This is the third of a three part series of guest posts by John Bullard. Before I turn the blog over to John, I would like to take a moment and thank him for all the work he has done not only researching and writing this series, but his editing of the Howard letters for the next edition of the collected letters. It’s this type of behind the scenes efforts that often go unacknowledged. So John, on behalf of Howard fans and scholars everywhere, thank you.
Click the links to read Part 1 and Part 2. Be advised there are spoilers.
Now here’s John.
In Part 2, we saw some of the historical Texans and their stories that Howard used to base incidents in his story “Beyond the Black River” on, hereinafter referred to as BBR. We also saw that Howard’s life-long love of talking to and learning these stories from old people he would meet saturated his thoughts and dreams, leading him to create other incidents and characters in the story. In this final part, we will see the one story that influenced Howard the most in writing BBR, and then his use of historical people that his ancestors interacted with from family histories which he used to flesh out his story. Finally, we’ll see his use of a famous incident in Texas history to bring BBR to an end, clearly showing that BBR was indeed a story about the settlement of Texas, and not a story taken from the American Colonial wars with the Eastern First Nations. Continue reading
