Paul H. Carlson – författare

Texas is as well known for its diversity of landscape and culture as it is for its enormity. But West Texas, despite being popularized in film and song, has largely been ignored by historians as a distinct and cultural geographic space. In West Texas: A History of the Giant Side of the State, Paul H. Carlson and Bruce A. Glasrud rectify that oversight. This volume assembles a diverse set of essays covering the grand sweep of West Texas history from the ancient to the contemporary.In four parts - comprehending the place, people, politics and economic life, and society and culture - Carlson and Glasrud and their contributors survey the confluence of life and landscape shaping the West Texas of today. Early chapters define the region. The ""giant side of Texas"" is a nineteenth-century geographical description of a vast area that includes the Panhandle, Llano Estacado, Permian Basin, and Big Bend-Trans-Pecos country. It is an arid, windblown environment that connects intimately with the history of Texas culture.Carlson and Glasrud take a nonlinear approach to exploring the many cultural influences on West Texas, including the Tejanos, the oil and gas economy, and the major cities. Readers can sample topics in whichever order they please, whether they are interested in learning about ranching, recreation, or turn-of-the-century education. Throughout, familiar western themes arise: the urban growth of El Paso is contrasted with the mid-century decline of small towns and the social shifting that followed. Well-known Texas scholars explore popular perceptions of West Texas as sparsely populated and rife with social contradiction and rugged individualism.West Texas comes into yet clearer view through essays on West Texas women, poets, Native peoples, and musicians. Gathered here is a long overdue consideration of the landscape, culture, and everyday lives of one of America's most iconic and understudied regions.

In 1863, the thirteen-year-old boy who would come to be called Comanche Jack was sent to the well to fetch water. Instead, he joined a wagon train bound for Santa Fe. Thus began the exploits of Simpson E. ""Jack"" Stilwell (1850-1903), a man generally known for slipping through Indian lines to get help for some fifty frontiersmen besieged by the Cheyenne at Beecher Island in 1868. Daring as his part in the rescue might have been, it was only one noteworthy episode of many in Comanche Jack Stilwell's life - a life whose rollicking story is finally told here in full.In his later years, Stilwell crafted his own legend as a celebrated raconteur. Authors Clint E. Chambers (whose grandfather was Stilwell's nephew) and Paul H. Carlson scour the available primary and secondary sources to find the unvarnished truth and remarkable facts behind the legend. In a crisp, fast-paced style, the narrative follows Stilwell from his precocious start as a teenage runaway turned teamster on the Santa Fe Trail to his later turns as lawyer, judge, U.S. marshal, hangman, and associate of Buffalo Bill Cody. Along the way, he learned Spanish, Comanche, and sign language, scouted for the U.S. Army, and became a friend of George A. Custer and an avowed, if failed, avenger of his kid brother Frank, an outlaw killed by Wyatt Earp.Unfolding against the backdrop of the Civil War, cattle drives, the Indian Wars, the Oklahoma land rush, and the rough justice of the Wild West, Comanche Jack Stilwell takes a true American character out of the shadows of history and returns to the story of the West one of its defining figures.

Carlson writes well in a style that lends itself to an understanding of how man got to the high plains, and what he did once he arrived. Highly recommended reading' - New Mexico Historical Notebook"". Humans have visited the Texas High Plains, and in particular the upper Brazos River region, for nearly twelve thousand years. At the site of the Lubbock Lake Landmark in the long Yellow House Draw, they camped, hunted game, and sought shelter from harsh winter weather. In this brief, readable history, Paul H. Carlson surveys the Lubbock Lake Landmarks long geologic past, placing emphasis on human activity in the region and showing how early people adapted to shifting environmental conditions and changing animal resources. Yet this book is more than a history of the Landmark. Carlson places this significant national archaeological site in broad perspective, connecting it to geology and history in the larger upper Brazos River drainage system and, by extension, the central Llano Estacado. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carlson consulted geological records; paleontological, anthropological, and archaeological reports; astrometrical and climatological studies; and, histories of the region to reach back through deep time to explore the significance of the region to life on the Texas High Plains. 'From the edge of eternity ...astronomy, geology, anthropology, and history converge, forming the High Plains. An exciting library addition, classroom guide, or reference book, Paul Carlsons easy-reading study is an adventure for everyone who explores the unique character of the Texas High Plains' - Eddie Guffee, former curator of the Llano Estacado Museum. Paul H. Carlson is professor of history at Texas Tech University. He has published many articles and several books, including ""The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture"" (Texas Tech 2000) and ""The Plains Indians"".

