The Bears of Moro: Part 3

By Larry Webb

In the author’s first book, From Moro to Bluff Creek—Part 1, published in 2014, the author shares an assemblage of unique Moro stories, all garnered while living at Moro, Texas, all the while observing how one decision or lack of decision seemed to have set a new experience into motion. In the author’s second book, Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek—Part 2, published in 2017, the author returns to Moro again—this time through the life of a Toyah Native American medicine woman who also lived at Moro, albeit some eight hundred years prior to the author, in prehistory.
In his current book, The Bears of Moro—Part 3, the author focuses again on Moro while exploring the recent and prehistoric past while sharing more of the author’s unpublished experiences and bringing more depth to the story of the Toyah Native Americans, which brings us to the subject of bears. You the reader will learn that in the time of the Toyah, one thousand years ago, Moro had a thriving population of grizzly bears; and the Toyahs came to Moro to take these bears, in a rite of passage for aspiring want-to-be warriors.
This book introduces new Moro stories, not previously published, yet experienced by the author and stories taken from small ledger books handwritten in the late 1800s about the Civil War by a neighborhood veteran of the Civil War, John Joseph Vernon. Vernon’s ledger books tell stories in his unique vernacular of his growing up in the 1850s and 1860s experiencing the horrors of a civil war and facing an even worse reconstruction. The author simply transcribes the stories from Vernon’s handwritten notes, making small grammatical changes only when absolutely necessary, yet keeping the writing style of Vernon intact and to the period.
The Comanche Native Americans also lived in Moro, simultaneously with the arrival of the author’s great-grandparents in 1879. The author, having read dozens of books regarding the Comanche Native Americans, became fascinated with Comanche life on the Southern Plains. He read stories of captured Comanche slaves such as Cynthia Ann Parker who became so enamored with her Comanche life such that when returned to her original white family, she still pined away to return to her Comanche family, refusing to eat and dying a slow, painful death.
The author also learned that Comanche males only have one career path—take care of the horses as a youth, become a skillful raider capturing more horses as a young adult, and finally return to the Comanche homelife on the Comanche horse ranches as an older adult, somewhat used up following Comanche life as a raider. The author takes his knowledge of Comanche lore and pens his original story connected to historical places and events—presenting how life may have been for a Comanche family living at Moro and adjusting to the arrival of the European settlers in the 1850s.
Spending even more time in an archaeological excavation of an actual Toyah encampment at Moro, the author’s findings reveal further insights into the Toyah culture and how their lives were often justified while engaging the ferocious bears at Moro. Taken together, these findings generate more information on many issues regarding the Toyahs while at Moro; yet at the same time, these findings also pose unanswered questions that perhaps could be explored with less direct means or psychic channeling. Consequently, the author obtains the services of four psychic mediums to assist in his evaluation. These psychic channelings reveal more unique information regarding these Toyahs and their lives at Moro.
So come take this journey with the author, a thousand years in the making, and witness how various lives were impacted, shaped, and molded, all within this unique community of Moro. This journey and these events are all based upon the archaeological records, psychic readings, historical records, and events that occurred to the author while living at Moro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669873884

Larry Webb

About the Author The author and his three preceding generations of ancestors grew crops and raised livestock along Flag Creek in Taylor County, Texas, beginning in 1879 while observing the remnants of several Toyah Native American village sites on his stock farm. The author, a self-trained archaeologist, has consummated a near lifetime of study of what this subset of the Toyah culture left behind in their refuse piles along Flag Creek, Bluff Creek, and Elmmottt Creek. The author learned directly and indirectly how these Toyahs lived and perhaps why they disappeared. Revelations regarding this Toyah culture drawn by the author include the discovery of Native American cliff art, caches, arrowheads, atlatl dart points, scrapers, drills, and pottery, which all clearly illustrate the Toyah heritage in Texas.

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Copyright © 2023 by Larry Webb.

