Mike Kearby's Texas

Sourdough Biscuits

2012-01-16T16:05:00.000-06:00

Did You Know? Trail Drive Cooks made their sourdough biscuits without yeast. At the beginning of a drive, the cook would mix up a batch of batter and let it ferment in a jar for a day or so. The sourdoughs were made each morning by adding soda and lard to this fermented batter and then cooked between hot coals in a Dutch oven. The amount of batter removed each day to make the sourdoughs was replaced with more flour, salt, and water so that the fermenting process was ongoing during the drive. Trail hands often joked that a cook who made the desirable "light" doughs was always adding blueberries or raisins to their batter just to keep the gnats from flying off with them!

The critical factor in making light sourdoughs was calculating how many coals were placed below and above the oven. Here's an easy calculation when cooking with a Dutch oven. Figure 2 coals per inch of oven diameter. Then place 2 more coals than the oven size on the lid, and place 2 less than the oven size under it.

So if you are cooking in a 12-inch oven, you use a total of 24 coals. For the number of coals underneath, you would subtract 2 from 12 for 10 coals and on top: 12+2 for 14 coals.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2012

Cowboy Twitter

2012-01-09T08:34:00.000-06:00

Did you Know? Even though Jack Dorsey is credited with inventing Twitter and "Tweeting" in 2006, Texas Cowboys were using 140 character sentences way before Dorsey's time.

It has been said that a Texas Cowboy possessed the rare talent for "saying a whole lot in a mighty few words." Or, "He don't use all of his kindlin' to get a fire started." Here are a few of my favorite Cowboy sayings.

"A winks is as good as a nod to a blind mule."

"Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule, or a cook."

"Man's the only critter who can be skinned more than once."

"The man who straddles the fence usually has a sore crotch."

"Polishin' your pants on saddle leather don't make you a rider."

"A change of pasture sometimes makes the calf fatter."

"If the saddle creaks, it's not paid for."

"The bigger the mouth, the better it looks shut."

And my all-time favorite:

"Nobody ever drowned himself in sweat."

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2012

Texas Artist / Illustrator: Jack Jackson

2012-01-04T06:44:00.000-06:00

Did you Know? Artist/cartoonist, Jack Jackson, (1941-2006) was born in Pandora, Texas (Pop 200) but migrated to Austin in the early sixties where he landed a job at the Texas Ranger humour magazine. Jackson became friends there with Gilbert Shelton. (Another 60's icon) and the two soon found themselves heading off to San Francisco to join the "flower power" revolution. In 1969, Jackson, Shelton, and two other Texans, Fred Todd, and Dave Moriaty bought an offset printing press and started the infamous, Rip Off Press, the original underground comix publisher. (Photo-Jack Jackson)

The press published cult favorites from Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to R. Crumb's Comix and Stories. But history and Texas were never far from Jackson's mind and later set out to produce works of Texas in "real historical terms." Jackson's graphic novels include stories of Juan Seguin and other Mexican-American heroes of the Texas revolution - Los Tejanos; the Karankawa tribe's massacre of the Spaniards - God's Bosom; Sam Houston's time among the natives -Indian Lover: Sam Houston & the Cherokees; the way the Mexicans remember the Alamo -The Alamo: An Epic Told From Both Sides. And my personal favorite: Comanche Moon -The Story of Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker.

It must also be noted that Jackson is the inspiration behind Texas Tales Illustrated, produced by myself and fellow Mineral Wells native, Mack White.

Black-Eyed Peas on New Year's Day

2011-12-31T08:26:00.001-06:00

Did you Know? Some believe that the practice of eating black-eyed peas for good luck in the upcoming year dates back to the Civil War. During Sherman's famous march through Georgia, it is widely believed that the General ignored the fields of black-eyed peas while destroying other crops as the pea was a major food staple of plantation slaves. As a result, the black-eyed pea also became a major food source for those left in the wake of the Northern troops.

Black-eyed peas were farmed in China and India in pre-historic times and often eaten by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Records show that the peas were transported from West Africa to the West Indies by slaves as early as 1674. The USDA reports that the peas, (which are acutally legumes) are high in potassium, iron, and fiber. A half cup serving is the same as one ounce of lean meat.

