Miz Megen and Swift Eagle

About the Book

Megen O’Neal Mechem’s early goal in life was to be a good ranch wife to Bit Mechem and a mother to their son, Big Thang. That changed. She found herself a widow running a large ranch and coping with the challenges of the time in what was essentially a man’s world. She did obtain justice for her husband’s murder. Miz Megen brought eight families of Comanches from the reservation to provide ranch hands for her Black foreman, and essentially built a Comanche village, establishing Swift Eagle as the village chief. They defended the ranch from fence cutters, and an attack on her sheep herd. She publicly challenged both men responsible for these actions. The railroad came close by, and she took action to move the Canyon Ranch toward the 20th century.

About the Author

After a career in the Air Force the author turned to writing. He has published a memoir (Number 9: Growing up on a cotton plantation in Northeast Arkansas during the Great depression), a biography (Uncle Hot and Aunt Chur: He survived Iwo Jima and she survived a vicious flashback), and a Novella (Ada: about love, gardening and writing). His long term interest in the west and the civilization along the western frontier resulted in his novel Lil’ Bit and Swift Eagle which set the stage for an alternative to reservation life for the Comanche. His manuscript for Miz Megen and Swift Eagle: Ranching on the Texas Frontier and the Comanche, is a sequel to the earlier work, and carries forward this idea of an alternative to the reservation for the Comanche. This manuscript portrays the development of a devoted ranch wife and mother into a tough widow rancher surviving and operating a large cattle and sheep ranch in a gun toting man’s world circa 1878-91. The author has been married to the former Bonnie Farris of Morehouse, Missouri, since 1952, and they have four sons. They live in San Antonio, Texas.