Tomas Piedra, Now 110, Patriarch of the Brush Country, Looks Back to Wild and Wooly Days *
Now Past the Century Mark, Hopes to Live a Long Time Yet - Incidentally He’s the Father of 16 Children.
By HENERY YELVINGTON. Literally ridding through the pages of Texas history for a century and still ridding every day over the hills and through the brush of his favorite haunts that’s Tomas Piedras straw boss for Jeff Martin’s Lopez Ranch cow outfit down near Christine. Where Zaro Aghn for many years has had his strength carefully nourished by friends and loved ones that he might reach the age he has attained to boast of being the world’s oldest living man. Tomas Piedras, better known as Tom Rock, has put every ounce of his vitality into his daily work of running, branding and cutting cattle in the brushiest country of the old frontier down near where the black-brush catclaw, guajilla and nopal fight to occupy the same flats and hills and almost crowd the mesquite to the sidelines.
Tom Rock, that’s what his name is translated into English and that’s what most people call him----- don’t know how old he is nor can he read or write nor tell you how his name is spelled. But he knows history. He knows he was born in Nacogdoches when that was just a settlement and that years later his father moved near San Antonio when priests were occupying the Alamo and trying to lead the savage Indians to the foot of the Cross. He remembers that when the bands of brave men were coming to San Antonio to take over the Alamo and make the sacrifice of sacrifices for Texas freedom, he was a big boy and carried gallons of milk and some bread to one band of Texans who camped on the ranch where he lived just before they reached the mission fort.
HOW OLD IS HE?
"All I know about my age is I was born in Nacogdoches when that was just a little place and my mother she came from Louisiana, being French, and my father he was there when they first builded the settlement," Tom Rock said. His father’s name was Lauro Piedras, or it may be that the family name is Pierre, nobody knows. "I don’t know how you spell it." Rock said and nobody, even those who have known him for years, seems to know. But the old vaquero himself pronounces it the French way, while his friends who don’t know any French, spell it the Spanish way and to make sure they call it the American way which is just plain Rock. He was among the first children born in Nacogdoches, he knows that because he has heard people say so in the away back years of Texas history, in which case and in view of the fact that he was a big boy when the battle of the Alamo was fought it is safe to credit him with probably 110 years.
So few and far between were visitors back in those days of the dawn of Texas history, and so scarce were settlers that the battle of the Alamo was fought and over with and Texas had probably won her independence before Tom Rock heard of the battle. "We were living on the Cibolo, a good ways from San Antonio and we had no way to see people," he said. "When those American men camped on the creek going to San Antonio we knew there was a fellow named Santa Anna they were going to fight, but we never heard anything about the fight for a long time afterwards. We were just trying to make a living and get some land and attend to the cattle."
Here is something really remarkable about Tom Rock: he lived through the most stirring times of Texas history, from wars on down to fights for possession of the plains and brush country, and he has been among the most desperate of men, yet he has never had to shoot anybody: he has never been shot: he has never been to jail and has never paid a fine, all of which proves that a man seeking peace and to pursue his daily labor, even though it take him face to face with many hazards, can get by peacefully if he wants to.
IS THE FATHER OF 16
"I just work all the time, attend to my own business and don’t never bother anybody and they leave me alone." He said. It was the days of the open range in Southwest Texas when Tom Rock was in his glory. He left the San Antonio area when this city was just a small town 59 years ago and went down into the brush country of the La Parita, the Lagunillas, the Nueces and the Frio and there he has been ever since, still out in that brush, with the exception of three trips up the trail and a few visits to San Antonio. Rock, who is fair in complexion and speaks English about as well as he does Spanish, looks more like a Frenchman of ancient vintage than he does a Don Tomas. He hasn’t heard any French spoken in so long he remembers a little about the language. He married late in life and his wife, who is many, many years younger than he, has borne him 16 children, the youngest of whom is well past 40 years. They all speak Spanish, his wife being Mexican.
Tom Rock don’t remember a great deal about San Antonio because he has not been here very often. He remembers time when there were Mexican soldiers here and not American soldiers. And he vows that he remembers a time when there was also a great many French-speaking soldiers here. He remembers the padres going in and out of the Alamo just as they now go in and out of San Fernando. "I don’t like the towns too much, I like best the country where I work," he asserts. His life has been spent almost wholly in the cattle country because when he lived in Nacogdoches as a small child that was just an outpost to civilization and when his parents brought him to a ranch near San Antonio he did not see the town very often.