Another explanation of the tradition says that black-eyed peas were all southern slaves had to celebrate with on the first day of January, 1863...the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. From that time on,the peas were always eaten on January 1. Today, black-eyed peas are traditionally served with collard, mustard or turnip greens, pork, and cornbread. And don't forget...each pea represents one day of good luck in the new year, so one must eat 365 peas on New Year's Day to ensure prosperity for the entire year!

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Did You Know? ~The Rio Grande

2011-12-28T09:29:00.001-06:00

Did you Know? The Rio Grande forms at the base of Canby Mountain, just east of the Continental Divide in Colorado? The river has been known by many names throughout its discovery. The Spanish names are Rio Bravo (wild or bold river) or Rio Bravo del Norte. (wild river of the north) The Keres Pueblo People's name for the Rio Grande was mets'ichi chena or Big River, while the Tiwa Pueblo People's called it paslápaane which also meant Big River. The Navajo People knew it as Tó Baʼáadi (Female River because of its southerly flow - South is female in Navajo cosmology) Other names include: Río de Nuestra Señora from the Hernando de Alvarado expedition, the Río de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the Río Guadalquivir by the Agustín Rodríguez expedition, and Río Turbio (turbulent river) by merchant, Antonio de Espejo. Juan de Oñate is generally regarded as the first to call it the Rio Grande, when he reached its banks near the future site of El Paso in 1598. To call the river the Rio grande River is redundant as the word Rio means river in Spanish! (Photo -The Rio Grande near Eagle Pass)

The Great Western

2011-12-13T08:15:00.000-06:00

Did you Know? The Great Western was a nickname given to El Paso Prairie Nymph, (Prostitute) Sarah Bowman. Sarah, who was born Sarah Knight, also used the last names of Bourjette, Bourget, Bourdette, Davis, Bowman, Bowman-Phillips, Borginnis, and Foyle. She came to be known as the Great Western for her height. (Sarah stood six feet two inches tall) The nickname is thought to be a reference to a contemporary steamship of the day also noted for its size. RIP Ford wrote of Sarah, "she has the reputation of being something of the roughest fighter on the Rio Grande and was approached in a polite, if not humble, manner." During the Mexican War it is reported that Sarah offered to wade the Colorado and whip the enemy by herself if Gen. Worth would simply lend her a stout pair of tongs. Sarah is best known for opening a hotel in Saltillo, (The American House) , that she converted to a hospital. During the battle of Buena Vista, Sarah not only rescued wounded soldiers from the battlefield. but also carried them back to her hotel / hospital!

Did You Know 3?

2011-11-16T14:54:00.000-06:00

Did you Know? The original county seat of Hardeman County, Texas was Margaret. However in the mid-1880's, the Fort Worth and Denver Railway surveyed the area, and discovered that the town of Margaret was across the Pease River and away from where they wanted their rail lines to run. The rail road officials subsequently laid out the town of Quanah, named after Comache Chief, Quanah Parker. A special election was called, but before the vote, it was established that one could become a resident residency simply by having their laundry done in any Hardeman County town for six weeks. Amazingly, the railroad crews all became voting citizens just in time to vote Quanah as the new county seat! [Photo - Chief Quanah Parker visits Quanah on July 4, 1896. The Fort Worth and Denver Railway station is at the left.]

Did you Know? HideTown was a bufflo hunter's trading post in present day Wheeler County, Texas. The town was originally named for the fact that residents used buffalo hides to construct their dwellings. Later, the town camed to be called, Sweetwater. In 1876, Sweetwater was home to the infamous Sweetwater Shoot-out in which Bat Masterson shot and killed Sgt. Melvin King after King had killed local prairie nymph, Mollie Brennan. After the town applied for a Post Office in 1879, it learned the name Sweetwater was already being used in Nolan County, Texas. Legend holds that the town fathers dispatched a rider to nearby Fort Elliot (located at the time in the Eastern Panhandle of Texas) to find out an Indian word that meant Sweet Water. A Cheyenne scout supposedly offered up Mobeetie as the translation. Some insisted at the time that the Cheyenne had the last laugh on the "Buffalo Hunters" and their town as Mobeetie actually meant Buffalo Dung!

Did You Know 2?