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 04/13/2023

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Boogeyman Is Killed at Moro

Chapter 2: A Near Drowning at Moro

Chapter 3: It’s My Sunday to Feed the Preacher

Chapter 4: The Duesenberg of Moro

Chapter 5: Damn Yankees

Chapter 6: The McIver Mystique

Chapter 7: Excavating a Prehistoric Toyah Encampment at Moro

Part 1—Toyah Channeling (March 2018) with Lauri and Cassandra

Part 2—Toyah Channeling (July 2018) with Lauri and Betsabe

Part 3—Toyah Channeling (September 2018) with Lauri and Betsabe

Part 4—Toyah Channeling (October 2019) with Lauri and Cassandra

Chapter 8: The Bears of Moro

Chapter 9: Indians on the Devils River

Chapter 10: Feral Pigs Occupy Moro

Chapter 11: My Uncle Clay McIver

Chapter 12: On the Road to Texarkana

Chapter 13: Passing the Enemy without Fighting

Chapter 14: All the Soldiers Are Not Shooting?

Chapter 15: An Evening with a Sniper at Moro

Chapter 16: Touring with Bruce

Chapter 17: America’s Civil War

Part 1—A Civil War Love Story

Part 2—A Civil War Story of Fighting Yankees

Part 3—A Civil War Story of Sleeping on a Mule

Part 4—A Civil War Story of the War Is Over

Chapter 18: Comanches

Part 1—Nacomah Comes of Age

Part 2—Nacomah Finds the Comanche Raiders

Part 3—The Penateka Comanches Move against the Texans

Part 4—The Penateka Comanches Plan the Great Raid

INTRODUCTION

Moro, located adjacent to the Callahan Divide in west-central Texas gives birth to three major streams—Bluff Creek, Flag Creek, and Elmott Creek from west to east. It is given its initial glance by European Americans arriving in the early 1850s in the form of buffalo hunters with their long-range Sharps rifles, seeking to harvest the seemingly unlimited supply of buffalo, available in Moro during the winter months. These hunters with their teams of shooters, skinners, and freighters arrive with purpose as they are earning enticing wages for the times, supplying the unrelenting demand for buffalo robes back east. These hunters arrive in late fall, harvest buffalo, take the hides from the skinners, and transport these hides a short ten-mile jaunt north over the Callahan Divide to nearby Buffalo Gap to sell their hides to buyers who came for that purpose.

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Moro, Texas (Looking South toward Flattop Mountain)

(Author Photo)

Some of these buffalo hunters noticed that Moro offered that melting pot combining two unique ecosystems: the rolling hills of the Edwards Plateau and the grasslands of the Southern Plains. It presented an abundance of oak tree mottes and pecan trees among rolling hills separated by flowing spring-fed creeks with deep prairie grasses, belly-deep on a horse. When the European American westward expansion of buffalo hunters observed this rich, diverse ecosystem and what Moro had to offer—wood for construction and warmth, diverse wildlife including unending streams of buffalo arriving each fall, ample water essential for life, fertile soils, adequate rainfall, and a mild climate—what else could anyone want? It was heaven on earth. Clear some trees, build a home, replace the buffalo with better European cattle and you would have the perfect stock farm. So they began to settle, build their homes, and raise their families. Thus begins the American dream. Moro, Texas, begins.

One of the first published cases of actual settlement at Moro involved Major Griffith who noticed what was available at Moro on Bluff Creek in 1873 during his service as a Texas Ranger, serving south of Lawn and north of Camp Colorado or Coleman. Following his service in the Civil War and dealing with Carpetbaggers who had killed his brother back in Arkansas, Major Ellis Ringold Griffith fled to Comanche, Texas, and began service with the Texas Rangers. During his service there while protecting settlers, Major Griffith observed Moro’s attributes and quickly decided to quit his Rangering, leave Comanche, and bring his wife, Ella Goble, and settle at Moro on Bluff Creek and start their family. (As a side note, Ranger Griffith also delivered John Wesley Hardin from Comanche to Austin to stand trial and account for Hardin’s many murders. Griffith found Hardin to be a likable and friendly sort when questioned by a reporter from the Winters Enterprise in 1933.)

The following map of Moro indicates where the many settlers who eventually join up with Major Griffith are illustrated:

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Moro and Vicinity

(Author’s Sketch)

Settlements at Moro continued to increase in momentum following the Civil War in the late 1870s and exploded after the arrival of the new railroad tracks to nearby Abilene in 1880. The author’s family, the Floyds, settled in Moro between Flag Creek and Elmott Creek, arriving from Kentucky in 1879. The author was born into this Floyd family at Moro in 1945, he being the fourth-generation Floyd. Growing up in Moro, the author begins to realize that his group of European settlers were not the first humans to discover Moro. The cultural presence of the Spanish and many Native American artifacts proved that others had settled in Moro including the Clovis, Plainview, Dalton, Darl, Pedernales, Toyah, Apache, and Comanche Indians.

