Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

The wolves of Laguna del lobos locos -- when wolves lived on the Llano Estacado (Part 1 of 2)
November 8, 2006

On Wednesday, November 15th, at 7 p.m, at the Sibley Nature Center, 1307 E. Wadley, Jim and Jamie Dutcher, wildlife documentary filmmakers, will present a free program to the public on their six-year study of wolves in Idaho. Brought here for a program at the Trinity School, they graciously agreed to offer their program at the Sibley Center, as well. Their DVDs will be for sale. Their work has been shown on the Discovery Channel.

Their upcoming visit made me wonder – what was it like when wolves roamed the Llano Estacado? What follows is fiction. If the experiences of the ciboleros and comancheros had been more thoroughly recorded, a story such as this would be part of our history. The person telling the story is a modern-day Hispanic from Roswell.

“Once upon a time a family of wolves lived at Laguna de los lobos locos. My grandfather’s grandfather was a cibolero. Sometimes he was a comanchero. He was an experienced plainsman and was sometime entrusted with journeys of great economic importance. In the fall of 1862, Senor Jose Piedad Tafoya needed him to go to El Paso to arrange for a new string of wagons to be brought to Canon de Rescates in the spring. Senor Tafoya gave my ancestor thousands of dollars to spend on the wagons and to hire drivers, and to purchase trade goods. After buying blankets, kettles, and other domestic goods, my ancestor was to travel up to San Miiguel to purchase weapons and ammunition from an individual that had acquired them during the confusion after General Sibley’s failed Confederate invasion of New Mexico. Then he was to drive the wagons to Alamagordo Creek, north of present day Fort Sumner, where Tafoya would meet him, and then together they would go back across the Llano.”

“My ancestor was called “El Indio.” His grandfather’s great grandfather was an Indian servant brought to Santé Fe by a member of the Baca family, who married a peon’s daughter whose mother was an Apache captured in 1715 as a child. The succeeding generations of my family married other mixed bloods. We served the ricos as shepherds, carreta drivers on the Chihuahua trail, and eventually wagon drivers on the Santé Fe trail. El Indio was part of the group of Spanish speaking settlers that had recently built Missouri Plaza along the Rio Hondo.”

“El Indio had left Senor Tafoya at Muchaque and headed southwest. August and September had been rainy, so to save time in getting to El Paso, El Indio gambled that the playas of the Southern Llano Estacado would be filled with water. He made great time – he had two horses that would go all day at a steady pace and he made sure to trade off and ride no more than an hour on a horse. He arrived at Laguna de los lobos locos three hours before sundown. Because he figured the following day he could make it through Castle Gap and maybe even past Horsehead Crossing to Escondido Spring, he decided to give both he and his horses a good break after two days of hard traveling.”

“El Indio spread his blankets and staked out his horses just west of the salt playa. He lit a small fire of hackberry branches from a grove nearby and heated up a small stewpot of panocha y tasajo (sprouted wheat grains and dried buffalo meat.) As he began his meal, he heard wolves howling from the north end of the playa. He had seen erosional features there, shadowed in the late afternoon sun, and he assumed that one had been enlarged to be a den. When the wolves sounded off, a small herd of pronghorn trotted past his camp, headed to the south end of the playa, where he had noticed a wet-weather seep bringing fresh and potable water to the surface.”

“In a few minutes nine wolves began to singly pass his camp. Three were this year’s pups, smaller than the adults. The lead wolf stopped along the western shore, and the three pups went out of sight, down to the playa bottom, followed by an adult wolf. The remaining wolves went on, towards the south end of the playa. El Indio could not see what transpired between the adult wolves and pronghorn, but after the sun had gone behind the gentle hill behind him to the west, the three pups and their guardian returned to the meadow of alkali sacaton above the playa.”

“The three pups roughhoused. One would take something that appeared to be a stick and run with it, and the others pursued it. When they caught up, all three jerked on it in different directions. The boldest of the three snapped at the others, which drew the ire of the guardian. El Indio stayed motionless, watching, and letting his supper settle. His horses watched the pups, too.”

“A badger trailed past his camp, headed directly for the pups. It did not waver in its course, even as it neared them. The pups discovered the badger and came to investigate. When they skidded to a stop and barked, the badger did not break stride. The pups ran circles around it, yipping. The adult wolf merely watched, sitting upright on its haunches. The badger went past him, too, with the pups trailing. The pups and badger disappeared over the bank above the playa, but the three pups came back over, leaping and yelping. They spun around and peered over the bank and began leaping back and forth, even leaping over each other, yipping and whining. The adult wolf did not respond to their distress, other than the flicking of its ears.”

“The boldest pup went over the bank again, but again came soaring back up and over. He bit at his siblings, as if to encourage them to go after the badger again. One finally responded to his urgency, but within a second of going over the bank, it too soared back over the lip of the bank. El Indio could not help but chuckle at the antics of the “lobos locos,” and thought of the antics of his kids at home. As twilight darkened, one of the other wolves barked three times, then twice more, from the southern end. The guardian barked at the pups and nipped at them, and all four headed south. El Indio arose and restaked his horses near the head of his bead, and tied a string around his arm that he attached to the stake ropes, rolled up in his blankets and closed his eyes.”

Related: Part 2