Little Known History Of The Texas Big Bend: Documented Chronicles From Cabeza De Vaca To The Era of Pancho Villa

The 1535 arrival of Cabeza De Vaca at the junction of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos marked the dawn of historic times in the Texas Big Bend. Beginning with Cabeza De Vaca, Glenn Justice traces Spanish accounts of the Jumano Indians and their remarkable chief Juan Sabeata. Next the author ventures into the mid-nineteenth century when Don Milton Favor carved out a Big Bend cattle empire in the Chinati Mountains by constructing forts to defend his ranch from Apache and Comanche raiders. John Spencer's discovery of silver ore in the Chinati Mountains at the end of the Civil War set in motion silver mining at Shafter. Homesteaders poured into the Big Bend and the cattle industry took hold. In 1910, a bloody civil war broke out in Mexico and a bandit turned revolutionary named Pancho Villa took up arms. For the next decade, Big Bend residents found themselves on the front lines of a terrible war that claimed the lives of as many as a million Mexicans. Villa's bold raid on Columbus New Mexico in March 1916 started a reign of terror in the Big Bend. On Christmas Day 1917, Mexican raiders attacked the Brite Ranch. Less than a month later, a troop of Eighth Cavalry accompanied by a group of Texas Rangers retaliated for the Brite Raid by burning the village of Porvenir, Texas to the ground, killing fifteen of its inhabitants. Using perviously undiscovered primary sources, including declassified military documents from the National Archives and private papers, Glenn Justice takes a fresh view of the fascinating history of the Texas Big Bend. A native of West Texas, Glenn Justice has written extensively about the Big Bend borderlands.