This post includes the first three topics on comparing the respective histories of Texas and Wisconsin. The introduction
is linked here.
Click on the links to
the Land and
the Settlers to skip down to those topics.
Topic: The Ice Age
Both: The Ice Age affected both states, but the specifics differ. Neither book goes into great detail. Fehrenbach mentions the Ice Age only in how it affected the early settlers. Nesbit describes how it affected the physical landscape.
Texas: To learn about the Ice Age in Texas specifically, visit the Texas State Historical Assocation’s website. What they say is that the ice sheets never reached Texas. While glaciation and melting determined relatively new Wisconsin geology, Texas geology was a little more stable during that time. Major geologic changes had last occurred in western and northern Texas about two million years ago. The overall climate was cooler and more humid than today. The sea level went down by about 300 to 450 feet during the glacial maximum. The coastal features of Gulf Coast Plain have been formed in the past 3,000 years.
Wisconsin: For the Ice Age in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Geology and Natural History Survey is a good starting point. Wisconsin appears to have never bordered an ocean or a gulf. The most recent glaciation began in Wisconsin 31,500 years ago, expanded until 18,000 years ago, and fully retreated 7,000 years later. Before the melt, there was a treeless tundra (frozen swamp) south and west of the glacier.
Going much farther south, you encountered a cool and humid Texas.
Both: Both states have distinct geographic provinces. Newer sources can and do have different counts of provinces, draw the boundaries differently, and have more qualified names. If Texas and Wisconsin share any province, then it is the vast Interior Plains. Also, both states generally slope towards the southeast.
Texas: According to Fehrenbach, there are three geophysical provinces: the Atlantic-Gulf
coastal plain, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountain system. In
general, the land slopes southeast towards the Gulf of Mexico. This
is close enough to the truth at a 100,000-foot level, and accurate
enough for people who don’t live in Texas. For those us who live or have lived there, the reality has a higher fidelity.
Wisconsin: According
to Nesbit, there are five provinces: the Lake Superior lowlands, the
Northern Highlands, the Central Plains, the Western Uplands, and the
Eastern Lowlands. The highest lands are in the northern ridge, while
the lowest are at Lake Michigan. So, the state slopes southeast as
well. I’ve not independently confirmed or qualified this
information.
Both: The authors agree that each present-day state was populated at least twice, before the Europeans showed up. Indeed, all of the Americas were
settled...at least once, if not twice or more, depending on how you
define “settle” vs “develop”,
where you define the
timing of settlements, which archaeologist you ask, and when you ask
them. Seriously. Start with the Wikipedia page on the Settlement of
the Americas, and have at it.
Both Texas and
Wisconsin had the mound-building Mississippian culture. In Texas, the
Mississippian culture began to decline before the Europeans arrived.
The Caddo Nation of today is a direct descendant of this culture. In
Wisconsin, this culture died out entirely.
Texas: Fehrenbach devotes an entire chapter to the first settlers, and it is more
detailed and romantic than Nesbit. Fehrenbach goes into
archaeological and anthropological detail that Nesbit largely avoids.
The uncomfortable situation that arises is that Fehrenbach
wrote the first edition of Lone Star
in the 1960s. Brace yourself.
For example, he
devotes ten paragraphs to describing what is essentially the Clovis
culture. He makes astounding claims: that the charred remains of a
camp site may be more than 37,000 years old. These Paleo-Americans
had longer heads that anyone else that came after. They had flat and
curved leg bones. What?
Flipping
to the Bibliography, one sees that he wrote: “...Fred Wendorf, A. D. Krieger, Claude C. Albritton, and T. D. Stewart, The
Midland Discovery (Austin, 1955)
reveal some of the excitement and controversies concerning the
mysterious first settlers” (730).
Hours of web-research later, the following is what I learned about The
Midland Discovery:
You
can buy it used on Amazon for about $50 or
$60.
The
books is out-of-print.
The book is available at two locations at the University of Wisconsin.
American
Anthropologist reviewed
the book in 1956.
