Volume VII, December, 1894: “It has been likened to a number of musical

instruments, by a few to the soft, sweet notes of the Aeolian harp.” This last is the sound most frequently heard by Mr. J. W. Morris of Freeport, though he also mentions the violin, the flute, and the human voice.

There is equal variation, indeed contradiction, in accounts of the time when the music may be heard. Mrs. West, who grew up on the San Bernard, says that the music may be heard by day or by night, though not continuously or regularly even by those who “believe in it.” This testimony is corroborated by Mr. F. D. Letts, an abstract of whose article, published years ago in the Galveston Daily News, has been supplied by Mr. E. G. Littlejohn. Mr. Wilson, in the article referred to above, states that it is audible at night only, and can be heard most distinctly when the moon is full. Miss Lorene Cook, who lived for a time at the mouth of the river, limits the music strictly to the time of the full moon, between the hours of twelve and one. Mr. Morris, in three separate accounts, published in the Freeport Facts, 1922, records impressions of the music at night, but does not expressly state that it cannot be heard during the day.

One point of interest, to which several auditors testify, is the permeating quality of the music. Some of them, in attempting to describe this quality, fall back upon other senses than hearing. Mrs. West says that she could almost see the sound, which began softly, as if at an elevation, and slowly came down to the boat. Miss Cook reports that the sound was “so close at times that I felt as if I could touch it with my hands.” Mr. Wilson’s article contains this sentence: “On first coming within its limits, one can easily perceive that it proceeds from under the water, but in a short while it is impossible to locate it, as it gets under the seats, in the bow and in all parts of the boat, overhead and around; in fact, it seems to pervade the atmosphere.”

I have heard of no apparitions in connection with the music except those seen by Mrs. West’s mother and brother. However, as they illustrate very well the workings of folk imagination, I record them here. Mrs. West’s mother, Mrs. Mary Ducroz, was one of a considerable party rowing at midnight on the river. Just as the boat drew over Music Bend she saw a man, with a bridle over his arm, come down to the water, turn, and go back into the woods. She could see only the upper part of his body. He seemed not to walk but to glide. He was not visible to any other member of the party, though Mrs. Ducroz tried very hard to make the others see him. She is quite certain about having seen him herself, as the moon was very bright. At another time Mrs. West’s brother, then a boy of fourteen years, was riding horseback at night when he saw before him a man and a woman sitting in the middle of the road. They did not seem to see at all a very large ant bed just in front of them. The boy had seen the ant bed many times in passing along the same road. Now he saw the most beautiful horse he had ever seen, dappled gray, tied with an extremely large and knotted rope to a tree at the side of the road. The horse evidently belonged to the man and woman who were sitting in the middle of the public way. The boy urged his horse forward, but the horse refused to go. Then the boy remembered that he was just above the ghostly Music Bend, and turned his horse about.

To Mrs. West I am also indebted for a relation of the effect of the music upon some of those who have heard it. When she was a child, an old gentleman boarded for a time at her father’s house. The old gentleman used to row out over the Bend day after day on the chance of hearing the music, and return at night to tell his hosts that surely they imagined the music. They knew that they did not imagine the music, but thought that perhaps the old gentleman could not hear it, as it is not given to all to hear such ghostly music. One evening, however, he came back in terror. Suddenly, as his boat was over the Bend, he had begun to tremble as if in a chill, and his hat seemed to rise from his head. At once he had begun to hear the sweetest and most terrible music that ever he had heard. He never wished to hear it again. In 1920—Mrs. West is again my informant—two girls were drowned in the San Bernard; and when the searchers told of finding the bodies, they told also of hearing the most beautiful funeral music that ever they had heard. But it was music that they hoped never to hear again.

The real legend of the music is the story of its origin. The several versions have only one point of identity: that a fiddler who played on the bank in life plays on in the waters in death; and in one version the fiddler played from a boat. One common story is that two men who froze to death beneath a tree at Music Bend were fiddlers. As Miss Lorene Cook has heard the tale, an old hermit fiddler was murdered by pirates who sought refuge in the San Bernard River during a storm. Mr. Wilson’s account explains: “The negroes really believe it to be a ghost. They say that many years ago, on a dark and stormy night ... a sloop with two sailors aboard ... was forced to seek shelter in the San Bernard; that one of the sailors was a fiddler, and that as soon as the winds began to lay, he began to fiddle for joy; that his mate, desiring to sleep, was so enraged that he attempted to stop him by force, and that in the scuffle the fiddler fell overboard and was drowned; that the other sailor, while angry, threw the fiddle and bow into the river; and that on that very night the ghost of the dead sailor played so touchingly that the living mate could not sleep, and that every night since then it has played the same tune, again and again.”

In most of the stories the musician lived alone at the Bend. The most romantic of them is that retold by Mr. J. W. Morris in the Freeport Facts with certain variations. “In life the musician lost his fiancée a few hours before they were to have been married. She walked to the river to pluck a white water-lily to braid in her shining hair for the marriage, but as she reached for the flower, a snake head sprang forth and bit her on her white neck and she fell dead in the water.” The musician then threw himself, with his violin, into the river. According to another account of Mr. Morris’ the lover moved to a small island in the stream, and there lived. At his death his violin and bow were buried with him, and still he plays strange, sweet music.

Another version of the love legend has been contributed by Miss Sarah S. King of San Antonio, who heard the story from Miss Arline Rather. In it the maiden was accustomed to go to the stream each evening for water, and there to meet her lover. One day an arrow struck her down. Her lover, approaching, called and played his liveliest tunes, and then found her dead in the waist-high ferns. As in the preceding account, the musician then flung his violin and himself into the river.

The version supplied by Mr. E. G. Littlejohn has considerable circumstantial detail. According to this account, the young hermit, son of a wealthy Eastern gentleman, had been jilted in a love affair, and had come to the lonely hut on the San Bernard in hope of forgetting his grief. This was long before Texas gained her independence. The young gentleman was a violinist of so much repute that the officers of a military post in Central Texas sent two troopers to engage his services for a ball. They found the violinist lying dead upon the floor, and near him an ax covered with congealed blood. His murderer had taken from the shack everything of value, even wearing apparel, except the violin, which hung still in its accustomed place on the wall. The troopers buried the body under an oak tree, and took the violin and private papers to the commanding officer of the fort. But on a spirit violin the young hermit has played for a century.

THE DEATH BELL OF THE BRAZOS

By Bertha McKee Dobie

[More than one early Texan was concerned with slave-running. Yoakum [105] says that the three Bowies, Rezin, James, and John, made sixty-five thousand dollars in this trade. Fannin also ran slaves, operating from Cuba to Texas under the name of J. F. Walker. With him, as with others, the Brazos was a port of entry. Writing from “Velasco, Rio Brazos, Prov. Texas, Aug. 27, 1835,” he says: “My last voyage from the island of Cuba (with 152) succeeded admirably.” [106] On May 26, 1837, it was reported from New Orleans to the British minister, Pakenham, that “some slaves were brought from Cuba and landed in Texas by the Am. Schooners Waterwich and Emperor. A some few Months ago a Cargo was run at the Brazos River by a Vessel under the Texas Colors.” [107] Until a few years ago the ruins of a house near Velasco were pointed out as marking the habitation of a man whose business had been the buying and distributing of smuggled slaves.

Charles D. Hudgins, a lawyer who grew up near the mouth of the Brazos, says in his book of poems called The Maid of San Jacinto: “It is said that shortly after Texas obtained her independence, a ship loaded with slaves from Africa was chased into the Brazos by a United States man of war; that she had a number of sick negroes on board; that the well negroes were landed and hurried through the woods, while the sick ones were weighed down with chains and thrown into the river.” [108]

However, Mr. Hudgins does not connect the “mysterious music” of the Brazos with the slave ship, though such a connection is common in the vicinity. He continues: “Three miles above the mouth of the Brazos River is what is known as the haunted Labore. Twain causes conspire to give rise to the superstition among the ignorant with regard to this spot. The first is a grave near the bank of the stream; the second is a peculiar humming noise, that can be heard there on still summer nights—this noise is soft, like the notes of an Aeolian harp, and superstition, coupling it with the grave, has woven many a tale of the haunted Labore.”[108]—Editor.]

This legend is set down in the words of Mrs. A. F. Shannon of Velasco.

“This is the account I heard as a child of the music in the Brazos. About 1836 or 1838 Texas passed a law forbidding the bringing of slaves from Africa. But boats, slave runners they were called, used to come from Africa to Cuba and wait there until they thought they could slip across the Gulf. One of these ships with three hundred slaves nailed down into the hold—they brought them over like freight—put into the Brazos. But before it could reach the safety of the timber, it was followed by—I don’t know exactly what it was, whether it was a revenue cutter or what, but anyway a government boat. This boat gained on the slave ship, and seeing that they were lost, the crew of the slave ship scuttled it, and it went down with its three hundred negroes in the hold, at Seaview Bend, about four miles from Quintana.

“When I was a child we could hear every evening at sunset the ringing of a great bell. Very plain it was. The negroes called it ‘the death bell.’ Mammy Kitty had stayed on with my grandmother after the Civil War, and when I was a child was about eighty or ninety years old and always sat in the ‘chimley corner.’ Every day when the bell tolled at sunset I would run to Mammy Kitty and put my head in her lap. She would run her hands over my head and croon until the bell stopped. The other negroes whispered ‘the death bell,’ and stood still while it rang. They thought the bell was ringing for the three hundred negroes in the scuttled ship. And then whenever we passed over Seaview Bend we could hear faint music like that of a guitar played at a distance. Since the jetties have been built and there has been so much traffic on the river, the music has gone away, and I have seen no one who has heard it of late years. I know now that ‘the death bell’ must have been the sunset bell of a big sugar plantation ten or twelve miles up the river. The water carried the sound down. But I still hear the death bell ringing in my ears and feel Mammy Kitty’s hand passing over my head.”

THE LEGEND OF THE SALT MARSHES (SAN LUIS PASS, BRAZORIA COUNTY)

By Bertha McKee Dobie

This legend was told me by Mrs. A. F. Shannon of Velasco. San Luis Pass is the narrow entrance from the Gulf into a small and sheltered bay on the Texas coast. It is a wild and mournful spot, where sea gulls scream and breakers roar. It is especially wild and mournful when the wind is east, as the few settlers say. Then three great billows roll in successively from the Gulf, overtake each other on the bar, and break together with the sound of thunder. This breaking together of the billows is called the boor [109] on the bar.

A great many years ago a fisherman lived with his wife and young child at the Pass. One day when the wind was east and the boor was on the bar, he went out in his boat to fish. The wind blew stronger, the billows rose higher, and a great tide came in, flooding the salt marshes that border the Pass. The fisherman did not return. A few days later other fishermen found the young wife, quite demented, wandering in the salt marshes and calling, “Come back! Come back!” Since that time, when the wind is east and the boor is on the bar, the white form of the woman flits over the marshes and cries, “Come back! Come back!” in warning to fishermen whose boats are on the water.

It is probable that the white wings and the hoarse cries of the giant gulls that come in to the marshes only when there is a high east wind and the lives of fishermen are threatened have given rise to this legend of the salt marshes. Such an explanation, at least, was suggested to Mrs. Shannon by Mr. Lon Follet.

RHYMES OF GALVESTON BAY

By John P. Sjolander

Years ago, when I used to run vessels on Galveston Bay and along the coast, I gathered up some stories told by old boatmen on nights when we lay wind-bound. Later I put them into rhyme and I may have tried to ornament them with some phrases of my own. Some of the “Rhymes” were published in the Galveston News, 1910, and later came out in the Texas Magazine (Houston).

THE BOAT THAT NEVER SAILED

(Note: In the early 70’s the hull of a boat, all overgrown with vines and briers, was found at a place then known as Hungry Cove, on San Jacinto Bay. The story of it was told me by an old boatman who had been a settler of that section of the country for many years.)

Like the moan of a ghost that is doomed to rove, Is the voice of the wind in Hungry Cove.

And the brier bites with a sharper thorn Than the fang of hate, or the tooth of scorn.

And the twining vines are as cunningly set As ever a poacher placed snare or net.

And the waves are hushed, and they move as slow As fugitives making headway, tiptoe.

For Nature remembers, as well as Man, The time and the place, and the Mary Ann.

The time, man-measured, was long ago, Some seventy fleeting years, or so.

The place, where the sea was with light agleam, And the shore shone white as a maiden’s dream.

And the Mary Ann—how a prayer prevailed!— Was the name of the boat that never sailed.

For the men who built it, a blackguard twain, Had taken a maiden’s pure name in vain.

And she prayed that for taunts, and for many mocks, The boat would not move from its building blocks.

But the builders laughed at the maiden’s prayer, And spit on her name they had painted there.

And they swore, in defiance of God and man, They would launch the boat they had named Mary Ann.

But when they stood ready at stern and stem, The boat fell down on the heads of them.

And no one came to where crushed they lay, And no one will come until judgment day.

For their guards are briers with thorns that bite With a pain as keen as the sting of spite.

And their only dirge is the song of the loon, When the sea is black, in the dark of the moon.

THE PADRE’S BEACON [110]

(Note: Boatmen, at night, staring into the fog and haze in search of certain marks and objects, often think to see them, only to have them disappear again when they blink their eyes. These visual illusions are called Padre’s Beacons. An old boatman, many years ago, told how the name originated, and his story is here set down in rhyme.)

With eager eyes an Indian peered Into the darkness of the night, And his canoe he swiftly sheered From right to left, from left to right; For lost within the blinding fog, He saw the mad waves roll and toss, And found both snag and sunken log But not the Padre’s beacon cross.

He dipped his paddle in the sea, And found its depth now less, now more; And where he thought the Pass would be He only found a weedstrewn shore. He questioned of the hidden star, And counseled with the waning moon, But found no answer, near or far, Only the lone cry of the loon.

