Cowboys & CowTales

By John Peirce and Sherry Cherryhomes Peirce

Books and the purchase thereof are much like going to the carnival: lots of glitter and flashing lights everywhere. Lots of ways to spend your money. Why this ride? Why this cotton candy, and why this particular coney cheese dog? Hunger amidst all the turmoil of activities, becomes a timely endeavor to extend our exploration - staying longer, riding more rides, eating more, until the clock expires or the wallet runs dry.

Choices in rides, food, friends, automobiles, vacation trips and even leisure entertainment like books, all comes down to …"what's in it for me?" Bang for the buck is a common expression. Value for the dollar is another.

Regardless of the subject matter within these books, our choices are made most commonly by three things: perceived value, perceived enrichment, and perceived enjoyment. Our choice as to what we like is personal. Your likes are unique to you. If you like "damsel in distress" stories, murder mysteries, or exploring the galaxies, this book is not for you! If you like to "feel' the heat waves that cut the air in front of your face, feel comfortable with the dusty accumulation of "grit" across the face, and enjoy the soft sounds of leather rubbing against leather - you just might have found the "lost treasure of Solomon".

One needs to know the environment about which we write. Have been hung up, a foot through the stirrup for even a moment…will launch a vast array of "Lord, help me please" thoughts. Having a mad horned cow that you just roped come back up the rope to you, will make million dollar executive decisions seem like moves on a scrabble board. For all the cussing of mesquite trees referred to, they've saved more than a few cowboy lives. My own life once, involving a bull that I knew better than to rope - but did't do better. That wire caught around his foot seemed important until my rope settled around his neck. Then several things suddenly seemed vastly more important than that bit of wire.

Before I graduated from high school, no less than a dozen things involving wild cattle could have snuffed out a young life. But if you survive the early learning years, you might just make a cowboy.

If I were a great writer, I could create stories involving women, bank heists, murder or Wall Street crime…"If" I knew one blasted thing about them. I know cowboying. I know cattle. I know reproduction and nutrition, all due to college. I used to be able to tie-down wild cattle in a brushy pasture. I used to be able to ride a bronc. Those two words, "used to", have got a lot of men hurt bad. Like the NFL, age is the enemy. Having played in the early years is a whole lot different than playing in the latter years. Getting hurt becomes a primary concern. If one is worried about "getting hurt", you probably will. Age does that to you. Whether you are a football player, or a cowboy, advancing age changes your game. Indestructible becomes destructible. Maybe they had a crowd to please or were just showing off. Maybe they were just being damn fools. Fools and showoffs live on borrowed time among real cow outfits. Little is lost when they are replaced.

Growing up, we kids were likely watched from afar, more than we were aware of, in case we did get into trouble. In the situations I mentioned that was not the case. Only a fool or a young, dumb cowboy who thinks his "shit don't stink" — does these things and more times than not, gets away with it. SURVIVES until the next time. I find in later years that the Good Lord must have had an arm around me - most of the time I was in the saddle. We, my brother and I, grew up in a bygone era. The time of the absolute last of the true cowboys. Though we were kids, we knew 'em. Tried to act like 'em. Wanted to be like 'em.

My dad was a quiet man, mighty quiet. He was a small man. He seemed to prefer a little smaller horse than most. I think maybe (though never announced) that he enjoyed that he could do everything, and mayb

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098313616

John Peirce

John Peirce, DVM, lives in Rockport, Texas, three miles from the site of the first refrigerated packer, the harbor that sailing ships in the past utilized to move locally processed beef toward the cities along the east coast of America. Born a third gener

Book preview

Copyright Pending 2019 John L. Peirce

All rights reserved

ISBN (Print): 978-1-09831-360-9

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-09831-361-6

www.thebeefindustry.com

Getting High

Original painting by Bill Owen, CAA (1942-2013)

18x24, © 1999

www.CowhorseGallery.com

Dedicated to our fathers

The men in our lives who instilled in us the desire to try

Don C. King

Walter (Perk) Peirce

Table of Contents

Introduction

Prelude

Chapter 1: 300 Years of Incubation & Growth

Chapter 2: 1863—1910

Chapter 3: 1910—1940

Chapter 4: 1940—1970

Chapter 5: 1970—Today

Personal Closing

Bibliography

About the Authors

Introduction

Regarding Cowboys: Cowboying is like saluting the flag. Feels good. Feels right. Makes ya proud. Pays about the same.

