coyote while also examining the prominent role of the coyote in the myths and legends of the West.

"James Cook came west before he reached his teens, and his life encompassed most of the raw material that today comprises our mythology: trail driving, scouting, big-game hunting, Apaches, ranching, drought, desert and cow-country interest. All of these he not only saw but was actively engaged in."--San Francisco Chronicle

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas Rangers charged with border patrol under the command of L. H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas under Juan Cortina and others were raiding settlers on both sides of the Rio Grande. McNelly's Rangers stormed into this lawless area for two reasons, according to Jennings: "To have fun, and to carry out a set policy of terrorizing the Mexicans at every opportunity", which would gain them the...

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society includes the play-party in Oklahoma; folklore of Texas birds; tall tales for the tenderfeet; fishback yarns from the Sulphurs; Cajun stories of Bolivar's Peninsula; Paul Bunyan; pioneer folk tales; folk anecdotes; the Texas pecan; African-American folk songs of Texas; old Nacogdoches; ghosts of Lake Jackson; how the polecat got his scent; characteristics of cowboy songs; ballads and songs of the frontier folk, and other tales.

This especially substantial folkish son-of-a-gun stew concocted by J. Frank Dobie and associates is distinguished by a wide variety of materials, ranging from the simplest recording of single items, like anecdotes, folk remedies or sayings, through the skillfully retold primitive legend, to the scientific, though quite idiomatic, anthropological report, and to the scholarly analysis of the philosophy of the folk. The theme and hero of the volume, Old Man Coyote, is animal and folk character. Indian legends are well represented in Coyote Wisdom, a Publication of the Texas Folklore...

A Publication of the Texas Folklore Society, which examines how Texans of many races have shaped their lives and shaped the state.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society has been the standard work on the subject. Included are fascinating folk narratives of buried treasure and lost mines; legends of the supernatural; legends of lovers; pirates and pirate treasure in legend; legendary origins of Texas flowers, names, and streams. Over one hundred legends are included as they were recorded by more than twenty-five folklore collectors from every part of Texas.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a miscellany of Texas and Southwestern folklore collected and written by ten folklorists in 1925. Included are articles on Mexican popular ballad; Spanish songs of New Mexico; versos of the Texas vaqueros; reptile myths; the cowboy dance of the northwest; superstitions of the Northern Seas; oil field diction; folk tales of the Chibcha nation; the human hand in primitive art; and Indian pictographs near Lange's Mill. It also includes "When the Woods Were Burnt," by L. W. Payne Jr., the first pamphlet of the Texas Folklore Society.