In the author’s first book, From Moro to Bluff Creek—Part 1, published in 2014, the author shares an assemblage of unique Moro stories, all garnered while growing up at Moro, Texas, all the while observing how one decision or lack of decision seemed to have set a new experience into motion. In the author’s second book, Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek—Part 2, published in 2017, the author returns to Moro again—this time through the life of a Toyah Native American medicine woman who also lived at Moro, albeit some six hundred years prior to the author, in prehistory.

In his current book, The Bears of Moro—Part 3, the author returns to Moro again exploring the recent and prehistoric past while sharing more of the author’s unpublished experiences and bringing more depth to the story of the Toyah Native Americans, which brings us to the subject of bears. You the reader will learn that in the time of the Toyah, one thousand years ago, Moro had a thriving population of brown bears; and the Toyah Native Americans came to Moro to take these bears, in a rite of passage for aspiring want-to-be warriors.

This book introduces new Moro stories, not previously published, yet experienced by the author and stories taken from small ledger books handwritten in the late 1800s about the Civil War by a neighborhood veteran of the Civil War, John Joseph Vernon. Vernon’s ledger books tell stories in his unique vernacular of his growing up in the 1850s and 1860s experiencing the horrors of a civil war and facing an even worse reconstruction. The author simply transcribes the stories from Vernon’s handwritten notes, making small grammatical changes only when absolutely necessary, yet keeping the writing style of Vernon intact and to the period.

The Comanche Native Americans also lived in Moro, simultaneously with the arrival of the author’s great-grandparents in 1879. The author, having read dozens of books regarding the Comanche Native Americans, became fascinated with Comanche life on the Southern Plains. He read stories of captured Comanche slaves such as Cynthia Ann Parker who became so enamored with her Comanche life such that when returned to her original white family, she still pined away to return to her Comanche family, refusing to eat and dying a slow, painful death.

The author also learned that Comanche males only have one career path—take care of the horses as a youth, become a skillful raider capturing more horses as a young adult, and finally return to the Comanche homelife on the Comanche horse ranches as an older adult, somewhat used up following Comanche life as a raider. The author takes his knowledge of Comanche lore and pens his original story connected to historical places and events—presenting how life may have been for a Comanche family living at Moro and adjusting to the arrival of the European settlers in the 1850s.

Spending even more time in an archaeological excavation of an actual Toyah encampment at Moro, the author’s findings reveal further insights into the Toyah culture and how their lives were often justified while engaging the ferocious bears at Moro. Taken together, these findings generate more information on many issues regarding the Toyah being at Moro; yet at the same time, these findings also pose unanswered questions that perhaps could be explored with less direct means or psychic channeling. Consequently, the author obtains the services of four psychic mediums to assist in his evaluation. These psychic channelings reveal more unique information regarding these Toyahs and their lives at Moro.

So come take this journey with the author, a thousand years in the making, and witness how various lives were impacted, shaped, and molded, all within this unique community of Moro. This journey these events are all based upon the archaeological records, psychic readings, historical records, and events that occurred to the author while living at Moro.

CHAPTER 1

The Boogeyman Is Killed at Moro

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My mother, Bessie (McIver) Webb, in this photograph seemed to relish indulging me, her youngest son, the author, in her arduous stories or aspersions of child psychology that were theoretically intended to induce me to change my directionless path and error-prone ways. An example of this occurred late one night in total darkness as I entered my sleeping area, when my mother introduced me to the ways of the boogeyman and what he would do to me if I continue failing in my life’s experiences. This is my story as to how I responded to my ultimate destiny with the boogeyman.

I was born in 1945 and living with my family in one of the older homes on the Webb property south of what we refer to as Rattlesnake or simply Webb Mountain. At that time, my grandparents were living in a fairly new rock house north of the same mountain. Another family was living in a newly constructed home on the Chitty Place, which is located west of Webb Mountain. These three homes actually formed a large circular pattern around Webb Mountain, a path I would often take in a counterclockwise direction, later in life. But at this moment, I was only a small child, hardly three years old.