The
reviewer wrote approvingly: “The authors conclude in convincing
fashion that the fragmentary human remains, representing an unusually
long-and narrow-headed female about 30 years of age, came from a sand
deposit of late Pleistocene Age; that they probably antedate the
Classic Folsom artifacts found in the area; that they were
contemporaneous with the native horse, an extinct antelope, and other
Pleistocene fauna.”
The
Quarterly Review of Biology
also gave a positive review in 1958.
The
reviewer commented that “[t]his careful study of an important find
provides a welcome antidote for some of the inspirational hunches
that still plague paleoanthropology.” SLAM!
While
not a review of the book, a
1996 article in
American Antiquity
concerns investigations
conducted at the Midland site and on the Midland skeleton from 1989
through 1992.
Their
conclusion includes the following:
“...(3)
the human remains there associated with the valley-margin facies of a
lacustrine carbonate that is well dated in the region and rarely is >10,000 B.P.; and (4) all numerical dating methods applied at the
site produced unreliable results. We find no compelling evidence that
the human remains from the Midland site are older than Folsom age;
they may be contemporary with or younger than the Folsom occupation.”
In
other words, no one really knows how old anything is there at the
Midland site. The skeleton is probably less than 10,000 years old.
The
lead author of the book, Fred Wendorf, was an accomplished
archaeologist in his own right. He is more well-known for his
archaeological work in Africa, than for his work in Texas. He wrote
The Midland Discovery when he
was 30 years old, and
lived to the age of 80, dying in 2015.
Near
the end of the ten paragraphs of Clovis-folk discussion, Fehrenbach
links them with the three
great stone heads found at the Trinity River. A quick web search
finds that few-to-no archaeologists regard them as authentic.
At
this point, to be charitable to Fehrenbach, he was reporting the
latest information as of 1968. I suspect that he found The
Midland Discovery, read about
the Trinity River heads, and integrated both with
the knowledge he read from then-current
books on archeology and
pre-historic humans. Yes, he could have been
cautious, and stuck with only
the Clovis reports.
But,
these entries are in the
2000 edition of Lone
Star. However,
Fehrenbach warns in the
foreword in the 2000 edition that “the narrative [of the 1968
edition] was largely drawn from contemporary sources” (xiii).
He saw no reason to change
the book. As a result, one
comes away with a rather dramatic and inaccurate knowledge of early
Texan settlement.
The
drama with the Midland Discovery and the Trinity Heads consume ten
paragraphs over two
pages in a 15-page chapter. If the above is not enough
to make you quite skeptical
of this author’s reporting, then
consider the slow build-up
and blunt finale to this passage:
“There
was, simply, very little fat, and the campsites of the early Amerinds
have revealed mortars and pestles, seeds, and remnants of roots among
their small bones, as well as cracked human femurs. Broken and sucked
human marrow bones have been discovered preserved in the ancient muck
of the coastal prairies in great quantity – proof that where the
Old Americans [Clovis] had been able to live well on mastodon and
elephant meat, the aborigines who replaced them came to depend on
other foods. In modern times all Texas tribes except one – the
late-coming Comanches – practiced at least some form of ritual
cannibalism, a grisly ceremonial residue of a harsh past” (8).
Grisly
web-research showed these statements to be largely accepted by the
public and historians, including that the Comanches did not practice
ritual cannibalism.
That
said, what are some of the tribes that the Spanish, French, and
Americans encountered?
In
rough order of mention, there are the following:
Comanches
(not cannibals)
Mayans
(built vast cities)
Toltecs
(ditto)
Aztecs
(ditto)
Puebloans
(civilized)
Basket-Makers
(lived in caves)
Jumanos
(semi-agricultural)
Mount
Builder (culture was influenced by Mexico)
Caddo
Confederacy (numerous and powerful)
Choctaws
(resembled the Caddo)
Cherokee
(ditto)
Creeks
(ditto)
Fehrenbach
describes the Caddo Confederacy in some detail, talking about their
political system, their countryside, and bows. He describes them as
peaceful and weepy, not prioritizing “the cult of courage” (12).
