WAUGH, JULIA NOTT. _Castroville and Henry Castro_, San
Antonio, 1934. OP. Best-written monograph dealing with any
aspect of Texas history that I have read.
WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in _Straight Texas_, Texas
Folklore Society Publication XIII, 1937.
_10_
Fighting Texians
THE TEXAS PEOPLE belong to a fighting tradition that the
majority of them are proud of. The footholds that the
Spaniards and Mexicans held in Texas were maintained by virtue
of fighting, irrespective of missionary baptizing. The purpose
of the Anglo-American colonizer Stephen F. Austin to "redeem
Texas from the wilderness" was accomplished only by fighting.
The Texans bought their liberty with blood and maintained it
for nine years as a republic with blood. It was fighting men
who pushed back the frontiers and blazed trails.
The fighting tradition is now giving way to the oil tradition.
The Texas myth as imagined by non-Texans is coming to embody
oil millionaires in airplanes instead of horsemen with six-
shooters and rifles. See Edna Ferber's Giant (1952 novel).
Nevertheless, many Texans who never rode a horse over three
miles at a stretch wear cowboy boots, and a lot of Texans are
under the delusion that bullets and atomic bombs can settle
complexities that demand informed intelligence and the power
to think.
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