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.

Mrs. Crawford’s Story

In BBR, Balthus and Conan make a desperate journey to outrun the Picts and warn the settlers to flee to safety. Balthus is able to warn two cabins of women and children and the group flee to the fortress of Velitrium for safety, like the Fort Parker Survivors. Two of the women mentioned are specifically fleshed out in their characters. The first woman Balthus warns tries to talk him in to staying and defending the cabin with her and her children while awaiting her husband’s return from a salt gathering expedition. She immediately changes her mind when Balthus informs her that Conan has gone to warn those men, loads up her children on a horse, and the group sets off with the woman grimly and purposely carrying an axe for defense of her family: “The woman took the horse’s halter and set out up the road. She still gripped her ax and Balthus knew that if cornered she would fight with the desperate courage of a she-panther.”(BBR) They proceed to a second cabin, filled with 3 women – 2 young and 1 old, and several children:

“Like the other woman’s husband, their men had gone to the salt licks the day before, unsuspecting of any danger. One of the young women seemed dazed, the other prone to hysteria. But the old woman, a stern old veteran of the frontier, quieted them harshly; she helped Balthus get out the two horses that were stabled in a pen behind the cabin and put the children on them. Balthus urged that she herself mount with them, but she shook her head and made one of the younger women ride.

‘She’s with child,’ grunted the old woman. ‘I can walk—and fight, too, if it comes to that.’”(BBR)

When the group hears the sounds of the on-coming Pict horde (a fake wolf howl—which appears in Howard’s dream of fighting Indians that he relates to Lovecraft in the Jan. 1931 letter, see Part 2), Balthus makes his decision to stay and fight a delaying action for the group to have time to make it to safety. He tells the women:

“’Go! Rouse the other settlers along the road and take them with you. I’ll scout along behind.’

Without a word the old woman herded her charges ahead of her.”(BBR)

In a letter to Lovecraft from October 1931, Howard relates the story of Mrs. Crawford, a woman who survived a Comanche raid, and whom he knew that shows up in both of these women’s characters, and even in details in BBR involving other plot points. Again, the telling starts off with a restatement of the savage fighting history in the area of Texas between the two rivers:

“Yes, the region between the Trinity and the Brazos saw many a red drama enacted. I remember an old woman, a Mrs. Crawford, whom I knew as a child, and who was one of the old settlers of the country. A gaunt, somber figure she was behind whose immobile countenance dreamed red memories. I remember the story she used to tell of the fate of her first husband, a Mr. Brown, in the year 1872.

One evening some of the stock failed to come up and Mr. Brown decided to go and look for them. The Browns lived in a big two-storied ranch-house, several miles from the nearest settlement — Black Springs. So Brown left the ranch-house, hearing the tinkling of a horse-bell somewhere off among the mesquite. It was a chill dreary day, grey clouds deepening slowly toward the veiled sunset. Mrs. Brown stood on the porch of the ranch-house and watched her husband striding off among the mesquites, while beyond him the bell tinkled incessantly. She was a strange woman who saw visions, and claimed the gift of second-sight. Smitten with premonition, but held by the fatalism of the pioneers, she saw Brown disappear among the mesquites. The tinkling bell seemed slowly to recede until the tiny sound died out entirely. Brown did not reappear, and the clouds hung like a grey shroud, a cold wind shook the bare limbs and shuddered among the dead grasses, and she knew he would never return. She went into the house, and with her servants — a negro woman and boy — she barred the doors and shuttered the windows. She put buckets of water where they would be handy in case of fire, she armed the terrified blacks, and led them into the second story of the ranch-house, there to make their last stand. She herself went out upon the balcony of the second story and waited silently. And soon again she heard the tinkle of a horse-bell; and with it many bells. Cow-bells jangled a devil’s tune as the mesquite bent and swayed and the riders swept in view — naked, painted men, riding hard, with cow-horns on their heads and cow-tails swinging grotesquely from their girdles. They drove with them a swarm of horses, some of which Mrs. Brown recognized as her own property, and at their saddle-bows swung fresh crimson scalps — one of these had a grim familiarity and she shuddered, but stood unmoving, starkly impassive. Inside the house the blacks were groveling and whimpering with terror. The Comanches swept around the house, racing at full speed. They loosed their arrows at the statue-like figure on the upper balcony and one of the shafts tore a lock of hair from her head. She did not move, did not shift the long rifle she held across her arm. She knew that unless maddened by the death or wounding of one of their number, they would not attack the house. That one arrow flight had been in barbaric defiance or contempt. They were riding hard, spurred on by the thought of avengers hot on their trail, light-eyed fighters, as ferocious as themselves. They were after horses — the Comanche’s everlasting need — they had lured the rancher to his doom with a tinkling horse-bell. They would not waste time and blood storming the ranch-house. They did not care to come to grips with that silent impassive figure who stood so statue-like on the upper balcony, terrible with potentialities of ferocity, and ready to spring and die like a wounded tigress among the embers of her home. Aye, they would have paid high for that scalp — there would have been no futile screams of terror, no vain pleas for mercy where no mercy ever existed, no gleeful slitting of a helpless soft throat; there would have been the billowing of rifle-smoke, the whine of flying lead, the emptying of saddles, riderless horses racing through the mesquite and red forms lying crumpled. Aye, and the drinking of knives, the crunching of axes, and hot blood hissing in the flames, before they ripped the scalp from that frontier woman’s head.

