Long before birding became a word for a recreational activity that today pours a $41 billion dollar benefit into the U.S. economy, and long before Zapata County recorded a hefty bird count that draws birders from around the world, John James Audubon traveled the county’s prairie lands, arroyos, and riparian habitat, and that of the Río Grande Valley, to paint birds and other wildlife of the region.
In a chapter called “Cuellar Era” in The Kingdom of Zapata (1953), authors Virgil Lott and Mercurio Martinez (I), tracked two leads to establish that it was indeed Audubon — traveling by horse, accompanied by a dog, and carrying a shotgun — who visited Zapata County, perhaps a bit earlier than the year stipulated in their account.
Audubon’s Wild Turkey
The first lead took the writers to Anna Kelsey in Río Grande City. She confirmed that Audubon had used a room in the Kelsey family home as a studio and there “painted his kills.” The specimens he painted may have been for inclusion in The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was published posthumously in 1851.
Kelsey recounted her parents’ stories about Audubon, his personality, and his charming demeanor.
The second lead the writers followed took them to the Cuellar family, settlers and ranchers of Zapata County. What follows, from Page 80, is an account handed down through the Cuellar family for five generations (up to 1953):
“One April evening in 1848, I was resting in front of my house on the ranch when a tall man riding a good horse and followed by a pointer dog, rode out of nowhere, it seemed, and stopped, dismounted, and engaged me in conversation. He had ridden hard all of two days, he said, and was tired and saddle sore. Could he impose on my hospitality and might he find food for his animals and himself? Of course he could, for we never turned a stranger away in those days, and since this one spoke fluent Spanish and had a winning way about him, he was made doubly welcome.
I cannot help but think a curious
event is this life of mine.
John James Audubon
He stayed with us all of a week, shooting birds here and in Mexico and coyotes and panthers in the hills along the arroyos. These he would mount and at night paint them on heavy paper. I remember him well and I remember those sketches he made, for the children were fond of pictures and on the frontier in those remote days, pictures were jewels indeed, and I thought that when he departed he would leave some of the sketches with us. But we were disappointed. At the end of the week, he carefully packed them away in his saddlebags, rolled his blankets, and tied them behind his saddle, mounted, called his dog, and rode out of our lives forever.
Audubon’s Collared Peccary
I never heard his name, and it didn’t make much difference, for we were not interested in names then. It were better never to learn a man’s name in those times for it is doubtful whether a stranger would trouble to tell you his right name, and we didn’t trouble to find out. He wanted to pay for his keep and for the feeding of his animals, but of course we took nothing.”
Continued from The Kingdom of Zapata:
Well, from the description of the man, his dog, horse, and the fact that he carried a shotgun, using it only for the purpose of killing birds and animals which he sketched and transferred to paper, and the same year and month of arrival, we are certain that the man was Audubon on his last expedition for specimens.
John James Audubon may have been remiss in business and a poor business manager, but he was at least meticulous about preserving his sketches, probably because he did not want them to fall into the hands of plagiarists who would turn them to their own wicked uses and claim authorship.
Next time you see a copy of Birds of the Southwest by Audubon, turn the pages until you locate the roadrunner. Look at it carefully. It was sketched at either Río Grande City or Zapata by one of the greatest naturalists the world has ever known, and that particular roadrunner, or paisano, may have been the forebear of those you see every day of your lives hopping across Highway 83 somewhere between Río Grande City and Zapata.
(The story of Audubon’s life is told well in a 2010 PBS American Masters documentary. It is available at Amazon.)
