Why not teach Western Frontier History in College, and why isn't there a degree in Texas History?
Where I live is more interesting than you might think at a glance - it is quite literally where the history of the Western Frontier took place. When you see the Western Frontier depicted in movies, it’s always some desert terrain with tumbleweeds rolling by.
That’s not accurate. The true Western Frontier was a moving target, but reached it’s final destination where the plains of West Texas meet the cross timbers of central Texas. The Kiowa and Comanche were Southern Plains tribes, and the settlers’ migration was stopped somewhere between the 98th and 100th meridian, and in the 1860’s and 1870’s cut right through Parker County, and stayed there until the Western Frontier ended. Of course there were forts farther west, but they were military posts, and the very sparsely populated areas around them doesn’t really equate to an identifiable boundary of any sort.
Nowadays Parker County is western lifestyle mixed with suburban life, with people moving into this area from all over the U.S., in part so that their kids can go to school in these school districts (Brock and surrounding towns in particular).
I’ve only recently started to appreciate the degree to which the Western Frontier, the stuff of Cowboys and Indians legend and lore, happened right here in our backyard.
Some local people are aware of this, and some people are completely oblivious like I was.
I thought it would be interesting, informative, enriching, etc., to teach a class to the degree that I can, at our local community college on the subject.
I went to Weatherford College’s Continuing and Adult Education Department, and suggested that a class be made teaching about this history, and calling it something like “The Western Frontier History of Parker County”.
Weatherford College is in Parker County - the town of Weatherford is the county seat of Parker County.
The lady who I spoke with, who is in charge of this department and its classes, looked at me like she was struggling to stifle a laugh, as I described the idea for this sort of class.
I mentioned that Weatherford College is a community college, and asked her if it would be such a crazy idea that the College serve the interest of the community in the classes that it teaches, to which I was told that they don’t do that any longer. She said there was a time when classes weren’t strictly vocational, but that stopped years ago, and she didn’t know why.
Now, that sort of education has been relegated to the high school’s adult education program.
So I guess it’s a class like Occupational Therapy or nothing at Weatherford College for those of us who aren’t degree seekers. My takeaway from this encounter was that liberal arts or humanities classes would be categorically denied no matter who is offering to teach it, what expertise they have, and on what subject. It’s vocational training or nothing at Weatherford College for people not in a degree program. I happen to still believe, probably naively, that colleges should still be places where people of all ages can attend and learn about things other than just how to get a job. Some things are worth learning for personal enrichment and a better understanding of our history, which puts our lives into a broader context, given that we are inheritors of this history.
But what about degree programs? Can they teach local history in an Associate’s of History program, which Weatherford College offers?
No.
The State of Texas dictates all of the curricula in degree programs at community colleges, so local history cannot be taught (unless it’s approved by the State of Texas first). But the State rubber-stamps the curricula for all community colleges.
I think the rationale of the State is that community colleges are fundamentally feeder schools to larger four-year universities, so community colleges aren’t allowed to create their own degree programs or individual classes.
The University of Texas at Arlington will be opening their UTA West campus in Parker County, and given that they’re a four year school they have the prerogative to create a class or degree program on such local and even broader Western Frontier history or even Texas history. But I have heard that their focus will be on Engineering. I emailed them and posited the idea of a class on Western Frontier history, and I’m still waiting on their response…
By the way, there is no bachelor’s or master’s degree program on Texas History at any college or university in Texas (or anywhere else). Texas History as a degree doesn’t exist.
There are plenty of undergrad and graduate programs on Middle Eastern history, American history, Military history, European history, etc.
But Texas has some unique history that deserves, in my opinion, it’s own academic subject.
The reason why Texas has 6 flags associated with it is because in its history there have been 6 different sovereign nations that have resided in part or all of its territory.
These are:
Spain
France
Mexico
Republic of Texas
Confederate States of America
United States of America
Each of these (and of course settlers from all over the Old World) have lived and toiled in Texas. The Navajo, Apache, Lipan, Comanche, Karankawa, Tonkowa, and Kiowa (among others) have all resided in Texas.
The fierce, guerrilla style warfare and raids upon the settlers from the Comanche and Kiowa created an almost impenetrable barrier to westward expansion for over 40 years.
