Adventures of Big Foot Wallace

Book info: Adventures of Big Foot Wallace (Hardcover, – Books in Motion, 1986) – Books in Motion, 1986. Language: Eng.

Condition: Good

William A. Wallace (1816–1899) went from his native Virginia to Texas in 1836, shortly after the battle of San Jacinto, "for the purpose . . . of taking pay out of the Mexicans for the murder of his brother and cousin." His experiences as a hunter, Indian fighter, member of the Mier Expedition (1842–1844), defender of the "old Republic" in the Mexican War, and Texas Ranger were chronicled by his comrade John C. Duval in this free-hand biography, first published in 1870. Because Duval, as the editors note, felt free to adapt his materials in order to make the book more interesting and used many novelistic devices, "in his own way he achieves something of the effect of the twentieth-century school of biographers. He makes his characters live." Although Part I, dealing with Big-Foot's adventures as a hunter and Indian fighter, is a mixture of fact and fiction, Part II, the account of his role in the Mier Expedition, is unretouched, told from the point of view of an actual participant, and "stands as the most realistic straight narrative of this dramatic chapter in Texas history. [It] is the heart of the biography. The Indian adventures are a prologue for it; and Part III, the final comedy of Big-Foot in the settlements, makes an epilogue." In this classic of early Texas, the reader will recognize three literary traditions of the nineteenth century: the journals and memoirs of the pioneers; the romantic adventure story; and the broadly humorous yarn of the American frontier.Excerpt: The Texas Ranger and Hunter The writer of this little book is well aware that it will not stand the test of criticism as a literary production. A frontiersman himself, his opportunities for acquiring information, and for supplying the deficiencies of a rather limited education, have of course been "few and far between;" and therefore it cannot reasonably be expected that he could make a book under such circumstances which would not be sadly defective as to style and composition. However, it can justly lay claim to at least one merit, not often found in similar publications - it is not a compilation of imaginary scenes and incidents, concocted in the brain of one who never was beyond the sound of a dinner-bell in his life, but a plain, unvarnished story of the "'scapes and scrapes" of Big-Foot Wallace, the Texas Ranger and Hunter, written out from notes furnished by himself, and told, as well as my memory serves me, in his own language. "Big-Foot Wallace" is, perhaps, better known throughout Texas as an Indian-fighter, hunter, and ranger, than any one now living in the State; which is saying a good deal, when the great number who have acquired more or less notoriety in that way is taken into consideration. Few men now living, I am confident, have witnessed as many stirring incidents, had more "hair-breadth escapes," or gone through more of the hardships and perils of a border life. He was a participant in almost every fight, foray, and "scrimmage" with the Mexicans and