HE IS PEACEFUL SOUL
It is the things of the trail and of the range that interest Tom Rock. "The first time I go up the trail, it is with Reese Harris," he said, "but I don’t know what year that is, but I know it was a long time ago and before I go up with the Slaughter boys, I work for the Slaughters for 16 years. Bill Slaughter, he was the big boss of the outfit and then there was Charlie and John. I like them. I work long time for them. When I leave them I go up trail with a fellow we call Billie Botaw that the way we call him, I don’t know how to spell, I don’t know what kind of name it is. Yes, we have lots time trouble with Indians on trail that times, we don’t have to fight so much, but they bother us a whole lot and all the time we have to keep close lookout, sometimes some real trouble."
As is usual with old-timers, Rock will not talk much about fights, but he will assert that he never was in any gun battles. He admits, however, "One time when I ride down where they call it now Possum Hill the Indians they come across prairie. You know in those times lots of prairie country where now mesquite, but lots of brush too. When the big bunch of Indians see me, one ride of one side and one ride another side, but I know them pretty good. I have fast horse and I know country and brush. I beat them to brush then they can not catch me, but they shoot arrows but don’t hit."
Many times tom Rock had to deal with Indians and old-timers say he could get along with many of them. He always has been a peaceful man. However, he has been on the heels of many engagements with Indians and has been in parties who trailed them and who trailed __(can’t make out word)___band of Mexicans and American bandits. But never in a battle, no sir. He remembers one time he came up to a ranch with some others just after the Indians they were trailing had left and had killed a woman and two children and their sheepherder. He helped carry one of the children into the house and then rode after the Indians, but they outdistanced the settlers. Then he remembers other times when Indians raided, but raids were numerous when he first went into the brush country.
ROUTING WILD STOCK
It is truly remarkable that Tom Rock was closely associated with the most dangerous men of all the Southwest out on the range and yet got by without being hurt and without himself being a quick gun man. One of the kings of the early open range for whom he gathered cattle was notorious for murdering people to whom he had paid money and then taking their money, if he could get away with it. Many bodies were found buried in a dugout near what formerly was his old ranch headquarters about 20 years or more when they first started clearing away the brush around the Three Rivers-Simmons City area.
I asked Tom rock about this man and if he was as dangerous as many old-timers said. " I hear he pretty bad man for some people," Rock said, "but he always pay me cash and he never try to hurt me. I know lots of people say he killed this one and that other fellow, but I never see him kill anybody. (Again your frontier diplomacy.)
Here’s probably the answer: This man who disputed the open range with pretty nearly all the early settlers hired Rock to get the cattle out of the brush, where the average cowboy even of that day and time could not get them. He needed just such a man to do that work and tom rock was the emergency man, the trouble-shooter, or better still, the expert cowboy of the old frontier. He was every bit of that.
"He would tell me," Rock said. "I have lots of cattle in the brush the boys can’t get when they round-up. I want you to get them for me and I pay $2 head for average and $3 head for big steers." There you are. When the cattlemen of the open range sent their outfits to round up they often did not take time to get the wildest of the cattle that took to the thick brush. Rock and the three men he kept with him went in there and got them. "Sometimes we bring 30, sometimes 40, 100 or more head in and I tell this man here are cattle and see if they are all his," Rock said. "Then he look them over and say, "yes Tom all mine" and pay me. I don’t know, maybe some not his, many times we get big ones not branded you call mavericks."
SIMPLE FOOD. LONG LIFE
Let’s make it plain that Rock was not to blame for any of the appropriations that this man might have made. It was customary to round up cattle of different brands in those days and cut them to the herds they belonged to when possible, but brands were pretty much mixed. Rock worked mainly after the general round-ups and avoided open country where the average cowboy could work. He worked in thickest brush and got what others could not. He thought if the man who paid him get them claimed them they must be his. Maybe they were. Quien sabe?
The rock pens Frank Dobie writes about in "Coronado’s Children" were built by one of the first men who tried to raise sheep in that country, Rock said. He has been there many times. His name was "Kidowa or something that sounds that way." Rock said and he does not know what became of him? He does know that they have long since been torn away and trace of them lost in the thick brush that has grown up in the country within the last 50 years. Rock remembers when troops were stationed at Fort Ewell and were constantly on alert against Indian bands that sought to steal cattle and horses from the pioneer ranchmen.