2011-11-09T12:10:00.003-06:00

Did you Know? Even though our current Governor portrays it otherwise, the governor for the State of Texas has very little power within the halls of government. The real power resides in the office of Lt. Governor. The reasons go back to reconstruction and the reconstruction governors who held office after the war. The most notable was Edmund Jackson Davis. Davis, a radical Republican during Reconstruction, was controversial to say the least for the times. Davis held a commitment to the civil rights of black people. As such, Davis was naturally despised by racists. Davis was defeated by the Democrat Richard Coke in his bid for reelection. Davis contested the results and refused to leave office. As a result, Governor-elect Coke was forced to enter the Capitol by a ladder propped up against a second floor window. Davis called on President Grant for help but Grant refused to send troops to Texas. Davis left the capital in January 1874. On his way out, he locked the door to the governor's office and took the key with him. Coke entered his office with the help of an axe. In 1875 Texans held a constitutional convention to replace the Constitution of 1869. In 1876 Texans adopted the state's present constitution which was designed to prevent any possibility of having the changes forced on them by reconstruction, such as the power wielded by reconstruction governors, ever happen again. The Governor's duties, expanded during the Davis term were limited and dispersed among a number of independently elected offices who did not have to share the same political affliation as the governor. Republican's would not hold the Governor's office until almost a century later when Bill Clements was elected in 1978! Photo - Edmund Jackson Davis.

Did you Know? In 1620, María de Jesús de Agreda, a Franciscan nun, also known as the Lady in Blue (The nuns' habit was brown with an outer cloak of coarse blue) would often lapse into a trance state in which she believed she was transported to far away lands where she taught the Gospel to wild pagan-like people. In July 1629, a group of Jumano Indians from West Texas appeared at the Franciscan Co...nvent of Isleta. (Near present day Albuquerque) The Jumanos had a basic understanding of Christianity, and were seeking more religious teaching. When asked how they learned about the religion, they responded that, "The Woman in Blue had taught them." Photo - María de Jesús de Agreda, The Lady in Blue.

Did you know? Balmorhea, Texas got its name as a result of a disagreement by the town's four developers. The men, Mr. BALcome, Mr. MORrow, and the RHEA were on a train when the argument broke out. A quick thinking conductor suggested using the amalgam. The town is best known for sharing its name with the Balmorhea State Park, home to the San Solomon Springs even though the springs are located 4 miles south of Balmorhea in Toyahvale. The springs, a little known Texas treasure, flow between 22 and 29 million gallons of water each day. The park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1936 and 1941.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Did You Know?

2011-11-04T07:06:00.000-05:00

Did you know? James Britton "Brit" Bailey, a Kentucky legislator, arrived in Texas in 1821 after being investigated for forgery. Brit entered Stephen F. Austin's Brazoria Colony as a member of the Old 300. He later fought at the Battle of Jones Creek in 1824 and the Battle of Velasco in 1833. However, Brit never gained the respectability he so coveted in Texas. He died in 1832, an alcoholic reclus...e by some accounts. His last request was that he be buried standing up, his gun on his shoulder and a jug of whiskey at his feet. It was reported that Brit said of this strange request - "Bury me standing up, facing west, so no one can look down on me even in death." After his death, residents reported seeing a ball of light near his grave site. many believe the eerie light, known as Bailey's Light, was Brit's ghost in search of more whiskey!

Did you know? John Lang Sinclair of Boerne, Texas composed: The Eyes of Texas in 1903. Sinclair, a student at the University of Texas wrote the song on a piece of scrap laundry paper at the request of his roommate, then band director, Lewis Johnson. Johnson needed a lively tune for a minstrel show to benefit the University track team. Sung to the tune of, I've Been Working on the Railroad, Sinclai...r's title lyrics were taken from UT President, Dr. William Lamdin Prather. Prather constantly warned students around campus that, "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You." The UT Student's Association copyrighted the song in 1936 as the official school song. Today many still mistake the song for the official state song!

Did you know? Sophia Porter, who participated in the Runaway Scrape, claims to have arrived at San Jacinto after the battle and nursed Sam Houston's badly wounded ankle. She married Holland Coffee in 1839. The newlyweds traveled north to the Red River and Coffee's Station. They established Glen Eden Plantation and the town of Preston. During the Civil War, she earned the nickname, the Confederate ...Paul Revere, for her ride across the Red River to warn Col. James G. Bourland, that Northern troops were at her plantation and searching for him. Legend says that Sophia plied the Northern troops with wine to keep them inebriated while she rode to warn Bourland. Today, Glen Eden sits at the bottom of Lake Texoma!