Silent she stood and saw them round up all the horses on the ranch, except one in a stable they overlooked — and ride away like a whirlwind, to vanish as they had come — as the Comanches always rode. They came like a sudden wind of destruction, they struck, they passed on like the wind, leaving desolation behind them. Taking the one horse that remained to her, she went into the mesquites and some half a mile from the house she found her husband. He lay among the dead grasses, with a dozen arrows still protruding from him, his scalped head in a great pool of congealed blood. With the aid of the blacks who had followed her, wailing a wordless dirge of death, she lifted the corpse across the horse and carried it to the ranch-house. Then she put the black boy on the horse and sent him flying toward Black Springs, whence he soon returned with a strong force of settlers. They saw the dead man and the tracks of the marauders; the wind blew cold and night had come down over the hills, and they feared for their own families. Mrs. Brown bade them go to their respective homes and leave her as a guard in case of the return of the slayers, only Captain McAdams, with whom, she said, she would feel as safe as with an army. So this was done, but the Comanches did not return. They swept in a wide half circle like a prairie fire, driving all the horses they found before them, and outracing the avengers, crossed Red River and gained their reservations and the protection of a benevolent Federal government.”(Lovecraft, Oct. 1931)

Mrs. Crawford’s experience and character shows up in the two women Howard creates—the first woman ready to fight to defend her family “like a she-panther” and the Comanche knowing not to attack Mrs. Crawford as she would fight like a “wounded tigress”; the calm, strong assurance of the old woman in taking control of the women and children with her and leading the group on after Balthus decides to stay and fight mirroring Mrs. Crawford’s handling of her frightened servants and preparing them to defend their homestead. Details in her story also show up in BBR in additional plot details. There is Balthus having a lock of his hair cut from his head by the Pict’s axe during his fight against them, the same as Mrs. Crawford having a lock of her hair cut off by the arrow shot at her by a Comanche as they pass through her ranch. Also, the luring of her husband to his death by the Comanches tinkling horse/cowbells was taken, changed, and added by Howard to his story for effect in several places. In both drafts and the final printed version in the opening chapter, Conan and Balthus have come upon a murdered merchant, Tiberias, and are carrying his body to Fort Tuscelan, when they are stopped by the sound of a woman screaming in the forest:

“They had covered more than a mile, and the muscles in Balthus’ sturdy arms were beginning to ache a little, when a cry rang shuddering from the woods whose blue shadows were deepening into purple.

Conan started convulsively, and Balthus almost let go the poles.

“A woman!” cried the younger man. “Great Mitra, a woman cried out then!”

“A settler’s wife straying in the woods,” snarled Conan, setting down his end of the litter. “Looking for a cow, probably, and—stay here!”

He dived like a hunting wolf into the leafy wall. Balthus’ hair bristled.