But getting back to the expert career of Rock one probably has the secret of his long life. He took with him on those wild cattle expeditions generally three but sometimes six men, he said. Meal or flour for bread and jerked meat or fresh meat when it was safe to kill it, was their diet. No coffee, no bacon, no beans. Just those two articles of food and water to drink. Many, many months they never tasted other food except when they went into town once a year or so. They carried all their food on packhorses or mule.
The method of getting these wild cattle- the wildest of the wild- was the most thrilling of all frontier cow work. They simply tracked them down in their brushy range, then rode them down and roped them. When they were roped and tied, some would be hobbled with rawhide thongs, some they would "knee." This method of "kneeing" is to cut one of the small leaders in the knee so that a steer or cow cannot run fast, but they finally get over it. When they had sufficient bunch hobbled, sidelined or kneed, they would run round them all up easily and drive them to the ranch headquarters of the man who was paying them.
Rock has never been really sick. "Sometimes I get fall from wild horse or get hurt in the brush," he said. Once he had his collarbone broken. "One time when work was scarce and I was not riding I get so I can’t eat anything make me sick," he said "so I went to a doctor in San Antonio. He did not know me and I did not know him. Somebody told me he was a good doctor. He made me stand up. He raised up my arms and moved my head about. Finally he said, "You ride wild horses, you work cattle, you don’t farm. You have not been ridding lately. You don’t need medicine, go get back in the saddle and if you stop ridding for two years you will die." I been ridding ever since and that’s a long time ago. I know I am old but I work every day and only the One Above rules all things and whom we all must go before can tell how long I live. He is head of everything."
Rock never drank liquor to speak of; he has led a peaceful life and been temperate in everything but his riding. He is working everyday for Jeff Martin and Mr. Martin says he will wager anybody that Rock can run down in the brush, rope and tie any steer that anybody else can. "He is about the best cowhand even today that I have and can ride rings around lots of these younger men even if he is away over 100 years old." Mr. Martin said.
Rock has his wife and his two youngest sons with him. His boys are good cowhands, real chips of the old block but not quite up to him yet. "Maybe when they live a hundred years or so they will be as good as their dad," mused their boss.
*Article appeared in the San Antonio Express newspaper Sunday morning edition February 12, 1933
Now Past the Century Mark, Hopes to Live a Long Time Yet - Incidentally He’s the Father of 16 Children.
By HENERY YELVINGTON. Literally ridding through the pages of Texas history for a century and still ridding every day over the hills and through the brush of his favorite haunts that’s Tomas Piedras straw boss for Jeff Martin’s Lopez Ranch cow outfit down near Christine. Where Zaro Aghn for many years has had his strength carefully nourished by friends and loved ones that he might reach the age he has attained to boast of being the world’s oldest living man. Tomas Piedras, better known as Tom Rock, has put every ounce of his vitality into his daily work of running, branding and cutting cattle in the brushiest country of the old frontier down near where the black-brush catclaw, guajilla and nopal fight to occupy the same flats and hills and almost crowd the mesquite to the sidelines.
Tom Rock, that’s what his name is translated into English and that’s what most people call him----- don’t know how old he is nor can he read or write nor tell you how his name is spelled. But he knows history. He knows he was born in Nacogdoches when that was just a settlement and that years later his father moved near San Antonio when priests were occupying the Alamo and trying to lead the savage Indians to the foot of the Cross. He remembers that when the bands of brave men were coming to San Antonio to take over the Alamo and make the sacrifice of sacrifices for Texas freedom, he was a big boy and carried gallons of milk and some bread to one band of Texans who camped on the ranch where he lived just before they reached the mission fort.
HOW OLD IS HE?
"All I know about my age is I was born in Nacogdoches when that was just a little place and my mother she came from Louisiana, being French, and my father he was there when they first builded the settlement," Tom Rock said. His father’s name was Lauro Piedras, or it may be that the family name is Pierre, nobody knows. "I don’t know how you spell it." Rock said and nobody, even those who have known him for years, seems to know. But the old vaquero himself pronounces it the French way, while his friends who don’t know any French, spell it the Spanish way and to make sure they call it the American way which is just plain Rock. He was among the first children born in Nacogdoches, he knows that because he has heard people say so in the away back years of Texas history, in which case and in view of the fact that he was a big boy when the battle of the Alamo was fought it is safe to credit him with probably 110 years.
