Tales of the Big Bend

by Elton Miles

Now in its sixth printing, the first of Elton Miles's folklore collections tells stories as inseparable from the region as the Rio Grande itself. The tales cover supernatural phenomena such as the Marfa lights and water witching, murders, feuds, and lost treasures. Together, they reflect the rugged land where Anglo, Indian, and Mexican cultures meet.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tales of life in West Texas’s Big Bend region that folklorist Elton Miles recounts in this 1976 book are always interesting and often hair-raising. The vast Big Bend area, west of the Pecos River, was regarded for many years as a lawless no-man’s-land, and it was a place where Indigenous, Hispanic, and Anglo worldviews and folkways met and (not infrequently) came into conflict. And any reader who is fond of the region, or of folklore generally, would be well advised to take up Miles’s 1976 book Tales of the Big Bend.

Author Elton Miles was exceedingly well suited to write this book. He taught English for more than a quarter of a century at Sul Ross State University – the Alpine, Texas-based university that has served the Big Bend region for more than a century. As a folklore scholar who once chaired the Texas Folklore Society, Miles knew a great deal about how to seek out, set down, and comment upon the folk tales of his region. Tales of the Big Bend benefits from Miles’s lived familiarity with the Big Bend, and from his scholarly expertise in the field of folklore.

The Big Bend folktales that Miles recounts here often include violent tales of revenge and bloodshed, as in the chapter on old Fort Leaton. Today, Fort Leaton is a state historical site, not far from the Rio Grande in the border town of Presidio, Texas. In the mid-19th century, however, it was an old adobe structure developed into a fortification by a singularly rough character named Ben Leaton.

Leaton, it is said, hoped to change careers from scalp hunter (!) to Indian trader. Accordingly, he threw a barbecue for local Indians, in hopes of building good trade relations with them, but the barbecue had an unexpected result – he found that horses and mules had been stolen. Pretending to take the horse theft all in fun, Leaton invited the Indians to a second barbecue, ordered a cannon from the Mexican city of Chihuahua, and then took his revenge while the venison was still grilling over the coals: “Circling through the house, Leaton took his stand behind a falsely walled-off portion of the patio, where the cannon stood. His men helping him, he toppled the adobe wall and lit the big gun. In the roar and smoke, flame, blood, and wine ran together” (p. 56). Blood and violence, as in this story of what Big Bend residents still call the "Second Housewarming," are frequently features of these Big Bend folktales.

Because Miles is not only a folklore collector but also a folklore scholar, he offers perceptive insights regarding the role that folklore plays in any community. For instance, he tells the story of “Indian Emily” – an Apache woman who, tradition has it, fell in love with an Anglo soldier at Fort Davis, and still carried a torch for him after he married an Anglo woman. An historical marker, placed by the State of Texas during the Texas Centennial in 1936, gives the story as it has been handed down in Anglo-American folklore, stating that Indian Emily’s “love for a young officer induced her to give warning of an Indian attack. Mistaken for the enemy, she was shot by a sentry, but saved the garrison from massacre” (pp. 102-03). The story persists as a popular folktale, even though “Skeptical historians dismiss the story out of hand” (p. 103), citing the lack of evidence for the tale in Fort Davis records.

Similarly, a real-life Mexican-American woman named Dolores Gavino Doporto, who was said to be “demented” and who “periodically lighted fires at night on a mesa near Fort Davis” (p. 105), was transmogrified over time into the legendary Dolores, a “beautiful, rustic señorita” in love with a “dashing caballero” named José who scouted for the U.S. Army; and the reason she lighted the fire every night, according to the stories that spread all over the Big Bend region, is that José was killed by hostile Indigenous warriors on what would have been Dolores’ and José’s wedding day.

In the cases of both Indian Emily and Dolores, “Whatever basic facts these legends may have sprung from, those facts have been augmented by the sentimental imagination in the American manner” (p. 111). When a folktale gains popularity within a community, in other words, it does so because, even though things didn’t really happen the way they are portrayed in the story, there is a widespread feeling among people in the community that things should have happened that way.

Visitors to the Big Bend area may particularly enjoy Miles’s reflections on the “Marfa Lights” – mysterious lights, without any apparent source, that show up along the walls of the Chinati Mountains near an old abandoned airport. Miles lists, by my count, 68 different “explanations” for the Marfa Lights – tales and accounts that explain the lights in terms of everything from German or Mexican invaders to ranchers’ ghosts, Indian ghosts, Indian spirits, lovers’ ghosts, trappers’ ghosts, bandits’ ghosts, miners’ ghosts, soldiers’ ghosts, buffalo spirits, experimental Cold War weapons, UFO’s, dimensional portals, and a variety of natural phenomena. The common denominator, in Miles’s view, is that “the folk mind abhors a missing link in the chain of cause and effect”, and therefore “legend is spawned, sometimes disguised as rumor” (p. 150).

Fans of Cormac McCarthy’s blood-drenched Western novel Blood Meridian (1985) may enjoy reading the chapter on “John Glanton, Scalp Hunter,” as the gory depredations of Glanton’s gang formed the inspiration for McCarthy’s novel. Both Glanton and a judge named Holden come through in details just as hideous and terrifying as what one reads in Blood Meridian; and the reader who is familiar with both books is likely to come away from Tales of the Big Bend with a heightened appreciation for the research that McCarthy conducted in preparation for crafting his classic novel.

I read Tales of the Big Bend whilst visiting the Big Bend National Park and staying in Terlingua, Texas – the “ghost town” that is known for an epic chili cook-off, and for inspiring Jerry Jeff Walker’s 1973 ¡Viva Terlingua! album of “outlaw country” music. Traveling in the Big Bend is truly a striking thing; the stark, desiccated landscape seems like the kind of place that would inspire a rich folkloric tradition. It is good that a great folklorist like Elton Miles took pains to set down that folklore for the edification of Big Bend residents, Big Bend tourists, casual folklore buffs, and serious folklore scholars alike.

Published by the Texas A & M University Press at College Station, Tales of the Big Bend will provide a rewarding read for students of Texas’s cultures, and for anyone who enjoys and appreciates the power and influence of folk tales.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book. Definitely only of interest to,people who love the Big Bend region of Texas. A whimsical mix of folklore, myth, and historical bits. The history was the most interesting to mr. A lot of the rest just caused me to roll my eyes.