“Stay here alone with this corpse and a devil hiding in the woods?” he yelped. “I’m coming with you!”(BBR)

They go chasing off to find the woman, when they hear another scream behind them that changes into “mocking laughter”, and Conan then knows that the screams are not from an endangered settler woman, but from the Swamp Demon that just killed Tiberias, and that has lured the pair off into the forest on a wild goose-chase so the Demon could go back and collect Tiberias’ head as a trophy for Zogar Sag’s altar.

This luring trick also shows up twice again in the second draft (Draft B) and the final printed version. One of these is when Conan and Balthus running to warn the fort need to cross the Black River. Conan tricks a Pict canoeing down the river to come to his doom so that Conan and Balthus can use the canoe by imitating a fellow Pict calling out to the Canoeist to warn him of danger on the opposite riverbank and to come over to them for safety. The third time occurs in the final fight between Conan and the Swamp Demon when the Demon imitates Balthus’s voice to attract Conan’s attention.

Who is Zogar Sag?

The character of Zogar Sag is cobbled together from several people Howard knew about. Zogar Sag is a Pictish wizard who has started to draw all the tribes of Picts together to attack and destroy the Aquilonians moving into the Picts’ lands. Zogar Sag has the ability to command various animals and summon demons.

The first person that Howard uses to base Zogar Sag’s character on is Kelly the Conjure Man, whom Howard knew of from his family relations living in Arkansas (Lovecraft, Nov. 1930). Howard would of course return to Kelly for his story, “Black Canaan”:

“…[A] weird story called “Black Canaan” based on a real life character with a realistic background (though the latter considerably altered) the region actually known as “Canaan” in southwestern Arkansas, between Tulip Creek and the Ouachita River, not far from the ancestral home of the Howards.” (Petaja, Mar. 6, 1935),

and:

“ Ignore my forthcoming “Black Canaan”. It started out as a good yarn, laid in the real Canaan, which lies between Tulip Creek and the Ouachita River in southwestern Arkansas, the homeland of the Howards, but I cut so much of the guts out of it, in response to editorial requirements, that in its published form it won’t much resemble the original theme, woven about the mysterious figure of Kelly the Conjur-man, who was a real character, back in the seventies — an ebon giant with copper rings in his ears and a gift of magic who came from nowhere and vanished into nowhere one dark night when the owls hooted in the cypresses and the wind moaned among the nigger cabins.” (Derleth May 9, 1936)

Notice the historical setting of Howard’s tale of Kelly—land between two bodies of water, which is reflected in the setting of BBR between the Thunder and Black Rivers, and Texas’s Trinity and Brazos Rivers. Kelly was a shaman/witch doctor among the poor Blacks in the swampy river land of Arkansas, and Howard used these elements to add to Zogar Sag’s character, giving him his supernatural abilities to command the animals and demons¹⁴.

For the aspect of Zogar Sag’s getting the Picts to band together and attack the colonists, however, Howard used two other people. Howard wrote in his letters about a “Colonel Leopard”. Leopard, according to Howard, was a Yankee who came to Texas after the Civil War, and did try to raise the newly freed Blacks in a race war against the whites in Central Texas:

“It reminds me of the revolt old Colonel Leopard the carpet-bagger planned in East Texas. He stirred the niggers up and was going to lead them to a bloody victory. He was holding forth in a meeting place in the woods, with the fires blazing, and hundreds of blacks howling like fiends, and Leopard roaring and shouting as he goaded them to frenzy — urging them to march on Waco and slaughter every white man, woman and child in the place. And about that time old Captain Wortham and his bush-rangers opened fire from the bushes and they dropped eight niggers at the first volley. The rest scattered and the worthy Colonel led the flight. The Texans hunted him clear across the state with blood-hounds…”(Lovecraft, Jun. 1931).

The next person Howard used to create and flesh out Zogar Sag’s character is John A. Murrell, who also was planning to start an uprising of slaves in Mississippi. Howard knew of Murrell from his family’s history. Howard’s great-grandfather, Squire James Henry, while moving his family and possessions west, was alleged to have come in contact with Murrell:

“And what a grisly fantasy was John A. Murrell’s imperial dream and what a strange and ghastly empire he planned! Surely in that man slept the seeds of greatness, overshadowed by the black petals of madness.

The shadow of John A. Murrell and the shadow of the threat of his outlaw empire still hovered over the pine woods and the river lands in the 1850s when my great-grandfather, Squire James Henry, came west along the Wilderness Road with fifty head of fine cattle, a drove of horses, and five big wagons loaded with his family, slaves and belongings.