Sherry and I are both ranch raised—of the old school. We had chores to do before catching the school bus. Small but important things to start the day. Cocking horses (bringing in the loose horse herd for the cowboys to pick their mount for the day) and milking the cow or cows, usually two, were the most common chores of the morning. Our moms might go to the barn in the evening when everyone else was doing chores; but, they watched and socialized. They’d done their chores in the house—keeping the rest of us full and clean. Thank the Good Lord for mothers!

I don’t believe that either of us realized at the time that in our lifetimes, the ranch life we knew and loved would largely go away. Ranches, seemingly, used to be everywhere. Now……you can hardly get out of sight of a house. Pick your own road….look around….it’s houses you’ll see, not cows. Houses and small acreages become depressing mighty quick when you can still remember how it used to look. No question that the environment changes with time. The question becomes: is it for the better? Disagreement? Likely. Speaking for ourselves…..doesn’t look like change is going in the right direction. Spending time writing of how things were, just might be our handhold to recognize that there are still good people out there……they just live a lot closer together than they used to.

Prelude

One should not be surprised at the differences of opinion expressed as to when peoples arrived in North America. Consensus says the very earliest Paleo-Indians probably came here from the Lena Basin of Siberia between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. General consensus says these early arrivals were throwing spears about 12,500 years ago. The bow and arrow showed up about 1200 years ago.

Archeological evidence suggests that a variety of peoples were occupying the area known today as New Mexico as early as 9,200 BC. It’s not to say they weren’t in other places; but rather that our focus is on the areas north of what will become Mexico—Texas in particular. Likely other groups/tribes had similar histories, if known. Facts are hard to come by up until the church and their record keeping Monks became involved. Largely, we don’t know. We find a few hidden stone points that can be dated, but its use during the ancestral history is only estimated. We know something of only a point in time.

We know that as early as the 7th century native peoples were on the banks of the Colorado River farming; in particular, the area where it intersected with the Little Colorado River. Many other ancient cultures have been identified to have existed in many parts of the southwest with varying degrees of success.

The Pueblo culture developed early on; but the time from 1100 AD to 1300 AD is known as the Great Pueblo Period. The Anasazi were initially centered in the four-corners area. They were the ancestors of the modern Pueblo people: Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo. From 1160 to 1340, they were almost exclusively cliff dwellers, having completely abandoned the four corners area by 1300 AD. A known drought occurred around 1275 AD and lasted about twenty-five years that apparently doomed the people known as Anasazi.

Christopher Columbus, in an effort to find a western passage to the Indies, actually landed in the Caribbean Sea—on an unknown (today) island in the Bahamas. In 1501 Merino Vespucci proved that Columbus had landed nowhere near the Indies; but rather had discovered an unknown continent—the New World.

Hernando de Soto, Juan Ponce de Leon and Francisco Coronado, all contributed information regarding this new world; but it was Coronado who traveled through the area of what would become Mexico, and into what was to become the southwestern U.S., exploring and plundering these indigenous peoples and their cultures. From this point forward it seems that the purity of once historically significant peoples began to be traumatized and lost; in varying degrees, some faster than others, but lost! Most commonly because they had something civilized man wanted!

Map of the new world as Columbus found it: fully inhabited.

Over the next three hundred years untold numbers of native Indians were killed by deadly epidemic diseases such as measles and small pox, brought in by the Spanish as they searched new areas. Later, in other locales, the comancheros working with the hostile Indian tribes, also spread deathly diseases in their quest to steal horses, take hostages, and in later years, steal cattle as well. Entire cultures were destroyed.

