Sul Ross State University - Brand Yearbook (Alpine, TX)

Page 26 text:

Page 18

Page 25 text:

Fort Davis Cave A SMALL black chasm among the rocks on a Fort Davis mountain side, a chasm so unobtrusive as to have been overlooked until two years ago, is the opening to the Indian Cave at Fort Davis. There, as late as Civil War days, perhaps, the Indians lived — now at peace with the whites, now making fearful raids, stealing cattle, rushing out from ambush upon freighters, and attacking the fort. And along the walls and ceiling ot the cave they left in picture-writing a mystifying record — of these very raids, perhaps, though our interpretation of the crude paintings is only conjectural. On the dark walls and ceilings are numerous prints — originally white but gray now from time — of the hand, each one a symbol, probably, a boast of some deed of prowess. In red outline along the wall is a map, the tips of its numerous projections evidently indicating to the Indian the location of waterholes and camp sites. On the wall, too, are black and red paintings, among them the two leaping deer and the quaint animal jauntily confront¬ ing a bow and arrow, which appear in this book. Many other deer, one of them a great buck with beautiful antlers, file across the cavern walls, along with a buffalo and a coyote, each one, doubtless, hinting of some outstanding event in Indian life. Page 17

Page 27 text:

F ERN CANYON, fifteen miles to the northwest of Alpine, is one of the most beautiful canyons in the Davis Mountains. From its opening toward Mitre Peak to the south, its trail winds ever upward, around boulders, through steep, narrow passes, under a dripping, fern-fringed ledge, past a waterfall and its worn basin below, on to the high level spaces where a pool spreads dark and deep under the shadow of the rock arch that spans it. Just below this spot, a quarter of a mile from the mouth of the canyon, is the Tippitt orchard, once the site of the largest Indian village in West Texas. Neatly laid-off streets have been ploughed up, and fragments of rock terraces stand in a semi-circle facing a big spring. Hollowed in the solid rock above the spring are pot holes, or mortars, the pestles of which are in the museum at Sul Ross. Within sight of the mouth of the canyon is a chief’s grave, which has yielded valuable relics — beads and finely-wrought arrow heads. Although in Fern Canyon it¬ self only, one evidence of Indian habitation has been found, a turtle-back scraper of flint rock, used for dressing skins, it seems improbable that the Indian hunters would have failed to use this passage-way from the village to the high¬ lands. Tlie canyon may even have resounded long ago with chants and battle cries, but its rugged walls give back now only college song and blithe laughter, and permit no stored- up echo of fiercer notes to escape from the silence of the centuries.