The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973 Page: 253
539 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Pioneer Evaluation
the praria [sic] on fire near the Settlements," because "at certain seasons
if the praria [sic] was fird [sic] it would destroy our stocks." Austin
himself was convinced of the wisdom of the practice, for in January,
1829, he instructed his surveyor to "fire the prairie at different places
as you go along." Two years later, a traveler in the Coastal Prairie be-
tween the Trinity River and the settlement of Anahuac noted that
"every where in the Prairie were to be seen traces of the fire by which it
had been overrun and devastated only a few weeks before." Writing in
1834, Amos Parker observed that "the prairies are all burnt over twice
a year-in mid-summer, and about the first of winter," and William F.
Gray witnessed prairie firing by settlers in Houston and Austin coun-
ties in February of 1836. Edward Smith mentioned prairie burning in
northeast Texas in 1849.64 A law passed by the state legislature in 1848
made it illegal to fire prairies between July 1 and February 15, except
on land belonging to the person doing the firing, and the law remained
in effect a decade later. February was viewed as the best month for
burning the grass. This pioneer practice persisted into the twentieth
century in some areas,<6 and the present writer can well remember that
a few town dwellers in Dallas still fired their lawns in the 1940's, prob-
ably as a heritage of their farm life in the Texas prairies. Prairie burn-
ing was also adopted at a very early date by German immigrants who
settled in the Texas hill country.66
That the settlers took the trouble to fire the prairies in their vicinity
underlines the importance of the grasslands to them as ready-made
pastures for livestock. The universality of the practice suggests the con-
sistency with which the pioneers throughout Texas valued prairies.
Over most of the portion of Texas settled by Anglo-Americans, both
prairie and forest were present, offering the colonists the advantages of
both types of vegetation. The pioneers utilized the forests for building
"SRandall Jones to Austin, June 4, 1824, in Barker (ed.), The Austin Papers, I, 8og;
Austin to William Selkerk, January 27, 1829, ibid., II, 1635.
14A Visit to Texas, 88; Parker, Trip to the West, 139; Gray, From Virginia to Texas,
lo2, 119; Edward Smith, Account of a Journey through North-Eastern Texas, Undertaken
in 1849 for the Purposes of Emigration (London, 1849), 26.
"Bates, Denton County, 92-93; De Cordova, Texas, 35; Ralph Semmes Jackson, Home
on the Double Bayou: Memories of an East Texas Ranch (Austin, 1961), 107.
"Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: or, A Saddle-Trip on the South-
western Frontier (New York, 1857), 147; Emmanuel H. Dieudonn6 Domenech, Missionary
Adventures in Texas and Mexico: A Personal Narrative of Six Years' Sojourn in Those
Regions (London, 1858), 93; and Alwin Sirgel, Neueste Nachrichten aus Texas: Zugleich
ein Hiilferuf an den Mainzer Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (Eisle-
ben, 1847), 28.253
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973, periodical, 1973; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101202/m1/295/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.