Spain profited greatly from the metals found in this new world, and became one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world. But, it was not to last. The expeditions of the 16th and 17th centuries expanded claims into what is now known as the southeastern gulf coast states, as well as the entire southwestern portion of the land mass. At this point, however, they actually only had a few isolated outposts. Most of these were in areas today known as Texas, New Mexico and California. Franciscan, Jesuit and Dominican missionaries attempted to convert Indians to Catholicism, integrating them into colonial society.

The most successful of these were in present day New Mexico; largely because the Pueblo Indians were already settled farmers with established settlements near water. Many believe that the very first permanent settlement was Mission San Gabriel, (1598) established by Juan de Onate near what is now known as the San Juan Pueblo. The missions became the lifeline back to Mexico and ultimately, Spain. The economy (for the wealthy, of course) was better than ever in Mexico. Mexico City became larger than any city in Spain except for Madrid.

France would invade Spain in 1808. Within two years both were seriously weakened economically. In 1821 a nearly broke and vastly weakened Spain sold Florida to the Americans. That same year a Mexican rebellion would end Spanish rule in New Spain, now Mexico. Thus Mexico would now begin it’s own history with many tentacles into Texas, New Mexico and California—or at least the areas that would later become these states.

{encyclopedia.com}

Chapter 1

300 Years of Incubation & Growth

(from The Beginning to 1863 )

Overview:

Long, long, long, before Columbus discovered America, thousands upon thousands of native peoples had migrated into the new rich lands of North and South Americas. How long before? Likely, tens of thousands of years.

Over such a long period of time each people became somewhat unique, adjusting to their new home. Each, often, at odds with others. Through these thousands of years, each developed into societies quite unto themselves. They each adopted territories which provided for their needs regarding continuation. Historians believe that there were greater than five hundred different tribes.

Hundreds of generations, broken only by migrations necessitated by factors (perhaps weather) unknown today, survived in a more or less stable fashion. Some rather advanced civilizations, like the Anasazi, completely, mysteriously, disappeared. {The Anasazi: a civilization that arose as early as 1500 BC and apparently survived until somewhere between 1276 and 1299. Their demise likely associated with the historical fact that they lived in an area where no rain had occurred for the last 23 years of their final existence!!!} But most sustained, one way or another through good years and bad, to become stable tribes acclimated to their own environment. These Indian tribes had proved to be uniquely adaptable to living off the land—their land, with few exceptions. This continued until, eventually, civilized (so called) man invaded their territories. The territory as per this story, would become known as Texas.

In 1520 we find the first recorded entries of Spanish Explorers beginning to occasionally traverse within its boundaries. Other than these very few expeditions, only the native Indian tribes would have known it. Historians have shared that today’s Texas was likely called other things by the tribes present at the time; Tejas, Tayshas, Texias, Thecas, Techan, Teysas and even Techas. Existing tribes believed to be present at the time, were the Kiowa (northeastern panhandle), Apache (the fringe areas along what would become the New Mexican border), Jumano and eastern Pueblos (southwestern areas), Comanches (controlling vast areas of central and the central/west), Wichita (north central), Caddo (northeast), Tonkawa (southeast), Karankawa (upper gulf coast), Coahuilteco (south), and Bidal (central southeast).

The Spanish king liked to claim about any property that touched Spain or one of its provinces, i.e. Mexico, which would include Tejas—his own preferred name— next door. There were some Spanish/Indian missions, at the time, scattered about Texas that yielded limited lines of communication with the Province of Mexico. All was well until the Governor of the province of Mexico learned of Cavelier’s activities.

*In 1682, a French Explorer, Rene’ - Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, had canoed down the Ohio River, from Canada (a French possession), to the Mississippi River, and continued south until he reached its mouth. There, in the name of France, he named what he had found: La Louisiane.

*Weddle, Robert S. (October 30, 2011), "La Salle’s Texas Settlement; Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association.