Before the settlers showed up, they beat the French, Spanish, and Mexicans to the point where they stopped trying to settle Texas.
The American settlers were stopped as they were trying to go west as well, and it wasn’t until the United States military got involved after the Civil War, and fought the Indian Wars, that the west became open for expansion.
To recap: where the frontier stopped in that gridlock between the settlers and the Native American Indians was right here in Parker County and surrounding counties.
Parker County was hit the hardest in terms of the number of lives lost by Indian encounters (such as raids), the amount of property destroyed, and the number of settlers taken into captivity.
It looks to me like Texas was the hardest hit state in the nation, because it was the target of the two fiercest tribes in the U.S. - the Comanche and the Kiowa. They raided Texas primarily.
So if Texas was the most fiercely contested ground in the history of the entire United States’ efforts at westward expansion, and Parker County was the hardest hit county in Texas, then, if there had to be one county as ground level zero of the Western Frontier, it was Parker County.
According to G.A. Holland (who was the mayor of Weatherford in the 1930’s), over 400 people collectively were killed or taken into captivity - mostly residents of Parker County (but that number also included surrounding areas). He wrote this in History of Parker County and the Double Log Cabin (this is a very rare book).
The two most significant events in the history of the Western Frontier tie back to Parker County - the raid from Peta Nocona that killed settlers in Parker County which led to the recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker at the Battle of Pease River (when Quanah was about 12 years old, and resulted in Quanah never seeing his mother or little sister again), and the Warren Wagon Train Massacre, which caused a cascade of events that led to the end of the Western Frontier itself.
Peta Nocona’s Raid and the Battle of Pease River
In November of 1860, Peta Nocona, Quanah Parker’s dad, led a raid through Parker County that killed 23 settlers, including Martha Sherman, and led to the Battle of Pease River, where Cynthia Ann Parker (and her young daughter Prairie Flower) were captured by Sul Ross and Charles Goodnight, and Quanah never saw them again.
This was significant because it shaped Quanah as a person, a warrior who would lead the Quahadi band of Comanches as their last chief before they were put onto the reservation.
The Quahadis, it should be noted, never signed a peace treaty with the United States or Texas, and was the last Comanche band to go onto the reservation. Their defeat at Palo Duro Canyon by Ranald Mackenzie, for all intents and purposes, marked the end of the Comanche dominance of the Western Frontier. They were the most formidable of all of the Comanche bands, due in part to Quanah’s hatred of settlers because of his mom and sister being taken.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History is an amazing book that goes into this history.
By the way, one of the settlers that Peta Nocona’s Comanche raiders gang raped and killed was a lady named Martha Sherman who was 9 months pregnant. The day after the attack she gave birth to a stillborn baby, and three days later she died. She’s buried in the Willow Springs Cemetery that’s right across the street from David’s Stove Shop.
She was the great great grandmother of John R. Erickson, the author of the Hank the Cowdog books. He wrote a book about this attack on Martha Sherman and his family history called Prairie Gothic The Story of a West Texas Family and it’s a really great book.
Martha Sherman’s attack was so heinous that it got Charles Goodnight to ride through the area finding volunteers to track the Comanche, and they tracked them back to the Pease River, which led to the Battle of Pease River.
But what about the Kiowa? Weren’t they just as formidable as the Comanche at stopping the efforts of the settlers going west? That leads into the next significant event that involved Parker County.
The Warren Wagon Train Massacre
As far as I can tell, the most significant event in the history of the Western Frontier happened in Jack County, but involved people from Weatherford, and Kiowa Indians.
It’s commonly referred to as the Warren Wagon Train Massacre or the Salt Creek Massacre.
A man named Henry Warren owned a business in Weatherford where he and other hired hands from Weatherford would take supplies to the forts further out west, forts like Fort Richardson (in Jacksboro) and Fort Griffin (outside of Albany, TX).
Seven guys working on the Warren wagon train were killed by 150 Kiowa (with some Comanche mixed in) along Salt Creek Prairie, which was the most dangerous place in the United States in the late 1800’s.
Salt Creek Prairie is about 28 miles west of Jacksboro (in Jack County).
The wagon train was carrying supplies to Fort Griffin that was squarely in Indian territory on the far reaches of the frontier, when they were attacked, in 1871.