They were in Murrell’s country, and though he had recently been released from prison and his planned slave-uprising had been nipped in the bud, his name was still one to conjure shudders. And in the sunset they came to a wild, frothing river, lashed to frenzy by the flooding rain, and saw, on the other side, a man sitting on a log beneath the forest branches. Something about his posture fired grisly recognition in the mind of a man traveling with the wagon-train and he paled and cried out that it was John A. Murrell who sat on the opposite bank.” (Lovecraft, Feb. 1931)

Howard’s grandfather went over to see if Murrell was going to cause trouble, and found:

“…[T]he man still sat in the same posture in which they had first glimpsed him. Apparently he had not moved. The Squire rode up close to him and spoke aggressively and harshly, leaning out from his saddle. The man made no reply; his hands lay listlessly at his side, and vacant eyes gave back an unseeing stare. The squire saw and realized what broken ambitions and ten years in a prison dungeon had done to the man. His face was worn and lined and prematurely old. From beneath wispy white hair, pale, glassy eyes stared through the Squire and far, far beyond him. A rifle lay by the log, like a forgotten bauble. There he sat, in a cloud of lost dreams and dim red visions, the King of the Mississippi — who had worn his crown and pressed his regal seat only in mad visions — the monarch that was to be, in that mad, black kingdom of death and destruction, whose plan was conceived in insanity and crushed in blood and terror. His face was old beyond the ken of men, his eyes were those of a ghost — and his slim white hands that had ripped so many shuddering souls from their fleshly bodies, lay limp on the log that was his final throne.” (Ibid.)

In the first draft of BBR, Zogar Sag is only called “the Swamp Snake” (Draft A), and first appears in the narrative as Conan tells Balthus the “Swamp Snake” crossed over the Black River and either killed a settler family and raided their homestead, or came across their remains and destroyed home, and got drunk on casks of ale he either found there or stole from the merchant Tiberias. He is sent to jail, and released, vowing vengeance.(Draft A) In the second draft and printed version, Zogar Sag crossed the river and stole several horses carrying ale from Tiberias, where he was caught while drunk and thrown in prison.(Draft B) This change in Zogar Sag’s origin was made to reflect John Murrell. Murrell was known to be a horse thief. His first conviction and prison sentence was from being convicted for stealing a horse. After his release from prison he started a gang that would rob and murder travelers. Murrell would travel the South as a travelling preacher, and he would have his gang members steal some of the horses of the people who would come to hear Murrell preach. He also set up a business of helping slaves to escape, then reselling the escaped slaves and helping them to escape again. At some point, Murrell decided to lead a slave uprising:

“John A. Murrell was a hell-bender, in Southwest vernacular. He planned no less than an outlaw empire on the Mississippi river, with New Orleans as his capital and himself as emperor. Son of a tavern woman and an aristocratic gentleman, he seemed to have inherited the instincts of both, together with a warped mind that made him as ruthless and dangerous as a striking rattler.”(Lovecraft, Jun. 1931)

Murrell’s planned slave uprising never occurred because he was arrested, tried and convicted for robbery.

Finally, what about the nameless Mexican agent who led the Comanches on the attack on Fort Parker: “Early in the morning five hundred Comanches appeared before the fort, led by a Mexican agent who had been stirring up the tribes against the white people…”(Lovecraft, May 1935)? What can this person say about Howard’s thinking in his creation of Zogar Sag? The fact that Howard invented this person in his letter to Lovecraft is curious. Where Howard got the idea to place this person in the Fort Parker narrative is unknown¹⁵, but it is interesting to work through the Mexican Agent and Zogar Sag in their effect on the two stories as Howard wrote them. The agent in Howard’s version of the Fort Parker story is a man who has gathered together and led several hundred Comanche and Kiowa on a raid against the hated Anglo-Texians who had just won the independence of Texas from his nation, Mexico, in the month (April 21, 1836) before the attack (May 19, 1836). He had lost a huge part of his country to invaders. Zogar Sag’s story predated Howard’s letter invention, but Zogar Sag, too, had the same things happen to his people and homeland.

