At the close of the civil war the need for a market
for the
surplus cattle of Texas was as urgent as it was general.
There
had been numerous experiments in seeking an outlet,
and there is
authority for the statement that in 1857 Texas cattle
were driven
to Illinois. Eleven years later forty thousand
head were sent to
the mouth of Red River in Louisiana, shipped by boat
to Cairo,
Illinois, and thence inland by rail. Fever resulted,
and the
experiment was never repeated. To the west of
Texas stretched a
forbidding desert, while on the other hand, nearly
every drive to
Louisiana resulted in financial disaster to the drover.
The
republic of Mexico, on the south, afforded no relief,
as it was
likewise overrun with a surplus of its own breeding.
Immediately
before and just after the war, a slight trade had
sprung up in
cattle between eastern points on Red River and Baxter
Springs, in
the southeast corner of Kansas. The route was
perfectly feasible,
being short and entirely within the reservations of
the Choctaws
and Cherokees, civilized Indians. This was the
only route to the
north; for farther to the westward was the home of
the buffalo
and the unconquered, nomadic tribes. A writer
on that day, Mr.
Emerson Hough, an acceptable authority, says:
“The civil war
stopped almost all plans to market the range cattle,
and the
close of that war found the vast grazing lands of
Texas fairly
covered with millions of cattle which had no actual
or
determinate value. They were sorted and branded
and herded after
a fashion, but neither they nor their increase could
be converted
into anything but more cattle. The demand for
a market became
imperative.”
This was the situation at the close of the ’50’s
and meanwhile
there had been no cessation in trying to find an outlet
for the
constantly increasing herds. Civilization was
sweeping westward
by leaps and bounds, and during the latter part of
the ’60’s and
early ’70’s, a market for a very small
percentage of the surplus
was established at Abilene, Ellsworth, and Wichita,
being
confined almost exclusively to the state of Kansas.
But this
outlet, slight as it was, developed the fact that
the
transplanted Texas steer, after a winter in the north,
took on
flesh like a native, and by being double-wintered
became a
marketable beef. It should be understood in this
connection that
Texas, owing to climatic conditions, did not mature
an animal
into marketable form, ready for the butcher’s
block. Yet it was
an exceptional country for breeding, the percentage
of increase
in good years reaching the phenomenal figures of ninety-five
calves to the hundred cows. At this time all
eyes were turned to
the new Northwest, which was then looked upon as the
country that
would at last afford the proper market. Railroads
were pushing
into the domain of the buffalo and Indian; the rush
of emigration
was westward, and the Texan was clamoring for an outlet
for his
cattle. It was written in the stars that the
Indian and buffalo
would have to stand aside.
Philanthropists may deplore the destruction of the
American
bison, yet it was inevitable. Possibly it is
not commonly known
that the general government had under consideration
the sending
of its own troops to destroy the buffalo. Yet
it is a fact, for
the army in the West fully realized the futility of
subjugating
the Indians while they could draw subsistence from
the bison. The
well-mounted aborigines hung on the flanks of the
great buffalo
herds, migrating with them, spurning all treaty obligations,
and
when opportunity offered murdering the advance guard
of
civilization with the fiendish atrocity of carnivorous
animals.
But while the government hesitated, the hide-hunters
and the
railroads solved the problem, and the Indian’s
base of supplies
was destroyed.
Then began the great exodus of Texas cattle.
The red men were
easily confined on reservations, and the vacated country
in the
Northwest became cattle ranges. The government
was in the market
for large quantities of beef with which to feed its
army and
Indian wards. The maximum year’s drive
was reached in 1884, when
nearly eight hundred thousand cattle, in something
over three
hundred herds, bound for the new Northwest, crossed
Red River,
the northern boundary of Texas. Some slight idea
of this exodus
can be gained when one considers that in the above
year about
four thousand men and over thirty thousand horses
were required
on the trail, while the value of the drive ran into
millions. The
history of the world can show no pastoral movement
in comparison.
The Northwest had furnished the market—the
outlet for Texas.