Texas Tales

2011-10-27T08:53:00.000-05:00

The term Filibuster was originally used by the English to describe Sea Pirates. Later the French changed the word to Filibustier to describe a Land Pirate or one who acquired land illegally from a country. The Spanish used the term to describe illegal immigrants from the U.S. who tried to steal Texas from the Spanish crown. 15 Years after the Mexican Revolution, Santa Anna used Fillibuster to describe the Texas Revolutionaries - as Land Pirates could legally be put to death by El Presidente.

In the 1880's, a Van Horn rancher, A.S. Goynes suggested the town slogan of: "Van Horn is so Healthy, We had to Shoot a Man to Start a Cemetery." The slogan was placed on a sign and prominently featured inside the Clark Hotel. A short time after that, Goynes was shot and killed by his brother-in-law in a feud over a watering hole, thus becoming the first man buried in the Van Horn cemetery!

Sam Houston was the only American who held the title, General in two armies, The Tennessee Militia and The Texian Army. He was also a governor of two states, Tennessee and Texas. And Sam was also the only American to be a President, Senator, and Congressman of another country-The Republic of Texas!

Conrad Hilton came to Texas in 1919 intent on buying a bank in one of the booming oil towns of Breckenridge or Cisco. Turned down in Breckenridge, Hilton cut a deal in Cisco only to see the bank owner renege on their agreement. Tired from his dealings, Hilton tried to rent a room at the only hotel in Cisco but was told, "We're full up." The hotel owner, H.L. Mobley did confide that the rooms were rented three times a day and to come back in 8 hours. Hilton later purchased the hotel, and thus began the Hilton Hotel chain! (Photo - Mobley Hotel. Conrad Hilton's First Hotel.)

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University

2011-10-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

I was honored recently to have my "story" included in the Oral History Section of the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University. Following is a transcript of one of my talks included in the collection. The article is my promotion of reading and teachers.

Education and Reading.

Our earliest ancestors used the spoken word, and much later, the written word as a means of sharing thoughts, fe...elings, and ideas with one another, a communion of language celebrated by denizens of any locale.

The spoken or written word also serves an evolutionary benefit…words evoke images. When the brain changes a word into a visual representation…good, healthy, things happen. The electrical impulse that sparks from the transmutation of word to picture is equivalent to running several feet at full speed. This brain exercise is specific to the short-term memory centers in the brain. Short-term memory is the function affected by diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia.

Recent studies show that exercising our short-term memory centers with actions such as reading, working crossword puzzles, or performing other problem-solving activities energizes our brain. In addition, as with any exercise, the muscle or organ exercised becomes larger and stronger. In the brain, the synaptic highway, the roadway for incoming and outgoing information, can change from a two-lane country road into a sixteen-lane freeway over time simply by transforming words into a pictures. Exercising the brain provides our kids with the ability to process incoming and outgoing information quickly and effortlessly.

Sounds simple, but the nation's school systems have become the latest victims of government intervention. For unfathomable reasons, politicians historically believe that the welfare of its citizenry is too valuable to be left in the citizen's own hands, that only in the far-away centers of government can local decisions be made intelligently. As a result, the local community no longer controls its own schools and the manner of education in which its children will be taught leaving each ISD with the “test.” The "test" not only measures students, but teachers and schools as well. Monies and jobs are on the line with the “test.” It is little wonder that school administrators quickly figured out, that the best way to meet the state standard was to abandon the process of education and “teach the test.”

Students were (and are) learning only what the State would have them learn. This is a very scary concept. Children continue to be drilled to the answers on the test and not allowed to step outside the State’s learning dictate. We have, with the 'test" effectively created “parrots” that can mimic and regurgitate the State’s test. Simple activities such as daydreaming and play, both vital in the development of imagination, have been put aside. And remember, imagination is the fertile ground for invention…

To add to the child's burden, the system even dictates what books children should read. To ensure that the students read these books, only "those" books on "the" list award grade points.

