Bodark is Texas slang for Bois d’arc, the French term meaning bow wood. Better known in these parts as Horse-Apple, (Machura pomifera), the “pig tight and bull strong” hedge planted by early settlers who could’t afford stone walls in the decades before barbed-wire. Before bodark spread over the Great Plains as a hedge, it was limited to a tiny range in the Red River region where Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma join. The bois d’arc had almost gone extinct at the end of the Pleistocene around 12,000 years ago because the animals that processed the seed through digestion and dispersed its seeds, mastodons, ground sloths, horses, and camels, disappeared from North America. Deer and rodents tear-up the grapefruit-sized fruits for the seeds, but do a terrible job of spreading them over long distances. The wood made the best bows in North America and was highly valued. For a time the remnant habitat was monopolized by the powerful Spiroan trade network (1250-1450 AD) that traded the bow staves all over the Great Plains and down to the Texas Coast. The tree has a tendency, after being cut, to sprout several shoots that grow to bow staves size in just a few years. [It was this sprouting habit that made the bodark hedge so thick] In 1804 Meriwether Lewis wrote to President Thomas Jefferson about the tree: So much do the savages esteem the wood of this tree for the purpose of making their bows, that they travel many hundreds of miles in quest of it.” Today, because of the use as hedges, the bois d’arc grows all over the Great Plains, including Erath County.

The above photos were taken on the Bosque Trail in Stephenville, on June 3, 2022

Connie Barlow. The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms. New York: Basic Books, 2000; and Leslie Bush. “Evidence for a Long-Distance Trade in Bois d’arc Bows in 16th century Texas (Maclura pomifera, Moracee),” Journal of Texas Archeology and History Vol. 1:51-69.

Texas settlers were lured into Texas by land speculators with claims that Texas was a paradise where rain was plentiful. “Wheels of the wagons heading west in 1883 made music as they turned . . . Tied to their wagons were iron wash pots, coops of clucking Plymouth Rock hens, plows, and crates of squealing pigs. At the heels of the team of mules trotted a dog; and two cows, secured with ropes, followed docilely. Children, tousled headed, sensed the happiness of their parents; they sang and climbed over the mounds of coffee and sugar and played around the jars of peaches, pears, peas, jams, and pickles. But it stopped raining and by 1886 all surface water was gone and there were no crops. In 1886 the “Wheels of the same wagons – dried and aged, headed east . . . , groaning and creaking as the churned the dust. Occupants, disappointed, disgusted and heartsick. A cracked iron wash pot, smutty from numerous fires, was secured to the side of the wagon, and the hound which walked beside the wagon looked like a rattan birdcage draped with hide. No cows followed the wagon; no chickens cackled; and no pigs squealed. These wagons heading east were the same wagons that had gone west three years before.”

C. Richard King. Wagons East: The great Drought of 1886. Austin: The University of Texas, 1965.

Roy Sylvan. Droughts. TSHA: Texas State Historical Association. tshaonline.org

Baylor’s vigilante army was still active after last month’s defeat, intercepting wagons of government supplies for the reservation, killing Native’s cattle and stealing their horses. On June 6, Major Robert Neighbors received word that the vigilantes [from Erath and other counties] were going to attack the reservation again, but the report was a ploy on the part of Baylor “to enable them to scatter” to their homes. “It’s a sad commentary on conditions on the frontier that troops, who were fighting the real enemy [Comanches] to the north who had devastated Texas for years, had to be recalled to protect their Indian allies from the assaults of hostile white men.” [The reservation would have to close in July and Major Neighbors would be assassinated in September.]

Kenneth Neighbours, “Chapters from the History of Texas Indian Reservations.” The West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 33 (October, 1957), 3-16.

Kenneth Neighbours, “Indian Exodus Out of Texas in 1859.” The West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 36 (October, 1960, 80-87.

Twelve-year-old Sue Sanders visited Stephenville in 1892 during a political rally and barbecue on the square. Farmers had donated “chicken-eating hogs and fence-breaking cows” to feed the crowd. There were a lot of dogs present – a mighty lot – and they were only the green country kind that don’t get around much and weren’t posted on how dogs should act at a barbecue. So when they heard everybody clapping and hollering, they took it to mean, ‘sic ’em,’ and every dog of the lot went to it for all he was worth. I counted 18 dog fights around the speaker’s stand . . . The speaker’s face got red and purple, and the veins stood out in his neck like ropes. He was hollering as loud as a county politician can holler, but it got so we couldn’t catch a word of it.”

Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd. New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1939; The above scenes are of the Erath County courthouse as it was 1n 1892. Courtesy of the Stephenville Historical House Museum.

1922: A massive rainfall late this month brought the Leon River out of its banks, “sending thousands of giant catfish into the eddying backwaters where they are destroying crops. Citizens there were shooting and clubbing the voracious hungry creatures. Several of the huge fish even entered chicken houses and pulled chickens from their roosts.” Stephenville Tribune

During the last week in May, 1874, John Wesley Hardin won $3000 at the Comanche County horse races. Charles Webb, Sheriff of Brown County, arrived with 15 men to arrest Hardin and announced that Comanche Sheriff John Karnes “was no man or sheriff because he allowed a set of murders to stay around him.” Celebrating after the race, Hardin threw a handful of $20 gold coins on the counter of a local saloon and ordered drinks for everyone. Sheriff Webb drew on Hardin in the saloon and was killed. A mob formed to hang Hardin, who surrendered to Sheriff Karnes. Vigilantes arrived from Erath County and together with the angry citizens of Comanche stormed the jail and disarmed Karnes. Hardin’s wife, mother, father, sister, and brother joined the Sheriff’s people, advanced with shoguns, allowing Hardin and a friend to reach their horses and ride out of town. Hardin was wounded by vigilante gunfire as he fled town and on the 26th camped in the hills four miles from Comanche, trying to avoid the hundreds of vigilantes that searched the area. Bill Waller, Ranger and vigilante captain, arrested Hardin’s father, brother, and several friends, to keep them from helping Hardin.

Robert G. McCubbin, (ed.) The Life of John Wesley Hardin, As Written by Himself. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.

In 1895 “Who would have thought of the Bosque River being navigable, and of our people shipping vegetables and fruit right out of Stephenville by water?” Such a produce shipment left Stephenville left Stephenville on May 13th bound for the mouth of the Brazos River at Waco. The Stephenville Empire did not have a follow-up story about whether or not the shipment made it to Waco.

1908: “A deplorable scene was enacted at the auditorium of the Stephenville Public School during the closing ceremonies of the school term, evidencing much ignorance and stupidity. When a match was applied to the red flash powder used to light up a tableau [actors freeze in a pose recreating a historical moment]- instantly pandemonium ensued: someone yelled ‘fire’ and there was a mad dash for the door.” Stephenville Tribune

1895: A farmer from the Lingleville area allowed his wife to accompany him to Stephenville this month for the first time in four years.