This story deserves its own long form article, so I’m not going to recount it here. Suffice it to say that it started a series of events that culminated in the Western Frontier ending, because the U.S. military got involved with Ranald Machenzie leading the charge, and the United States army rounded up the remaining Indians and put them onto reservations (these included Quanah Parker and his Quahadi band of Comanches, and the Sioux who had previously beaten General Custer). It was, for all intents and purposes, Ranald Mackenzie who “won” the west.
The Warren Wagontrain massacre also led to three Kiowa chiefs being arrested by General William Tecumseh Sherman (Sherman was one of the guys responsible for the Union winning the Civil War).
General Sherman was the highest ranking guy in the United States armed forces, and he just happened to have ambled along Salt Creek Prairie having no idea that 150 Kiowa were watching him pass by. The only reason the Kiowa didn’t attack General Sherman was because their medicine man, Mamanti, also known as the Owl Prophet, had communed with an owl the night before, and the owl told him that there would be two parties that the Kiowa would encounter - the first one they were to let pass, and the second one would be larger and more profitable and their raid would be a success. General Sherman was the first party, and the Warren wagon train was the second.
Imagine this, the highest ranking officer in the United States armed forces, one of the most consequential guys in the victory of the Union behind General Ulysses S Grant, the guy who the entire Confederacy couldn’t kill as he burned a swath through the south on his “march to the sea”, and whose life was spared because a medicine man communed with an owl.
When a survivor of the wagon train made it to Fort Richardson in the middle of the night, and told General Sherman what had happened, Sherman realized that it could’ve been him that was killed along the road. That’s when Sherman realized the gravity of the Western Frontier and got the United States army involved.
It was the first time in American history that Indians had ever been put on trial. The prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney both lived in and worked out of Weatherford. The houses where they lived are still houses in Weatherford.
The trial was held in the courthouse in Jacksboro, and it was a sensational trial, like O.J. Simpson-level big, with the New York Times and other newspapers from all over the U.S. covering it.
One of the chiefs, Satank, was killed right after he was arrested, just as they were making their way from Fort Sill to Jacksboro. The other two chiefs, Satanta and Big Tree, were the ones who stood trial in Jacksboro.
There’s a fantastic book on this subject called The Indian Trial: The Complete Story of the Warren Wagon Train Massacre and the Fall of the Kiowa Nation by Charles M. Robinson III.
The same author wrote Bad Hand: A Biography of Ranald S. Mackenzie that’s also great.
While I’m on the subject, where the Warren wagon train was headed, Fort Griffin, was to shortly become one of the roughest, toughest border towns in the history of the West in the entire United States, according to the same author as mentioned above, Charles M. Robinson III, in his book The Frontier World of Fort Griffin: The Life and Death of a Western Town.
Robinson says that there were four main lawless border towns in the history of the West:
Tombstone
Dodge City
Deadwood
Fort Griffin
It’s hard to believe that we had a Tombstone-equivalent just down the road. I have this book, and what happened at Fort Griffin, or The Flat as it was called, was the stuff of legend.
It’s just a coincidence, but it was raining during the attack on Martha Sherman and on the Warren Wagon train.
Texas may be the subject of the earliest non-religious book in the history of the world
The oldest non-religious book in the history of the world is Chinese, and it’s called the Classic of Mountains and Seas, also known as Shan hai jing.
It’s a book about traveling, and describes plants, animals, land, and people that the Chinese travelers encountered about 4,000 years ago.
Computer analyses have been done to delineate the distance that they could’ve traveled by translating the distance that’s mentioned in the book, and then looking at what area matches the descriptions of the lands, plants, animals, and people (as described in the book) within that radius.
According to the book Texas Tales Your Teacher Never Told You, the plants, animals, people, and terrain match a 20 mile stretch of land from Wyoming to West Texas.
This is from ChatGPT, but it touches on the salient points, such as the javelina and the connection with peanuts, that the book describes, that are only found in the Southwest, so West Texas and surrounding areas. ____________________________________________________________________________
From ChatGPT:
Excellent — here’s a structured summary case that explores the idea that the Shan Hai Jing ("Classic of Mountains and Seas") might be describing pre-Columbian knowledge of the American Southwest, especially West Texas and northern Mexico.
