Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Mud-daubers!

They’re back! It’s June, and mud-dauber wasps are in our garages and sheds, looking for spiders and building their clay nests. Remember those from childhood? Inquisitive insects, scary but harmless to us. Hondo Crouch wanted to have a party “when the mud-daubers come back to Luckenbach.”

You might notice two types of daubers in your garage – a robust, black-and-yellow wasp that builds a nest like a shapeless blob. And a bluish, fluttery wasp whose nest looks like the pipes in a pipe-organ.

And thereby hangs a tale.

An experiment with radioactive waste disposal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory drained some waste into big open soil pits (don’t ask). Mud-dauber wasps found mud in the pits, and used it to build their nests. Right in the little sheds that housed the radiation detection equipment.

Soon, the equipment was monitoring radioactive wasp nests, not the waste pits as they were supposed to.

Comes my friend Alvin S., who soon discovered that the blob nests might or might not be radioactive, depending on where the wasps got their clay. But -- the pipe-organ nests were NEVER radioactive.!

Could the pipe-organ wasp detect radiation, and avoid it?

Al spent a year studying those wasps, their behavior, their feeding habits, their clay selection. He found that the pipe-organ wasp was picky about clay, taking a little bit here and a little there. The blob-building wasp didn’t seem to care what kind of clay it was. Scooped it up and there it went.

Even so. Could the pipe-organ wasp detect harmful radiation?

Maybe…

Dac Crossley
June 19, 2010

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” – Prince Hamlet

Origin of the Longhorn Cattle?

In George West, Texas (pop. 3,000), a longhorn steer sits in a glass case on the courthouse lawn. Whenever I drive through George West I never fail to stop and salute that old stuffed steer.

George Washington West was an old-time cattle drover. He took herds to Indian reservations under an army contract. Longhorns were plentiful in the brush country, there for the taking if you had the will. George West did. In later years his ranch headquarters became the town of George West. A promoter and innovator, he was responsible for much of the early development of Live Oak County.

All built on the backs of longhorn cattle.

My historian friend John B. points out that the longhorn is most likely the first truly American breed of cattle. What were its roots?

The Spanish colonials did bring some long-horned cattle with them, but mostly they brought Moorish types with short, forward-facing horns (think bullfights). The Texas historian J. Frank Dobie (“The Longhorns”) believed that English cattle introduced by American pioneers were an important source of genes.

Natural selection gave us the longhorn. Rangy and lean, with a fierce disposition, they were molded by the drought-prone, sparse grasslands of the South Texas monte. Some historians say those cattle pulled Texas out of its post-Civil War slump.

According to Dobie: When the short-horned, stocky English breeds were introduced into Texas, ranchers scoffed at them. They were too heavy. Their legs were too short, so they couldn’t cover enough ground to graze on the thin grasses. At least one old Texas rancher would shoot them on sight.

So, join me in a salute to the icon under glass, the last of the old-time longhorns in George West, Texas.

Dac Crossley
6/15/2010

“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.”: Winston Churchill

More About the Blue Nun

Texas historian John B. sent me some further information about the Blue Nun:

She was the daughter of Francisco Coronel and Catalana de Arana. She was the first girl born to the family in 1602 in the tiny town of Agreda, Spain. They were described as minor nobility. At an early age she displayed a high degree of piety and a thirst for knowledge. By the time she was 16 she convinced her parents to turn their small castle into a convent for Franciscan Nuns. Her father became the friar and her mother a nun.

At 18 she took her religious vows and the name "Maria de Jesus de Agreda." She wanted to become a missionary to the Indians of the Southwest. This was not possible because the Order that she had founded was very poor and women were not allowed to become missionaries.

However, while she was still 18 she had the first of her catatonic experiences. They lasted from hours to over a week. During the first spell people thought she was dead and began to prepare her for burial.

She later told her confessor that during these catatonic spells she seemed to dream that she was in the new world visiting and witnessing to Indian tribes, teaching them the Gospel and instructing them to go to Spanish Missions and ask to be baptized.

The Church decided to send investigators to the New Mexico/Texas area. The friendly Indians told them that a beautiful women dressed in a blue coat the color of the sky had visited them and sent them to the missions. The investigators were led back to the Indian's area about 300 miles southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A large congregation of Indians welcomed them. This was in the area where the Concho river empties into the Colorado. The priests spent several months with the Indians preaching, teaching and eventually baptizing 2000 Indians

When the investigators got back to Spain the situation had changed. Maria was now the Mother Superior of her order and a well-known writer who was always criticizing the Church and had become a spokesman for women's rights within the church and at the secular level.

Although she met with the investigators and was able to describe in detail places they had visited, the Church fathers were displeased with her and would not allow her to receive any credit for these strange experiences. She died on May 24th, 1665 and was buried in her robe that was the color of the sky.

Other appearances occurred over many years. The Spaniards searching for LaSalle's colony found a few survivors living with Indians. The Indians told the Spanish that their fathers had seen the Blue Nun and she had told them that Spaniards would bring them the word of God. A group of Indians suffering from a smallpox epidemic on the Sabine river claimed to have been helped by the Blue Nun. Various appearances and claims of appearances have been reported all over Texas. The latest was in 1944!

John B. recommends Jeff Carroll’s book, Being Texan, for these and other tales. Thanks, John!

Dac
6/5/2010
"The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Mysterious Blue Lady

The American Southwest is truly the land of many legends.

In the early 1600’s, a group of Indians approached the new Mission established in Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico. They wished to be baptized. They came west from across the Pecos. They also requested a priest to return with them and baptize their chief.

The Padre explained that they must have instruction before they could be baptized. The Indians claimed they had already received instruction from a woman in a blue robe, who came to them from the hills. When shown a painting of the Virgin, they said the woman in blue was similar but younger.

María de Jesús de Agreda lived her entire life in Spain. She and her mother established a nunnery in the village of Agreda. In old age (1670) she recounted how she her spirit had been “translocated” to Texas and New Mexico, to convert a native people. Over 500 such spiritual visits were made. These apparitions ceased after 1631.

The legend of the Lady in Blue was well rooted in the Indians of East Texas, New Mexico, and even in California, before the arrival of Europeans. Documentation during those early years was scanty. I’m taking my information from “History if San Antonio and of the Early Days in Texas,” by Robert Strumberg (1920). Thanks to Angelia R. for telling me of this book.

According to Wikkipedia, María was no shy, retiring nun. She was a prolific author, with fourteen books to her credit. She served as spiritual advisor to King Philip IV. And accounts of her mysterious apparitions in the American Southwest inspired the 17th and 18th century missionaries there.

The Blue Nun persists as part of history and the culture of the Southwest. She was celebrated in the Texas City of San Angelo (which was named for a different Angela).

A miraculous Lady indeed, and a contributor to the mystique of our Southwest.

Dac
6/3/2010

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Prince Hamlet (and credit Mrs. Williams, King High School, 1944).