So few and far between were visitors back in those days of the dawn of Texas history, and so scarce were settlers that the battle of the Alamo was fought and over with and Texas had probably won her independence before Tom Rock heard of the battle. "We were living on the Cibolo, a good ways from San Antonio and we had no way to see people," he said. "When those American men camped on the creek going to San Antonio we knew there was a fellow named Santa Anna they were going to fight, but we never heard anything about the fight for a long time afterwards. We were just trying to make a living and get some land and attend to the cattle."
Here is something really remarkable about Tom Rock: he lived through the most stirring times of Texas history, from wars on down to fights for possession of the plains and brush country, and he has been among the most desperate of men, yet he has never had to shoot anybody: he has never been shot: he has never been to jail and has never paid a fine, all of which proves that a man seeking peace and to pursue his daily labor, even though it take him face to face with many hazards, can get by peacefully if he wants to.
IS THE FATHER OF 16
"I just work all the time, attend to my own business and don’t never bother anybody and they leave me alone." He said. It was the days of the open range in Southwest Texas when Tom Rock was in his glory. He left the San Antonio area when this city was just a small town 59 years ago and went down into the brush country of the La Parita, the Lagunillas, the Nueces and the Frio and there he has been ever since, still out in that brush, with the exception of three trips up the trail and a few visits to San Antonio. Rock, who is fair in complexion and speaks English about as well as he does Spanish, looks more like a Frenchman of ancient vintage than he does a Don Tomas. He hasn’t heard any French spoken in so long he remembers a little about the language. He married late in life and his wife, who is many, many years younger than he, has borne him 16 children, the youngest of whom is well past 40 years. They all speak Spanish, his wife being Mexican.
Tom Rock don’t remember a great deal about San Antonio because he has not been here very often. He remembers time when there were Mexican soldiers here and not American soldiers. And he vows that he remembers a time when there was also a great many French-speaking soldiers here. He remembers the padres going in and out of the Alamo just as they now go in and out of San Fernando. "I don’t like the towns too much, I like best the country where I work," he asserts. His life has been spent almost wholly in the cattle country because when he lived in Nacogdoches as a small child that was just an outpost to civilization and when his parents brought him to a ranch near San Antonio he did not see the town very often.
HE IS PEACEFUL SOUL
It is the things of the trail and of the range that interest Tom Rock. "The first time I go up the trail, it is with Reese Harris," he said, "but I don’t know what year that is, but I know it was a long time ago and before I go up with the Slaughter boys, I work for the Slaughters for 16 years. Bill Slaughter, he was the big boss of the outfit and then there was Charlie and John. I like them. I work long time for them. When I leave them I go up trail with a fellow we call Billie Botaw that the way we call him, I don’t know how to spell, I don’t know what kind of name it is. Yes, we have lots time trouble with Indians on trail that times, we don’t have to fight so much, but they bother us a whole lot and all the time we have to keep close lookout, sometimes some real trouble."
As is usual with old-timers, Rock will not talk much about fights, but he will assert that he never was in any gun battles. He admits, however, "One time when I ride down where they call it now Possum Hill the Indians they come across prairie. You know in those times lots of prairie country where now mesquite, but lots of brush too. When the big bunch of Indians see me, one ride of one side and one ride another side, but I know them pretty good. I have fast horse and I know country and brush. I beat them to brush then they can not catch me, but they shoot arrows but don’t hit."
Many times tom Rock had to deal with Indians and old-timers say he could get along with many of them. He always has been a peaceful man. However, he has been on the heels of many engagements with Indians and has been in parties who trailed them and who trailed __(can’t make out word)___band of Mexicans and American bandits. But never in a battle, no sir. He remembers one time he came up to a ranch with some others just after the Indians they were trailing had left and had killed a woman and two children and their sheepherder. He helped carry one of the children into the house and then rode after the Indians, but they outdistanced the settlers. Then he remembers other times when Indians raided, but raids were numerous when he first went into the brush country.
ROUTING WILD STOCK
It is truly remarkable that Tom Rock was closely associated with the most dangerous men of all the Southwest out on the range and yet got by without being hurt and without himself being a quick gun man. One of the kings of the early open range for whom he gathered cattle was notorious for murdering people to whom he had paid money and then taking their money, if he could get away with it. Many bodies were found buried in a dugout near what formerly was his old ranch headquarters about 20 years or more when they first started clearing away the brush around the Three Rivers-Simmons City area.