As a result, reading has become drudgery. And far-away government remains ignorant to a basic tenet of learning, that is, children cannot be forced to learn. Oh, they will perform as commanded during their school time, but once they exit the system and achieve free choice, the majority will abandon reading as their only association with the concept is through pressure. Plato said it best with his quote: compulsory learning never sticks in the mind.

Pre-test educators realized that not all children walked or talked at the same age and not all students learn the same things at the same age. The education system of that age promoted reading and writing, two basics for all future educational development. Today, once again, we promote reading by “lists” of what the child should read. When in reality, reading, the basis of all learning, should be about enjoyment. Students should be encouraged to read about things they like. Once a student finds enjoyment in reading, they will read more. The more a child reads, the more intelligent they will become.

I understand the need for required reading, but the curriculum should also provide one hour per school day for fun reading as well. Reading is and will always be – about fun. What "you" the reader likes to read, what makes "you" the reader think, what inspires "you" the reader to pursue more information, in short...reading should always be pleasantly entertaining.

Think of the terminology that adults use to prepare for a reading experience. Phrases like, I'm going to curl up with a good book, I'm going to slip into some comfy clothes and read, I'm going to sit beside a nice fire and read. All the terms associate reading with comfort. Why is it then that we do not allow our kids as students that same level of comfort?

Reading time should encourage our kids to "get comfy." If that means reading from their backs on the floor, or sitting in a bean-bag chair, or relaxing on a couch, then so be it. The end value of reading for fun is the student naturally "learns" or "becomes smarter." Reading teaches a child how to write and a child, who can read and write…well, is more apt to enjoy success in subjects such as math and science.

Reading what the child prefers promotes a healthy brain and allows the child to associate reading as a fun activity and not as a task. And it matters not what the reader decides to read, whether it be a graphic novel or a celebrity expose. For the scientific community understands that all readers eventually move up the reading ladder. When a child lifts weights during a physical education class, if the muscle group being exercised finds the weight load too easy, it will tell the lifter to add more weight. The brain does very much the same thing when it finds the reading material too simple; telling the child it is time "add more reading weight," which results in incremental reading advancement.

One of the great accomplishments of reading for fun is the sense of fulfillment in "learning," gathering one's own information and the joy that goes along with finding that information. Our schools should always be places where students learn because they want to, not because they have too.

To do so ensures that our children will become not only lifelong readers, but lifelong learners as well.
Education and Reading Copyright 2010 Mike Kearby

Historical Novels Review of Texas Tales Illustrated ~ The Revolution

2011-08-23T15:19:00.000-05:00

Here's what Eileen Charbonneau had to say about Texas Tales Illustrated ~ The Revolution in the August Edition of Historical Novels Review:

TEXAS TALES ILLUSTRATED: “The Revolution”
Mike Kearby, illustrated by Mack White, TCU Press, 2011, $6.95, pb, 32pp, 9780875654393

Two-thirds graphic novel and one-third background material, “The Revolution” tells the story of events between October 1835 and December 1836 in the struggle to form the Republic of Texas. The battle at the Alamo is told through the viewpoint of eight-year-old Enrique Esparza, taking refuge, and fifteen-year-old William King, who fights alongside its defenders. Warfare rages on as young Dilue Rose molds bullets for her uncle. Francisca Alavez, the wife of a Mexican officer, saves a young man from a massacre. Sam Houston overcomes setbacks to defeat the Mexican army, and the Treaties of Velasco conclude the account.

The storytelling in both word and image is vivid, stark, and compelling. It neither romanticizes nor glosses over this violent road of Texas history. But there’s so much incident in this single illustrated volume, it may lead to a crammed-in reading experience. The supplemental section includes a timeline, battlefield map, account of the Texas Independence Convention and content of the Treaties of Velasco. The narratives here seem to be written for an older audience. (Ages 8 to 12)

Dorchester Publishing Releases The Taken in Trade Paper

2011-08-15T09:09:00.000-05:00

With the release of my novel, The Taken, read what RoundUp Magazine had to say about the novel:

The Taken. Dorchester. 277 pps., ISBN 978-1428511675.

