A Texas Frontier

by Ty Cashion

In A Texas Frontier: The Clear Fork Country and Fort Griffin, 1849-1887. Ty Cashion surveys the formative development of northwest Texas where the Clear Fork of the Brazos cuts a path between the timbered region and the treeless plains beyond. Despite the unfamiliar and often harsh environment, the first pioneers - mainly southern stock raisers - persisted through conflicts with Plains Indians, the Civil War, Reconstruction, outlawry, rapid settlement, and diversification to form a ranching-based social and economic way of life. The process turned a largely southern people into westerners. . Others helped shape the history of the Clear Fork country as well. Notable among them were Anglo men and women - some of them earnest settlers, others unscrupulous opportunists - who followed the first pioneers; Indians of various tribes who claimed the land as their own or who were forcibly settled there by the white government; and African Americans, both former slaves and buffalo soldiers and th