Growing up as a child in Moro was simple enough back then—chase butterflies around the yard, watch an elder brother as he steps onto the school bus headed for Bradshaw, or play on our Aermotor windmill sprouting skyward adjacent to our home. I can still remember that beautifully clear blue day in 1948 when I climbed that windmill while closely studying its blades spinning with the steady cooling breeze. I had reached that top level of the windmill where there was a flat wooden platform where my dad would occasionally sit while working on the windmill. Usually he would add thick oil to the windmill’s gear box that leaked. What I didn’t realize on that day when I made my first climb up the windmill was that when you were on that top platform, the windmill should be stopped first. At the time, I did not realize that my dad would always turn a hand crank at the ground level or base of the windmill that tightened up the brake on top and also turned the wind vane relative to the turning wheel of blades. This has the effect of pulling the wind vane toward the spinning blades and forcing the spinning blades out of the wind. This immediately lowers the windmill’s available torque, and if the brake is not worn out, it will actually hold the once-spinning blades in a nonturning or powerless position.

Unfortunately, on this day, I was standing high up on the windmill’s work platform content with the world, enjoying that magnificent view, triumphantly standing there at least twenty feet above my former playground around our porch, above the house and only inches from making contact with the windmill’s sharp spinning blades. I was enjoying this vantage point while scanning the horizon and appreciating the inherent advantage afforded by height. Looking north, I could see the grandeur of Webb Mountain; and from a unique perspective, I could see the three beehives immediately north of our house with the mountain behind. I could also see the old Indian village adjacent to Spring Creek to the west of our house. I was thinking, Why haven’t I been up here before? Everything was so much more appealing up here—what a view!

I did not sense the grave danger of standing only inches from the sharp spinning blades held in position by the currently steady wind. I also did not know that if the wind shifts the least bit, the wind vane would quickly turn the spinning blades into this new direction of power. Since I did not appreciate any of these basic facts on the inner workings of a windmill, it became an indescribable pleasure just being up there enjoying the view. I thought, This is so much easier than climbing a tree with all its limbs in your way, which mask the view.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I had been seen by someone, possibly an elder brother who knew more of the windmill’s inner workings and alerted my mother who was now below me and alongside the windmill screaming at the top of her lungs for the perilous straits her baby boy was now in. My dad must have been close as he quickly arrived and climbed up the windmill tower and brought me down to a safer lower elevation for a three-year-old. I don’t remember the words my mother said during the incident on the windmill, just her screaming. But the feelings I was left with were that I was bad, very bad. At the time, I thought about everything and wondered why had I not reasoned all this out; it was simple enough—perhaps I was bad. In the future, I would think things out better and not get myself into such situations.

The months passed, and I forgot all about the windmill incident. One day my mother was washing clothes in the concrete wash shed below and alongside the windmill. The windmill pumped water up from belowground and deposited the water into a water storage compartment above the concrete wash shed that stored water for use by the family. One could stand inside this concrete wash shed and take a shower or wash clothes. Washing clothes was the agenda for this day. We had a Maytag wringer-style washing machine powered by a gasoline Onan engine that agitated the washing machine and turned the wringer wheels that squeezed the water from the washed clothes. However, at that moment, inside that shed, all one could smell were the exhaust fumes from the running gasoline engine. I walked to the east end of the house to escape the smell of the exhaust fumes and went inside. Surely there would be something here that would prove more interesting than watching my mother wash clothes and having to breathe all those exhaust fumes from the running washing machine engine.

Upon entering the east end of the house, I noticed that there were some matches on a table. I knew what those matches would do as I had previously seen how easy it was for my eldest brother to strike a match to produce the flames. Simple enough, so I scratched one of the matches on the hardwood floor and watched it ignite. I thought to myself, This is like magic, as I held the match stem and watched the flames slowly burn down the match stem. It was quite a show until the flames burning down the match stem had now reached my fingers. I reacted in horror to the pain and tossed the burning match stem down into a frayed and torn cotton easy chair.

The pain from the match began to subside, so I walked back to my mother who was on the southwest side of the house in the wash shed, still washing clothes. As I neared my mother, I could again smell those fumes from the gasoline engine running inside the concrete tower.

Life was great there on the farm as you always had options. Perhaps I will go back to the east end of the house and strike another match. This time I will not hold it so long. As I rounded the corner of the house, I noticed that the room on the east side of the house was on fire, practically engulfed with flames. I turned around and went back toward my mother silently thinking, Perhaps the fire will go out. Maybe the fire will go away if I quit watching it. Then I noticed that my mother was still washing clothes. I wondered if she even realized the house was on fire.