Anyways,
he also mentions the following:
Atakapan
(“man-eaters”)
Karankawa
(even worse)
Coahuiltecans
(they used the resources of the countryside more fully than anyone
else)
Tonkawas
(lived on the Central Plateau for a very long time)
Apaches
(raided like no one else)
Navajo
(splintered from the Apache)
The
Apache were the polar opposite of the Caddo. The only reason that the
Apache didn’t take over the Caddo is (according to Fehrenbach)
because the Apache didn’t want the Caddo’s land. The Apache lived
off of buffalo, and the Caddo lived in piney forests.
He
describes the
Apache as extreme: extremely
fragmented, extremely democratic;
they rarely-to-never took
orders from anyone; leaders
had little influence if they made mistakes or failed. Fehrenbach
concludes the chapter by commenting that since the Apaches feared
nothing, there was nothing to
unite them.
Stepping
away from the relatively noisy and not-entirely-accurate trees, and
focusing on the close-enough-to-2017-opinion forest, one sees
foreboding in this chapter. The Apache were tenacious enough to
combat the U.S. military well into the late 19th
century. One also notes the decidedly non-Texan Mayan, Toltec, etc.
Why would Fehrenbach mention them?
In
case you didn’t already know, here’s the spoiler: Texas was once
part of Mexico. Spain colonized much (if not most) of the Americas.
Whatever Spanish policy was in place, it affected the Native
Americans in both present-day Mexico and Texas.
Whether
in Texas or Aztec Mexico, history seems
to consist largely
of bad guys trying to
slaughter each other, and the good guys living only because bad guys
haven’t slaughtered them (yet). The
fearless aggression and lack
of coordination are among the themes
that run through Fehrenbach’s
book.
Wisconsin:
Nesbit’s book is far less dramatic. His writing on the Native
Americans is also much shorter.
There
were three settlement periods in Wisconsin’s early history: the
Clovis of 10,000 B.C. to 7000 B.C., the Aqua-Plano of 7000 B.C. to
4500 B.C., and Boreal Archaic and Old Copper of 5000 B.C. to 500 B.C.
The Boreal Archaic developed into Early Woodland, and the Hopewell
began to replace the Early Woodland by 100 B.C. Then, this remarkable
passage:
“[The
Hopewell] were related to similar cultures originating in present
Mexico: sedentary, with capabilities in farming, construction,
tool-making, and pottery well beyond those of the preceding cultures
on the upper Great Lakes. They built burial mounds as well as
impressive earthen structures for defense and ceremonial purposes.
Based more on agriculture and hunting, the Hopewell culture was more
stable than its predecessors; nonetheless, these people were gone
before the Europeans arrived” (12).
Whoah.
Fehrenbach also talks about how the Mound (or Mount) Builders of the
Mississippi culture died out before the Europeans arrived. He also
mentions that the Caddo are descendants of the Mound Builders, with
which Wikipedia agrees.
Anyways,
he moves onto the tribes that the Europeans did encounter, within the
context of Wisconsin history. He mentions the following:
Huron
(they lived east of Lake Huron)
Ottawa
(ditto)
Chippewa
(north of Lake Huron, and all around Lake Superior)
Menominee
(in Wisconsin)
Winnebago
(ditto)
Sauk
(ditto)
Fox
(ditto)
Miami
(ditto)
Potawatomi
(western lower Michigan)
In
case you don’t know the Great Lakes, Wisconsin has Lake Superior to
the north, and Lake Michigan to the east. Lake Huron is on the east
side of the State of Michigan.
Nebsitt
concludes this chapter by describing how the fur trade affected the
Native Americans so that they ultimately resembled the Chippewa
hunting culture, versus the Huron farming culture.
History
is fascinating for so many reasons. It is profound to realize that
climate and the land affect cultures, and how people’s cultures
physically affect the land itself. History is terrifying in its
violence, pitiable in its suffering, and most striking of all...eery
in how certain cultures apparently just...disappear.
