HAIF PotD: Dark and Light

[editor]

Vision, originally uploaded by data5amurai.

Dark skies, but the buildings of downtown Houston still light up this picture.

Data5amurai posted this picture in the HAIF Photo Pool on Flickr.

You can add you photos to the group.  Just click here:  HAIF Houston Photo Pool on Flickr .

[citizen4rmptown]

a little off topic, but

does buffalo bayou's name have anything to do with buffalos,

and if not why did they choose that name?

just curious, since in the corner i saw the BuffBayou Walk sign.

[sevfiv]

There are several explanations..

From McComb's Houston: A History:

Andrew Forest Muir in "The destiny of Buffalo Bayou" and in "The Municipality of Harrisburg, 1835-1836" claims that the name of the bayou came from the buffalo fish which teemed in the clear water. He denies the existence of bison in the area and uses as his authority his grandmother, Mrs. Mary Hayes Ewing Charwane, who was born in Houston in 1857."

[...]

Julia Jones, however, in Houston: 1836-1940, pages 33-34, relying on an Indian legend related by the mother of her black washerwoman, argues that the name came from bison, not fish. According to the story, the natives called the stream "Buffalo River" because bison lived in the area and drank from the bayou. The legend goes on to say that the indigenous magnolia tree, with its large white flowers, was called "buffalo tree" after a white hunter killed a sacred white buffalo. Following the death of the buffalo, supposedly, the magnolia tree appeared, embodying the spirit of this animal.

Although the origin of the name of the bayou may never be fully determined, it seems significant that Stephen F. Austin, on his 1822 map of Texas, labels a stream, located approximately in the position of Buffalo Bayou, with the name "Cibolo," a Spanish-Indian word which, according to dictionaries and the Handbook of Texas, can mean "buffalo."

So fish or bison. Who really knows. But I have my reservations about buffalo fish teeming in the "clear" water