* On a return trip, across the Atlantic, direct from France, in 1686 that stretched into 1687, Cavelier brought with him some 200 Frenchmen, aided by buccaneers. His directed mission was twofold: establish a settlement, and harass the Spanish with whom the King of France was at war. This effort was doomed to failure when they missed the mouth of the Mississippi by 500 miles, landing instead at what would eventually become known as Lavaca Bay, Texas. They tried unsuccessfully to sail up the Lavaca River in an attempt to reach the Mississippi. Even so, the necessary settlement was established. Over the ensuing months Cavelier’s insufferable arrogance, slowly but ultimately, initiated a revolt that resulted in his death. But the area had been properly claimed by France. The boundaries of the specific area claimed were long debatable, especially problematic was the boundary line with Texas.

*David C.G. Sibley; With La Salle Down the Mississippi; Encyclopedia Britannica / 2720

Early Day Cattle Arrivals

A Pictorial History of Texas, H & V Gambler; 1960

The cattle, brought by Cavelier, became the first documented cattle known to have become permanent residents of Texas. But, it should be noted: the first recorded cattle to reach Texas were brought in by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1541. They were brought along to provide food for a large group of over 300 European adventurers and a large group of Indians serving as scouts and herdsmen. Their objective was the legendary cities of gold. The Palo Duro area of today’s Texas panhandle was their targeted area regarding this search. It is believed that some of the cattle may have been lost along the way. Based on a monk’s written notation from 1507, cattle or at least an individual animal was observed. It’s unclear from the writings whether the observation occurred in Texas, New Mexico, or California; and so is rarely mentioned in historical accounts.

Other cattle arrived between 1687 and 1690 when General Alonso de Leon, governor of Coahuila, made four different expeditions across the Rio Grande River into Tejas. His efforts were designed to establish and/or support Spanish/Indian missions. On each occasion he took cattle with him.

DeLeon’s urgent directive was the result of the Governor of Mexico, having heard of the existence of Cavelier. Interestingly enough General de Leon arrived at the sought after settlement the day after Cavelier was killed by members of his own group. The general then burned and destroyed all physical presence of Cavelier’s settlement. Cavelier’s cattle were likely saved.

*De Leon’s diary and letter to the Viceroy in Mexico City urged the construction of additional presidios to bridge the gap between the Coahuila settlements, and field a new Spanish mission at the site of Cavelier’s death.

*Donald D. Chipman, DeLeon, Alonso, accessed June 29, 2018; http://tshaonline.org/online/articles/fde 06.

More Spanish cattle arrived with Domingo Teran los Rios who in 1691 was made Governor of the newly formed Province of Tejas.

In June of 1715 French trader Louis Juchereau de St. Denis remarked about the abundance of cows, bulls, horses and mares, numbering into the thousands. *He had been commissioned by the Governor of Louisiana to open a trade route to Mexico; and made this observation concerning what he saw in his attempted crossing of Tejas. He was actually imprisoned twice by the Spanish, and told not to return, without having completed his assigned mission.

*Winston De Ville, Jauchereau DeSaint-Denis, Louis, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, Universit’e Laval, 2003-, accessed June 29, 2018

In 1731 the Spanish Mission of Espiritu Santo, near Goliad, claimed forty thousand head of cattle, most of which were unbranded. The Apaches, Comanches and Lipans were recorded to have driven off twenty-two thousand head in a single raid.

By 1821 increasing numbers of settlers from the east began entering Texas. The Opelousas Trail was to become a virtual highway, created by people moving west through Louisiana in particular, seeking opportunity. Most were farmer-stockmen. Some brought along a few British breeds of cattle. Thus, an unintentional blending of the breeds (British and Spanish) in Texas was to be expected.

Early Vaquero at Work

Cowboys, by W. Forbis; 1972

The cattlemen of Tejas learned much from the Mexican vaqueros and became very adept at dealing with wild cattle. Markets, however, were always somewhere else. So, cattle had to be moved to those markets. Reaching a market was a long and arduous task—some directions more arduous than others. The best markets, according to local lore, seemed always to be the hardest to get to.

