Colonialism In The Brush

The book describes the Hill Country as a trap, baited by grass. Thick, hearty grass that came up to a rider’s stirrups.

The tall grass of the Hill Country stretched as far as the eye could see, covering valleys and hillsides alike. It was so high that a man couldn’t see the roots or the bottoms of the big oaks; their dark trunks seemed to be rising out of a rippling, pale green sea. There was almost no brush, and few small trees – only the big oaks and the grass…
The grass had grown not over a season but over centuries. It wouldn’t have grown at all had it not been for fire – prairie fires set by lightning and driven by wind across tens of thousands of acres, and fires set by Indians to stampede game into their ambushes or over cliffs -- for fire clears the land of underbrush, relentless enemy of grass. The roots of brush are merciless, spreading and seeking all available moisture, and so are the leaves of brush, which cast on grass the shade that kills it, so if brush and grass are left alone in a field, the grass will be destroyed by the brush. But grass grows much faster than brush, so fire gives grass the head start it needs to survive; after a fire, grass would re-enter the burned-over land first – one good rain and among the ashes would be green shoots – and by the time the brush arrived, the grass would be thick and strong enough to stand it off…

As the white settlers planted their crops and grazed their cattle during the driving days, this same grass became thinner and thinner. The soil had taken time to accrue. Many fields of grass had been taken in flame or had died over the seasons, bending and falling, to form the thin layer of what was, over the slick face of Texas limestone. After the tall grasses were all eaten, this soft padding the cattle ate. The roots pulled, the soil remained in a loose arrangement. The heavy rains of the Hill Country came and, with settlers watching, washed this soil away.

When the settlers pushed westward, deep into the Hill Country, Comanche attacks, the book says, were common. For this reason, the first settlers were few and scattered. Over the years, as they grew in number, experience, and frustration, they began to push the natives back. Those white men north in the Comanche homeland purposefully slaughtered the buffalo: food, clothing and shelter to the natives. For this slow eradication 1869 was the final year of Comanche attacks, “forcing them to move onto reservations or starve”. Without the vast acreage of grass needed to sustain a lightning blaze, and no natives to start one, the brush came.

So the brush began to move out of the ravines and off the rocky cliff-faces to which it had been confined. It began to creep into the meadows: small, low, dense shrubs and bushes and stunted trees, catclaw and prickly pear and Spanish dagger, shrub oak and juniper – and mesquite, mesquite with its lacy leaves so delicate in the sun, and, hidden in the earth, its monstrous, voracious taproot that reached and reached through thin soil, searching for more and more water and nourishment. Finally, even cedar came, cedar that can grow in the driest, thinnest soil, cedar whose fierce, aggressive roots are strong enough to rip through rock to find moisture, and which therefore can grow where there is no soil – cedar that grows so fast that it seems to gobble up the ground. The brush came first in long tentacles pushing hesitantly forward into a grassy meadow, and then in a thin line, and then the line becoming thicker, solid, so that sometimes a rancher could see a mass of rough, ragged, thorny brush moving implacably toward the delicate green of a grassy meadow and then in huge bites devouring it. Or there would be a meadow that a rancher was sure was safe – no brush anywhere near it, a perfect place for his cattle if only grass would come back – and one morning he would suddenly notice one shrub pushing up in it, and even if he pulled it up, its seeds would already be thrown, and the next year there would be a dozen bushes in its place.

Whenever you see President Bush, on TV or in print, clearing cedar brush at his Crawford ranch, remember that it has its roots in this.


Oh holy shit, this LBJ book is good.