'Carlson writes well in a style that lends itself to an understanding of how man got to the high plains, and what he did once he arrived. Highly recommended reading' - ""New Mexico Historical Notebook"". Humans have visited the Texas High Plains, and in particular the upper Brazos River region, for nearly twelve thousand years. At the site of the Lubbock Lake Landmark in the long Yellow House Draw, they camped, hunted game, and sought shelter from harsh winter weather. In this brief, readable history, Paul H. Carlson surveys the Lubbock Lake Landmarks long geologic past, placing emphasis on human activity in the region and showing how early people adapted to shifting environmental conditions and changing animal resources. Yet this book is more than a history of the Landmark. Carlson places this significant national archaeological site in broad perspective, connecting it to geology and history in the larger upper Brazos River drainage system and, by extension, the central Llano Estacado. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carlson consulted geological records; paleontological, anthropological, and archaeological reports; astrometrical and climatological studies; and histories of the region to reach back through deep time to explore the significance of the region to life on the Texas High Plains. 'From the edge of eternity ...astronomy, geology, anthropology, and history converge, forming the High Plains. An exciting library addition, classroom guide, or reference book, Paul Carlsons easy-reading study is an adventure for everyone who explores the unique character of the Texas High Plains' - Eddie Guffee, former curator of the Llano Estacado Museum. Paul H. Carlson is professor of history at Texas Tech University. He has published many articles and several books, including ""The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture"" (Texas Tech 2000) and ""The Plains Indians"".

In December 1860, along a creek in northwest Texas, a group of U.S. Cavalry under Sgt. John Spangler and Texas Rangers led by Sul Ross raided a Comanche hunting camp, killed several Indians, and took three prisoners. One was the woman they would identify as Cynthia Ann Parker, taken captive from her white family as a child a quarter century before. The reports of these events had implications far and near. For Ross, they helped make a political career. For Parker, they separated her permanently and fatally from her Comanche husband and two of her children. For Texas, they became the stuff of history and legend. In reexamining the historical accounts of the “Battle of Pease River,” especially those claimed to be eyewitness reports, Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum expose errors, falsifications, and mysteries that have contributed to a skewed understanding of the facts. For political and racist reasons, they argue, the massacre was labeled a battle. Firsthand testimony was fabricated; diaries were altered; the official Ranger report went missing from the state adjutant general’s office. Historians, as a result, have unwittingly used fiction as the basis for 150 years of analysis. Carlson and Crum’s careful historiographical reconsideration seeks not only to set the record straight but to deal with concepts of myth, folklore, and memory, both individual and collective. Myth, Memory, and Massacre peels away assumptions surrounding one of the most infamous episodes in Texas history, even while it adds new dimensions to the question of what constitutes reliable knowledge.

In the 1880s, there wasn't much in Anson, Texas, in the way of entertainment for the area’s cowhands. But Star Hotel operator M. G. Rhodes changed that when he hosted a Grand Ball the weekend before Christmas. A restless traveling salesman, rancher, and poet from New York named William Lawrence Chittenden, a guest at the Star Hotel, was so impressed with the soiree that he penned his observances in the poem “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball.”Re-enacted annually since 1934 based on Chittenden’s poem, the contemporary dances attract people from coast to coast, from Canada, and from across Europe and elsewhere. Since 1993 Grammy Award-winning musical artist Michael Martin Murphey has played at the popular event.Far more than a history of the Jones County dance, Paul Carlson analyses the long poem, defining the many people and events mentioned and explaining the Jones County landscape Chittenden lays out in his celebrated work. The book covers the evolution of cowboy poetry and places Chittenden and his poem chronologically within the ever-changing western genre.Dancin’ in Anson: A History of the Texas Cowboys' Christmas Ball is a novel but refreshing look at a cowboy poet, his poem, and a joyous Christmas-time family event that traces its roots back nearly 130 years.

Paul Carlson engagingly chronicles the developmentof the range sheep and goat industry from Spanishtimes to about 1930, when widespread use ofmesh-wire fences brought an end to the open-rangemanagement of sheep and goat ranches in Texas.