In 1838 James Taylor White took a herd over the Opelousas Trail (from southeast Texas to New Orleans) through the bayou country of the Mississippi River. Many additional historical mentions involve moving Texas cattle to New Orleans as early in the early 1840’s. Large droves of cattle arrived there by 1845. Movement of cattle even down the Opelousas Trail was never easy. Cattle were always wanting to wander off or simply bolt away from all the activities. Then, once into wild portions of land they became difficult to turn back, due to the trees and abundant standing water typical of the environment. Moving cattle to distant markets anywhere, was never easy—always challenging.

Political turmoil through the 1840’s and 1850’s had already created massive movements of cattle in all directions. In 1851 Captain Richard Ware complained of losing his stock due to their commingling with the wild stock in the area of the Brazos River.

T.J. Trimmier, Washington County, Texas, drove five hundred head to market in California in 1844, and sold them for the unbelievable price of one hundred dollars a piece. In Texas, they would have been worth somewhere between five and fifteen dollars a head.

The late 1840’s saw a steady increase in cattle movements toward Missouri. They used the same trail that many settlers were using coming into Texas on the Texas Trail. As more and more cattle moved in the opposite direction, the cattlemen, at least, called it the Kansas Trail. Slowly the trail portion between Texas and Kansas City, in particular, ultimately became known as the "Shawnee Trail." It started around Austin, wove through Waco and Dallas crossing the Red River and toward the southeast corner of Kansas. After crossing into Missouri, they had several options besides Kansas City: St. Louis, Sedalia, Springfield, St. Joseph, and even Chicago. In 1854 alone some fifty thousand head of cattle moved along the Shawnee Trail into Missouri and Illinois. Average prices ranged from $2.50 to $2.75 per hundred-weight. By 1855 the same cattle were bringing $15 to $20 per head.

Beginning in 1848 steam powered boats were picking up cattle at Texas ports, including Rockport/Fulton, which at one time, had as many as eight packing houses, including the very first mechanically refrigerated meat packinghouse. Texas beef was exported from there to many distant locations including New Orleans, and up along the eastern coast of the U.S. England, too, became a marketing destination.

New York received Texas cattle in 1853 that had been fed a while in Illinois. They brought $80 per head. While most of these cattle were shipped by rail from Illinois, some few were actually trailed all the way to New York.

James Campbell, San Antonio, Texas, took herds to California in 1853 and 1854. He was told at the Ft. Yuma crossing that more than ten thousand Texas cattle had already crossed that season. Their route traversed New Mexico and Arizona, crossing the river just south of Henderson, Nevada, and westward into California.

In 1856 local papers reported that over thirty-two thousand beeves crossed the Sabine River into Louisiana. Most were headed for New Orleans on the hoof.

{Origin of the term maverick: In 1856 Samuel A. Maverick (one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence) sold his land, cattle and brand to a local rancher named A. Touting Beauregard, brother of the famous general. Beauregard’s men ranged over several counties looking for all of Maverick’s cattle. Whenever they came upon unbranded cattle, they claimed them as Maverick’s and applied his brand. Thus an unbranded animal came to be called a maverick.}

Kansas City was the largest stock market on the western frontier. As many as fifteen thousand were sold there in a single week. In 1857 they sold fifty-two thousand head of cattle. In 1858 they sold forty-eight thousand head of cattle. It was estimated that two-thirds of all these cattle had originated from Texas.

In 1858 Oliver Loving and John Durkee made a cattle drive to Quincy, Illinois. In 1859 Loving trailed cattle to St. Joseph and then shipped them on by rail to Chicago. In 1860 he trailed a herd to Colorado, over wintering them on grass near Pueblo. He sold them in Denver in the spring of 1861. Long trails to market sometimes included the winter months. If so, they would previously have located over-wintering grounds, i.e. protected areas with plenty of grass for the cattle during the winter.

Longhorns grazing to a new location

During the early 1860’s there was significant unrest related to Texas cattle carrying tick fever, which significantly reduced the numbers of cattle reaching Missouri. The rumblings of war additionally delayed and sometimes restricted cattle movements east. The Civil War would prove to play havoc with marketing Texas cattle, as well as generally destroying life as it had been. Yankee carpetbaggers who controlled the southern states after the war, left an indelible mark of theft and personal gain that may never be erased.

