The German-American Press

folk-consciousness of what the history had been and which things
were important. While the Kalender/Jahrbuch prints almost nothing
about the other German settlements in Texas, again and again we
hear of Prince Solms and the Adelsverein, Meusebach's daring
meeting with the Indians, the death march of the new immigrants
from Karlshafen to the interior, the so-called "Sophienburg" at
New Braunfels, etc. According to this folklore, after meeting with
Meusebach, the Comanches never bothered the honest and peace-
loving Germans, and if horses were sometimes stolen by Indians,
you knew it was "those other tribes" ( 1935, 35). The previously
mentioned cycle of historical poems in the 1935 Jahrbuch (replacing
the weather verses) celebrate these themes. Less known now, but
apparently current in the nineteenth century, were the legend of the
"seven gold-rich cities of Cibolo" (1935, 38), the use of the smoke
of the Peyote plant by Indians as a hallucinogenic (1935, 52), the
reputation of the Karankawa Indians as cannibals (1930, 50), and
the fact that the very word "Texas" sounded like "Desperado, Mord
und Totschlag" ( 1935, 53).

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