In the middle of the arid summer of 1877, a drought year in West Texas, a troop of some forty buffalo soldiers (African American cavalry led by white officers) struck out into the Llano Estacado from Double Lakes, south of modern Lubbock, pursuing a band of Kwahada Comanches who had been raiding homesteads and hunting parties. A group of twenty-two buffalo hunters accompanied the soldiers as guides and allies.Several days later three black soldiers rode into Fort Concho at modern San Angelo and reported that the men and officers of Troop A were missing and presumed dead from thirst. The “Staked Plains Horror,” as the Galveston Daily News called it, quickly captured national attention. Although most of the soldiers eventually straggled back into camp, four had died, and others eventually faced court-martial for desertion. The buffalo hunters had ridden off on their own to find water, and the surviving soldiers had lived by drinking the blood of their dead horses and their own urine. A routine army scout had turned into disaster of the worst kind.Although the failed expedition was widely reported at the time, its sparse treatments since then have relied exclusively on the white officers’ accounts. Paul Carlson has mined the courts-martial records for testimony of the enlisted men, memories of a white boy who rode with the Indians, and other buried sources to provide the first multifaceted narrative ever published. His gripping account provides not only a fuller version of what happened over those grim eighty-six hours but also a nuanced view of the interaction of soldiers, hunters, settlers, and Indians on the Staked Plains at this poignant moment before the final settling of the Comanches on their reservation in Indian Territory.

The Llano Estacado—dubbed by author Paul H. Carlson as “heaven’s harsh tableland”—covers some 48,000 square miles  of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. In this new survey of the region, the story begins during prehistoric times and  with descendants of the Comanche, Apache, and other Native American tribal groups. Other groups have also left their marks on the area: Spanish explorers, Comancheros and other traders, European settlers, farmers and ranchers, artists, and even athletes.Carlson, a veteran historian, aims to review “the Llano’s historic contours from its earliest foundations to its energetic present,” and in doing so, he skillfully narrates the story of the region up to the present time of modern agribusiness and urbanization. Throughout the ten chronologically arranged chapters, concise sidebars support the narrative, highlighting important and interesting topics such as the enigmatic origins of the region’s name, fascinating geological and paleontological facts, the arrival of humans, the natural history of bison, colorful “characters” in the history of the region, and many others.The resulting broad synthesis captures the entirety of the Llano Estacado, summarizing and interpreting its natural and human history in a single, carefully researched and clearly written volume. Heaven’s Harsh Tableland: A New History of the Llano Estacado will provide a helpful, enjoyable, and authoritative guide to the history and development of this important region.

Amarillo, the Queen City of the Texas Panhandle, is known far beyond its immediate vicinity—the high tableland called the Llano Estacado. The famous highway Route 66 ran through the very heart of Amarillo. Alan Jackson, Emmylou Harris, Neil Sedaka, and James Durst each recorded a different song titled "Amarillo." Named by True West magazine as one of the fifty most Western towns in America, this city remains rooted in its Western past—yet at the same time Amarillo's background and outlook have a distinctly Midwestern flavor.In this book, the first comprehensive history of Amarillo, Paul H. Carlson explores the city and its environs, from the first peoples who settled in the area to Amarillo's current position as the marketing and commercial hub of a broad region. Through its economic and political strength and its deep cultural influences, Amarillo will likely continue to dominate much of the Texas Panhandle well into the twenty-first century.

Black Americans arrived in West Texas in the early sixteenth century and nearly five centuries later continue to contribute to the region that shares so many characteristics with the western United States. Despite that distinguishing feature, no published study covers the lives of African Americans in West Texas. This volume seeks to fill that gap. ""Slavery to Integration"" consists of twelve articles depicting the basic themes and topics of the black American experience in West Texas. Drawing articles from the West Texas Historical Association Year Book, the editors, Bruce A. Glasrud, Paul H. Carlson, and Tai D. Kreidler, selected well-written and enjoyable articles on the basis of chronology, topic, readability, scholarship, and interest. They include such topics as slavery, black cattlemen, buffalo soldiers, race relations, urban centers, education, desegregation, and integration. Read individually, each article explores an important aspect of African American history in West Texas and, read in aggregate, they cover black West Texas history broadly.