Mike Kearby presents his readers with an Indian captivity story that immediately feels familiar, yet fresh. On an ill-fated trip to retrieve an errant mule, James Kensing takes his five-year-old brother,... William Barrett Kensing, with him, much to their mother’s concern. William Barrett is taken by a Kwahadi raiding party. A search for the boy turns up nothing, and time passes. On her deathbed, James’ mother makes him promise to find the boy, no matter what. There is no way he can tell her no, as he feels wholly responsible for the loss of the boy. With the stage set, Kearby uses a large pallet, spanning time and characters—historical (Quanah Parker) and fictional—as the two boys work their way back together; one a tracker bent on redemption, and the other learning how to be something other than he truly is. This is a quick-paced novel, and offers a depth of emotion not often found in pure genre novels. The author extended his reach, and was, for the most part successful, offering a satisfying and compelling read that is a welcome addition to the shelf of Indian captivity stories.—Larry D. Sweazy

Texas Tales Illustrated Reviewed

2011-07-13T17:18:00.000-05:00

The Star - The magazine of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum recently reviewed Texas Tales Illustrated ~ The Revolution in its summer issue. Read the interview below...

A Hundred Miles to Water Honored

2011-07-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

July 1, 2011 – A Hundred Miles to Water has been honored as a recipient of the 2011 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Best Adult Fiction.

The Will Rogers Medallion Award is presented each year to those books that represent an Outstanding Achievement in the publishing of Western Literature. They are books that exemplify outstanding excellence in content and design with an enduring quality that preserves and celebrates the history and spirit of the West and the memory of Will Rogers.

A big Texas Thank You to the selection committee as well as all of my fans and readers!

Colonial Horses in the New World - Part 1

2011-06-14T15:49:00.000-05:00

After 1492, on subsequent voyages to the new world, the Spanish carried cattle, pigs, and horses on their ships. The horses would play an instrumental role in the Spanish plans for the Americas as the Spanish, fresh off their conquest of the Jews and Moors of Southern Spain, viewed this new world as non-Christian kingdoms, filled with savages that required conquering before assimilation into Spanish culture, specifically Catholicism. The group of Spaniard adventurers effecting the annexing of land and people would be the Conquistadores, and the conquistadores required horses that could traverse mountains, cross deserts, and survive the tropical jungles of the Americas. The horse would inspire awe and fear into the native peoples as prior to the Spanish landings, there were no horses in the new world (the Americas had probably been without the horse since the last ice age) The horses the Spanish brought to the new world were from North Africa: (the Barb) and the Iberian Peninsula: (the Andalusian, the Sorria, and the now extinct Jennet.). These horses, while serving the conquistadores splendidly, would later be bred carefully across lines to produce an animal that would become legendary and forever known as the Spanish or Indian pony.

The original presidio at Santa Fe, New Mexico was built to protect the Mission de San Miguel. One of the functions of the mission was the breeding and raising of Spanish horses. True to the Spanish system of the period, the Spanish offered native people of the area, the Pueblo, protection from their traditional enemy, the Apache. The Pueblo requirement was that they become Mission Indians (slaves). In the mid-17th century, a severe drought in the Santa Fe area helped the Pueblos to agree. Though barred from riding or owning horses, the Pueblos quickly learned how to breed and care for equine. And in 1680, with the drought over and tired of their Spanish taskmasters, the Pueblo revolted and in the process killed or drove all of the Spanish from the area. The Spanish that survived, departed quickly, and in the process left behind over 200 horses. The agricultural Peublos had no real use for horses, but their warlike enemy, the Apache saw some value in the animal. In the pre-horse days of the Americas, women and dogs moved the band or tribe. And when the Apache first obtained the horse in any numbers, they saw in the animal, a beast that could move many possessions by travois. Some accounts say the Apache actaully referred to the horse as the "Big Dog." The Apache, who were also toying with growing corn and become a fixed agri-society, never bothered early on to learn how to breed the animal or to hunt or fight from the animal's back like Plains Indians later would. Instead, they used the horse more as a conveyance. For several decades, the Apache would ride their horses to an enemy camp, dismount, fight, and then ride the animal back home.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 9

2011-06-14T15:45:00.000-05:00

A Dodge City legend recalls the following: An intoxicated Texas cowboy boards a Santa Fe train in 1878. When the conductor calls for tickets, the cowboy answers with, "Ain't got none." The conductor then asks, "Well, where are you headed?" To which the cowboy replies, "Hell." The conductor straightens his coat and says, "All right, give me 4 bits and get off at Dodge City." Perhaps one of the most famous incidents in the town's cattle heyday involved the killing of singer Dora Hand. (who performed under the name of Fannie Keenan) Hand was staying the back room of a two-room set-up used by Dodge City Mayor Dog Kelly. Kelly was away at Fort Dodge at the time and his would-be assassin, a Texas cowboy by the name of James Kenedy (son of the powerful Texas cattleman Capt. Miflin Kenedy) was ignorant of that fact. On October 4, 1878, The younger Kenedy, who had a brawl weeks earlier with Kelly, fired four shots into the mayor's room missing

another performer, Fannie Garrettson by inches but penetrating the plaster wall and killing Hand. A posse was immediately assembled and possibly - no greater posse was ever put together. The group included Bat Masterson, Charlie Bassett, Wyatt Earp, William Duffey, and Bill Tilghman. Kenedy was caught outside of Meade, Kansas, and wounded in the shoulder during the capture. He was later acquited on insufficient evidence. Rumors persisted from that time forward that Miflin Kenedy had paid off officials for his son's release. It should also be noted that Miflin Kenedy sold thousands of Longhorns in Dodge City during this time and his "money" was much appreciated by the Dodge City businesses.

In the winter of 1877, in Frio County, Texas a rancher by the name of Kerr discovered one of his mama cows dead in a mud hole. Beside the dead cow was a black and white bull calf. Kerr hauled the calf home to his wife who promptly took to the orphan and raised him by the name- Sancho (pet in Spanish). Before long, the wife was feeding Sancho tamale shucks, and later whole tamales. Sancho seemed to like both the meat and the chile pepper seasoning of Mrs. Kerr's steam-boiled rolls. In 1880, Sancho, now a steer, was sold with some of Kerr's other steers to the Shiner brothers who were contracted to deliver 2500 Longhorns to Wyoming. The Shiner's branded him with a 7 Z and pointed him north. During the first night out, Sancho seemed to determined to go back home. Some said later, for one of Mrs. Kerr's tamales, but whatever the reason, the night crew had to push him back into the herd over a dozen times. Days later, Sancho made his break and heading south, was discovered by the second Shiner herd trailing to Wyoming. One of the point cowboys roped him and turned him north again. As usual, Sancho took a position in the drag and constantly looked south. In September, upon reaching Wyoming, Sancho was branded with C R for his new herd home. The next spring, John Rigby, who was working with Joe Shiner near Kerr's ranch, recalled looking across a pear flat and seeing a paint steer with 7 Z and C R branded on him. The men rode to the Kerr's where Mr. Kerr admitted that Sancho had arrived home about six weeks earlier. Mrs. Kerr had been feeding her pet, tamales ever since. Joe Shiner conceded that, "If Sancho loved his home enough to walk 2000 miles from Wyoming to get to it, he wasn't going to drive him back." Sancho is said to have lived on the Kerr Ranch until he died of natural causes.

The Big Die-Up - By the time the winter of 1885 - 1886 arrived, the cattle industry, especially the trailing of cattle north was about to undergo severe change due to four gradually occuring events - (1) the expanded use of barb-wire, (2) the expansion of the railroads as a means of hauling cattle, (3) the re-populating of northern cattle herds which eventually lowered cattle prices as supply slowly exceeded demand, and (4) the overstocking of herds resulting in overgrazing of open prairies. The winter of 85-86 merely provided the final push toward the inevitable change. The blizzards that winter,The Big Die-Up - By the time the winter of 1885 - 1886 arrived, the cattle industry, especially the trailing of cattle north was about to undergo severe change due to four gradually occuring events - (1) the expanded use of barb-wire, (2) the expansion of the railroads as a means of hauling cattle, (3) the re-populating of northern cattle herds which eventually lowered cattle prices as supply slowly exceeded demand, and (4) the overstocking of herds resulting in overgrazing of open prairies. The winter of 85-86 merely provided the final push toward the inevitable change. The blizzards that winter, began in November and continued through February. Temperatures across the plains ranged from -36 below zero to -70. Hundreds of thousands of head of cattle died during this time for unlike many winters before, cattle could not move to shelter and water due to barb-wire cross fences. Many herds were found stacked against barb-wire barriers, frozen in place, often still standing up. And not only cattle suffered, as many ranchers and ranch hands lost their lives trying to rescue stranded cattle. The final tally would not be known until the spring thaws. By most accounts as much as 5% of the Western U.S. cattle herds perished during the time. The direct results of the above events were - (1) the growing and storing of hay, (2) the fencing of smaller pastures for cattle rotation so as to avoid the depletion of native grasses, (3) the construction of shelters and windbreaks for livestock, and (4) the practice of winter feeding.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 8

