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When
it comes to how the Devils River got its name, the Devil’s in the
details.
Ambrose Bierce did not include a definition for the Devils River in
his 1911 classic the “Devil’s Dictionary,” but as a hell of a hand
at arranging English words in an amusing order, the famous journalist
doubtless would have had fun with writing an entry for the Southwest
Texas river. |
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a long-time newspaperman, the first thing that would have caught Bierce’s
attention in pondering a humorous definition for the scenic if difficult-to-traverse
stream is that the accepted usage of its name is without an apostrophe.
What the Devil? Referring to the river without using the possessive
is strange, since attributing the stream to the person supposedly
presiding over the nether world is how the river got its name in the
first place. |
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Well, maybe.
Actually, that apostrophe only has to do with how some people think
the river got its name.
When a group of Spanish explorers traveled along the river in 1675,
it may have already have had a name. Splashing across the Rio Grande
on May 11 that year, a party of soldiers and friendly Indians rode
into Texas to scout a hilly region then known as the “Sierra Dacate”
that is believed by historians today to have referred to the rough
country along the Devils River. During the first week of the trek,
the expedition came to a river the Indians called the Dacate.
“Dacate” does not show up online as a Spanish word, so it may be an
Indian word or a phonetic of an Indian word. No matter its origin
or meaning, the name didn’t last.
Before, in a manner of speaking, the Devil took it, the river was
known for a time as the San Pedro. Saint Peter, of course,
was Simon Peter, one of the twelve apostles later beatified by the
Catholic Church. Since the first Europeans to see the ruggedly beautiful
river were Spanish explorers, they must have come up with that name.
After Spain lost its claim on Texas and the area became part of the
new Republic of Mexico, it is possible that citizens of the nascent
nation occasionally traveled across the river, and further possible
that one of those visitors came up with the idea of naming the stream
for Peter. But again, no specific information on this has come to
light. Whatever led to the naming of the river for one of the apostles,
the Devil didn’t darken the picture until the 1840s.
In
1848, former Texas Ranger Capt. Jack
Hays led a party westward to explore a good route from San
Antonio to El
Paso. When Hays
and his 70-plus men reached the river, not an easy trip then and not
much easier even today, he supposedly reined his horse and surveyed
the river and the rough terrain on either side of it before famously
prounouncing:
“Saint Pete, hell. This is the Devil’s River.” As in suggesting that
the river belonged to the Devil, hence the need for an apostrophe.
Hays’
opinion became codified when a San
Antonio newspaper called the Western Texian printed Hays’ December
report to Col. Peter H. Bell. The operable line in that document is:
“Owing to the difficulties we had in extricating ourselves from the
deep revines and mountains which encompass it for many miles from
its mouth, we named it Devil’s River.” |
But
as he did the research that went into his book “Devils River: Treacherous
Twin to the Pecos, 1535-1900,” Midland
writer- historian Patrick Dearen dug deep. One of the things he found
was that contrary to legend and Hays’ own written claim, someone else
mayt have come up with the idea of naming a Texas river in honor of
Lucifer.
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Examining the
diary of noted Texas pioneer Samuel Maverick, who rode with Hays
on his 1848 expedition, Dearen found where Maverick referred to
the river as the Devil’s as early as Sept. 21 that year when he
wrote: “Mouth of Devil’s river. 14 [miles].”
As Dearen observed: “The casual way he noted the stream’s name seems
unusual for a river never before known by that designation until
that very day. Add to this Hays’ claim that he and his fellow riders
named the river only after experiencing difficulty upstream, and
it’s clear that the two men’s accounts contradict one another in
regard to the party’s first use of the word ‘devil’s.’”
Dearen goes on to speculate that the river may already have been
known by at least some people as the Devil’s. Indeed, as he notes,
there’s a folk tale that at some point a lovelorn Indian girl leaped
to her death from one of the river’s high bluffs. Learning the horrible
news, her father the chief supposedly uttered: “The Devil’s River.”
However the river got its name, the disappearance of the apostrophe
is equally curious.
© Mike Cox
- September 6, 2012 column
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