At that moment, my mother suddenly exclaimed that she smelled smoke. Later she said that I simply responded to her, Yes, there is a fire. The whole east end of the house is on fire. Other than Mother’s excitement, my first memories after that were being held by my dad (Bruce) watching our former home turn into a short stack of glowing ashes when Bruce offered, You should have put water or dirt on the flames when the match burned your fingers. Or you could have at least taken the match outside before it burned your fingers.

What Bruce said made sense, and it was a hard lesson to learn as we lost everything except the clothes on our backs. It was hard on the family financially. At least we had an option for a place to live. We could move to the Chitty Place house that had been recently vacated. The Chitty Place house had electricity and running water to the kitchen sink, but no indoor bathroom, much nicer than the house that had just burned. I could not imagine how stupid I had been to strike the match, much less to have placed the lit match onto the exposed cotton on the old chair.

It was living at the Chitty Place a few years later when I learned all about the boogeyman. My mother told me that the boogeyman was an evil half man, half beast and overall devilish creature who lives in the woods and comes out at night and takes away bad kids. Why had I never heard of this boogeyman before? Apparently, the boogeyman was just as evil as evil can be. After a few years of life on the Chitty Place, I recall one night after I had gone to bed when my mother proclaimed, You are bad, so bad that the boogeyman will probably come tonight and take you away. There is nothing your Dad or I can do to stop him. I’m surprised that he hasn’t already come and taken you away. Hearing this, I imagined how terrible it would be, actually living with this evil, nasty boogeyman.

After Mother gave her boogeyman warnings to me, it became difficult for me to sleep at night just thinking that the boogeyman might come and get me tonight while sleeping. I would remain awake and alert as long as I could, yet eventually I would fall asleep and have those awful dreams of this big half man, half monster dragging me off into his lair in the darkness. It was a terrifying thought. I became deathly afraid of the darkness as the boogeyman was out there just waiting in his world, ready to pounce on me when I walked by.

I can remember being told to go shut the chickens up well after darkness had arrived. This chore became complete terror as I would rather do anything to escape not having to walk that dark path downhill, past the dark trees alongside the dark chicken house. Regardless, it must be done. I had to do it. Yet I also knew that the boogeyman would be out there, lying in wait, ready to grab me. To resolve my dilemma, I would make a break for the chicken house, leap out the back door, and run as fast as I could to the chicken house, always watching my sides and back, slam and lock the chicken house door closed, and run even faster back to the house. It was a death-defying event for me to be alone outside in the dark.

When I would go out into the darkness to accomplish this assigned chore, I was also afraid that one of my brothers would see me running crazy—like avoiding the boogeyman. I knew that my brothers would make fun of me for being afraid of the dark. This inner conflict remained unchecked for a while, but it became time that would resolve this problem. Mother continued reminding me that the bad boogeyman was determined to get me. I must resolve this boogeyman problem in the darkness by myself.

The Depression was technically over, but in Moro, we didn’t experience it being actually over until the mid-1950s. Growing up with Depression Era parents seemed okay as we had moments of fun, like swimming or hunting. Occasionally we would have to face discipline and punishment, but it wasn’t because my parents didn’t love me; they simply did not have the time or emotions left to share after a long day in the field. They were so consumed, trying to make a living during those times. Had I been mature enough to understand the family finances, I would have realized that all money received following the Depression went to bringing our land payments in arrears up to date following the Depression. My grandmother Louie (Louise Floyd Webb) often said she had been in debt her entire life, and it was in 1954 when they finally paid off the Chitty Place, purchased in 1929.

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I began spending more of my time with my grandmother Louie in this photograph of her in later years. From Louie, I learned about life, people, Indians, animals, plants, and things. Once I confided that my mother had told me that the boogeyman was coming to get me. Now I could not even go out in the darkness without being worried that I would be taken by this evil creature. In hindsight, Grandmother had to be careful as she did not want to get in between me and my mother. She hedged her words somewhat carefully, saying, Oh my, I am not so sure about this boogeyman thing. She asked me to tell her more about it.

All I could say was Mother said I was so bad that she was certain the boogeyman was coming to take me away and there was nothing she or Dad could do about it.

Grandmother added, What did you do that was so bad?

Trying to explain to your grandmother why you were so bad to deserve being taken by the boogeyman is tough enough, especially for someone who is six years old. I explained that sometimes I liked to play and often failed to get all my chores done. Other times I would tear my clothes going through a fence, or I would make a mess of something. Grandmother