One swore he had seen her caught up into the black cloud as it opened to emit the thundering electric bolt—plain proof that she was an emissary of the devil.
While confusion thus reigned, some tried in vain to find the arrows, which might give a clue. With the earliest dawn, a careful and persistent search failed to discover the arrows, or the presence of a single Indian within the radius of a hundred miles.
The presence and disappearance of the “Woman of the Western Star” must be classed as a mystery, and, like many another mystery, its influence was not only felt at the time, but had lasting beneficial effect. Henceforth the Indians came and went peacefully, committing no depredations, and unmolested by the white men. At a certain season of each year, they placed flint arrowheads and beads of many colors in the grave of their most noted chief and planted a peace feather at its head. In the long ago, he and his tribe had resisted the Spanish invasion and he had fallen, mortally wounded, in battle against them. On a high cliff overlooking Bandera Pass, his grave could still be seen thirty years ago.
THE DEVIL AND STRAP BUCKNER[1]
By N. A. Taylor
[The legend of “The Devil and Strap Buckner” reprinted here in a much abridged form, through the courtesy of Mrs. Natalie Taylor Carlisle and [[119]]Miss Grace B. Taylor, of Houston, daughters of the deceased author, affords sufficient perplexity to the folk-lorist. There is no doubt that the legend as told is based on a pure folk tale; there is no doubt that the author in telling it took many liberties with it, much as Washington Irving took liberties with the legends of the Hudson; and there seems little doubt that the legend has perished from the folk among whom it once existed. The book in which it is preserved is very scarce, hardly procurable at any price.
Colonel Nathaniel Alston Taylor came to Texas shortly before the Civil War and began his travels of “2000 miles on horseback,” concluding them after the war was over. I should say that in addition to being the most delightful of all Texas books of travel, his book contains the most incisive information on the social conditions of pioneer Texans. According to Mrs. Carlisle, though the name of H. F. McDanield is printed as an associate author, he had absolutely nothing to do with the authorship. Mr. Taylor needed financial help to publish the book and McDanield gave it on the condition that his name should be used as joint author. Mr. Taylor left manuscript journals containing notes on his travels in which the legend is mentioned; and Mrs. Carlisle writes:
“As told me by my father, the legend of Strap Buckner is really folk-lore. It was told to him in very simple form by a ‘dapper young man’ explaining why the creek was named Buckner’s Creek. The young man said that Strap Buckner came to Texas with Austin’s colony and gained his queer reputation for good naturedly knocking men down, and that he had several times knocked down the great Austin himself; he would not hesitate to knock down anything. My father remarked, ‘He’d try to knock down a bull, wouldn’t he?’ Thereupon the young man said that it was related that Strap Buckner had tackled and put to flight, with his bare fists, a great black bull that occasionally made himself obnoxious in Austin’s colony. But Strap became unpopular and betook himself to the La Grange vicinity, where he settled in a log cabin of his own construction near the creek. Here he ‘tried to be good,’ but finally again began knocking men down, and knocked down the Indians and even the chief and his ‘queen’ and the chief’s daughter. The Indian chief admired him so much that he presented him with the swiftest horse he had, a gray nag. This recognition of ‘his genius’ so aroused the spirits of Strap that he became gloriously drunk and declared himself ‘the Champion of the World’ and challenged any and everybody to fight—the whole Indian tribe, the Devil himself. At this point, a terrible tempest arose, during which the air was charged with brimstone, and the Devil appeared, and a dreadful fight took place, lasting all the day and night. The Devil conquered, and carried Strap and his gray nag away on a cloud of pale blue smoke that arose from the ‘battle ground.’ My father was so impressed by the tale that he added to it with the result to be read in his book.”
In hope of finding some survival of the legend in the La Grange neighborhood, I sent a copy of it to Mrs. W. H. Thomas, a member of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, who has long lived at La Grange. She and her son, Mr. Wright Thomas, circulated the legend widely without being able to get a surviving trace of it. Nevertheless, there is a large creek that empties into the Colorado River near La Grange called “Buckner’s Creek.” The country up it “used to be considered wild and rough,” says Mrs. [[120]]Thomas, “and when I was a child and we wanted to describe anyone as rough, rude, or illiterate, we would say that he must have come ‘from high Buckner.’ ”