The Explorers' Texas: The Animals They Found

Rating:
Summary: Texas Past
Review: Del Weniger used 360 journal entries from whites who explored what would be Texas from the late 17th Century to 1860 to find out what the fauna of the region once was. He used only observation notes to avoid the distortions that can arise from reminiscences, and what he found is awe-inspiring: vast numbers of plains animals, comparable to the African savanna and not limited to buffalo. There were pronghorns and White-tailed Deer in herds of hundreds on the prairies - yes, deer in the open in giant herds. His research indicates they became shy forest creatures after whites with their mass slaughter and land destruction entered the scene. With them were attendant wolf packs, also hundreds strong. Peccaries, jackrabbits, coyotes, and elk (in north and south Texas!) joined them for what must have been an awesome spectacle to the European settlers. Jaguar roamed to the Red River. Ocelots lived wherever there was shrub cover, even in what's now the Panhandle. Mountain lions were encountered on a daily basis and said to be relatively harmless and even tamable. Immense prairie dog towns extended for miles with populations in the hundreds of millions. Beavers, otters, ringtails, black bears, and gray foxes were abundant, but armadillos hadn't yet moved north of the Valley and porcupines hadn't moved south of the Panhandle before 1860. Weniger uses etymology and range records to validate his arguments and clarify his points. The only irritating thing about this book is his ignorance of Native Americans. Names from American languages (like jaguar, opossum, and cougar) he says came from "the Indian word for...", implying there's only one Indian language. And for opossum, he says that the first syllable is a white approximation of the "peculiar grunt common to Indian speech". No linguistic research past Hollywood Westerns? That aside, this is a fascinating, enlightening book.

Rating:
Summary: Texas Past
Review: Del Weniger used 360 journal entries from whites who explored what would be Texas from the late 17th Century to 1860 to find out what the fauna of the region once was. He used only observation notes to avoid the distortions that can arise from reminiscences, and what he found is awe-inspiring: vast numbers of plains animals, comparable to the African savanna and not limited to buffalo. There were pronghorns and White-tailed Deer in herds of hundreds on the prairies - yes, deer in the open in giant herds. His research indicates they became shy forest creatures after whites with their mass slaughter and land destruction entered the scene. With them were attendant wolf packs, also hundreds strong. Peccaries, jackrabbits, coyotes, and elk (in north and south Texas!) joined them for what must have been an awesome spectacle to the European settlers. Jaguar roamed to the Red River. Ocelots lived wherever there was shrub cover, even in what's now the Panhandle. Mountain lions were encountered on a daily basis and said to be relatively harmless and even tamable. Immense prairie dog towns extended for miles with populations in the hundreds of millions. Beavers, otters, ringtails, black bears, and gray foxes were abundant, but armadillos hadn't yet moved north of the Valley and porcupines hadn't moved south of the Panhandle before 1860. Weniger uses etymology and range records to validate his arguments and clarify his points. The only irritating thing about this book is his ignorance of Native Americans. Names from American languages (like jaguar, opossum, and cougar) he says came from "the Indian word for...", implying there's only one Indian language. And for opossum, he says that the first syllable is a white approximation of the "peculiar grunt common to Indian speech". No linguistic research past Hollywood Westerns? That aside, this is a fascinating, enlightening book.