This leads to the final person that Howard used as a source for the character of Zogar Sag: the great Comanche War Chief, Quanah Parker, which ties directly into Fort Parker being the inspiration for BBR and Fort Tuscelan. As has been previously stated, Howard got excited about the history of Fort Parker in the early 1930’s. Cynthia Ann Parker had been taken at the fort’s destruction by the Comanches and grew up among the Comanches. She married a Comanche chief, Peta Nocona, and bore him two sons and a daughter. Her oldest son was named Quanah, and Quanah became the last War Chief of the Comanches. He is also another one of Howard’s favorite historical characters as Howard wrote about him in 2 letters to Lovecraft, in January 1931 (“Quanah Parker, is one of the stock folk-lore characters of the Southwest and as smart a horse thief as ever rode off with a rancher’s hoofed stock”), and again in the May 1935 letter; and also to August Derleth in December 1932 (“You’ve heard perhaps of Quanah Parker, the great Comanche warchief, son of Petah Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker?”), and in January 1933 (“It would take a large volume to tell the full story of Quanah Parker, and of Cynthia Anne Parker, yes, and of Peta Nocona, the last war-chief of the Comanches. It is the classic tale of the Southwest, which has been rewritten scores of times, fictionized and dramatized.”). In this January 1933 letter to Derleth, Howard relates the history of Quanah Parker’s life. Here, you have Quanah having a mixed race parentage (a white woman and a Comanche) like Zogar Sag (a Pict mother and a god for his father), and also being a horse thief as Zogar Sag and John Murrell were, and also having the same reasons as the Mexican agent and Zogar Sag in the loss of his peoples’ land to newcomers. Finally, as will be discussed in the next section, Quanah Parker was involved in an incident which mirrors a major plot point of BBR.

Howard used these men from the histories of Texas and Howard’s Southern ancestors to create his character of Zogar Sag, giving him supernatural powers and the ability to unite the various Pict tribes and lead them to attack and drive out the settlers that have moved onto former Pict land, further cementing the roots of BBR in Texas and Southern history, and not New England.

Zogar Sag’s Defeat-What Inspired It?

The final part of BBR that ties it into being about Texas and not New England is how Zogar Sag’s raid was defeated. In the story, after Fort Tuscelan has fallen, and the Picts are starting their rampage through the land, Conan is following behind the alerted band of salt gatherers as they head for safety. Conan soon feels they are being followed and stops. In a call-back to the woman’s screams and Conan’s tricking of the Pict, he hears Balthus’ voice calling for him to stop and wait for Balthus to catch up. Of course, it is the Swamp Demon come to kill Conan for Zogar Sag. The Demon then gives the backstory that he and Zogar Sag are half-brothers and that Zogar Sag summoned the Demon using Zogar Sag’s own blood. Then, in a nod to another author Howard was very familiar with, Alexandre Dumas¹⁶ and his story “The Corsican Brothers”, the Demon says that he and Zogar Sag “…[A]re one, tied together by invisible threads. His thoughts are my thoughts; if he is struck, I am bruised. If I am cut, he bleeds.”(BBR) Conan and the Demon fight, and Conan gives the Demon three sword wounds: in its groin, in its abdomen, and finally killing it by nearly decapitating it. Later, after the Picts have stopped their raid and retreated back across the Black River, the lone survivor of Fort Tuscelan tells Conan of the moment that the Picts lost all interest in the attack and gave up and went back home across the Black River:

“Zogar Sag’s dead?” ejaculated Conan.

“Aye. I saw him die. That’s why the Picts didn’t press the fight against Velitrium as fiercely as they did against the fort. It was strange. He took no wounds in battle. He was dancing among the slain, waving an ax with which he’d just brained the last of my comrades. He came at me, howling like a wolf—and then he staggered and dropped the ax, and began to reel in a circle screaming as I never heard a man or beast scream before. He fell between me and the fire they’d built to roast me, gagging and frothing at the mouth, and all at once he went rigid and the Picts shouted that he was dead… “I saw him lying in the firelight. No weapon had touched him. Yet there were red marks like the wounds of a sword in the groin, belly and neck—the last as if his head had been almost severed from his body… [T]he forester, aware of the reticence of barbarians on certain matters, continued: “He lived by magic, and somehow, he died by magic. It was the mystery of his death that took the heart out of the Picts. Not a man who saw it was in the fighting before Velitrium. They hurried back across Black River. Those that struck Thunder River were warriors who had come on before Zogar Sag died. They were not enough to take the city by themselves. (BBR)

As was stated in the previous section on the inspirations for Zogar Sag, Howard knew and used the life of Quanah Parker to flesh out Zogar Sag’s character. In the January 1933 letter to Derleth, Howard gives a long history of Quanah Parker’s life. Howard had to know of the event that he used to craft the end of BBR, which occurred to Quanah Parker.

