Big-Foot Wallace was a genuine buckskin-wearing, musket-packing, big-knife-in-the-belt, Indian-fighting, bear-wrassling frontiersman. He came to Texas just after the battle of Goliad and joined the Somervell and Mier expeditions, landing him in Mexican prisons. He fought with Jack Hays in the Mexican War and later...

Jefferson Davis was the U. S. secretary of war in 1855, and he was a big thinker. Pondering the challenges of westward expansion, he thought that camels might prove the perfect beast of burden for crossing arid expanses. And so he dispatched a ship to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to bring back camels for testing...

Julia Nott Waugh's Castroville and Henry Castro was the original and definitive book on the Castro Colony of Texas. Spawned by a Sam Houston brainstorm, the colonization project meant to bring thousands of French and German immigrants to the western frontier of the Republic of Texas. In some measure it succeeded; in...

Noah Smithwick's memoir, The Evolution of a State, is indisputably one of the greatest of the Texas pioneer stories. His accounting rings more true than many. He came to Texas just behind the Austin colonists in 1827, at the age of nineteen, and remained until pushed out by the Civil War in 1861. During that...

This is the story of the founding of New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Boerne, Comfort, and the other German settlements of the Texas Hill Country.

Refugees from economic and social strife in Germany, followed by idealistic communalists and liberal political refugees, came to the Hill Country looking for freedom...

Mary Maverick's memoirs are a Texas classic. They are valuable as a chronicle of the experiences of a young woman on the Texas frontier; they are made more valuable by her marriage to Samuel Maverick, who was embroiled in much of the turmoil surrounding the young Republic of Texas. Mary and Sam led remarkable lives....

Not every Texian confrontation with Mexico heaped glory on the forces of the future Lone Star State. Of all the frustrations visited upon the Republic, surely the Texan Santa Fe Expedition stands out as the most ill-conceived, poorly planned, badly executed disaster. Yet the story—as related by George Wilkins Kendall—is...

George Wilkins Kendall’s story gains even more fire in the second half of his narrative. The story begins in the desert north of El Paso, as the prisoners are being marched to their destination. The brutal Captain Salezar delivers the Texans into other hands in El Paso, and the long march to Mexico City begins.

...

The Texas navy seems to be one of those topics that is unfamiliar to the general public. Although the navy saw a fair amount of action, and although it was certainly nettlesome to Mexico, it—like most of the Texas-Mexico struggle after San Jacinto—tends to slip by unnoticed.

If the general reader is surprised to...

Herman Lehmann may be the most famous person taken captive by Indians in Texas. Snatched from his family's home in Loyal Valley in May 1870, at about the age of twelve, he did not return home until he was a grown man, and then only under compulsion—he longed to return to his Comanche family.

After his abduction...

In the spring of 1843, Auguste Frétellière was a 20-year-old young Parisian searching for his destiny. Convinced by a friend, and by Texas land empresario Henry Castro, that there was a fortune to be made in Texas, he embarked on a most remarkable journey. At his mother’s insistence, he was accompanied by a tutor, who...

John J. Linn’s reminiscences are well known to Texas history scholars, but less familiar to general readers. The book is one of the first-person reflections on early Texas that has the hallmarks of both authenticity and personal interpretation. Written in 1883 by an octogenarian who had been an early trader, merchant,...

Looking back from a distance of more than 150 years, the subtitle to Ferdinand Roemer's travelogue—emphasizing German immigrants and the physical characteristics of Texas—seems misplaced. While covering his central topics, Roemer provides a world of insight into the farthest reaches of frontier Texas. Recounting his...

This book’s title is undeniably corny—even the author admits as much. But there is an equally undeniable spirit of adventure and, yes, romance about the Big Bend of Texas.

Even today the Big Bend remains one of the few outposts of the Old West. Vast deserts rippled with rugged mountains resist every effort to...

James B. Gillett served during one of the lustrous periods of the Texas Rangers' history—the last years of Indian fighting and the years of West Texas settlement just before the coming of the railroads. He fought Comanches, Lipans, Mescaleros, cattle thieves, horse rustlers, bank robbers, and outlaws. In an adventure...

This volume contains chronicles of four early and important expeditions (or entradas) into Texas. The first is the Bosque-Larios expedition of 1675, the earliest well-documented expedition to cross the Rio Grande from Nuevo León. The second is the landmark 1683 Mendoza-López expedition to the Jumanos in central Texas,...

Camels make a lot of sense when you are confronted with a vast, untracked desert reaching from San Antonio to California. That was the circumstance faced by the U. S. army in 1855 and, once camels were landed in Texas, the army began experimenting with their practical value in real-world conditions.

We offer...

Necessity begets innovation; faced with an arid and unexplored western frontier, and burdened with the need to haul water for horses, mules, and people, the U. S. army began thinking about camels. Under the circumstances, it made perfect sense to fetch a few dozen camels from Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Crimea, then...

There is no better exploration of Texas cowboy life than Charles Siringo's A Texas Cowboy. What sets his memoir apart is his candid account of the personality, habits, and values that brought him to the range. His difficult, dirt-poor childhood, his free-spending ways, his driving wanderlust, his love of whisky, guns,...

August Santleben’s Texas Pioneer is—like Mary Maverick’s Memoirs, James Gillett’s Six Years with the Texas Rangers, or Charles Siringo’s Texas Cowboy—one of the seminal first-person accounts of pioneer life in West Texas. Those who wish to understand that place and time must read Santleben,...

