During his sojourn with them Cabeza de Vaca went along. He describes how the Indians would dig a hole in the ground, squeeze the fruit out of tunas into the hole, and then swill up big drinks of it. Long ago the Indians vanished, but prickly pears still flourish over millions of acres of land. The prickly pear is one of the characteristic growths of the Southwest. Strangers look at it and regard it as odd.
Painters look at it in bloom or in fruit and strive to capture the colors.
During the droughts ranchmen singe the thorns off its leaves, using a flame-throwing machine, easily portable by a man on foot, fed from a small gasoline tank. From Central Texas on down into Central America prickly pear acts as host for the infinitesimal insect called cochineal, which supplied the famous dyes of Aztec civilization. A long essay might be written on prickly pear. It weaves in and out of many chronicles of the Southwest. A. J. Sowell, one of the best chroniclers of Texas pioneer life, tells in his Life of Bigfoot Wallace how that picturesque ranger captain once took one of his wounded men away from an army surgeon because the surgeon would not apply prickly pear poultices to the wound.