And he had steered by wave and wind To where the beacon cross should be, That marked the place where all might find The way into the Trinity. For there, ’mong cypress trees grown gray, The padre’s little hut showed white, Beneath a shining cross by day, And in a taper’s gleam by night.

But vandal hands had cut adrift The padre’s beacon in the night, And without prayer, and without shrift, A sea wrecked soul at dawn took flight. And now who sails the bay at night, And scans the dark with eager eyes, Out of the sea, grown gray with light, Can see a beacon cross arise.

For since that night long, long ago, When clouds hang wide and fogs lie deep, For him that laid that beacon low There is no rest in death, or sleep; All night he lifts it from the sea, All night he strives, and strives in vain; He stands it up, but when set free It sinks into the sea again.

BAFFLE POINT

(Baffle Point is on the north side of Bolivar peninsula, in what is known as East Bay. Many small sail-boats have been dismasted and upset in the vicinity of this point.)

A boatman loved a maiden, long ago, And good and fair was she; A maiden loved a boatman, even so, And strong and true was he; And one dark night the lovers sailed away To where the good priest dwelt, across the bay.

A father’s heart grew fierce with raging hate, And cruel as could be; But he would plan and work, and work and wait— A cunning man was he; He swore that boatmen all, excepting none, Should penance pay for the sin of one.

He planned and worked, and then he worked and planned, Not idle night or day; Sentinel sandhills raised he on the strand In some mysterious way; On sloping hills he planted phantom trees That changed their shapes with every changing breeze.

Now when the south wind, singing, came inshore, As gentle as could be, For it he opened wide a cavern door That none but him could see; And then the trees would groan, and cringe, and sway, Casting long shadows over shore and bay.

When the work was done as he had planned, He laughed and danced in glee; Then as the waters of the bay he scanned, A boat his eyes did see; And then the south wind in the cavern pent Over the hills down to the sea he sent.

When he saw the wind in madness reel, And strike the little boat, And how down went the mast and up the keel, A glad cry left his throat. The waters grew quiet and dull as a sea of lead; A man and woman at his feet lay dead.

By them, some boatmen found him, long ago, As dead as he could be; Deep, deep, they dug two graves, and all arow At night they buried three. Since then the winds are ever out of joint, And play strange tricks and pranks at Baffle Point.

POINT SESENTA

(Note: All that is left of Point Sesenta—presumably so called from the sixty (sesenta) trees—is a reef known as Fisher’s Reef, on the north shore of Trinity Bay. The story of the Point was told to me by Captain James Armstrong, just as it had been told to him by an old Indian chief whose tribe used to visit the bay shore many, many years before the Republic.)

The mocking birds sang in the sixty trees, And Inez walked in their shadow; The soft winds came laughing from southern seas, And the bay seemed a green-waved meadow; But a wealth of song, and of wind and water, Requites not the love of an Indio’s daughter.

Don Miguel’s pastures lay far and wide, His herds by peons were tended, But all he possessed was as naught beside Fair Inez so young and splendid. Still his heart was sore, for the winds kept saying: “The trees sesenta are graying, graying.”

Inez the fair walked ’neath the moss-grown trees, By the side of her gray-grown lover; And oft times she dreamed that o’er many seas He had come like a brave young rover; But when for sight of him her dark eyes gleamed They met dim eyes in a face deep seamed.

Then out of the north came a viking ship, With a viking young and brawny; A snare for love was his tender grip, And a net were his locks so tawny. Wherever man goes over hill and hollow, There a woman loving him dares to follow.

Ah, that is the tale told in every zone, A story told over and over. Don Miguel one morning found Inez flown, And the ship, and the bold young rover. And the winds were hushed, and the trees unshaken, And the birds had fled, their nests forsaken.

The boatmen passing beheld the trees, Saw how they all were dying; The winds grew fierce and angered the seas, And the flurrying sands went flying, Until Point Sesenta was quite departed, And left but a name and a place uncharted.

GUMMAN GRO

(Note: Gumman Gro is phonetic Swedish for “The Woman Gray.” Skell, master of Sweet Cecilia, was a Swede; he and his boat disappeared from Galveston Bay one night and were never heard of again.)

They said that Gumman Gro had a great store Of private treasure hid in Lone Tree Cove; That she with cunning eyes watched sea and shore, And that a curse was upon all who strove, Always in vain, to cross the line afar That she had marked outside of shoal and bar.

And it was said that many who had rushed Upon the Cove with favoring wind and tide, Had come away with heart and spirit crushed, Bereft of courage and of manly pride, To live their lives perpetual exiles, Beyond the reach of cheering songs and smiles.

And so the boatmen, sailing up and down, From Lone Tree Cove would sheer their boats away; For on the shore a small hut loomed up brown, And in the doorway stood a woman gray; Whence she had come, or when, none seemed to know, But Skell, the boatman, named her Gumman Gro.

And Skell would laugh the hearty laugh that springs Straight from the hearts of men when young and strong, While with a merry jest at men and things He sailed his course, and hummed a seaman’s song; Oft in passing Lone Tree Cove he’d sheer His boat more close, and shout a word of cheer.

Then one dark night a storm swept o’er the bay, And the mosquito fleet was scattered wide; And many men and boats until this day Have not returned to watch for wind and tide; And ’mong the missing ones that all loved well, Was Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell.

Often on nights when winds and tides are fair, On nights of calm, when God’s stars search the deep, Sounds from afar, like multitudes in prayer, Across the waters to lone boatmen creep, And then they see the dead sail to and fro, But none knows whence they come, or where they go.

After the storm, when winds came from the west On nights like these, Skell’s ghost from Lone Tree Cove Set sail, so seamen saw; then on Skell pressed To shun the shoals; straight out for the deep he drove, But just so far he came, and then he stopped, As if an anchor sternward had been dropped.

Then from the shore a cry, half laugh, half pain, Mocking and pleading, rose, and dipped, and fell, Stirring the waters like a shower of rain, While Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell, A moment wavered like a light wind blown, Then flashed across the darkness and were gone.

Thus every night, when out of sunset land The warm winds came and drowsed upon the bay, Skell and his Sweet Cecilia left the strand, And sailed and sailed as if to sail away; And every night that cry, half laugh, half pain, Would pleading come and call him back again.

This is the tale that old-time boatmen told, One to the other, long, long years ago; But not the greediest for shining gold Would risk the fearful curse of Gumman Gro— He’d hope, at last, whatever else befell, Death would not land him where it landed Skell.

LEGENDS OF LOVERS

LEGENDS OF LOVERS

Legends of lovers are almost as numerous as those of treasure; in Texas, at least, the lovers are generally hapless and are nearly always associated with precipitous cliffs. Indeed, legends of lovers’ leaps principally make up this group. Some well known legends, such as those about the Lovers’ Leap at Waco and about the Lovers’ Leap at Denison, have been omitted. Reference to them is made in the bibliography near the end of this volume. On the other hand, various versions of certain other legends of lovers’ leaps are given in detail that the manner of legend growth may be fully illustrated. The lovers’ leap legend was popular in the time of Sappho (see Spectator paper Number 33, by Addison), and probably had vogue for as many years before her time as have passed since. A feature to be remarked about the lovers’ leap legends of Texas is that seemingly all of them purport to be of Indian derivation. The state is yet so young that to go back to anything like remoteness one must go to the time of the Indian—and all legend runs to remoteness. One need not be learned in Indian lore, however, to know that in many instances the basic customs of Indian marriage are violated in these legends; the attributing of his own customs of love-making and marriage by the white man to the Indian is indeed naive. [111] As a class, I should say that of all our Texas legends these of lovers are least indigenous and least varied.—J. F. D.

THE ENCHANTED ROCK IN LLANO COUNTY

By Julia Estill

[The fame of the Enchanted Rock in Llano County, as Miss Estill has pointed out, goes back a long time. There are various references to it in Texasana, as the bibliography will show; but it is noteworthy that none of the early accounts of the Enchanted Rock even so much as refer to the legend of the lovers, the details of which are very similar to those in the most popular version of the legend of Mount Bonnell. However, in more recent years the lover legend seems to have had a wide vogue. It has appeared in print various times, once in the form of a German novel, Die Tochter Tehuans, printed at Fredericksburg, and my correspondence files indicate an extensive popularity of the legend. The Indians no doubt had an awe for the mountain that they expressed in narrative detail; the early Texans heard these accounts; then the descendants of those early Texans invented a story in which the Spaniard played a part to fit the legendary atmosphere of the mountain. Thus should I account for the genesis of the legend that is now told.

Writing from “Colorado River, Texas,” October 31, 1834, W. B. Dewees tells of what must be the Enchanted Rock of the Llano. He says: “A short time since, a few of our young men started to go up to the headwaters of the Colorado and Brazos rivers to examine a large rock of metal which has for many years been considered a wonder. It is supposed to be platinum. The Indians have held it sacred for centuries, and go there once a year to worship it. They will not permit any white person to approach it. It is almost impossible to make any impression on it with chisel and hammers. When struck it gives forth a ringing sound which can be heard miles around. The party were successful in finding the rock, but were unable to break off any specimens to bring home.” Dewees, W. B., Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, 1852, p. 152. (Mr. E. G. Littlejohn contributes this reference.)

Doctor Alex. Dienst of Temple, Texas, sends in an item copied from the New York Mirror of October 20, 1838, in which a traveler, lately returned to New York from a prospecting tour in the San Saba country, tells of having found an “Enchanted” or “Holy Mountain” on the upper waters of the Sandy—beyond all doubt the Enchanted Rock of other accounts. The traveler reports that “the Comanches regard this hill with religious veneration, and that Indian pilgrims frequently assemble from the remotest borders of the region to perform the Paynim rites upon its summit.”

Samuel C. Reid, Jr., in a book published in 1848, The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers, pages 111–112, says, in connection with a scouting trip that Captain Jack Hays had made into the then unsettled vicinity of the Enchanted Rock:

“We are unable to give to the reader the traditionary cause why this place was so named, but nevertheless, the Indians had a great awe, amounting almost to reverence, for it, and would tell many legendary tales connected with it and the fate of a few brave warriors, the last of a tribe now extinct, who defended themselves there for many years as in a strong castle, against the attacks of their hostile brethren. But they were finally overcome and totally annihilated, and ever since, the ‘Enchanted Rock’ has been looked upon as the exclusive property of these phantom warriors. This is one of the many tales which the Indians tell concerning it.”

Reid goes on to tell that at one time Hays saved himself from such a tight place in a fight with the Indians near the Enchanted Rock that they became more convinced than ever that “Devil Jack” bore a charmed life.—Editor.]

In the southwestern part of Llano County, very near the Gillespie County line, lies a huge mound of solid granite covering 640 acres and known far and wide as the Enchanted Rock. At night spirit fires dance on the summit, and by day millions of isinglass stars glint in the sunlight. During an early morning shower in the hills, when the sun shines out from under the passing cloud, the streams of water coursing down the sides of the massive boulder resemble sheets of molten silver. Then above the gigantic dome there forms a rainbow-path which will lead the seeker directly to a mine of gold, so the old legend goes. In fact, the sands of the sluggish stream winding lazily around the base of the rock testify of gold in the vicinity. And the oldest pioneer in the neighborhood will tell you that there is a lost mine somewhere near the rock, the shaft having been sunk by Spaniards in the eighteenth century.

The Indian legends woven about the enchanted mound are, however, far more interesting to the folk-lorist than is the story of a fabulous mine. My great-grandfather, Thomas A. Likens, who was first lieutenant of Captain Highsmith’s Company of Texas Rangers when, in 1847, they camped near the Enchanted Rock, told my grandfather, William H. Estill, of the remarkable veneration the Comanches had for the Rock, and of the awesome fear they manifested when at night the spirit fires danced aloft on it. The daring ranger always knew that if he could induce his sure-footed pony to climb the Rock, horse and rider would be safe from the pursuing savage, for the Comanche would not follow, nor would he direct an arrow toward the white man who sought the protection of the Spirit of the Rock.

At the foot of the enormous boulder the Indians offered sacrifices—sometimes a beautiful captive snatched from the white man’s clearing at the edge of the woods. Then, for months, perhaps, the Spirit of the Rock would smile on the savage tribe, and success would attend their raids down the river valleys to the south.

On one such expedition, according to the story told by Father Hörmann, [112] a priest at one of the missions near San Antonio, the marauders ventured farther than usual and were within attacking distance of Mission San José, near San Antonio, when José Navarro, commander of the mission, learned of their designs. Forthwith, preparations for the defense of the mission were begun, Don Hesu Navarro, a recent arrival from Spain and a bold soldier of fortune, aiding enthusiastically in strengthening the defenses.

Now, within the mission lived the Indian chief Tehuan and his beautiful daughter, christened Rosa by the good fathers of the mission. The dashing young Spaniard fell desperately in love with the pretty dark-skinned maid, and succeeded in winning her love in return. Soon, though, came a desperate separation. In the attack by the Comanches that had been expected, Don Hesu fell by an Indian tomahawk and pretty Rosa was carried away by the alien savages. Fortunately, however, the young Spaniard had received merely a stunning blow, and, after a time, revived and dragged himself back within the mission walls, only to find his beloved gone. From an Indian boy, the distracted lover learned that Rosa was being taken away to the Enchanted Rock to be offered as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Rock.

Realizing the futility of a single-handed combat with the fleeing Indians, Don Hesu hastened to Goliad for aid, and, together with a daring band of Spaniards and Texas colonists, started in pursuit of the Comanches. Upon discovering the camping place of the savages, the impetuous Spaniard proposed an immediate attack; but the remainder of the party, who were better versed in Indian ways and beliefs, persuaded Don Hesu that a better way would be to play upon the superstitious beliefs of the savages. Accordingly, the party secretly harassed the Indians by stampeding their horses and assaulting their guards in the dark. And the red men, believing that the spirits were incensed by the recent attack upon the mission, mounted their mustangs, and, with the captive maid safe in their midst, galloped away to the hills, where they intended to offer to the Spirit of the Enchanted Rock the fair prize they had won at San José.

The pursuers followed as best they might. However, when they reached the gulch between the Enchanted Rock and a neighboring peak, they saw, to their horror, that the beautiful captive was already bound to the stake, the faggots piled high around her. The rescue party was divided into two sections, one section skirting the peak so as to surprise the Indians encamped on the north while Don Hesu and a few chosen men rushed upon the guards who stood in the gulch. Frenzied by the sight of his beloved at the stake ready to be offered as a sacrifice, Don Hesu, fighting like a demon, succeeded in freeing the captive maid and escaping with her beyond the reach of the savages. Thus was the Spirit of the Enchanted Rock once, at least, deprived of the joy of a human sacrifice.

FRANCESCA: A LEGEND OF OLD FORT STOCKTON

By L. W. Payne, Jr.

This legend of old Fort Stockton was written for me in short-story form in 1911 by Miss Josephine Brown, on whose father’s ranch in Brewster County are the ruins of the old fort. The legend is frequently related by ranch people as well as by Mexicans in West Texas.

Fran——ces——ca! Fran——ces——ca!

I straightened up, listening. The low wailing sound that seemed to pronounce a name came again.

“Juan, what makes that noise?” Juan did not answer, and I turned in the seat to look at him. He was terrified. His eyes were stretched wide open, and he gasped out something about praying to the Virgin.

“What’s the matter, Juan? Tell me!”

“Oh, señor, that noise! The Virgin protect us!” he exclaimed. He began whipping the horses.

“Juan, stop! The road is rough. Be careful. There, give me the reins.”

He began saying his prayers, and I could occasionally distinguish the word “espiritus.”

I was very curious to know why he was so excited, but I thought I would wait until he calmed down a little before I asked him. Finally he became more calm, and I handed him the reins.

It was a cold, rainy night in the late fall. The big, piled-up mountains, at one side of the road, were barely visible through the rain. The creek, which ran on the other side, made a subdued, rustling sound. I could scarcely distinguish the road, and knew when we went up or down a hill only by the movement of the vehicle. We ran over a rock in the road, and the jolt seemed to loosen Juan’s tongue.

“You saw those big piles of rocks back there, señor? They are all that’s left of old Fort Stockton. Long time ago, in Indian times, there were a lot of soldiers here, and they lived in those houses. I’ve heard the padre tell tales of them. That one with the walls still standing is what was the church, and that’s where Ferenor”—here he interrupted himself to say some prayers.

“Well, Juan?” I said encouragingly.

“That’s where Ferenor calls for his sweetheart,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, as he seemed loath to continue.

“Get up, Maria! Steady there, Pierto. You see, señor, she was the most beautiful girl in all the country. Many young men wanted to marry her, but she loved Ferenor, the padre’s nephew, who was almost a padre himself, for he had taken some of the vows. His uncle preached to the soldiers and lived there behind the church. There were lots of Indians in those times, and one of the chiefs wanted Francesca for his wife. All this time Francesca was in love with Ferenor, but she couldn’t marry him on account of his vows.

“But one day Ferenor got desperate and swore he would marry Francesca anyway. That night, about this time of the year—and a night like this, only worse—they went to the padre to be married. Of course, he would not marry them, for it is unlawful for a young priest to marry. They begged and implored, but the padre refused to comply with their wishes. Finally the padre became very angry, and opening the door, he commanded them to go. Somehow, in the storm, they missed the trail to Francesca’s house, and after wandering around a while, they realized that they were lost. On and on they wandered, until Francesca was ready to drop with fatigue.

“Suddenly Ferenor exclaimed, ‘A light, Francesca!’ There was a light in the distance. They started toward it but Francesca dropped to the ground exhausted.

“‘I can’t go, Ferenor,’ she sobbed.

“‘I’m too tired to carry you that far, Francesca. You stay here, and I’ll come back for you when I get help.’

“He started out toward the light, but walking brought him no nearer to it. It seemed to move and lead him astray. He was very cold and sleepy. And where was Francesca? He knew; right over there she was waiting. He started to the place where he thought he had left her. Suddenly he slipped and fell, hitting his head on a stone. It was several hours later, just about dawn, that he regained consciousness.

“‘Francesca! Francesca!’ he cried, starting up. Vainly he searched. She was gone. Neither of the lovers was ever seen after that. Several months later a rumor was heard that just such a girl as Francesca was in the camp of Red Blanket. And Ferenor? On such a night as this, at this time of the year, he wanders around the old Fort, searching for his sweetheart, and always calling her name, ‘Francesca, Francesca.’ And señor, when a lover hears it, it means there is danger to him or his betrothed. Santa Madre preserve us!” Here Juan began saying his prayers again.

“What is that light, Juan?” I asked a few minutes later.

“That’s the headquarters of the H-Triangle, señor,” he said.

A good fire and jolly company did not altogether dispel the memory of the weird tale that Juan told me when we heard those strange sounds made by the wind in the ruins of the old Fort.

LOVER’S RETREAT AND LOVERS’ RETREAT (PALO PINTO)

By J. S. Spratt

I

Lover’s Retreat, or Lovers’ Retreat, as some would have it, is in Palo Pinto County, four miles west of the town of Palo Pinto. I got the first version, in which Lover makes his escape, from my father, Dr. J. T. Spratt. He heard it from a man named W. H. Walker, who related it in an address delivered while he was state secretary of the I. O. O. F. Walker said that the escape was made in the neighborhood of 1870 and that he was lying out on the prairie near by on the night that Lover eluded the Indians.

The other version I remember from a paper read in an English class in the Palo Pinto High School. I do not remember who wrote it, but I remember that we had a discussion over the place at the time, and that when I gave my version as to how Lover’s Retreat had got its name, none of the class had ever heard it, though most of them had heard the tale of the Indian lovers.

II

LOVER’S RETREAT

By 1870 the Indians had for the most part abandoned all that part of Texas east of the Colorado River. However, a few scattered bands still, on occasions, roamed over the territory east of the river, plundering lonely settlements and, when an opportunity presented itself, killing the pioneers. There is a story connected with one of these Indian raids into what is now Palo Pinto County.

Some four miles west of the town of Palo Pinto is a rough and beautiful ground covered with immense boulders. The enormous rocks have been left in an arrangement that reminds one of the streets of a badly surveyed old town. Vegetation of all colors and sizes grows on top of the old rocks and hangs down over the edges. Occasionally a tree rooted in some deep crevice reaches up thirty or forty feet, brushing the tops of the rocks. One has but to start climbing over the roots and gulches and through the breaks to think of what a good place it is to hide in. More than one man has found it to be such a place.

In the early seventies a man by the name of Lover was camped on a prairie near the place, loose herding a bunch of cattle. He had taken the bridle off his horse and was letting him graze out a short distance with the saddle on, when along late in the afternoon he was suddenly aware that the horse had stopped chewing and was watching something. Lover looked in the direction towards which the horse was pointing his ears. Just beyond the rigid animal, he saw a band of Indians coming at a long gallop through the soft grass. They were so close and were so increasing their speed that he did not have time to catch his horse. There was but one thing for him to do. He made for the rocks.

Running with the superhuman speed of deathly fright, he managed to reach them a little ahead of the Indians; but the Indians were so near that they would be upon him before he could climb down the side of the boulder that he had run up on from the sloping side. If he jumped, he was likely to kill or cripple himself. For the fraction of a second he wavered. Then he saw a tree below him. He leaped, caught a branch, and slid and swung to the ground. When less than two minutes later the warriors peered over the edge of the cliff, he was not to be seen.

In the little time that remained till night, Lover managed to dodge them. Then for hours he knew that they were watching for him to move. But when morning came, probably thinking that he had somehow slipped out past them, the Indians left, and Lover was safe. Since that time the place has been known as Lover’s Retreat.

The old tree that Lover is said to have slid down still stands, although it has been dead for several years and has fallen over against the bluff from which Lover made his desperate leap.

III

LOVERS’ RETREAT

Many years ago, in the northern part of Texas, lived a small band of Indians among whom were a young brave and a young maiden lost in love. For the sake of convenience, we shall call the young brave Running Elk and the maiden Laughing Water. She was the daughter of old Chief White Eagle, but in the veins of the warrior lover there was no royal blood, and the father refused to allow the marriage that both of the lovers so greatly desired.

The refusal was not, however, based primarily on the difference in rank. Running Elk was an ideal young brave. He was the best hunter in the band; no other could run so swiftly, ride so skilfully, or shoot an arrow so truly as he. His bravery had been tried more than one time. In a battle he had once, single handed, fought and killed six of the enemy. Many a chieftain would have been proud to claim such a warrior for son-in-law. Indeed, Chief White Eagle was pleased with the suitor, but his tribe was a weak tribe and he wanted his daughter to marry into a strong tribe. Such an alliance he regarded as necessary against powerful enemies.

After many pleadings with the old chief and as many refusals, the lovers saw that there were but two courses left to them. They could give up all hope of marriage and let the negotiations that were already under way for the marriage of Laughing Water into a powerful tribe proceed; or they could run away and seek united refuge in a strange tribe. They chose the latter course.

It was dark midnight when Laughing Water met Running Elk at the outskirts of the Indian village. He had two ponies ready, and the lovers were on their way immediately. They rode during the remainder of the night and almost all the following day. Late in the afternoon they saw a cloud of moving dust rising perhaps an hour’s ride behind them. The pursuers were gaining ground rapidly.

The runaways were now in the edge of a strange, mountainous country. Their horses were tired and farther journey on them meant capture, then torture. Running Elk called a halt, and when the girl had dismounted, he tied a thorny stick to the tail of each horse, gave the horses a slash with the thong of buffalo hide that he used for a bridle, and saw them disappear down a draw. Then he and the maiden set out on foot, selecting rocks and hard gravel for a path. Their tribesmen would be baffled by the trail for a little time at least.

After the couple had traveled in this way for what seemed to them a long while, they reached the top of a mountain covered with cedar, walnut, and scrub oak. All at once they came upon a wide crevice. They turned their direction and were as suddenly confronted by another crevice, narrow and forty or fifty feet deep. This they descended, taking care not to loosen rocks or earth.

The two Indians were surprised to find that this break led to a network of such passages, the widths of which varied from a foot to twenty or thirty feet. The walls were of solid rock and rose to a height of from forty to sixty feet. On the tops of these rocks had formed a soil that sustained a variety of vegetation. A greenish moss covered the sides of the rocks and against them clung straggling vines; from the tops and from niches along the sides, prickly pears hung; here and there a tree grew up out of the bottom of the fissures and swept its branches over the tops of the cliffs. A cold spring trickled from the bottom of one of the rock walls.

The lovers knew that there must be a cave somewhere amid such surroundings. They began to search for it, and had searched only a little while when they came to a small mountain lake. It was at a kind of gateway between mountain and plateau, and on the mountain side was the cave. It opened into the lake, its floor well above the level of the water, and extended back into the enormous boulder.

Running Elk swam to the mouth of the cave and climbed in, and with his senses as alert as those of the panther explored the darkness. He found that the recess ran back some twenty feet and that it was clear of harm. He swam back to the shore, got his beloved, and returned to the cave. The two had not been hidden ten minutes when they heard their tribesmen making camp by the water. Presently a few of the young bucks went into the lake for a swim. One of them discovered the mouth of the cave and called to his companions. They all came to him and began to talk of exploring the place.

Huddled close to each other in the remotest part of the cave, the lovers waited. Though they were themselves in pitchy darkness, they could see the world outside; however, dusk was approaching. Then they saw one of the bucks raise his body into the edge of the cave. He paused, fixed himself, and reached down to give a hand to a companion. Just then the lovers heard a wild shouting. They recognized the voice of their Medicine Man. He was screaming to the braves to come away from the cave, and telling them that all caves with their openings in or just above water were inhabited by evil spirits. The braves left the cave with frenzied strokes and soon the silence told that all the Indians had deserted the region of the lake. Again the lovers breathed freely.

But they would not leave their refuge until they were sure of safety. All that night, all the next day, and all the next night, they remained in hiding. Then they left in search of a friendly tribe to take up with, and the story generally goes that they found hospitality and security.

The white man has changed the looks about the picturesque region where the couple wandered and hid; but the cave and lake where they evaded their pursuers bears in memory of them the name of Lovers’ Retreat.

LOVER’S LEAP IN KIMBLE COUNTY

By Flora Eckert

[This legend, like others of its kind, is on all sides asserted to have come down from the earliest pioneers. When, less than a century ago, settlers first moved into any part of Texas where there is a cliff, what was their initial act: to get a meal, to start out hunting for buried treasure, or to christen the cliff with a tale of lovers? At any rate, thirty years ago, in 1894, Mary J. Jaques, an English lady who had resided for a time on a ranch in the Llano country, saw in London the fresh pages of her book, Texan Ranch Life; and in that book on page 255 is a version of the legend of Lover’s Leap in Kimble County:

“The lover of Leona, a beautiful Indian girl, having been sent on a distant raid, she promised to light a beacon fire on the cliff each night of his absence. But alas! weeks grew to months, but he didn’t return, and the old chief, her father, ordered her to marry ‘another.’ In despair one night Leona threw herself down the precipice, ever after known as ‘Lover’s Leap.’ The gorge below is still haunted by her restless spirit.”

Slightly different in detail is a version that was given to me in the summer of 1923 by Miss Grenade Farmer of Junction City, in Kimble County, a form of the legend from the same source having been written out by Miss Velma Crank. Miss Farmer’s father was a pioneer settler on the upper Llano and he has often told this legend to her, Miss Farmer says.

About seventy years ago there was an Indian village at the base of the bluff now called Lover’s Leap. The chief had a brave and handsome son; he fell in love with a maiden of his tribe “who was beautiful and good but who was not his equal in rank or fortune.” The father forbade the marriage desired by the lovers. In the obedient way of Indian youth, the son obeyed his father, but he continued to meet his love in secret, always under the bluff. In some way the unchanging nature of that great pile of rocks seemed to have an influence on the souls of the lovers. They, like it, would be unchanging in their devotion. So, when one day the youth received an order from his father that he must marry in order to perpetuate the noble line, he resolved with his sweetheart to preserve their fidelity by death.

They climbed the cliff and cast themselves into the gorge below. A few days later their bodies were found and were buried on top of the bluff.—Editor.]

The cliff called “Lover’s Leap” by the inhabitants of the Llano Valley stands today a rock-bound sentinel and watchtower, even as it stood during the legendary times of Texas. At its foot flows the cool, sparkling mountain stream that joins the Llano only a short distance beyond. Its sheer face forms a perpendicular wall that is one of the least accessible in a land of inaccessible cliffs.

Legends concerning the days of the Indians cluster about this sentinel rock. They are still told by pioneers to their children and are often related to the summer tourists of Junction, the little town that lies almost within the shadow of Lover’s Leap. Perhaps the most beautiful and plausible of these legends is the one that tells of the Indian maid, Winona, and her lover, Mewanee, both of the Comanche tribe.

In those days there was an Indian encampment at the foot of this cliff. No other situation for miles about was so well adapted to the needs of the tribe. Fish teemed in the clear stream; deer and other game roamed in the woods; the climate was mild at nearly all times of the year, and in winter the camp was protected from the fierce norther by the sheer wall behind it. It was mainly because of this shelter that the place had been chosen by the scouts of the party; but they had also another reason. This particular cliff reared its head higher than any of its sister cliffs along the river and therefore afforded a more distinct view of the surrounding country. In fact, it was the veritable sentinel of the valley. And such a watchtower was then a prime necessity.

The quiet beauty of the inclosing hills and the calmness of the deep pools of the stream were not reflected in the hearts of the Indians, who had, indeed, much cause for disquiet. Forty miles to the north the hated Spaniards had reared a hastily-built wooden structure to serve as a mission, and had filled it with soldiers and priests. This mission and all those connected with it were bitterly hated by the remnants of the tribes of Comanches, Cheyennes, Apaches, and Arapahoes. The priests endeavored to dissuade them from their age-old religion and to force new beliefs and institutions upon them. The soldiers, in jest and in earnest, treated them with brutal cruelty. [113]

The band of Comanches in the Llano Valley had special reason to distrust and hate the Spaniards at Menard, for Don Juan, one of the boldest of the soldiers there, had looked upon Winona, the fairest maiden of the Comanches, with lust and desire in his eyes. This evil look had not escaped the eye of the chief, White Cloud, whose daughter Winona was, nor of Mewanee, Winona’s favored lover. Therefore, the departure of the tribe from the mission had been abrupt. A double vow of vengeance was solemnly sworn as the councilmen gathered about the council fire in the chief’s tent there on the Llano. It was a vow to revenge the insult upon Winona and to destroy the mission which menaced the peace of the red men.

Many councils were held and the plans were carefully laid. The date of the attack was chosen in accordance with the Indian belief in time and season. Mewanee, as one of the most stalwart warriors, held an honored place in these councils. Meanwhile, high upon the cliff, the scouts kept a steady watch for the Spanish, who were believed to be on the trail of the rebellious Comanches.

Of all the sad, heavy hearts in that camp, Winona’s heart was the saddest and heaviest. It was partly because of her that the attack was being planned. Furthermore, Mewanee, she knew, in the zeal of his rage against Don Juan, would be heedless of the most perilous danger. Winona’s dark eyes plainly showed the anguish in her heart. Mewanee’s solemn and dignified mien reflected the gravity of the situation. The pain of parting was heavy upon them both.

To add to their grief, White Cloud issued an order forbidding marriages while the tribe was preparing for its attack of vengeance, for the most cherished plan of the lovers was that they should be married on the day preceding Mewanee’s departure. Now, however, their plans were broken. All Winona’s pleadings were in vain. White Cloud, her father, shook his head in obstinate refusal of their marriage. At their farewell meeting, even Mewanee allowed his love for Winona to show as he comforted her and promised eternal faith. His love, he told her, would reach out to her from the Happy Hunting Grounds and beckon her to him. And Winona whispered that she would come at his slightest call. As their lips met in a last, long, unaccustomed kiss, the drum signaled the inevitable separation.

And so, among the other braves, Mewanee rode away to the north to begin the raid on the mission. Winona was left at camp—to wait. Days passed with no word of the warriors or of the result of their undertaking. Then suddenly, just at noon, when the watcher on the summit of the cliff could see farthest over the valley toward hated Menard, he gave a mighty shout. He could discern the returning warriors. They traveled swiftly, and in a short time reached the camp. Even at a distance the watchers perceived that the raid from which their braves were returning had been successful. Each was weighted with plunder from the soldiers and from the mission. But their faces and their scanty number gave the lie to all these signs of success. It was at once evident that fewer men, by far, were returning than had gone out. Winona’s quick eye gave her instant proof that her lover had not returned.

His companions told her of his death at the hands of a Spanish soldier who had stabbed him in the back while he was engaged in a violent hand-to-hand combat with his enemy, Don Juan. Winona heard the story as in a dream. More real to her was a spirit voice calling, calling insistently.

When the moon rose over the cliff that night it outlined a solitary figure upon the bluff. Only for an instant, however, did the silhouette remain stationary. With a gesture of grief and longing, the figure flung out its arms and dropped over the edge into the vast darkness below. The water flowed on, lapping against the rocks upon which Winona lay, broken and lifeless. Her soul had answered the call from the Happy Hunting Grounds. And to this day the cliff, called “Lover’s Leap” because of this wild plunge, stands as an everlasting monument to the exceeding love and faith of the simple Indian maiden.

Some facts relative to the legend follow. 1. The headwaters of the Llano River were once a refuge for Indians. 2. There was a mission near Menard. It was destroyed by Indians. 3. Evidences of the camp at the foot of the cliff are plain. 4. In tribal emergencies marriage was sometimes (perhaps rarely) forbidden. I realize that there are slight grounds for such a statement, but it is a part of the legend as given by my informants. 5. The legend is given as told me by Frank H. Wilson and N. R. Skaggs (about seventy-five years old) of Junction.

THE WAITING WOMAN

By John R. Craddock

This legend, though it cannot be said to be retold in his exact words, came to me from a wood-cutter named T. W. Williams, who while hauling wood about the streets of Austin had time enough to stop and talk.

Out in the hills of Williamson County, a certain old path can still be found leading down to the San Gabriel River. If you follow the ancient path from the west bank of the Gabriel for a distance of some two hundred yards, you will find there on the hill the remains of the old Lazy J ranch house. If you follow the path from the east bank, you will soon come to its end among the rock-strewn hills. Years ago a foot-log connected the parts of the path, and at it in days now long past a man and a beautiful young woman were accustomed to meet. The girl came from the ranch house on the hill, and the man, a cowboy, came from somewhere out beyond the trail’s end, no one now knows where.

A little before sunset one evening, the girl walked down to the crossing to meet her lover. A few minutes later the cowboy sprang from his horse on the opposite bank, and, scarcely waiting to tie his mount, started across the foot-log. The ride had been long, and the man was unsteady on his feet after being for such a long while in the saddle. He wore heavy leggins and Mexican spurs, and in his haste he lost his footing on the log and fell into the river. He was never again seen.

The sight of the tragedy and the loss of her lover caused the maiden to become, as people believed, insane. Every evening at sunset throughout the remaining days of her life, she went to the foot-log to meet a phantom lover who came, as in life, to meet her. Her dying request was that if she lived until sunset, she should be carried to the bank of the stream. This request was complied with, and her attendants, on reaching the spot, witnessed a strange and pathetic ritual. The dying woman raised herself on her elbow and spoke a few words to the invisible lover, and then fell back lifeless on the stretcher. They buried her there by the foot-path, and the good folk will tell you yet that at dusk you can hear the lovers as they whisper by the path, or that sometimes in the coming shadows you can see the phantom woman drooped and waiting at the place where the foot-log used to be. [114]

LOVER’S LEAP AT SANTA ANNA [115]

By Austin Callan

Tradition tells us that long ago an Indian village nestled at the foot of “Santana Peaks,” called Las Mesas. It was before the white man’s ambition for new territory led him into the wild haunts of the savage; before Anglo-Saxon enterprise transformed the West from a wilderness of romance to a vulgar land of farms and ranches. Herds of buffaloes and deer roamed the prairies; wild turkeys, geese and game birds were as plentiful as the leaves on the trees; and the people were happy and indolent.

Among the inhabitants was Fox-Deer, who had taken unto himself a pale-face for a wife. He had an only daughter, called Lentalopa, Laughing-Eye, and he loved her poor, heart-broken mother, whose soul he gave to the Great Spirit in the forest, and whose body was laid to rest among the flowers on the “Little Table.”

One evil day a band of white men, with a great train of wagons and an Indian guide, passed through the gap of Las Mesas and were soon in view of the little village. Immediately the war-whoop rent the air. The soldiers and teamsters barely had time to corral their wagons and prepare for battle before the fierce red devils were circling round and round them, leaning low on their horses and gradually drawing in. The lieutenant gave orders not to fire until the enemy came near enough to the wagons to make every shot count a dead savage.

Each man stood in place, sighting down his musket, waiting breathlessly for the order. Fox-Deer, clad in a buckskin suit ornamented with silver, turned his horse towards the wagon corral and gave a signal. In an instant every warrior was charging the temporary barricade, all howling like a pack of fiends in hell. Then, from behind the wagons, there came a hundred puffs of smoke, and a hundred Indians fell lifeless on the sward.

Fox-Deer led his redskins back to the base of Las Mesas; the soldiers reloaded their muskets and made ready for a second attack. In the meantime several of the men reported to the lieutenant that the savages had a beautiful white girl in captivity.... The lieutenant immediately sent two men under a flag of truce to the Indians, with the information that he would withdraw and leave them alone if they would surrender the white prisoner into his hands.

The answer came back, as quick as a flash of lightning, from the ashy lips of Wounded Hawk. He said that Laughing-Eye belonged not to the pale-faces, that he had won her heart for bravery in fighting the battles of Fox-Deer. “We love each other,” he said in tones of pathos to the Indian guide, who acted as interpreter; “we have asked the beautiful moon to melt our hearts into one, and its spirit came down and danced for joy on the bosom of the silvery stream, because we were happy. Go away and leave us alone, leave Laughing-Eye among the flowers and the birds, close to her mother’s grave.”

The men returned and reported the effort to compromise with the Indians unsuccessful. Wounded Hawk’s story was put down as one of those slick lies characteristic of his race, and it was decided to attack the village at once and finish the job of whipping the devils, who had been rendered inferior by their first charge. As the soldiers drew up near the wigwams, the golden sun was hanging over the western point of the mountain. A beautiful valley swept off for miles to the north, and in the green grass droves of antelopes and deer were playing. Around the wigwams several squaws were seated upon buffalo robes and among them was Laughing-Eye, downcast and frightened.

Fox-Deer asked for permission to send his child to a cliff on the mountain where she could watch the battle without danger. “If the Great Spirit decides against the poor Indian,” he said, “the white man can take her, but if He answers her prayer, she will remain in the forest with Wounded Hawk and be happy.”

Laughing-Eye gave the signal for battle by waving a branch of cedar from the brow of Las Mesas, and a savage yell went up, as fierce as mortal ever heard. Fox-Deer led his warriors forth, playing for two of the highest earthly stakes—the happiness of his daughter and his own life. In an instant the whites were surrounded. The Indians, riding at full speed and lying low on the off-side of their ponies, poured volley after volley of deadly arrows into their dismayed ranks. The lieutenant fell mortally wounded; a dozen others were dead upon the ground. Closer and closer the savages came and more hideous grew their war-whoops. Laughing-Eye knelt upon the cliff to pray; no doubt she had learned to lisp the name of God at her mother’s knee, and I fancy she asked Him to restore safe to her bosom the young chief she loved. But the tide of battle turned, turned at a moment when Wounded Hawk felt the flush of victory and was almost ready to wave his love back to the joy of the wigwam.

The surviving soldiers formed a little square, dropped to their knees, and prepared to receive the last desperate charge of the savages. Fox-Deer brought his men up, this time in silence. Pointing to the girl on the brow of the peak and giving a signal which they all understood, he led a mad rush. A deadly stream of fire poured forth from the little group of determined whites, and then they sprang to their feet with bayonets fixed. For a moment the fate of Wounded Hawk hung in the balance. The struggle was as fierce as opposing forces ever waged. Indian and Caucasian fell together, with the cold steel in each other’s breasts, and their mingled blood crimsoned the grass-spears and the daisies. There was a hush; a little flag bearing the Stars and Stripes shot up just as the sun was setting. From the overhanging cliff a scream of agony rent the air. Laughing-Eye understood and leaped upon the rocks below, into the arms of death.

ANTONETTE’S LEAP OR THE LEGEND OF MOUNT BONNELL

By J. Frank Dobie

I

The legend of Mount Bonnell is among the half dozen most widely known Texas legends. It has been printed again and again, both in prose and in verse; it is still told in many quarters; and the details of the various versions have come to a wide divergence. So far as I can learn, the oldest printed account of the legend is that given by Morphis, published in 1874. For other accounts, the reader is referred to the bibliography.

In the main, there are three versions of the legend: first, the Morphis account in which an Indian chief steals a Spanish belle, who is rescued by her lover only to perish later with him at the cliff; second, a version, the details of which are similar to those of various other Lovers’ Leap legends, in which an Indian maid and an Indian brave make an interdicted elopement and are finally forced to the leap; third, a version in which an Indian maiden in love with a white man is forced to a precipitate death. It is an interesting fact that all the versions hitherto printed follow very closely the Morphis story, all being revampings of it. Noteworthy variations seem to exist in oral accounts only. As Morphis’ history has long been out of print, his version of the legend is here reprinted.

The word Antonette belongs to no language: the French spelling is Antoinette; the name in Spanish is Antonia. No lady of pure Castilian blood would have borrowed a French translation for her name. Yet Antonette is the spelling generally given in the legends.

II

THE LEGEND AS TOLD BY MORPHIS [116]

The following legend of the Colorado Valley was related to me years ago by that reliable gentleman, good citizen, and gallant soldier, George L. Robertson of Austin.

Mount Bonnell was called by the early settlers of Colorado Valley, Antonette’s Leap, which name was given to it in consequence of the self-immolation on that picturesque spot, at an early day, of a most lovely and accomplished señorita, who came over from Spain at the first settlement of the mission of San José, San Juan, Espada, and the Alamo.

“The fame of Antonette’s beauty and intellectual charms was spread abroad through the settlements, and even extended to the hunting ground and camp fires of the red men of the forest. It came to the ears and inflamed the passions of Cibolo, the chief of the Comanches, who selected a band of his favorite warriors, made a raid upon the settlements, captured the beautiful Antonette, and carried her far away to his camp in the wilderness, on the headwaters of the Colorado.

“The parents and friends of the unfortunate señorita mourned her as lost forever, except Don Leal Navarro Rodriguez, her betrothed lover, a brave and elegantly educated young Spanish caballero, of fine personal appearance and honorable, as well as brave to a fault, who determined to follow the murderous Indians to their homes and rescue his beloved Antonette, or perish in the attempt.

“Don Leal mounted his favorite steed and, well armed, started from the Alamo alone in pursuit of the Indians, and after many hair-breadth escapes, undiscovered, descried the camp of the savages. Selecting a dark night, he entered it, and by imitating the mocking bird, of which Antonette was very fond, and whose singing they could both imitate to perfection, he soon discovered at what spot inside the encampment she was, then came into the very tent which she occupied and found her tied securely to prevent her escape.

“In an instant the lover severed the bonds which confined the dear idol of his heart, and with her cautiously returned to where he had left his horse when he entered the Comanche camp; then quickly mounting and taking Antonette up behind him, he started to regain the Mission of Alamo.

“The fury of Cibolo in the morning, when he discovered the escape of his fascinating captive, knew no bounds. He raved and blasphemed terribly; then, sounding the alarm, with a hundred chosen warriors, he hastily started in pursuit, leaving the main body of his tribe to await his return.

“For several days Don Leal and his beloved Antonette made good speed toward the settlements, subsisting most bountifully upon game, which was easily obtained through Don Leal’s rifle, and at night sleeping under the forest trees; but on the seventh day, leaving the prairie land, they became tangled in the mountains bordering the Colorado. Early in the morning of the eighth day the lovers discovered themselves surrounded upon all sides by the cruel savages. All attempts at further flight were hopeless.

“The wrathful Cibolo, with cow horns on his head and face horribly painted, advanced in all pride of power to where they had fled as a last refuge, but when he was about fifty yards off, Don Leal, who had firmly resolved to fight and die rather than surrender, raised his rifle to his shoulder and, taking deliberate aim, fired! In an instant the savage chief bounded in the air and fell to the ground a corpse; but in another instant at least twenty arrows pierced Don Leal’s body, and he, too, fell to the earth and expired without a groan.

“After surveying the situation and revolving in her mind the miserable fate awaiting her from the merciless Comanches, ... the poor, unfortunate girl bent over the prostrate and lifeless form of her lover and kissed his dear lips. Then rising, with her eyes toward heaven, and murmuring her last prayer to God, she plunged headlong down the precipice and struck the rocks beneath, mangled, bleeding, and dead!

“For a long time the place where these rare, devoted, but most unfortunate lovers met their sad and untimely fate was called ‘Antonette’s Leap,’ but years ago a wandering Bohemian, who happened to pass a few days in Austin ... blotted it out and substituted his own, and now Antonette’s Leap is Mount Bonnell.”

III

For the details of the second version of the legend as here summarized I am indebted to Mr. Billy Minter, a West Point cadet from Austin.

Once two tribes of Indians living far to the north were at deadly enmity with one another; one tribe lived in what is now Oklahoma, the other in what is now the Panhandle of Texas. One day the son of the chieftain of the southern tribe was walking in the woods. It was springtime, the time to be in the woods, and there he met the daughter of the chief of the northern tribe. It was springtime; their hatred was forgotten, and often thereafter they met under the trees. But one day a brave of the northern tribe discovered the lovers. He was afraid to fight with this strong young Indian of the south whose fame as a warrior was already far known; so he watched from the bushes and then slipped away to tell the maiden’s father what he had seen.

When the lovers were parting, they discovered the trail of the watcher. They realized that they could never meet thus again and that if the maid returned to her people she would be terribly tortured. They fled to the south, hoping to find refuge in some friendly tribe that knew nothing of the quarrels of their ancestors. The next morning the father of the maiden sent to the enemy’s camp a demand for his daughter. Then the elopement was revealed. A truce was made and forthwith fifty picked trailers and warriors from each tribe were sent to pursue and capture the fugitives.

For many days the lovers fled, followed closer and closer by the warriors. At length they found themselves hemmed in on top of a mountain that faced precipitously on the Colorado River. Out of the scrub cedars and from over the gullies, they saw the cordon of pitiless pursuers nearing; beneath them they saw the swollen waters of the Colorado whirling over the rocks. On the one hand, was a captivity worse than death; on the other, the river below. “With one last prayer to the Great Spirit, the lovers embraced and, still locked in this embrace, leaped into the hungry water.”

“This,” concludes Mr. Minter, “is the legend of the Lovers’ Leap as told to me when I was eleven years old by an old settler, himself the son of a pioneer. He lived near the place, and told me the story while I was camped on Mount Bonnell. Last week (July, 1922) I went again to try to find him and have him retell the story, but I found that he had been dead for two years, and so I have not been able to use the names of the lovers, of the chiefs, and of the tribes, as well as many other minute circumstances that he made the tale vivid with. The river does not touch the foot of the cliff at the Lovers’ Leap. Indeed, it is a good stone’s throw from it to the water’s edge. The old man explained this discrepancy by saying that the legend was ages old and that at the time of the leap the river did touch the bottom of the cliff when it was on a big rise.”

IV

The third version of the legend was given me by Miss Etta Maddrey, a student at the University of Texas in the summer of 1922, who in turn heard it from an Austin woman who worked at the Driskill Hotel. This woman claimed that the witness in the circumstances that follow was one of her ancestors.

A pioneer couple had built a log hut near what is now the road to Deep Eddy. It was near a spring in some woods, and sometimes Indians camped near by. In the band was the tribal chief, and he had a daughter. He had, too, a hardened and cunning warrior who was in love with the daughter, and the chief was pleased at the match. The daughter was not pleased, and soon the brave came to realize that he was being repelled.

One evening when the settler’s wife was going to the spring for water, she saw in the dusk a tender greeting between the Indian maid and a young white man of the settlement. She saw too the form of a slinking Indian warrior spying on the lovers. The next evening the meeting was repeated, and the man and the young woman sat on a rock and watched the sunset. They parted; the paleface disappeared; the girl turned to go back to her camp and was confronted by the giant and menacing form of her spurned suitor. With vivid gesture he pictured the wrath of the father and chief when he should learn that his daughter had scorned one of his tribe for a hated paleface, and he gloated as he told how he would report her treachery.

The girl broke away from her tormentor. Perhaps she thought to return to her father and ask forgiveness; but the folly of such a course must have been apparent to her. Perhaps she thought of taking refuge with her lover, but then his helplessness in protecting her must have flooded her mind with the conviction that by such an act she would only bring about his death. A moment after she left the warrior she bounded out of the woods in a direction to the north. On and on she ran until she reached the topmost point of what is now Mount Bonnell. Below her was the dark river. “There was but a moment’s hesitation, and then the fatal leap—lover’s leap then, certainly; and Lover’s Leap today.”

PIRATES AND PIRATE TREASURE IN LEGEND

From SUNSET IN AUGUST: GALVESTON BEACH

By Stanley E. Babb

[“Sunset in August: Galveston Beach,” from which the following lines are taken, is one of a group of poems entitled “Arrows of Loveliness.” The group won the first prize from the Poetry Society of Texas in 1922. The poems were printed in the Poetry Society’s Book of the Year, 1922. In addition to giving a picture of the great Texas pirate, the lines illustrate what a poet may do with legend.—Editor.]

Old Jean Lafitte once paced along these sands, Surveyed the misty sea for Spanish galleons Sweeping up from Panama with gold And precious freights—and lusted for the sharp High clamour of battle: rattle of pistol-shots— Thunder of broadsides—crash of falling spars— Loud cries to Christ for quarter—shouts of joy— Spurts of hot blood—surrender—sharp commands— And then the scuttling of the captured vessels: The wild red laughter of the rioting flames Above a littered sea ...

Old Jean Lafitte once wandered down these sands, And watched the day’s red death, the swirling gulls, The golden doubloon of the rising moon, Remembering days of splendour: mornings when He buried gold ashore on Los Muertos, Midnights when his little schooner “Pride” Cut past Nigger Head with all sails drawing, Wild battles with great storms off Yucatan, And nights with wine and girls at Porto Bello ... Old Jean Lafitte once paced this beach and cried From wanderlust that shook his heart, and looked Up to the sky for winds and clouds, and told His aves on the rosary of stars, And then along the last bleak beach of life, He proudly strode, and out across the sea Into the white mists of oblivion ...

LIFE AND LEGENDS OF LAFITTE THE PIRATE

By E. G. Littlejohn

[The pirate legends of Texas are all so bound up with the name of Lafitte that they may well be prefaced by a sketch of that remarkable personage. Perhaps there is as much legend about the man as about his treasure. Even his name seems to be in dispute, for, whereas he is generally known in this country as Jean Lafitte, the Nouveau Larousse Illustré Dictionnaire Encyclopédique denominates him, the “corsaire français,” Nicolas Lafitte. A historian can hardly write of him without arousing controversy. Dr. J. O. Dyer, of Galveston, in a letter to the editor says: “Lafitte was no pirate, but the head of two noted buccaneer or privateer camps.... He never went to sea; he was a poor sailor because he suffered from sea-sickness; he never was in any fight on the sea.”—Editor.]

I

JEAN LAFITTE: MAN AND PIRATE

The European wars of the early part of the nineteenth century, the consequent passage of the Embargo Act by the Congress of the United States, and the act prohibiting the importation of slaves after the year 1808, all conspired to bring about a great volume of clandestine trade at the ports of the United States. This trade was especially active along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Here resorted the privateer and the smuggler, the one to dispose of his booty, the other to receive it and to distribute it.

The labyrinthine waters of lower Louisiana were the smugglers’ paradise. Here they could carry on their business almost without fear of detection. Just prior to the War of 1812, a flourishing establishment of this kind sprang up on the island of Grand Terre, some sixty miles west of the mouth of the Mississippi, under the management of the two brothers Lafitte, Jean and Pierre, former blacksmiths of New Orleans. At first, the brothers were mere agents and distributors for the privateers who resorted to Grand Terre, but they soon got vessels for themselves, and began privateering on their own account. Letters of marque and reprisal were granted to them by the Republic of Cartagena, erstwhile a colony of Spain, and with this authority they went forth with other Robin Hoods of the sea to ravage and to plunder. They soon grew immensely wealthy and their business became so extensive as to almost paralyze the legitimate trade of New Orleans.

The governor of Louisiana, on being appealed to by the merchants of the city, issued several proclamations against “pirates and smugglers,” who were bringing disgrace and ignominy upon the state, ordering them to disperse and threatening dire punishment in case of their refusal to do so. When his fulminations went unheeded, he offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the capture of Jean Lafitte, now become the leader of the smugglers. Lafitte promptly responded by offering fifteen thousand dollars for the capture of the governor. The merchants then appealed to the United States government for protection, and Commodore Patterson was sent with a fleet to break up the Grand Terre establishment. This he succeeded in doing, taking a number of prisoners and much valuable merchandise. The brothers Lafitte, with the greater number of their followers, fled to the woods and so escaped capture.

Shortly after this event, when the battle of New Orleans was impending, we find Jean Lafitte, who seems to have cherished no animosity for his summary ejectment from Grand Terre, informing the United States authorities of the plans and movements of the British fleet, and offering his aid in defending the city. At first declined, the proffered assistance was later accepted by General Jackson, and Lafitte with several of his lieutenants fought with conspicuous bravery in the memorable battle of January 8, 1815. In his report of the battle, General Jackson spoke in the highest terms of these “gentlemen,” and recommended that they be pardoned for any offences they might have committed against the laws of the United States. This recommendation was promptly acted upon by President Madison, who issued a full and free pardon to Jean Lafitte and such of his men as participated in the battle.

With the close of the war, Othello’s occupation was gone, and Lafitte returned to his old practices of privateering and smuggling. This time he established his headquarters on Galveston Island, then uninhabited, where he built a fort and a town which he called Campeachy. His followers at one time numbered fully one thousand men, and these he ruled with a rod of iron. He became very wealthy and lived in lordly style. The “Red House,” Lafitte’s residence, so called on account of its color, was the scene of many princely entertainments given in honor of distinguished visitors. Colonel James Gaines, who was on the island in 1819, states that while he was there several rich prizes were brought into port, and that Spanish doubloons were as “plentiful as biscuits.”

Though Lafitte claimed to make war only on Spanish commerce, he showed little squeamishness in attacking vessels of other nations when no Spaniard was in sight. In 1820 an American vessel was captured and plundered and then sunk in Matagorda Bay. This act spelled the ruin of Campeachy. Early the next year the United States Government dispatched a man-of-war to break up the establishment. Lafitte went out to meet the captain, conducted him to Red House, and entertained him in a magnificent manner, in the meantime trying to persuade him from executing his orders. But the captain was not to be influenced by blandishments or money. His orders were peremptory. Lafitte must leave the island. Bowing to the inevitable, Lafitte convoked his followers, supplied them with money, and dismissed them from his service. Then, with a chosen few, in his favorite vessel, the Pride, he sailed away from Galveston forever.

II

CREDENCE IN THE LAFITTE LEGEND

As Captain Kidd, according to legend, left more wealth on Long Island than the vaults of Wall Street have measured, so Lafitte is reputed to have secreted immense treasures on Galveston Island and the adjacent mainland. Early inhabitants of Galveston can tell of many a midnight quest for the hidden hoards of pirates; and in sundry places certain mounds, with accompanying depressions on one side, were but recently pointed out as “where they have been digging for Lafitte’s treasure.” Unlike Captain Kidd, however, Lafitte left no screeching Hannahs to guard his treasures. No such dog-in-the-manger spirit was his. On the contrary, he seems to have desired that they should be found and put to some useful service. I have an old letter purporting to reveal the hiding place of this treasure. It was written in the late fifties by a strong-headed old lawyer, who at one time held high office in the Republic of Texas, to a scientist of considerable reputation in that day. The letter is too long to quote, but it recounts in detail Lafitte’s attempt through a medium at a “sitting” of spiritualists to reveal the whereabouts of a ship-load of concealed treasure. According to the lawyer, the Lafitte “influence” yearned to have the directions corroborated so that the investigators might be filled with sufficient faith to go after the waiting treasure.

III

THE HORROR GUARDED TREASURE OF THE NECHES

This story, under the title of “Seeking for Buried Treasure,” appeared many years ago in the Houston Post. It was said to have been related by a Mr. Marion Meredith of Port Neches.

Said Mr. Meredith: “It was before the Civil War that a neighbor of mine got hold of a chart from an old Mexican woman purporting to locate a vast treasure hidden by pirates in the marsh near the mouth of the Neches River.

“It was said that the vessel bearing this treasure was so closely pursued by a Spanish craft that the crew cut their cable and left their anchor. The man who got the chart felt so sure of finding the treasure that he concluded to go alone to seek it in order that he might not have to divide it. He located the spot where the vessel was reported to have left her chain and found the chain there without any trouble. He soon found where the treasure should be and began to dig. After he had dug a few feet, some unseen power seemed to seize him and he fled from the place. A few days later he died without having been able to speak.”

Mr. Meredith subsequently obtained the chart and, knowing the circumstances of the former effort, he associated with a man noted for his bravery, an old Texan who had roughed it for years. We will call this man Clawson. After making all necessary preparations, he and Clawson proceeded to investigate. They found the old rusty chain, whence, a certain direction and distance, the chart called for a tree with a heart cut in the bark. They located the tree. The heart was there; then in a certain direction and at a certain distance they found the spot sought for. It was located on a small island, a mere shell bank in the marsh. The tools of the former treasure hunter were there, and the hole he had dug. They began digging and soon found a human skeleton, which they carefully removed from the hole and laid upon the bank. Meredith dug till he was tired, when Clawson relieved him. He was resting on the edge of the hole, expecting every turn of the spade to uncover the treasure, when suddenly Clawson clambered from the hole, his face drawn and pale. Clutching Meredith’s arm, he said in a husky voice, “Come, for God’s sake, let’s get away from here.”

“What’s the matter? What have you seen?” asked Meredith.

“I have seen hell and its horrors. Come away from here,” and he pulled Meredith to their boat. They left so hurriedly that they forgot to take their tools. No other explanation could be got from Clawson, but he begged Meredith, if he valued his life, not to dig there again. Years afterwards Meredith met Clawson in Beaumont and begged him to tell what had frightened him. “For God’s sake,” he answered, “don’t ask me about that; it has haunted me all these years.”

After a time Meredith returned to the spot, recovered his tools, and buried the skeleton in the hole, but he had so much confidence in Clawson that he could not dig again. Since then he has several times visited the spot. Once a party of young men volunteered to go with him and dig up the ghost and the treasure. His reply to them was: “I will take you there and stay with you, boys, but there is not enough money in Texas to get me to dig in that hole.”

IV

PIRATES AND THEIR SACKS OF GOLD

This story appeared many years ago in the Galveston Daily News as a “special” from Corpus Christi.

“One morning far back in the receding past, just as the sun was casting his first golden beams of light over the lovely prairie, then robed in the sublimity of wild solitude, Lafitte and ten or fifteen of his buccaneers called at the humble home of an old lady and her husband who then lived on Kellar, or Cox, Creek in what is now embraced in Jackson County. Here these pirates got their breakfast and then handed the old people $1000, in which sum were found coins from the then leading commercial governments of the world. During their stay at this house the pirates made frequent references to the hot pursuit of English or American war vessels. After they had dispatched the morning meal, they shouldered what purported to be sacks of gold and departed, going toward the head of Cox Creek, presumably to bury or secrete their ill-gotten treasure. After a few hours they passed back by this house, going in the direction of Cox Bay. They were never seen or heard of again by the old people who supplied them with breakfast.”

In the article from which the above excerpt is made, it is stated that some years ago certain respectable citizens of Corpus Christi who had enlisted the services of a lad with an “affinity” for gold made an extensive search for the supposed hidden treasure. The expedition was a failure, but the leader was confident that somewhere between Cox Bay and the mouth of the Lavaca River large sums of the pirates’ coins would some day be found, and intimated that they would be fished out of Swan Lake.

V

LAFITTE’S TREASURE VAULT

Legends of Lafitte’s treasure in Louisiana often come down the Texas coast and become Texan by adoption. In the Abbeville country, Louisiana, there is a legend, handed down from the last century, to the effect that Lafitte and his pirate crew, having run a schooner up into White Lake (Louisiana coast) through a bayou which has long since been filled and grown over with marsh grass, at some spot along the shore built a brick vault in which they stored a vast amount of their ill-gotten treasure.

About the year 1908 a man named C—— claimed to have stumbled upon the vault while hunting alligators. He further claimed to have torn away, though with much difficulty, portions of the brick work, revealing untold wealth in gold coin, the hidden treasure of Lafitte.

Numbers of persons to whom this story was told became interested in making a search for the treasure. Owing to the swampy condition of the country and the inaccessibility of the spot where the vault was located, C—— advised the digging of a small canal as the best means of reaching it. This idea was adopted, money was advanced for the purpose, some five or six thousand dollars, and the digging of the canal was begun. After weeks of toil, of chopping through dense canebrakes, and of floundering through the swamp mud, the party reached a lone cypress tree that was supposed to stand sentinel over the crypt. The treasure could not be found.

Disappointed in their quest and disgusted at their own credulity, the treasure seekers caused the arrest of C—— on the charge of having taken their money under false pretenses; C—— claimed as the reason for their failure that he had lost his bearings. Who knows?—Adapted from a story in the Galveston News, October 27, 1908.

THE UNEASY GHOST OF LAFITTE

By Julia Beazley

“Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it.”

“It faded on the crowing of the cock.”—Hamlet.

Within the memory of men still living, Texas coast dwellers used to gather around firesides on northery winter nights, and while the rich juice of sweet potatoes roasting among the ashes oozed through the jackets, tell tales of “the Pirate of the Gulf.” Not a few of these tales centered about an ancient and dilapidated house at Bayshore Park, La Porte, in Harris County. Under it, so they say, is the blood marked booty of Lafitte; and though old tales and old times and old houses pass, anyone hardy enough to spend the night in this deserted building may yet, according to report, receive a visit from the guilt-harried spirit that sometimes in distress and sometimes in anger is still trying to win absolution for his earthly sins.

The legend runs that upon a certain occasion Lafitte and his buccaneering crew sailed up to what is now Bay Ridge (which is opposite the haunted house of La Porte). He anchored his schooner offshore, and rowed to the beach with two trusted lieutenants and the heavy chest which none dared touch except at his orders. When the skiff grounded, the watchers on the schooner saw their chief blindfold his helpers; then they saw the three disappear with the chest behind a screen of grapevine-laden trees. Two hours later Lafitte returned alone. He was in a black mood and no one had the temerity to question him. It was supposed that he had caught one of his helpers trying to mark the location of his cache, and had killed them both. Some say that he led them back to the pit they had dug and filled up, made them reopen and enlarge it, and while they were bent down digging, shot them dead. Soon afterwards Lafitte and his followers went down together in a West India hurricane, and his crime-stained treasure still lies buried in its secret hiding place.

Yet to many, as I have intimated, that place has not been secret. It is under the old house. As faithfully as I can follow the tale, I shall relate an experience connected with that old house as it was told me by a Confederate veteran who has now passed on. For personal reasons I shall call him Major Walcart, though that was not his real name. The tale, however, is a genuine legend in that it has long been current in the vicinity of La Porte.

“It was on a February night back in the eighties,” the Major used to say. “The early darkness of a murky day had overtaken me, and I was dead tired. I do not think mud ever lay deeper along the shore of Galveston Bay, or that an east wind ever blew more bleakly. When I came to a small stream I rode out into the open water, as the custom then was, to find shallow passage. A full moon was rising out of the bay. Heavy clouds stretched just above it, and I remember the unearthly aspect of the blustering breakers in its cheerless light. The immensity and unfriendliness of the scene made me feel lonesome, and I think the horse shared my mood. By common consent we turned across before we had gone far enough from shore, and fell into the trench cut by the stream in the bottom of the bay.

“We were wretchedly wet as we scrambled up a clayey slope and gained the top of the bluff. A thin cry which I had not been sure was real when I first heard it now became insistent. It was like the wail of a child in mortal pain, and I confess that it reminded me of tales I had heard of the werewolf, which lures unwary travelers to their doom by imitating the cry of a human infant. By the uncertain light of the moon, which the next moment was cut off entirely, I saw that I had reached a kind of stable that crowned the bluff, and from this structure the uncanny summons seemed to come.

“The sounds were growing fainter, and I hesitated but a moment. Dismounting, I led my horse through the doorless entrance, and now the mystery was explained. Huddled together for warmth lay a flock of sleeping goats. A kid had rashly squeezed itself into the middle of the heap, and the insensate brutes were crushing its life out. I found the perishing little creature, and its flattened body came back to the full tide of life in my arms. Its warmth was grateful to my cold fingers, and I fondled it a moment before setting it down on the dry dirt floor.

“I tied my horse to a post that upheld the roof of the stable, and with saddle and blanket on my arm started toward the house, which I could make out in its quadrangle of oaks, not many yards distant. The horse whinnied protestingly as I left him, and when the moaning of the wind in the eaves smote my ears I was half in mind to turn back and bunk with the goats. It was a more forbidding sound than the hostile roar of the breakers had been in the bay.

“I called, but only the muddy waves incessantly tearing at the bluff made answer. I had scarcely hoped really to hear the sound of a human voice. The great double doors leading in from the front porch were barred, but the first window I tried yielded entrance. Striking a match, I found myself in a room that gave promise of comfort. Fat pine kindling lay beside the big fireplace, and dry chunks of solid oak were waiting to glow for me the whole night through.

“I was vaguely conscious that the brave fire I soon had going did not drive the chill from the air so promptly as it should, but my head was too heavy with sleep to be bothered. I spread my horse blanket quite close to the cheerful blaze, and with saddle for pillow and slicker for cover I abandoned myself to the luxury of rest.

“I do not know how long I had slept when I became aware of a steady gaze fixed on my face. The man was looking down on me, and no living creature ever stood so still. There was imperious command in the unblinking eyes, and yet I saw a sort of profound entreaty also.

“It was plain that the visitant had business with me. I arose, and together we left the room, passed its neighbor, and entered a third, a barren little apartment through whose cracks the wind came mercilessly. I think it was I who had opened the doors. My companion did not seem to move. He was merely present all the time.

“‘It is here,’ he said, as I halted in the middle of the bare floor, ‘that more gold lies buried than is good for any man. You have but to dig, and it is yours. You can use it; I cannot. However, it must be applied only to purposes of highest beneficence. Not one penny may be evilly or selfishly spent. On this point you must keep faith and beware of any failing. Do you accept?’

“I answered, ‘Yes,’ and the visitant was gone, and I was shivering with cold. I groped my way back to my fire, bumping into obstructions I had not found in my journey away from it. I piled on wood with a generous hand, and the flames leaped high. I watched the unaccountable shadows dance on the whitewashed walls, and marked how firebeams flickered across the warpings of the boards in the floor. Then I dozed off.

“I do not know how long I had been asleep when I felt the presence of the visitant again. The still reproach of his fixed eyes was worse than wrath. ‘I need your help more than you can know,’ he said, ‘and you would fail me. The treasure is mine to give. I paid for it with the substance of my soul. I want you to have it. With it you can balance somewhat the burden of guilt I carry for its sake.’

“Again we made the journey to the spot where the treasure was buried, and this time he showed it to me. There were yellow coins, jeweled watches, women’s bracelets, diamond rings, and strings of pearls. It was just such a trove as I had dreamed of when as a boy I had planned to dig for Lafitte’s treasure, except that the quantity of it was greater. With the admonition, ‘Do not force me to come again,’ my companion was gone, and once more I made my way back to the fire.

“This time I took up my saddle and blanket and went out to the company of my horse. The wind and the waves were wailing together, but I thought I saw a promise of light across the chilly bay, and never was the prospect of dawn more welcome. As I saddled up and rode off, the doleful boom of the muddy water at the foot of the bluff came to me like an echoed anguish.”

But Lafitte does not appear to every one who spends a night in the house, and any person seeking the treasure from purely selfish motives is likely to rue his pains. A story is told of an acquisitive and enterprising man who came hundreds of miles with the purpose of helping himself to the chance of finding pirate gold, but who abruptly changed his mind after spending a night in the house. As Lafitte steadily pursues his object of finding a fit recipient for his dangerous gift, never succeeding, his disappointment is sometimes terrible, so they say, and some simple folk believe that when there is a particularly dolorous moan in the wash of the waves, it is the despair of the pirate finding voice in the wail of the waters.

LAFITTE LORE

By J. O. Webb

John Smith and W. C. Callihan of the old town of Liverpool, Brazoria County, are each eighty-four years old; each is sound in mind and body; and each has spent practically his entire life in the vicinity of Liverpool. These men speak familiarly of Warren D. C. Hall, of Lamar, and of Lafitte’s lieutenants. The legendary material here given is based on their separate statements. However, the stories told by them coincide to a remarkable degree. Liverpool is situated on Chocolate Bayou, and is so near Galveston Island that the early history of the two places is closely related. Consequently Smith and Callihan are familiar with the lore bearing on Lafitte’s life. What they have to say is not based so much on legends in general circulation as on the stories told them by Lafitte’s associates. One of these followers of Lafitte was Jim Campbell, who, after the departure of his chief from Galveston Island in 1821, settled on what became known as Campbell’s Bayou. The other was an odd character called Captain Snyder.

No story of Lafitte proceeds very far without referring in some way to buried treasure. The lives led by the two strange characters just mentioned caused many to believe that they had stored away some of their chief’s wealth. According to Smith and Callihan, these ex-associates of Lafitte never lacked money, although they were engaged in no profitable business. Long after the death of Jim Campbell, it was generally believed that his widow knew where money was buried but was unwilling to reveal the place.

Captain Snyder was likewise known to have plenty of money. He was engaged in carrying some kind of trade from the Brazos to Liverpool, for which he used a one-eyed mule, but he got little income from this occupation. His actions at times, too, were rather strange. Smith was often on the boat with him, and when they would approach Galveston Island, Snyder would frequently get off and go ashore. There he would go to a clump of bushes, and apparently try to get his bearings for some point.

Some of the buried treasure stories, however, are based on more direct information. In the fifties, according to the authorities already quoted, there appeared at the mouth of Chocolate Bayou a small vessel, which remained in that vicinity for several days. During the daytime it would go to the opposite side of the bay, and at night it would return to the near shore. This odd procedure aroused a little curiosity, but would doubtless have been soon forgotten had not an important discovery followed. A few days after the vessel had gone, Smith and Callihan paid a visit to the mouth of the Bayou and, to their surprise, found that excavations had been made. Beginning at the shore, a long trench had been opened, and at the end of this a large hole had been dug. Apparently, a chest of some kind had been taken out, for the imprint of the box—even to the handles—was plainly visible. As further evidence, there was lying to one side a broken earthen jar that had been sealed with sealing wax, and upon its fragments were imprints of coins.

A less realistic story is told of the region around what was called Dick’s Camp, on Chocolate Bayou. A Mrs. Adams who lived in the vicinity had had a persistent dream of buried treasure. For three successive nights she had the same dream, and in these dreams she was told that $100,000 in gold was buried near Dick’s Camp. The exact spot was to be found by sighting with three stakes due east from a certain point. Mrs. Adams was so impressed with the repetition of this dream that the third morning she and her son set out in search of the hidden treasure. On the way they were joined by Smith, who at first was not told the purpose of the excursion. On reaching the spot they did not find any stake set up, but they did find three china trees in a line running due east. The son, whose name was Brunner, began sighting and measuring, and finally he said, “Here it is.”

“What?” asked Smith.

“$100,000 in gold,” replied Brunner.

Excavation was begun at once, but had not proceeded far when the treasure hunters dug into an oyster bed. Thinking there was little hope of finding treasure in that medium, the search was abandoned and, so far as is known, it has not been renewed.

Captain Snyder, who has already been mentioned, was a strange character. Those who knew him declare that he slept with one eye open, and that often he would cry out in his sleep, “Boys, the Spaniards are coming.” He told many Lafitte stories. He had seen service with his chief on voyages against the Spanish. According to his description, these encounters with the Spaniards were bloody affairs. Blood ran off the decks like water, and when the fight was over, the enemy dead were thrown into the sea. One of the most remarkable incidents related by Snyder, however, pertained to the storm of 1819. Lafitte, with his four ships, was in the bay when the hurricane arose. The storm became so intense that he decided to go with his vessels to the high seas and take his chances there. He headed toward the channel, but, as the wind was blowing from the east, he was unable to get out that way. He therefore came back and drove his vessels straight across the island in six or seven feet of water.

THE PIRATE SHIP OF THE SAN BERNARD

A LEGEND OF THEODOSIA BURR ALLSTON

By J. W. Morris

Rumor of a pirate ship wrecked at the mouth of the San Bernard River, Brazoria County, has persisted for more than a century. Colonel Hunnington, who is seventy-eight years old, and who has lived near the mouth of the San Bernard for sixty years, heard of the wrecked privateer from the McNeill family, which established itself on the Bernard in 1822. Colonel Hunnington says that the ship was wrecked about 1816. It had put into the river to escape a great hurricane. The crew buried their golden pillage, some say ten million dollars, before the water rose to their destruction. When the storm passed, only one pirate remained alive. Colonel Hunnington says that the buried money has never been found, and he believes that it still lies where pirate hands placed it more than a hundred years ago. Captain William Sterling, who died a few years ago at the age of eighty, gave me corroborative evidence concerning the pirate ship. He said that during his boyhood he knew a solitary fisherman on Matagorda Peninsula who claimed to be the sole survivor of the wrecked privateer. He often showed the boy gold coins, which he called Spanish doubloons.

A wild and fascinating legend of the storm-wrecked ship was told me many years ago by Doctor Sid Williams, who was then a practicing physician near the mouth of Old Caney in Matagorda County. Mr. Jacob Smith told the same story. It is ascribed to a chief of the Carancaguas Indians, who spoke broken English and often visited the white settlers. He said that his tribe had always lived along the coast—a fact substantiated by history. A small band, of which he was chief, lived in the timber a few miles from the San Bernard River, along which clear to its mouth grew live oak trees and tough salt cedars. One day a great storm came out of the Gulf; the wind blew with fury that increased as the darkness came, and the waters rose upon the land. The chief and his people climbed into the salt cedars, which bent with the wind but did not break. After two days the storm passed and the tidal waters fell back. Many of the huge live oaks were destroyed utterly, and the remainder were so twisted and broken that they soon died. Since that time there has been no forest along the lowest reaches of the San Bernard.

As soon as the storm abated, the chief went from his camp to the bank of the river, where a pale-face lived alone. He found the hermit’s body tied with a rope to the splintered stump of a tree. There the waves had overwhelmed him. The chief also saw, partly in the water and partly on the land, the wreckage of a great ship. As he looked, he heard a faint voice. He followed the sound to what had been a cabin, and saw the ghost-like form of a white woman chained to the side. She stood with difficulty, and presently fainted, perhaps from weariness, perhaps from fright at seeing an Indian savage, for the chief made a habit of wearing deer antlers on his head. He broke the chain from the wall and carried her to the shore and laid her on the sand. He bathed her face in cold water, and she revived. She told him that her father had been a great chief away back somewhere, but that he had been misunderstood and had had to leave his country. Her husband was governor, she said, of a great state. She had been in a ship on the ocean when pirates destroyed the ship and killed all aboard it except herself. She was put on the pirate ship, which, returning to its Gulf headquarters, had been encountered by the storm and driven inland. There was, she said, a chest of gold on the wrecked ship, but the Indian could not find it. He did find the captain and some of the crew lashed to parts of the wreckage, dead. The chief made every effort to revive the woman, but she grew steadily weaker. She took from her neck a chain and locket and gave them to him. She began to sing, very faintly and beautifully. The Great Spirit spread a white wigwam around her so that the Indian could not see her. The voice sang on into the night, more and more faintly. When the morning star rose, the voice was still. At daylight the white wigwam was gone, and the woman lay dead. The Indian dug a grave with broken pieces of the wrecked ship, laid her there, and covered the grave with a broken door from the wreck. No man knows where that grave lies.

The Indian took the locket and chain to some white men, who read on the locket the word Theodosia and found within pictures of a fine-looking man and a little boy. Long afterward coast dwellers told this story in explanation of the mysterious fate of Theodosia Burr Allston. [117]

LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF TEXAS FLOWERS, NAMES, AND STREAMS

AN INDIAN LEGEND OF THE BLUE BONNET

By Mrs. Bruce Reid

[Considering the popularity of Texas blue bonnets, it is rather strange that legend concerning the flower is not more widespread. Corroborative versions prove conclusively that there is a legend. The first version is supplied by Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, of the University of Texas; it was given her by a Mrs. Lida Lea of Austin.

When the first Spanish missionaries came to the Southwest, they brought with them the seeds of a blue flower which grew originally on the hillsides of Jerusalem. They planted the seeds first within the walls of the mission gardens; they sprouted, and, though the soil was alien, the flowers grew and bloomed and soon spread far beyond the mission lands. Thus came the blue bonnet to Texas.

Another version of the legend was given to Mrs. Hatcher by a Mexican lady from the City of Mexico. She said that she had always heard that the flower came to the Southwest in this manner: There was a terrible pestilence in the land of the Aztecs. The prayers of the priests and the pleadings of the people had brought no relief. At length the voice of the god to whom they prayed proclaimed that a living sacrifice of some sinless human being must be made to atone for the wickedness of the people. A certain Aztec maiden offered to make the sacrifice. Her offer was accepted. When she went up to the altar on the hillside, her little bonnet dropped from her head without being noticed, and the next morning the ground around the altar was covered with flowers in the pattern and color of her bonnet, each splotched with the hue of her spilt blood. The pestilence passed. Now the Mexicans call the flower el conejo (cotton-tail rabbit), but in Texas it is the blue bonnet.

This legend is very characteristic of the Southwest. Mr. J. H. Tipps of San Antonio saw a cross high on a hill near Roma, Texas. He asked an old Mexican why it was there. The Mexican said that it was to commemorate the life of a girl who had saved the community by prayer. A terrible drouth was ruining the country, the most terrible ever known. There was not a sprig of forage for animal kind to eat; the people were starving. Then the girl went up on the mountain to pray for rain. For a long, long time she prayed. She prayed until she was no longer conscious. Then it rained, but the girl died before she could be brought down. She gave her life, and the cross was erected on top of her Mount of Olives.

Comparative folk-lorists will associate the springing of the blue bonnet from human blood with the Greek legends of the hyacinth and the narcissus. It is related, too, to the legend of the bleeding heart shamrock, said to have first appeared in Saint Roche’s Cemetery at New Orleans, from the blood spattered on some clover by a lover who stabbed himself to death over the grave of his sweetheart.

The legend told by Mrs. Reid must have come from the Comanches rather than from the Cherokees (who did, however, bring with them to Texas the legend of the Cherokee Rose). The Cherokees were in Texas only twenty years, and then hardly into the blue bonnet lands. See “The Last of the Cherokees in Texas,” by Albert Woldert, Chronicles of Oklahoma, issued by the Oklahoma Historical Society, June, 1923, pp. 179–226.—Editor.]

The teller of legends often adds details to his narrative in order to give it reality. I do not pretend that all of the details in the following legend are as I heard them, but something like this legend was told me by the late “Jack” Mitchell, whose people lived for fifty years among the Indians of the piney-woods and cross-timbers of Texas. My understanding is that the legend came to him either from the Cherokees or the Comanches. There is another Indian legend about the blue bonnet. It has to do with a fight among warriors in the happy hunting grounds, during the course of which they knocked from the sky chunks of blue that fell to the earth and assumed the form of the blue bonnet.

There had been a great flood followed by a greater drouth, and then on the drouth came a bitter winter of sleet and ice. Even in the far south, where the cold breath of winter is seldom felt, the woods and grasses of the coastal plains were sheathed with a rattling icy armor. All the game was dead or gone. The Indian people were starving to death. A dreadful disease had broken out among them. It was clear that the Great Spirit had indeed turned his face away from his children. Day and night the medicine men chanted their incantations, danced to the music of the sacred tomtoms, and mutilated their bodies in agony for a promise from the angered Spirit. At last the Great Spirit spoke. This was his message. In penance for the wrong-doing that had brought the evils upon the tribe there must be a burnt offering of its most valued possession, and the ashes of this offering must be scattered to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south.

Now among those who sat in discreet and becoming silence, beyond the anxious warriors gathered about the fires, was a little maid, too young for the heavy burdens of Indian womanhood to have yet begun to fall upon her small shoulders. Hidden among the folds of her scanty garments she tightly clasped a tiny figure of white fawn-skin, rudely shaped into the likeness of a papoose, with long braids of black horse-hair, and eyes, nose, and mouth painted on it with the juice of various berries. This figure the little maid had robed in a skirt, mantle, and high head-dress, out of the feathers of a bird of the rarest of hues in nature—the big, proudly crested, black-collared bird that calls “Jay! Jay!” through the topmost branches of the tallest and largest trees. Very, very beautiful were the feathers of this bird, soft, richly blue as the late afternoon skies when they clear after showers which have lasted through a day; and as an older mother loves her living child, so did the little maid love her deer-skin baby. Almost would she rather have died than have parted with it. Well she knew that it was by far the most precious of things owned by the tribe; and her heart was very heavy indeed for the rest of that day, and the part of a night that she lay beside her mother in their tepee, sleepless for that she saw her duty so clearly.

