the fact that the French flag--tied to a pole in
Louisiana--once waved over Texas, French influence on it and other parts
of the Southwest has been minor.

ARTHUR, STANLEY CLISBY. _Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover_ (1952) and
_Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman_ (1937), both
published by Harmanson--Publisher and Bookseller, 333 Royal St., New
Orleans.

CABLE, GEORGE W. _Old Creole Days: Strange True Stories of Louisiana_.

CHOPIN, KATE. _Bayou Folk_.

FORTIER, ALCEE. Any of his work on Louisiana.

HEARN, LAFCADIO. _Chita_. A lovely story.

JOUTEL. _Journal_ of La Salle's career in Texas.

KANE, HARNETT T. _Plantation Parade: The Grand Manner in Louisiana_
(1945), _Natchez on the Mississippi_ (1947), _Queen New Orleans_ (1949),
all published by Morrow, New York.

KING, GRACE. _New Orleans: The Place and the People; Balcony Stories._

MCVOY, LIZZIE CARTER. _Louisiana in the Short Story_, Louisiana State
University Press, 1940.

SAXON, LYLE. _Fabulous New Orleans; Old Louisiana; Lafitte the Pirate_.

8. Backwoods Life and Humor

THE SETTLERS who put their stamp on Texas were predominantly from the
southern states--and far more of them came to Texas to work out of debt
than came with riches in the form of slaves. The plantation owner came
too, but the go-ahead Crockett kind of backwoodsman was typical. The
southern type never became so prominent in New Mexico, Arizona, and
California as in Texas. Nevertheless, the fact glares out that the code
of conduct--the riding and shooting tradition, the eagerness to stand up
and fight for one's rights, the readiness to back one's judgment with
a gun, a bowie knife, money, life itself--that characterized the whole
West as well as the Southwest was southern, hardly at all New England.

The very qualities that made many of the Texas pioneers rebels to
society and forced not a few of them to quit it between sun and
sun without leaving new addresses fitted them to conquer the
wilderness--qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy
self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust
for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious
politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models
of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society--a society
shockingly tame--may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman
is one who never gives offense." Under this definition a shaded vio