Late in 1862 the Confederate Congress exempted from the military draft a limited number of stockmen. In February of 1863, the Confederate commissary agent offered Texas cowmen $25 a head for cattle. Though some limited cattle movements out of the state continued, it soon slowed to a trickle. The war took its dreadful toll. Each year of fighting and death was worse than the year before. No one was unaffected. The after-effects would last many lifetimes.

Birth of early Ranching:

Early on, Texas was full of wild cattle, yet had few fence lines and fewer corrals capable of handling them. Though our focus will be on Panhandle ranches, it will include limited mention of other north Texas ranches. East Texas was however the birthplace of a serious population of cattle that would gradually spread more toward the west. Serious numbers of branded cattle were located in southeast Texas. Hard to recognize today, but Harris County (Houston) once had more cattle than any other county in Texas, and remained that way for many years. But as more and more people came, cattle operations were pushed farther and farther west. The further west they (people and cattle) encroached, the more they impacted existing Indian tribes that weren’t so friendly. The tribes further west generally seemed much more hostile to the white man’s encroachment into their personal areas. They were far from ready to remove themselves—giving up their land. Though some very sizable ranches came into existence during the 1850’s, they found that it was a long, hard fight to obtain control, and then maintain control over their desired areas. The King Ranch is one that was begun in that time period,1853, principally among the Coahuilteco Indians.

Regarding the Panhandle, Charles Goodnight is considered to have been the first to establish ranching operations. I would hasten to add that he was only just barely first, as many more followed quickly.

Texans often fail to remember that other areas (principally what was to become New Mexico) bordering Mexico, at the time, had been settled regarding serious cattle and sheep operations, long before serious beef operations were initiated in Texas. So as we talk of the birth of the cattle industry in Texas, be aware that the areas now known as New Mexico in particular, and in a more limited fashion, Arizona, and southern California, had already grown into a solid and hardy stockman’s environment, though perhaps seriously lacking in real markets for their beef, except for local use. They were adults during our developmental years as children in a cattle industry that was just taking form in Texas. The majority of cattle and their movements to market, began post Texas Revolution. Then explosions of cattle movement to market began after the Civil War. Developing Texas ranching operations of size in southeast and central Texas were just assuming definite shape during the early 1850’s. The movement then began to push outward into previously held Indian territories, moving farther and farther north and west. The years of the Civil War limited everything but Yankee encroachment. However, when focusing on the Panhandle, in particular, cattle and horse activities would have have been considered migratory in nature, until the arrival of ranches, led by Goodnight. Meaning that a large portion of that movement involved theft by someone—usually, Indians; or, seasonal grazing by sheep that would be returning back to New Mexico.

*In 1852 Captain R.B. Marcy crossed the Panhandle from east to west, explored Palo Duro Canyon, and claimed the distinction of being the first to thoroughly explore the area credited as the source of the Red River.

*H. Bailey Carroll, Texan-Santa Fe Expedition .

Several people crossed the area (panhandle) involved with commercial exploits between Louisiana and Santa Fe. Josiah Gregg in particular, in 1831, and again in 1839. Josiah Gregg was likely the foremost historian of the Santa Fe Trade—perhaps as early as 1822 (pack trains); certainly later with twenty-three, four-wheel carts.

"Commerce of the Prairies, XIX, 180-81

{The Santa Fe Trail had long been the primary highway west. It began in Franklin Missouri, moved westward through Independence (coincidentally, where one also could additionally begin the Oregon Trail route or the California Trail route); then on into Kansas, passing near Olathe, Great Bend, Dodge City and Garden City. The trail split southwest of Garden City with options either over the mountains in the Raton, New Mexico area, or through Boise City, Oklahoma and Clayton, New Mexico; with both ending in Santa Fe, New Mexico.}

Gregg, almost prophetically said: