I
The legend of a lost canyon somewhere in the Big Bend country has had a
long and wide circulation. When I was in the Big Bend country some
fourteen years ago I heard of it as being “an old story.” A version of
the legend came out in the Western Story Magazine, December 2, 1922.
Early in 1923, the “Cattle Clatter” department of the San Antonio
Express reprinted an enlarged version of the Western Story Magazine
legend, giving its source as the New York World. A syndicated feature
article was probably the source of both versions.
According to the World legend, a Mexican by the name of Lopez had come
into Sanderson from an exploring expedition initiated on the Mexican
side of the Rio Grande. He and a Mexican vaquero had followed up a
gorge that emptied into the Rio Grande until the gorge widened out into
a green valley, an oasis, wherein were grazing a herd of perhaps five
hundred buffaloes.
In all of the legends the valley is stocked with buffaloes,
notwithstanding the fact that buffaloes were never in the Big Bend
country. [139] The wild and inaccessible nature of this country,
however, gives color to the idea of a lost canyon. Maps in the State
Land Office at Austin still show a stretch of unsurveyed territory
along the river. Akin to “Lost Canyon” must be the “Lost Mountains,”
which are said to lie beyond the Davis Mountains.
The idea of a “lost” land is probably as old as any legend of mankind;
it luxuriates in the lore of modern seamen; but it may not be generally
known that regions of the modern West other than the Big Bend also
claim “lost” areas. No longer ago than February 2, 1923, the San
Antonio Express published a news story to the effect that Zane Grey had
discovered a lost plateau in Arizona inhabited by mustangs that had
some secret pass, unknown to man, down to water in the valley. Six days
earlier the same newspaper printed a dispatch from Scenic, South
Dakota, descriptive of a legendary oasis in an uncharted Bad Lands.
According to a tradition handed down by the Sioux Indians, inaccessible
bluffs and walls enclose a garden-like place “rich in food, sunlight,
warmth and pure running water.” Before the coming of the pale-faces
this protected spot was the home of Wankinyan (the Thunder Bird), and
no man has ever entered it to return. The story suggests that the
legend of the Lost Canyon in the Big Bend may be of Indian origin.
There is a legend connected with another secret canyon of the upper Rio
Grande country that seems to owe its existence to the Indians. Walter
B. Stevens in his Through Texas, published in 1892, tells of “The
Mystery of Diablo Canyon.” [140] The canyon, so the legend goes, was
sacred to the Indians, and only a few of their number knew its nature.
In it was an abundance of game and of pure water, but no white man
could ever find the water. Dry hides, sprinkled with sod and covered
with grass, concealed it cunningly.