This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Pioneer Days In The Southwest From 1850 To 1879: Thrilling Descriptions Of Buffalo Hunting, Indian Fighting And Massacres, Cowboy Life And Home Building 2 Charles Goodnight, Emanuel Dubbs, John A. Hart State Capital, 1909 Frontier and pioneer life; Pioneers

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Loneliness pervaded the lives of pioneers on the American plains, including the empty expanses of West Texas. Most settlers lived in isolation broken only by occasional community gatherings such as funerals and religious revivals. In The Lonesome Plains, Louis Fairchild mines the letters and journals of West Texas settlers, as well as contemporary fiction and poetry, to record the emotions attending solitude and the ways people sought relief. Hungering for neighborliness, people came together in times of misfortune--sickness, accident, and death--and at annual religious services. In fascinating detail, Fairchild describes the practices that grew up around these two focal points of social life. He recounts the building of coffins and preparation of a body for burial, the conflicting emotions of the pain of death and the hope of heaven, the funeral rite itself, the lost and lonely graves. And he tells the story of yearly outdoor revivals: the choice of the meeting site and construction of the arbor or other shelter, the provision of food, the music and emotionally-charged services, and tangential courting and mischief. Loneliness is most recognized as a feature of life in the time of the early West Texas cattle industry, a period of sprawling cattle ranches and legendary cattle drives, roughly from 1867 to 1885. But Fairchild shows that it also characterized the lives of settlers who lived in West Texas from the beginning of permanent settlement of the Texas Panhandle (around 1876) through the population shift that occured around the turn of the century, as farmers and their families supplanted ranchers and their cattle. Fairchild draws on primary materials of the early residents to give voice to the settlers themselves and skillfully weaves a moving picture of life in the open spaces of West Texas during the frontier-rural period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.