After the Civil War, the US Government in trying to get control of and pacify the Plains Indian tribes to make the expansion of European-Americans into their lands safe, allowed the destruction of the main source of food and supplies for the tribes, the huge buffalo herds. In June 1874, Quanah led a group of several hundred Comanche and Kiowa warriors to attack an outpost in North Texas that was used mainly by buffalo hunters as a rest stop, buffalo hide selling point, resupply stop, and gathering place called Adobe Walls, to stop the hunters’ killing of the buffalo in the Comanche’s area of Texas and the Oklahoma territory, very much like the attack on Fort Tuscelan in BBR. The outpost was kept under siege for two days while the several dozen buffalo hunters sheltering in the 3 buildings were able to exact losses on the attacking Comanches and Kiowas with their rifles while only suffering a few losses. On the third day of the siege, Quanah, who had been wounded during the attack, and the rest of the leaders of the Indians together with several warriors were having a council on the top of a bluff overlooking Adobe Walls. One of the buffalo hunters, Billy Dixon, borrowed a buffalo rifle from one of the hunters and took a shot at the group on the bluff which is about a mile away from the outpost. Dixon’s bullet hit one of the Indians sitting in a saddle atop his horse, and killed him instantly, dropping the Indian out of the saddle and to the ground. The rest of the Indians, expecting to be way out of range of the hunters’ guns, were startled by this unexpected killing, and being so disgusted at their lack of success and losses, felt that this was the final straw. They all left, ending the attack. Here, you have the seemingly magical killing of an attacker at a distance that ends the attack, just like in BBR. Howard specifically mentions this incident to Lovecraft in letters written after BBR was written, in the May 1935 letter (“…Quanah, who became the last war-chief of the Comanches and led the painted hordes against the barriers of Adobe Walls when the long rifles of the buffalo hunters raked the red riders out of their saddles and littered the prairie with their gaudily-painted bodies.”), and in a May 13, 1936 letter (“First I’ll quote Billy Dixon, a pioneer of pioneers, hero of the bloody Buffalo Wallow fight, one of the heroes of Adobe Walls.”), but must have known about this famous incident based on his letter to Derleth in January 1933 where he gives a short biography of Quanah Parker’s life.¹⁷

Conclusion

Clearly, after reading through Howard’s letters, one can see that while he may have chosen the forest milieu of Chambers’ American Colonial setting and some names for his story, BBR is a story of the settling of Texas. Excited by his learning of Fort Parker and his knowledge of the accounts of the Texas settlers, he took these various elements and wrote one of his finest stories. He had indeed figured out how to overcome his perceived problem with writing about the history of his beloved Southwest by moving it into a fictional, yet familiar setting, rounded out with historical figures and incidents taken from the area. This breakthrough and the resulting story seemed to open the gates for Howard on writing about the southwest and west. His humorous western series on Breckenridge Elkins was taking off, and he was getting paid regularly for these stories, unlike his payments from Weird Tales which came very late, if at all. He wrote to August Derleth in November 1934:

“I’m seriously contemplating devoting all my time and efforts to western writing, abandoning all other forms of work entirely; the older I get the more my thoughts and interests are drawn back over the trails of the past; so much has been written; but there is so much that should be written.” (Derleth, Nov. 28, 1934)

And shortly before his death, he wrote to H.P. Lovecraft:

“I find it more and more difficult to write anything but western yarns… I have become so wrapped up in western themes that I have not, as yet, written a follow-up yarn for the last Oriental adventure novelet bought by Street & Smith…[E]ven my interest in things Oriental is waning in comparison to my interest in the drama of early America… I have always felt that if I ever accomplished anything worthwhile in the literary field, it would be with stories dealing of the central and western frontier.”(Lovecraft, May 13, 1936)

From looking at the letters of Howard to his author-friends, you can see the bits and pieces of Texas history and Southern history that Howard drew on to write his story about the battle for ownership of the area of Texas between the Trinity River and the Brazos River moved into a fantasy setting. Clearly, Fort Parker is Fort Tuscelan, and “Beyond the Black River” really is “Beyond the Brazos River”.