John J. Linn’s reminiscences are well known to Texas history scholars, but less familiar to general readers. The book is one of the first-person reflections on early Texas that has the hallmarks of both authenticity and personal interpretation. Written in 1883 by an octogenarian who had been an early trader, merchant,...

George Wilkins Kendall’s story gains even more fire in the second half of his narrative. The story begins in the desert north of El Paso, as the prisoners are being marched to their destination. The brutal Captain Salezar delivers the Texans into other hands in El Paso, and the long march to Mexico City begins.

...

Not every Texian confrontation with Mexico heaped glory on the forces of the future Lone Star State. Of all the frustrations visited upon the Republic, surely the Texan Santa Fe Expedition stands out as the most ill-conceived, poorly planned, badly executed disaster. Yet the story—as related by George Wilkins Kendall—is...

Noah Smithwick's memoir, The Evolution of a State, is indisputably one of the greatest of the Texas pioneer stories. His accounting rings more true than many. He came to Texas just behind the Austin colonists in 1827, at the age of nineteen, and remained until pushed out by the Civil War in 1861. During that...

August Santleben’s Texas Pioneer is—like Mary Maverick’s Memoirs, James Gillett’s Six Years with the Texas Rangers, or Charles Siringo’s Texas Cowboy—one of the seminal first-person accounts of pioneer life in West Texas. Those who wish to understand that place and time must read Santleben,...

This book’s title is undeniably corny—even the author admits as much. But there is an equally undeniable spirit of adventure and, yes, romance about the Big Bend of Texas.

Even today the Big Bend remains one of the few outposts of the Old West. Vast deserts rippled with rugged mountains resist every effort to...

This is the story of the founding of New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Boerne, Comfort, and the other German settlements of the Texas Hill Country.

Refugees from economic and social strife in Germany, followed by idealistic communalists and liberal political refugees, came to the Hill Country looking for freedom...

Julia Nott Waugh's Castroville and Henry Castro was the original and definitive book on the Castro Colony of Texas. Spawned by a Sam Houston brainstorm, the colonization project meant to bring thousands of French and German immigrants to the western frontier of the Republic of Texas. In some measure it succeeded; in...

There is no better exploration of Texas cowboy life than Charles Siringo's A Texas Cowboy. What sets his memoir apart is his candid account of the personality, habits, and values that brought him to the range. His difficult, dirt-poor childhood, his free-spending ways, his driving wanderlust, his love of whisky, guns,...

Looking back from a distance of more than 150 years, the subtitle to Ferdinand Roemer's travelogue—emphasizing German immigrants and the physical characteristics of Texas—seems misplaced. While covering his central topics, Roemer provides a world of insight into the farthest reaches of frontier Texas. Recounting his...

This volume contains chronicles of four early and important expeditions (or entradas) into Texas. The first is the Bosque-Larios expedition of 1675, the earliest well-documented expedition to cross the Rio Grande from Nuevo León. The second is the landmark 1683 Mendoza-López expedition to the Jumanos in central Texas,...

Herman Lehmann may be the most famous person taken captive by Indians in Texas. Snatched from his family's home in Loyal Valley in May 1870, at about the age of twelve, he did not return home until he was a grown man, and then only under compulsion—he longed to return to his Comanche family.

After his abduction...

Jefferson Davis was the U. S. secretary of war in 1855, and he was a big thinker. Pondering the challenges of westward expansion, he thought that camels might prove the perfect beast of burden for crossing arid expanses. And so he dispatched a ship to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to bring back camels for testing...

James B. Gillett served during one of the lustrous periods of the Texas Rangers' history—the last years of Indian fighting and the years of West Texas settlement just before the coming of the railroads. He fought Comanches, Lipans, Mescaleros, cattle thieves, horse rustlers, bank robbers, and outlaws. In an adventure...

Big-Foot Wallace was a genuine buckskin-wearing, musket-packing, big-knife-in-the-belt, Indian-fighting, bear-wrassling frontiersman. He came to Texas just after the battle of Goliad and joined the Somervell and Mier expeditions, landing him in Mexican prisons. He fought with Jack Hays in the Mexican War and later...

Mary Maverick's memoirs are a Texas classic. They are valuable as a chronicle of the experiences of a young woman on the Texas frontier; they are made more valuable by her marriage to Samuel Maverick, who was embroiled in much of the turmoil surrounding the young Republic of Texas. Mary and Sam led remarkable lives....

In the spring of 1843, Auguste Frétellière was a 20-year-old young Parisian searching for his destiny. Convinced by a friend, and by Texas land empresario Henry Castro, that there was a fortune to be made in Texas, he embarked on a most remarkable journey. At his mother’s insistence, he was accompanied by a tutor, who...

Camels make a lot of sense when you are confronted with a vast, untracked desert reaching from San Antonio to California. That was the circumstance faced by the U. S. army in 1855 and, once camels were landed in Texas, the army began experimenting with their practical value in real-world conditions.

We offer...

Necessity begets innovation; faced with an arid and unexplored western frontier, and burdened with the need to haul water for horses, mules, and people, the U. S. army began thinking about camels. Under the circumstances, it made perfect sense to fetch a few dozen camels from Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Crimea, then...

The Texas navy seems to be one of those topics that is unfamiliar to the general public. Although the navy saw a fair amount of action, and although it was certainly nettlesome to Mexico, it—like most of the Texas-Mexico struggle after San Jacinto—tends to slip by unnoticed.

If the general reader is surprised to...