The first grasses to arrive on ruined soil are among the most valued by buffalo, the Bouteloua family. Many species still carry the Spanish name for grasses – grama. The Bouteloua are typically little tufts of thin, wiry, drought-singed leaves that hardly ever grow to a foot tall. The gramas evolved on the fringes of the Chihuanhuan Desert, a dozen of these nutritious little grasses migrated into Texas after the Pleistocene when most tall grasses were dying out. The gramas prefer plenty of space, which is no problem at the close of a barren period, and they will hold on until crowded out by the next stage in restoration. Most of these grasses keep their ideal spacing of about one clump per foot in the Trans-Pecos, but in the Cross Timbers area, the easily over-looked Texas grama (Boutelous rigidista) and slightly taller gramas, will close ranks, and hold enough moisture in the soil to invite the next stage, the more robust Meadow Dropseeds, (Sporobolus asper), and (S. texanus). These mat-forming grasses will choke out the gramas and prepare the conditions for the next stage. Dropseed is only moderately interesting to grazers, but as the name implies, the seeds release easily for wildlife and have even provided gruel for human use. The Dropseed is a medium grass growing as high as two feet and it holds enough moisture to host the final stage grass, Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium. This grass brings the prairie into balance and can last for centuries – or until the next megadrought. This is the grass that early settlers said covered 90% of the Western Cross Timber’s prairie patches. Later I’ll explain how Sumac facilitates this restoration.

The Western Cross Timbers is a mosaic of sandy post oak and thin black soil live oak-savannahs. The final stage growth that stays in balance for centuries, is characterized by waist-high little bluestem and full growth timber. Grassland damage from a severe drought might be compared to later dairy-decimation and cattle-penning in general. The ground appears rubble-strewn, Opuntia and spiny, immature cedar elm, skunkbush sumac, mesquite, and chittamwood-ringed thickets hide a few surviving bunches of native grass and second-growth oaks, waiting for their habitat to return. Hordes of undisciplined mesquites and cedars begin to rise in the absence of prairie fires. Texas broomweed (Xanthocephlum texanum) migrated into Erath County thousands of years ago during the Altithermal megadrought, like Opuntia, it can only reach its full potential when there is no root competition. Broomweed matures as green globes that form a canopy covering the land like ticks, sucking out the moisture. Broomweed’s globes and tiny yellow flowers present a photo-op for oblivious tourists. If cattle are removed, a good hot fire will push broomweed from its place of dominance, then grasses will migrate in to cover the area. I’ve seen little bluestem rise to waist-high in 40 years from bare ground without seeding. In the next several posts I’ll explain how sumac can help restore a nature grassland.

It is theorized that the mind was originally divided into an executive (the spirit world) and the follower (man). One part of the mind spoke to the other by audio hallucination. The notion is that there was an ancient bicameral mind that was not conscious or subjective in which the apparent spirit of a raven, a rock, or a burning bush could warn or instruct. This ancient mentality is demonstrated in comparison of earlier and later tablets of the Gilgamesh story, the Mycenean Iliad and later Greek literature, and earlier books of the bible, particularly Amos and Ecclesiastes. Each refers to direct communication with the gods without introspection, in a world before nature became an ecomachine. The bicameral mind was replaced with modern consciousness as civilization became more complicated, self-awareness has expelled man from the garden. Having lost the certainty of direct spiritual contact, religion set to work instituting the idea of a fall from divine favor. Its possible that the Comanches that were relatively isolated from Western consciousness that was beginning to pervade neighboring Indians, perhaps had still retained a bicameral mind and lived in the present, still free of the curse of self-reflective thought. Still open to the advice of an old oak. Unfortunately for the victims of Comanche raids, a nonconscious mind, with no subjectivity, did not register empathy.

Julian Jaynes. The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company

In 1895 Sam Roberson opened a bath house in Stephenville with both hot and cold running water. Friday was set aside as women’s day. Stephenville Empire At the Dublin Bath house, in 1883, “six bathers , in a perfectly nude condition, engaged in a fight” Stephenville Empire

On June 30, 1908 a small astroid, perhaps 160-200 feet thick, exploded before reaching the ground near the Tunguska River in Eastern Siberia. Thought to have been about 15-megatons, this explosion flattened an estimated 500 acres of forest. It was the largest impact on earth in recorded history caused worldwide climatic effect. A noctilucent cloud developed over much of the earth, illuminating night skies. Great storms sunk ships at sea, destroyed lives and property all over the United States, and blew over oak and peach trees in Erath County. Instead of heating up like a typical Erath summer, the following weeks were springlike, and [ July, 24th] according to “George Lidia who came to Erath County in 1859, who been a close observer of the seasons, remembers none equalling the present summer for rain. . . . The nights have been delightfully pleasant with few really warm days.” It just so happened that Col. L. S. Polk and Bruce Cage decided to try a large crop of sugar beets this summer, hoping to “establish at Stephenville a great factory for converting beets into sugar.” No doubt it was a bumper crop – but alas, Erath summers were never that cool or wet again.

Stephenville Tribune, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Among the agricultural Indians that lived along the southern end of the Bosque River and in East Texas, June was the time of the First Fruits Ceremony in which past deeds were forgiven and everyone experienced a sense of renewal. No one were allowed to eat any of the new vegetables until after “a ceremony both mysterious and remarkable” known as the feast of the new fruits. It consisted of dedicating the first beans and corn (separate ceremonies) to the sun and earth and purifying the village . On the appointed day the pathways through the village were swept and the council house cleaned and decorated with wildflowers. All drank a hallucinogenic, emetic [mescal bean] tea and spent the day singing and purging themselves before they they ate, “worthy of the first fruits of the year.”

Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969.

In 1901 “A lady teacher having applied for a position in the Stephenville public schools had an interview with one of the trustees, and then withdrew her application , stating that the views of the trustee as to what is required of a teacher are about on a par with that of a wolf’s views on the sermon on the mount.”

Erath Appeal

In June of 1905, ten miles east of Stephenville, a man was arguing with his wife. He then threw a knife at her, missed and killed the baby. “He ran for the camphor and tried to revive the child;” when that didn’t work, he shot and killed himself. Stephenville Tribune

A two-year -old boy went with his father to a cotton gin and when his father was ready to leave he couldn’t find the boy. The search went on for hours without finding the child. Months later, in June of 1909, word was received from England that a child’s body was found in a cotton bale from that gin.

Stephenville Empire

1908: “Tuberculosis, called the great white plague, is becoming a serious menace to life in Erath County, and many homes have already been made desolate. By following rigid sanitary rules the disease will be prevented; of course, those who now have it will die.” Stephenville Tribune I was told by a Brownwood blacksmith that I interviewed in the 1970s that in the early 1900s, when he lit his forge each morning and waited for the green, high sulphur (Thurber) coal smoke to dissipate, that women with TB would pay him 50 cents a week to crowd around the smoky fire, with quilts over their heads, and breathe all they could stand of the black smoke. The coal smoke treatments probably did nothing for them – but people need to feel that they are doing something when faced with a fatal disease.