POSTSCRIPT: So, About That Title–

I began thinking about the subject matter of this paper when while working on editing The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, I read the letter with Mrs. Crawford’s tale and was immediately struck by the thought that here was the beginning of Howard’s germination of BBR! I thought it would be interesting to gather all the letter excerpts that directly apply to Howard’s writing of BBR for folks to have. While at the 2019 Howard Days, I pitched my idea to Patrice Louinet, who enthusiastically endorsed it. Unfortunately, Rusty Burke was not at that Howard Days so that I could not check with him. I put this paper on the back burner as I was getting close to finishing the Letters. After finishing the Letters at the end of August, (or so I excitedly thought), I contacted Rusty to see if with his encyclopedic knowledge of Howardiana he knew if anyone else had done this paper before. Rusty said he wasn’t aware of anyone doing it and also encouraged me to go ahead and write this paper, and that he had some materials he had gathered that he would send me if I wanted them. I said please send the materials, but sadly he go too busy and never sent them. I wrote this paper and sent copies off to Rusty and Patrice for their comments last fall and winter, but they were too busy with their personal and professional lives to reply (I hope they do get around to commenting on this paper in the comments). So, after talking with Keith a couple of months ago about publishing this paper, we finally started putting it out this week.

This past Monday, March 23, as I was getting ready to start re-doing the tedious and mind-numbing updating of the indices for the Letters, I thought I would put on something to listen to to help with the boredom. I didn’t feel like music or the radio, and remembered that it had been several months since I checked the Cromcast podcast site, so that could be the ticket. I went to their site and saw that they had put up an episode with Rusty talking about Howard’s Weird Westerns and specifically, “Old Garfield’s Heart” a couple of weeks ago. I started listening to it, and nearly had a heart attack when about ¾’s of the way through the podcast, Rusty mentioned that BBR came from the letter with Mrs. Crawford’s tale and he had published that letter excerpt with the title “Beyond the Brazos River” in the collection of Howard western stories, The End of the Trail. While I did not know about this at the time I wrote this paper, and in speaking with Rusty about preparing to write this paper, he never mentioned this fact, I should have discovered this in my research for writing this paper. I immediately contacted Rusty Monday night to apologize and ask what he wanted me to do. Rusty, ever the gentleman, said no apologies were needed and that I had his blessing to continue to use the title. Thank you, Rusty.

I find it informative and very conclusive that after reading Howard’s letters, two different people came up with the same title independently. That should really put the final nail in the coffin that BBR is indeed about North Central Texas and the Comanches and not New York and the Iroquois.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Bobby Derie and Keith West for their help in reading this paper and giving me great suggestions and comments on it, and especially to Bobby for giving me the comments from Lovecraft to REH to write more Texas-based stories.

John Bullard is a retired attorney who lives in Texas, and has been slaving away for the last 2+ years on updating The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard for The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, which barring any more newly found letters or changes on letter dates, should finally be done this year. He became a life-long Howard fan upon reading his first Howard story in an anthology of horror stories in 1974. While working on the Letters, he started seeing the subject matter of this series and has written it up for the education and edification of other Howard-ophiles.

NOTES

14. REH Scholar Bobby Derie also points out that Zogar Sag being born from the union of his mother with a god, Jhebbal Sag, making him half-god or demon, was also built into the character of Tsotha-Lanti in Howard’s fifth Conan story, The Scarlet Citadel”.