At last she arose, and stooping to lift from the smouldering fire within the tepee a bit of wood, one end of which was a glowing coal, she slipped out into the night. Under the twinkling, frosty stars she knelt, and prayed that her offering might be accepted and the fact of the acceptance made known to her.

Then blinking her eyes to keep back the tears, which an Indian child early learns must never be shed, she made a fire of twigs and grasses, and thrust her beloved papoose deep down into the glowing heart of the blaze, till the last bit of skin and shred of feather were consumed to ashes. The ashes she carefully scooped up in the hollow of her hand and scattered, to the east and the west, to the north and the south. Then putting out what remained of the fire, she patted the earth smooth and flat again.

As she did this last she felt beneath her palms something as fine and soft as the plumage with which she had clothed her doll—something that had not been in that place upon the ground when she cleared it to make her little fire. Believing that this might be the sign for which she had prayed, she would have picked up what lay against her hand, but she found it to be rooted in the soil.

So, returning to the tepee, she waited until morning and then with her mother, whom she told of what she had done, she went to the place where she had burned the little deer-skin papoose. But all about, as far as the ashes had traveled upon the early spring night breeze, was nothing but a blanket of such flowers as had never before enriched the landscape; and their thick tassels, in so great a profusion as nearly to hide the tender green of their leaves, were of the same deep, deep blue as the feathers of the bird that calls “Jay! Jay!” through the high tree-tops.

When the chief of the medicine men heard the story told by the mother and daughter, and saw for himself the expanse of blue flowers, he called the tribe together, and solemnly informed them that the command of the Great Spirit had been obeyed and the sacrifice accepted, and that the evil which had for so long pursued them would now be at an end.

It was even so. At once the plains and the open places, between lines and clumps of trees, began to renew their verdure, scattered over with gayly colored wild flowers; the birds and four-footed things came back to raise their families; and the tribal crops, natural and cultivated, gave every sign of abundant harvest.

In place of the name the little maid had borne, another was given her, a name of many musically flowing syllables, the meaning of which, in the red men’s tongue, was “she who dearly loves her people.”

Because the great shaggy animals, whose herds of old thundered across the far-flung prairies, were so fond of its succulent green abundance, the blue flower was called an Indian name which the pale-faces translated into “buffalo clover.” After the manner of its class of plant, it bore prodigious quantities of fertile seed and rapidly extended the limits of its growth.

HOW THE WATER LILIES CAME IN THE SAN MARCOS RIVER [118]

By Bella French Swisher

[This sentimental legend is not an invention of Bella French Swisher’s, who was given to turning legends to literary uses, but not to manufacturing them. I have heard of it from a lady who grew up on the San Marcos and was familiar with the story of the Indian lovers forty-five years ago. It is akin to another Indian legend of the same flower, Castalia elegans, according to which a star maiden fell in love with the red people of the earth and came down to live among them in the form of a water lily. This latter legend is quoted from the Grolier Society’s The Book of Knowledge, by Kate Peel Anderson in the Houston Chronicle, September 16, 1923, page 8. The San Marcos version is probably appropriated from some other stream.—Editor.]

All pearly and bright, by the day and the night, (Beautiful, beautiful river) Reflecting the sky and the clouds passing by, Flows the San Marcos forever.

The lilies arise in their damp paradise, And they open their petals in glory; But on every leaf is written, in brief, Such a sweet little Indian story!

Far back in a day when the red men held sway, On the banks of the beautiful river, An Indian maid of the world grew afraid, And gave back her sweet life to the Giver.

A princess was she of a royal degree. Who had loved far beneath her high station; She suffered the blame, the sorrow and shame, Like a maid of some wealthier nation.

But her heart-strings were torn, when one bright April morn, He was slain—her most worshipful lover. On the green banks he lay, all the long, weary day, With only the sky for a cover.

But just at the night, when the star-beams were bright, Her despair gave her power to sever The terrible bands, that imprisoned her hands, And she fled to the banks of the river,

To the spot where he lay ’mid the shadows so gray, Colder still than the bright pearly water. Just a prayer and a breath, and they met there in death, The slain lover and the chieftain’s mad daughter.

But the breath and the prayer, as a seedling fell there, Though the waters were ever so chilly. They discovered her not, but morn found on the spot Where she died, a white water-lily.

Since then, waxen and white, in the sun’s golden light, And as well in the evening glooming, May ever be seen, ’mid their foliage green In the water, the white lilies blooming.

And e’er since that day, tradition doth say, Have the Indians shunned the fair river; Though pearly and bright, by day and by night, Flows the San Marcos forever.

THE LEGEND OF EAGLE LAKE

Reprinted from the Morning Star, Houston, 1839

[The following legend (reference to which was contributed by Mr. E. W. Winkler, Librarian of the University of Texas) is taken from the first daily newspaper of Texas, the Morning Star, Houston, June 13, 1839, Vol. I, No. 56, pp. 2–3, which in turn reprinted it from the Richmond Telescope. A week after the Morning Star printed the legend, the Telegraph and Texas Register reprinted it, June 19, 1839. A few typographical errors have been corrected in this reprinting and some of the original punctuation has been redistributed. The legend of how Eagle Lake got its name has persisted down to the present day, but this version is probably the oldest that we shall ever find.

A version with many changes was published in The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer Magazine), Austin, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1881), pp. 99–102. The article in which it is embodied is unsigned, but the legend itself is said to be “fresh from the pen of Mrs. F. Darden” [Mrs. F. A. D. Darden], and it is apparently quoted from some other publication. According to this version, one of the lovers, Sonoto, was old and fierce; the other, Gray Cloud, was youthful and bold. The tree that the rivals climbed was a cottonwood. Gray Cloud reached the nest first and had grasped one of the eaglets to bring it down when he was assaulted by the fierce parent eagle. Sonoto seized the opportunity to hurl his opponent to the ground a hundred feet below. Out in the lake were the Indians, watching the contest from their canoes. When she saw her lover’s fate, the maiden, Forest Flower, began the death chant; then she leaped into the water and was drowned. Later the two lovers were buried side by side at the foot of the tree.

The Eagle Lake Headlight, according to its editor, Mr. Bruce W. McCarty, printed in 1903 a version of the legend written by Mrs. Emma Duke, now dead. A year ago another version, in verse form, “written for the Eagle Lake Chamber of Commerce” by Mrs. H. W. Carothers, formerly of Eagle Lake but now of Houston, and printed on a folio leaflet for popular distribution, was sent me by the mayor of Eagle Lake. It shows all the crassitude of modern “boosting.” In it a smug young Indian gets the eaglet and presents it to the maiden—his success an emblem of “the spirit of endeavor” that characterizes the modern “progressive” inhabitants of Eagle Lake! Mr. Louis Landa, who is Oldright fellow at the University of Texas and whose home is at Eagle Lake, says that the legend in one form or another is common in the vicinity.

Thus may be traced over a period of almost a century the progress of what was originally a very simple, a very dramatic, and a beautiful legend.—Editor.]

Eagle Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, about seven miles in circumference, and is connected by a bayou bearing the same name—a kind of outlet—with the Colorado. That body of land through which Eagle Lake Bayou passes may be said to be without exceptions the most fertile in the world. Besides its qualities of unsurpassed fruitfulness, there is no part of the known western hemisphere where the common grape grows so abundantly or abounds so spontaneously.

A large sycamore tree is shown on the west shore of the lake, where a large eagle, the Falco Washingtonianis, built her nest. The remains of the nest are there, consisting of branches of trees and tufts of grass, which hang fully 110 feet from the surface of the earth below. The bird was called by the inhabitants of the country the king eagle, and its nest was considered inaccessible. The “king eagle’s nest” and “eagle’s water’s wave” were proverbial phrases with the various tribes of Indians in western Texas.

The daughter of an Indian chief—a beautiful, dark-eyed girl—was wooed by two young warriors of equal pretensions to consideration among the Indians. Each was anxious to obtain the hand of the fawn-like damsel of the woods, and each, no doubt, loved with all the ardor and fervency, simplicity and sincerity, of a rude youth of the forest. To say which should become the husband of his daughter was a great perplexity to the mind of the maiden’s father. He had his political interests to strengthen and his views to carry out, as have greater men in greater nations. After many cogitations he resolved upon the following plan by which the suitors themselves could give a decision.

It was in the summer season, and the “great eagle” had hatched her young. The old chief’s plan was no more nor less than that the young man of the two in question who could bring him the young eagles alive, by a certain time, without cutting down the tree, should have his daughter. The proposition was accepted, and the rival lovers set out to procure, if possible, the young eagles. Each prepared himself with a raw-hide rope to throw over some limb of the tree, which could be fastened and facilitate the ascent. They both arrived alone and about the same time at the king eagle’s tree.

Each had precisely the other’s means to come at the young eagles, and the other’s means seemed to each so sure to succeed that neither would consent for the other to make the first attempt; whereupon arose a dispute, a quarrel, and a fight, which terminated in the immediate death of one, and the infliction of a mortal wound upon the other, who died a few days after the combat upon the spot where they had fought, being unable from debility to leave it.

Meantime the maiden, becoming anxious for their return, and apprehending some such catastrophe, seized her father’s spear and hastened to the place. She arrived there in the afternoon of the day on which the last one of the two lovers breathed his last. Frantic with frenzy and despair, she plunged the lance into her own breast, and died as she had always lived, in the language of the Indian who related the story, “the wife of no one.”

Ever afterwards the spot was regarded with a superstitious veneration by every tribe of Indians to whom was related their hapless story. Once in every seven moons the young men and maidens assembled to consecrate the spot, and each time they erected a cenotaph of flowers to their memory. Thus Eagle Lake took a name by which it is now known and will ever be.

THE HOLY SPRING OF FATHER MARGIL AT NACOGDOCHES

By E. G. Littlejohn

[Fray Don Antonio Margil de Jesús was one of the most active of Spanish missionaries in Texas during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, preaching and founding missions. Legend has remembered him well. The Margil Vine is named for him, the legend of which is told in History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions, by Miss Adina de Zavala, under the title “Legend of the First Christmas at the Alamo.” But the most remarkable Margil legend—and this told by Mr. Littlejohn is but a variant of it—is that connected with the origin of the San Antonio River. It has been realistically told by Major Charles Merritt Barnes in his Combats and Conquests of Immortal Heroes, pages 76–79, and retold by Mrs. Wright. [119] According to Major Barnes, he heard it in 1875 from a venerable San Antonian of Spanish blood.

Father Margil was with a company of priests and soldiers spying out the land when they were almost overcome by the heat and drouth. At length they came into a valley where there was green grass for the horses but not a drop of water. The priests kneeled under a tree to pray for water, and as he prayed Father Margil’s eye fell on bunches of mustang grapes above him. With praises to God, he began to climb for the juicy fruit. While he was reaching for a cluster, he fell. In falling, he swung to the grapevine and somehow uprooted it with a sudden jerk. Then from the hole left by the root a plenteous and refreshing spring of water gushed out. Thus was the origin of what is now called the San Antonio River.

Finally, at the very moment of his death, which was in the City of Mexico, August 2, 1726, all the mission bells in Texas, so legend runs, rang out of their own accord, without hands. [120]—Editor.]

The story of the “Holy Spring of Father Margil,” as it is called in the country around Nacogdoches, was told by H. C. Fuller in the Galveston News more than twenty years ago. The spring is situated just back of the city cemetery of Nacogdoches, overlooking La Nana Creek. Every other spring in the neighborhood has gone dry, but this one has never been known to cease its abundant flow. By some devout people its waters are thought to have healing power. The story of its miraculous origin runs as follows.

In 1716, or thereabout, the zealous Franciscan missionary, Father Margil, visited the Nacogdoches country, preaching to the Indians and projecting missions. His work accomplished, he and a few devoted followers started back for San Antonio, then the headquarters of the missionary movement. It was midsummer, the heat was terrific, and a burning drouth had made the whole country as dry as a rock. As Father Margil’s band traveled on and found no water, they began to suffer from thirst, but they felt sure that they would come to water in La Nana Creek. Imagine their disappointment upon arriving to find the bed as parched as the banks.

Overcome with heat, thirst, and fatigue, the entire party, with the exception of Father Margil, sat dejectedly on the ground. Taking his walking staff, Father Margil set out down the creek in search of water. About four hundred yards from where his companions lamented, he observed signs of moisture upon a high bluff overlooking the creek; here he knelt and prayed that like Moses he might be allowed to find water. Then with full faith he arose and smote with his staff the rock whereon he stood. Immediately there issued forth a living stream of cool, clear water. He tasted of it and hastily ran for his companions. Then they all drank and went on their way rejoicing at their miraculous deliverance.

INDIAN BLUFF ON CANADIAN RIVER [121]

By L. W. Payne, Jr.

This story, or legend, came to me in 1911 from a University of Texas student named W. Higgins, who got it from a guide called “Doctor” Barton on a camping trip up the Canadian River near the Oklahoma boundary line. Mr. Higgins admits that he has used his imagination somewhat in writing the legend, but says that its basis is real legend.

“Well,” began the “Doctor,” “see that tall rocky cliff over there? There’s kind of a legen’ ’bout that. Seems like durin’ early times there was a man an’ his family a-livin’ out here on this side the river, not so fur away. He had a mighty beautiful little baby, ’bout two years old. Besides her, there was three or four older children; then their ma and pa. There was lots of Indians livin’ on th’ other side the river, near the bluff; and some lived in the cliff. Yes, they