I asked Tom rock about this man and if he was as dangerous as many old-timers said. " I hear he pretty bad man for some people," Rock said, "but he always pay me cash and he never try to hurt me. I know lots of people say he killed this one and that other fellow, but I never see him kill anybody. (Again your frontier diplomacy.)
Here’s probably the answer: This man who disputed the open range with pretty nearly all the early settlers hired Rock to get the cattle out of the brush, where the average cowboy even of that day and time could not get them. He needed just such a man to do that work and tom rock was the emergency man, the trouble-shooter, or better still, the expert cowboy of the old frontier. He was every bit of that.
"He would tell me," Rock said. "I have lots of cattle in the brush the boys can’t get when they round-up. I want you to get them for me and I pay $2 head for average and $3 head for big steers." There you are. When the cattlemen of the open range sent their outfits to round up they often did not take time to get the wildest of the cattle that took to the thick brush. Rock and the three men he kept with him went in there and got them. "Sometimes we bring 30, sometimes 40, 100 or more head in and I tell this man here are cattle and see if they are all his," Rock said. "Then he look them over and say, "yes Tom all mine" and pay me. I don’t know, maybe some not his, many times we get big ones not branded you call mavericks."
SIMPLE FOOD. LONG LIFE
Let’s make it plain that Rock was not to blame for any of the appropriations that this man might have made. It was customary to round up cattle of different brands in those days and cut them to the herds they belonged to when possible, but brands were pretty much mixed. Rock worked mainly after the general round-ups and avoided open country where the average cowboy could work. He worked in thickest brush and got what others could not. He thought if the man who paid him get them claimed them they must be his. Maybe they were. Quien sabe?
The rock pens Frank Dobie writes about in "Coronado’s Children" were built by one of the first men who tried to raise sheep in that country, Rock said. He has been there many times. His name was "Kidowa or something that sounds that way." Rock said and he does not know what became of him? He does know that they have long since been torn away and trace of them lost in the thick brush that has grown up in the country within the last 50 years. Rock remembers when troops were stationed at Fort Ewell and were constantly on alert against Indian bands that sought to steal cattle and horses from the pioneer ranchmen.
But getting back to the expert career of Rock one probably has the secret of his long life. He took with him on those wild cattle expeditions generally three but sometimes six men, he said. Meal or flour for bread and jerked meat or fresh meat when it was safe to kill it, was their diet. No coffee, no bacon, no beans. Just those two articles of food and water to drink. Many, many months they never tasted other food except when they went into town once a year or so. They carried all their food on packhorses or mule.
The method of getting these wild cattle- the wildest of the wild- was the most thrilling of all frontier cow work. They simply tracked them down in their brushy range, then rode them down and roped them. When they were roped and tied, some would be hobbled with rawhide thongs, some they would "knee." This method of "kneeing" is to cut one of the small leaders in the knee so that a steer or cow cannot run fast, but they finally get over it. When they had sufficient bunch hobbled, sidelined or kneed, they would run round them all up easily and drive them to the ranch headquarters of the man who was paying them.
Rock has never been really sick. "Sometimes I get fall from wild horse or get hurt in the brush," he said. Once he had his collarbone broken. "One time when work was scarce and I was not riding I get so I can’t eat anything make me sick," he said "so I went to a doctor in San Antonio. He did not know me and I did not know him. Somebody told me he was a good doctor. He made me stand up. He raised up my arms and moved my head about. Finally he said, "You ride wild horses, you work cattle, you don’t farm. You have not been ridding lately. You don’t need medicine, go get back in the saddle and if you stop ridding for two years you will die." I been ridding ever since and that’s a long time ago. I know I am old but I work every day and only the One Above rules all things and whom we all must go before can tell how long I live. He is head of everything."
Rock never drank liquor to speak of; he has led a peaceful life and been temperate in everything but his riding. He is working everyday for Jeff Martin and Mr. Martin says he will wager anybody that Rock can run down in the brush, rope and tie any steer that anybody else can. "He is about the best cowhand even today that I have and can ride rings around lots of these younger men even if he is away over 100 years old." Mr. Martin said.
Rock has his wife and his two youngest sons with him. His boys are good cowhands, real chips of the old block but not quite up to him yet. "Maybe when they live a hundred years or so they will be as good as their dad," mused their boss.
*Article appeared in the San Antonio Express newspaper Sunday morning edition February 12, 1933