15. It is interesting to speculate why Howard invented this “Mexican agent” in the May 1935 letter. In the section of the letter where the incident is written about, Howard is arguing with Lovecraft about the “civilities” practiced by conquerors, and specifically about a newspaper article from Rhode Island Lovecraft sent him that had praised Santa Anna’s attempt to put down the Texas rebellion. Howard talks about the atrocities Santa Anna committed on the Texians at the Alamo and Goliad, and then segues into the Fort Parker story and James Parker’s near-superhuman effort leading the survivors to safety. Possibly, Howard invented the agent in the letter to refute the newspaper’s claims of the Mexican’s chivalry in fighting against the evil Anglo-Americans who had invaded the province of Texas to take it away from Mexico for the United States based on his having written BBR with Zogar Sag leading the events in the story.

16. “I’ve read…Dumas…and a lot of those old libertines…” from a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, February 25, 1925, and: “I see where the Claytons are bringing out a new magazine dealing with weird subjects and another dealing with historical tales of romance and adventure — two cents a word on acceptance and up. If I can’t make both of them I ought to be ham-strung. You ought to re-read Dumas and crash the historical one…” from a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, May 9, 1931, and finally: “Dumas has a virility lacking [in] other French writers…” from a letter to H.P. Lovecraft, Nov. 2, 1932

17. Howard Scholar Keith West points out that Jack Hays also had an incident happen in his battles with the Comanche as a Ranger that also fits the magical death ending an attack. Hays and his men were being attacked by Comanches at Enchanted Rock in Central Texas and had been able to hold off the Comanche attacks from overrunning them, inflicting many losses on the Comanche. As the Comanches were being urged by their leader to make another attack, Hays ordered one of his men to take a shot at the leader. The Ranger did, and hit and killed the leader, which caused the Comanches to stop the attack and leave the Rangers. Howard must have known about this incident from his love of Hays and the Rangers, but as he doesn’t mention it in any of his existing letters, I don’t feel it can definitely be used as a source for the ending of BBR. See: West, Keith. “Dispatches from the Lone Star Front: Profile of an Early Texas Ranger”, http://www.adventuresfantastic.com, Nov. 6, 2011.

Sources

Letters

Robert E. Howard’s Letters:

To August Derleth: Dec. 1932, Jan. 1933, Nov. 28, 1934, May 9, 1936

To H.P. Lovecraft: Nov. 1930, Jan. 1931, Feb. 1931, Jun. 1931, Oct. 1931, Nov. 2, 1932, May 1935, May 13, 1936

To Emil Petaja Mar. 6, 1935

To Tevis Clyde Smith: Feb. 25, 1925, May 9, 1931

Texts

“Beyond the Black River”, Draft A, Robert E. Howard Foundation Glenn Lord Typescript Collection

“Beyond the Black River”, Draft B, Robert E. Howard Foundation Glenn Lord Typescript Collection

“Beyond the Black River”, Weird Tales, May and June 1935 Issues, e-text provided by Paul Herman

Roehm, R. (Ed.) (2007), The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume One: 1923-1929, REHFP

Roehm, R. (Ed.) (2007), The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume Two: 1930-1932, REHFP

Roehm, R. (Ed.) (2008), The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume Three: 1933-1936, REHFP

Emails

From Bobby Derie, Sept. 4, 2019, to author.

From Keith West, Sept. 9, 2019, to author.

Websites

“Adkins, J.K., L.E. Dodd, and J.L Larson. The Cromcast: A Weird Fiction Podcast. “Season 11, Episode 4: Old Garfield’s Heart, with Rusty Burke!”. Publisher, Tuesday, March 3, 2020. thecromcast.blogspot.com/2020/03/season-11-episode-4-old-garfields-heart.html. March 23, 2020.

“The Capture of John A. Murrell Natchez Trace Outlaw”, University of Northern Alabama Website, http://www.buildingthepride.com/tvhs/files/2014/04/Capture-of-John-Murrell.pdf

Kirk, Lowell. “John A. Murrell”, Tellico Times, 2002, http://www.tellicotimes.com/Murrell.html

Robertson, Rickey. “The Robber John Murrell and his Famous Hideouts”, Stephen F. Austin State University Website, Nov. 2012, http://www.sfasu.edu/heritagecenter/5818.asp

West, Keith. “Dispatches From the Lone Star Front: Profile of an Early Texas Ranger”, Nov. 6, 2012, http://adventuresfantastic.com/dispatches-from-the-lone-star-front-profile-of-an-early-texas-ranger/