Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Magoosh’s dilemma is back by popular demand!
April 6, 2006

As you remember Magoosh was a Lipan Apache that visited the Llano Estacado a number of times. (Type Magoosh in the search box at left and review all of the essays about him – skip the ones about the roadrunner and fox named after him, though.)

The first time that Magoosh came to the Llano Estacado, (in late October of 1857) he had only heard stories about the region from the tribe’s elders and from the Mescalero Apache trader Platta. Platta had indicated that the Lipan might find a better life in the Sacramento Mountains in New Mexico west of the Pecos River. For the last ten years or so Magoosh’s people had been hiding out in the canyonlands of the Pecos and Devil River desplobado (rugged country with limited resources) and Magoosh took on himself to see for himself what the Mescalero homeland looked like.

He had gone with Castellito to hunt buffalo along the Concho, and after they had met the Bartlett Boundary Survey wagon train, he had gone on alone. He first went to visit the old Lipan homeland around Mushaway Peak near the headwaters of the Colorado River, where Ipa had led the people who became the Lipans in the 1720s. He traveled at night and slept during the day to avoid running into Comanches.

After spotting campfires from Comanche camps at the confluence of Grape Creek and the Colorado River from West Gunsight Mountain, he had to give up his hopes of spending a night on Mushaway. Magoosh instead turned west-northwest and headed for the upper end of the main branch of the Colorado. After losing his horse in a snowstorm, and then finding it again eating mesquite beans out of a packrat nest, he found that the saddlebag that held his reserve buffalo jerky had been ripped off when the horse was loose. He decide not to waste time looking for it, and headed west. He had been told that there were several playas he could find within a day’s ride.

He had been told the playas almost always held water, and that at some of them by digging in the sand where the biggest draw fed into the lake he might find water even if the lake was dry. And if there was water, he would find buffalo, antelope, or wild horses coming in to drink that he could kill with an arrow – he did not dare use his gun (for fear a Comanche would hear it.) Although it was still daylight, Magoosh felt that the Comanches would not be leaving the Grape Creek camps because of the muddy soil from the snowstorm – and would be sitting around telling stories and feasting on their stored winter goods.

Near nightfall he saw a flock of large birds with downturned bills (long-billed curlews) flying south. “They spend the winter, but are not here in the summer. They might be headed south, or just headed to water,” he thought. He stopped his horse and debated whether to follow them, hoping to find a playa. “They don’t always stay near water – they like to stick their beak into the soil in any open grassland, but they prefer moist soil…” and his thoughts were interrupted by a flock of small ducks flying in the same direction. “Well – maybe…” and just then a long line of huge birds with long necks went by (sandhill cranes). “They spend the night in a playa – all these birds have been feeding elsewhere, and are headed to water for the night.”

Darkness covered the land before he saw a playa, so he stopped and staked out his horse, letting it graze anywhere along the length of the rope he had received in trade from one of the wagondrivers of Bartlett’s wagon train and rolled up in his blanket for the night. In the morning, the cranes, ducks, and curlews flying back north awakened him. “The water must not be far,” he thought, and he was right. When he arrived, there was not a bird near the water. The playa was down in a deep depression, and the water in it was two to three feet deep. Vegetation grew in the water – pretty white blossoms poked up out of the water. He got off of his horse and took a drink, and let his horse drink. The water tasted like toads – and he could see thousands of strings of toad eggs, but no toads. He walked completely around the playa, looking for signs that bigger animals had come in to drink. He did not find any droppings, any hoof prints – nothing.

Frustrated, he debated about his next course of action. He sat down, staring out over the water. He noticed some of the plants with white flowers floating around, pushed by the blowing wind. He also noticed a hundred swallows swooping down over the water for a drink, and then departing to the south. “I was told there would be a draw that I could follow west, and that I could dig whenever I found wild plums or wild currants and be able to find water. Maybe I should go, but I sure am hungry…”

Magoosh kept sitting there. One of the plants floated close. “Why is this plant floating?” he asked himself.

What is the solution?