Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek


Book Description

This book concerns an actual group of Native Americans known as the Toyah culture who lived in Central Texas for six hundred years, culminating with their disappearance around seven hundred years before the present. This Toyah cultures prehistoric empire began in Taylor County, Texas, and proceeded southeasterly across the Edwards Plateau through South Texas and into Northern Mexico. Their eastern boundary extended to the Gulf of Mexico while their western boundary coincided with the Pecos River basin. The book is written in two parts, with the first part taking place some seven hundred years before present and chronicling the life of Chandana, a strong young Toyah medicine woman and shaman struggling with lifes mundane things and some things quite serious and imposing. Chandanas life is written in the form of a novel as it is based upon the authors discovered evidence as to how her life may have unfolded. The second part of the book illustrates some of the authors discoveries, evaluations, and research among what was left behind by these Toyah Native Americans who lived along Bluff Creek, Flag Creek, and Elmmott Creek. Finally, the author offers direct and circumstantial evidence illustrating why and how this great Toyah Empire was replaced by other Native Americans, starting around the year 1300.




The Bears of Moro


Book Description

In the author’s first book, From Moro to Bluff Creek—Part 1, published in 2014, the author shares an assemblage of unique Moro stories, all garnered while living at Moro, Texas, all the while observing how one decision or lack of decision seemed to have set a new experience into motion. In the author’s second book, Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek—Part 2, published in 2017, the author returns to Moro again—this time through the life of a Toyah Native American medicine woman who also lived at Moro, albeit some eight hundred years prior to the author, in prehistory. In his current book, The Bears of Moro—Part 3, the author focuses again on Moro while exploring the recent and prehistoric past while sharing more of the author’s unpublished experiences and bringing more depth to the story of the Toyah Native Americans, which brings us to the subject of bears. You the reader will learn that in the time of the Toyah, one thousand years ago, Moro had a thriving population of grizzly bears; and the Toyahs came to Moro to take these bears, in a rite of passage for aspiring want-to-be warriors. This book introduces new Moro stories, not previously published, yet experienced by the author and stories taken from small ledger books handwritten in the late 1800s about the Civil War by a neighborhood veteran of the Civil War, John Joseph Vernon. Vernon’s ledger books tell stories in his unique vernacular of his growing up in the 1850s and 1860s experiencing the horrors of a civil war and facing an even worse reconstruction. The author simply transcribes the stories from Vernon’s handwritten notes, making small grammatical changes only when absolutely necessary, yet keeping the writing style of Vernon intact and to the period. The Comanche Native Americans also lived in Moro, simultaneously with the arrival of the author’s great-grandparents in 1879. The author, having read dozens of books regarding the Comanche Native Americans, became fascinated with Comanche life on the Southern Plains. He read stories of captured Comanche slaves such as Cynthia Ann Parker who became so enamored with her Comanche life such that when returned to her original white family, she still pined away to return to her Comanche family, refusing to eat and dying a slow, painful death. The author also learned that Comanche males only have one career path—take care of the horses as a youth, become a skillful raider capturing more horses as a young adult, and finally return to the Comanche homelife on the Comanche horse ranches as an older adult, somewhat used up following Comanche life as a raider. The author takes his knowledge of Comanche lore and pens his original story connected to historical places and events—presenting how life may have been for a Comanche family living at Moro and adjusting to the arrival of the European settlers in the 1850s. Spending even more time in an archaeological excavation of an actual Toyah encampment at Moro, the author’s findings reveal further insights into the Toyah culture and how their lives were often justified while engaging the ferocious bears at Moro. Taken together, these findings generate more information on many issues regarding the Toyahs while at Moro; yet at the same time, these findings also pose unanswered questions that perhaps could be explored with less direct means or psychic channeling. Consequently, the author obtains the services of four psychic mediums to assist in his evaluation. These psychic channelings reveal more unique information regarding these Toyahs and their lives at Moro. So come take this journey with the author, a thousand years in the making, and witness how various lives were impacted, shaped, and molded, all within this unique community of Moro. This journey and these events are all based upon the archaeological records, psychic readings, historical records, and events that occurred to the author while living at Moro.




The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains


Book Description

This book uses archaeology to tell 15,000 years of history of the indigenous people of the North American Great Plains.




Springs of Texas


Book Description

This text explores the natural history of Texas and more than 2900 springs in 183 Texas counties. It also includes an in-depth discussion of the general characteristics of springs - their physical and prehistoric settings, their historical significance, and their associated flora and fauna.




Field Methods in Archaeology


Book Description

Field Methods in Archaeology has been the leading source for instructors and students in archaeology courses and field schools for 60 years since it was first authored in 1949 by the legendary Robert Heizer. Left Coast has arranged to put the most recent Seventh Edition back into print after a brief hiatus, making this classic textbook again available to the next generation of archaeology students. This comprehensive guide provides an authoritative overview of the variety of methods used in field archaeology, from research design, to survey and excavation strategies, to conservation of artifacts and record-keeping. Authored by three leading archaeologists, with specialized contributions by several other experts, this volume deals with current issues such as cultural resource management, relations with indigenous peoples, and database management as well as standard methods of archaeological data collection and analysis.







The Light Gray People


Book Description

Although Lipan Apache culture was studied by one of the most eminent anthropologists of the twentieth century, many important questions remain. What is the meaning of the tribal name Lipan? Did Morris Opler's 1935 study of historical Lipan culture conform to practices seen by eighteenth century Spaniards? Only four in situ observations of Lipan Apache culture survive - observations made by a Spanish priest, a Spanish military officer, a Swiss botanist and an Anglo captive. Each source reveals fascinating insights into a hitherto unseen world of Lipan beliefs and practices. The sources reported, for example, that the Lipans were able to predict both solar and lunar eclipses, a practice which went far beyond the vision quest posited by Opler. The Light Gray People seeks to complete a comparative analysis of traditional Lipan Apache culture, as seen through the eyes of four eighteenth and nineteenth century observers and Morris Opler's theories.




American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene


Book Description

The volume contains summaries of facts, theories, and unsolved problems pertaining to the unexplained extinction of dozens of genera of mostly large terrestrial mammals, which occurred ca. 13,000 calendar years ago in North America and about 1,000 years later in South America. Another equally mysterious wave of extinctions affected large Caribbean islands around 5,000 years ago. The coupling of these extinctions with the earliest appearance of human beings has led to the suggestion that foraging humans are to blame, although major climatic shifts were also taking place in the Americas during some of the extinctions. The last published volume with similar (but not identical) themes -- Extinctions in Near Time -- appeared in 1999; since then a great deal of innovative, exciting new research has been done but has not yet been compiled and summarized. Different chapters in this volume provide in-depth resumés of the chronology of the extinctions in North and South America, the possible insights into animal ecology provided by studies of stable isotopes and anatomical/physiological characteristics such as growth increments in mammoth and mastodont tusks, the clues from taphonomic research about large-mammal biology, the applications of dating methods to the extinctions debate, and archeological controversies concerning human hunting of large mammals.




Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide


Book Description

Information on all aspects of Texas life is accompanied by advertisements for major retailers, real estate brokers, and vacation areas.




Premiums and Losses


Book Description