McMurry University, Box 637

Abilene, Texas 79697

(325) 793-4682 w Fax: (325) 793-4754

An interview with famous buffalo hunter J. Wright Mooar, told for the first time in book format.

Buffalo Days: Stories from J. Wright Mooar

As told to James Winford Hunt

Edited by Robert F. Pace

Illustrated by Granville Bruce

ISBN 1-880510-95-2

$19.95 cloth 5x7. 128pp. 8 b&w illus.

“Because he has been criticized as a destroyer, a ruthless killer, and wastrel of a great game resource of a Nation, the buffalo hunter appeals to the bar of history for his vindication… Within four years we opened up a vast empire to settlement, and put the Indians forever out of Texas.”

J. Wright Mooar tells the story of the buffalo hunter, from the hunter’s perspective, in this first-person account published more than seventy years ago in several installments in Holland’s, The Magazine of the South. Mooar was more than eighty years old when he sat down with Methodist minister/educator James Winford Hunt and recounted his years as a buffalo hunter.

Mooar describes how buffalo hunting became a huge business that thrived for less than a decade in the 1870s and makes the case that the buffalo hunter, more than anyone else, opened the way for white settlement by eradicating the Indians’ source of food.

“Buffalo hunting was a business and not a sport. It required capital, management, and a lot of hard work. Magazine writers and others who claim that the killing of the buffalo was a national calamity and was accomplished by vandals, simply expose their ignorance, and I resent such an unjust judgment upon us.

“If it had not been for the work of the buffalo hunters, the wild bison would still graze where Amarillo now is, and the red man would still reign supreme over the pampas of the Panhandle of Texas.

“Any one of the families killed and homes destroyed by the Indians would have been worth more to Texas and to civilization than all the millions of buffalo that ever roamed from the Pecos River on the south to the Platte River on the north.”

Illustrated by Texas folklore artist Granville Bruce, the story of J. Wright Mooar makes for lively reading and continuing debate.

“Here is an odyssey of hairbreadth escapes from death with wild Indians, wilder white men, and thundering herds of wild buffalo,” writes J.W. Hunt, founding president of Abilene’s McMurry College (now University), in his introduction.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about the book, State House Press, or to interview the editor, contact Carly Kahl at 325/793-4697 or by e-mail at ckahl@mcm.edu

From the book:

The Real Story of the “Cracked Ridgepole” at Adobe Walls

“The real cause for the night alarm was kept a secret by a group of men, including myself, who knew the truth. Under a solemn oath, we agreed to keep this secret until there should be but one survivor. He was then to be released from his oath. I am that last survivor, and will give the facts.”

The Killing of the White Buffalo

“[we] crept out on the prairie through the grass near the white buffalo. It was a four-year-old cow, her white coat a freak of nature. Whispering to Dan, I said, ‘Take a look. There is the gamiest animal on earth—a white buffalo.’”

Billy the Kid

“This chronicle would be incomplete without recording the story of my long journey to Arizona, and my final experiences with the buffalo and wilder men, among whom was none other than the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid.”

Big Jack and the Wounded Buffalo

“One big bull, badly wounded stood with spread feet and heaving sides, swinging his head to right and left. The hunter carefully crept up for the final shot. Just as he was ready to shoot the bull saw him and, lowering his hideous head, charged. There was no

place of concealment or refuge, and he had but one cartridge left. Kneeling on the open prairie he quickly aimed and fired. The impact of the bullet scarcely staggered the fearful beast as it rushed.”

The Frozen Robe

“he became aware that the wolves were also tearing at the skin in which he was rolled, and they began to trample him and drag and roll him about. . . . But when he essayed to roll out of the skin he found he was solidly encased. It had frozen!”

State House Press is a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium and is operated by the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation in Abilene, Texas. For further information on Buffalo Days: Stories from J. Wright Mooar or other State House Press titles, please contact Carly Kahl at (325) 793-4697, by e-mail at ckahl@mcm.edu or visit the web, www.tamu.edu/upress/MCWHINEY/mcgen.html