THE CASE FOR SHAN HAI JING DESCRIBING WEST TEXAS
“The Oldest Non-Religious Book in the World May Be About the American Southwest”
I. What Is the Shan Hai Jing?
Date: Compiled c. 4th–2nd century BCE (early chapters possibly older).
Genre: Geographic, zoological, and ethnographic encyclopedia.
Nature: Non-religious, empirical in intent, describing lands beyond China's known borders.
Sections:
Classic of the Mountains (山经)
Classic of the Seas (海经)
Classic of the Great Wilderness (大荒经) — particularly relevant here.
II. Geographic Match with West Texas
In Shan Hai Jing:
Describes rugged terrain, highlands, deep rivers, scorching plains, and deserts
Includes mountain ranges with red minerals, cactus-like flora, and unusual fauna
Often positions this “wilderness” far across the sea, to the west/southwest of the known world
In West Texas:
Chihuahuan Desert: Hot, arid, mountainous — matches much of the described terrain.
Big Bend region: Volcanic geology, winding Rio Grande, and strange landforms.
Red minerals: Hematite, ochre, and copper sources are present.
Wild flora: Yucca, agave, prickly pear — very distinct from East Asian ecosystems.
III. Fauna Matches: The Javelina
Shan Hai Jing passage (simplified):
“A beast shaped like a pig, with bristles and tusks, that moves in groups, emits a stench, and dwells in the barren lands.”
Javelina (Collared peccary):
Not actually a pig, but looks like one
Strong musk glands — emits a foul odor
Found only in the Americas, particularly Texas, Arizona, and Mexico
Travels in herds
Has tusk-like canine teeth and coarse bristles
This match is too specific to dismiss as coincidence.
IV. Botanical Anomaly: Peanuts in Han China
Discovery:
2004: Archaeologists find carbonized peanuts in the Yangling Mausoleum (burial of Emperor Jing of Han, ~141 BCE)
Previously believed to have arrived with the Portuguese ~1500s CE
Botanical facts:
Peanuts are native to South America
Require human cultivation to thrive — unlikely to arrive as drift seeds
Presence in Han China suggests pre-Columbian trans-Pacific exchange
If peanuts made it to China this early, so might other New World knowledge — especially if recorded in texts like the Shan Hai Jing.
V. Ethnographic Curiosities
Shan Hai Jing describes:
“People with red skin”
“People with heads shaped like bowls”
“Tribes who speak with clicking sounds”
“People who live in adobe-like cliff dwellings”
Potential American analogues:
Southwestern Native tribes (e.g., Zuni, Hopi, Apache, early Puebloan cultures)
Skin tones, dwelling types, and oral language features may have appeared strange and distinct to Chinese observers
Some scholars see connections to cliff dwellers or early Mesoamerican groups
VI. Feasibility of Ancient Contact
Chinese legends (e.g., Kunlun Mountains in the West, journeys across the Moving Sands) may reflect transoceanic imagination
Pacific currents could enable drift or accidental voyages
Other possible travelers: Austronesians, Malayo-Polynesians, or pre-Han seafarers
Boats with outriggers and star navigation existed long before the Han dynasty
VII. Scholarly Positions
Mainstream Sinology: Considers the Shan Hai Jing a blend of myth and observation; views New World matches as coincidence or anachronistic projection.
Alternative Theorists (e.g., Henriette Mertz, Joseph Needham’s later speculations):
Argue for cultural memory of contact
Suggest the book encodes ancient global exploration
Cite both the javelina and peanut evidence as critical points
Conclusion: What It All Suggests
If these connections hold water — and increasingly, archaeological and botanical evidence says they might — then we must consider:
The world’s oldest known secular text may describe an exploratory journey not through mythical China — but through the deserts, cliffs, animals, and native peoples of the American Southwest.
That would make the Shan Hai Jing:
A geographic marvel
A botanical time capsule
And potentially, a record of the first East Asian encounters with the Americas
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Of course there’s a lot of history that I’m leaving out of this article about why our colleges should teach classes on the Western Frontier, and Texas History at large as its own degree subject.
Incidentally, I had read that The Account by Cabeza de Vaca was the earliest book ever written about Texas, written in the 1530’s. But now I think the oldest book written about Texas could be the oldest non-religious book in the history of the world.