“A Davis Mountains Cougar ”
The Davis Mountains hold a special place in the back rooms of my mind. I love to be up high on a mountain side and look out over valleys and see other mountains in the distance. The Davis Mountains, in far West Texas, is probably the best place in Texas for me to enjoy myself. There are hundreds of places with magnificent views that just titillate my soul.
Just inside the Davis Mountains on the south side near the town Ft. Davis is the Davis Mountains State Park. In this state park there is a road that goes up to the top of the mountains on the south side. From up there you can look south out over the foothills, grassy plains, and distant mountains toward Marfa and Alpine. To the north the view is over the first valley that is now the state park.
That is the view in this painting. The model for the cougar sitting up there on the grassy top of the mountain enjoying the view is Freddie, a large male cougar that is a resident of PrideRock Wildlife Refuge, owned by my friends Carol and Gary, near Terrell, Texas.
For about a hundred years or more, these mountains were named Limpia Mountains. In Spanish, “limpia” means “clean.” The main stream that drains the southern side of the mountains is still named Limpia Creek.
These mountains, formed by ancient volcanoes, cover an area of about 20 to 25 miles across north to south and about 40 miles across east to west. They are like an island rising out of the surrounding semi-desert floor. They go up from about 3,500 feet elevation to about 6,500 feet with the highest peak being Mount Livermore at 8,381 feet. Due to the higher elevations, the rainfall is about 10 to 20 inches more each year in the mountains than in the surrounding area, so there are a lot more trees, bushes, grass, and wildlife. Up until about 1880, these mountains were the home for the Mescalero Apache Indians.
How it came about that the name of these mountains was changed to The Davis Mountains is briefly as follows.
The Comanche Indians that lived and roamed on the plains of northern Texas and Oklahoma were nomadic. Their culture was based on owning horses. They counted their wealth by how many horses they owned. The young males, whose hormones and genes were urging them to get that pretty young Indian maiden that had been giving them the eye, had to have horses to buy her from her parents. There were no jobs or employment opportunities for them to make money to get the horses they needed to buy the girl. Since tribal customs preventing them from stealing horses from fellow tribal members, their only course of action was to steal horses from others. The males that could steal the most number of horses had the most respect in their tribe and had as many wives as they could keep up with. To steal the horses, they had to accept in their culture that it was acceptable to kill the owners of the horses that they wanted to steal. As a byproduct, it also became acceptable to bring the children of the people they had killed back to the tribe to be slaves and concubines. Over time they became very proficient at, and loved, the killing of the people that owned the horses and children that were to be stolen.
The best hunting ground for them to find the most number of horses was to the south in southern Texas and northern Mexico. So for a hundred years or more they were the “terrorists,” as we would call them today, of southern Texas and northern Mexico . Just how many Texans and Mexicans were murdered by them, and how many children and horses were stolen during this period is unknown; however, the number has to be staggering.
One of the main routes or trails that the Comanche Indians made to do their raids into Mexico was to come down from the plains and cross the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossing, near present day Iran, Texas, and then go west to Comanche Springs, that is present day Fort Stockton. Then they went south, east of and skirting The Davis Mountains. The present day US Highway 385 closely follows that old Comanche Indian trail. It goes from Fort Stockton to just east of Marathon, Texas, and continuing on south, following the old trail, down to and through Big Bend National Park to the Rio Grande River.
So we today can drive down US 385 and see the scenery that the Comanche Indians were looking at as they rode their horses down the trail to Mexico.
In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the peace treaty that ended the war between Mexico and The United States, in Article XI, the United States agreed to provide the military might to prevent the savage Indians living within the U. S. from raiding into Mexico. Furthermore, no U.S. citizen could buy horses or children from the Indians that were stolen in Mexico. The U.S. started building military forts along the US and Mexico border to adhere to the requirements of Article XI.
In 1849, the U.S. did a survey to determine the best route for a wagon road from San Antonio to where present day El Paso is located. In Texas, the forts were built along this wagon road where water was available. The forts were from 40 to about 100 miles or more apart.
For the first years, the forts provided protection only for the Stage Stations being built along the wagon road and for immigrants to camp in overnight, but did nothing to stop the Comanche and other Indians from raiding into Northern Mexico. That was because, to save money, the U.S. Congress, not understanding the vastness of the area or the nature of the Comanche Indians, appropriated only enough funds to garrison the forts with infantry. In between the forts, the Comanche still ruled and continued to raid into northern Mexico without interference from the infantry soldiers in the forts. Later the infantry soldiers would be replaced with mounted cavalry and with better weapons, including the six-shooter. The soldiers could then confront, on even terms, the Comanche Indians and eventually stopped their raiding into Southern Texas and Northern Mexico.
The location for one of those forts was selected to be next to Limpia Creek where it exits the Limpia Mountains. This fort, built in 1854, was named in honor of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. About seven years later, he would be the President of the Confederacy of southern states during the Civil War. In his honor, the name of the Limpia Mountains was changed to The Davis Mountains.
As you visit and enjoy the views in The Davis Mountains, you can contemplate about how the ever present urge of male hormones and genes to procreate had a lot to do with how the mountains got their name today.
Cheers,
Acree
P. S. My grandson, Nathaniel Duban, and I are leaving this Saturday for a trip to the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. We will be gone most of next week so there will not be any more issues of Art and Tales by Acree until the last week of March.
If you come to the Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park, March 27 -29, my booth number is #313. Please stop for a visit.
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