2011-06-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

The year 1876 was a pivotal one for the country and Texas trailers. In 1876, Custer came to his end on the Little Big Horn, Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, barbed wire was beginning to gain notice and trailers were pushing more and more cattle into the expanding West. Both San Antonio and Fort Worth saw their fortunes increase as Cow Towns. In San Antonio, the city council outlawed loose cattle from the streets in 1876 although hogs were still free to roam. Fort Worth had plenty of saloons, dance establishments, sporting women, and mercantile supplies. But a new trail was being marked to the west of Fort Worth that caused the town alarm. The new trail, through Fort Griffin, (On the Brazos River west of present day Graham, and northeast of Albany - below the fort was a town called the Flats. The Flats soon became known as the wildest town in Texas.) From Fort Griffin the trail led to the Red River where the cattle crossed at Doan's Crossing and then on to Dodge City, Kansas. Coupled with the Kansas legislature's new cattle quarantine area that now included Wichita, Dodge City seemed posed to emerge as a major cattle shipping point for the Santa Fe RR. Richard King, of King Ranch fame, was credited with trailing 30,000 cattle in 12 different herds north in 1876. King's herds were sold in Kansas and Nebraska.

Kansans never held much regard for Texas trailers and events in the latter part of 1876 only seemed to justify their feelings. In September, outside of Big Springs, Nebraska, six men from cowboy outfits robbed the Union Pacific. The haul? $60,000 in gold and a few hundred in cash. The bandits included Sam Bass. It seems the cowboys, after getting paid for pushing Longhorns up the trail, had drifted north to Deadwood, (Black Hills) where they promptly lost all of their cattle money. And robbery must have seemed as the only viable means for Sam and the bunch to gain their proceeds back. Over at the Flats below Fort Griffin, a lawman, John Larn, was also making quite a name for himself. Larn, who operated as sheriff for Shackleford County moonlighted as a cattle thief. Watt Matthews, Larn's nephew, said of the man: "He was a charmer with many atrributes of a gentleman, but he was also an outlaw, cow thief, and a killer." Larn is said to be responsible for the killing of 12 men by age 30. Larn's running mate in the county was John Selman. (Selman is the man who later killed John Wesley Hardin in El Paso.) Bass met his end in Round Rock, Texas in 1878. He was shot by Richard Ware of the Texas Rangers. John Larn's demise also occurred in 1878. Larn was shot in his jail cell by vigilantes.

Most trailers rode a Spanish cow pony, which was a descendant of the horses brought over by the Spaniards, and the short distance running horse that was developed in colonial America. From Malcom MacKay's Cow Range and Hunting Trail: "Of the many cow ponies that we rode, a few seemed to have had real personalitites, and their traits have stayed in my memory. They were Captain, Baldy, Crockett, Coyote, Prince, Fox, Ginger, Texas, and Five Dollars. ...Fox was a heavy-boned, thickset sorrel and his name suited him well, for he was sure foxy. One morning I put a new saddle on him that had attached to it a beautiful pair of white Angora saddle pockets. Fox did not seem to notice the new rig until I got up on the flat behind our barn and hit into alope, then the Angora flaps began to flap. Fox took one look, and lost his head, and started, high, wide and handsome, straight for a cut bank, twenty feet down to creek bottom. I stuck him for three or four jumps, and then I saw he really was going over the bank, and I would sure be killed if I went along, so I threw my left leg over his head and tried to land on my feet, but didn't quite get the right slant to it, and lit on my right hip, which laid me up about ten days. Fox went on over, turned a somersault or two, and lit in the creek with a grunt..." In MacKay's writing, I love the description, high, wide and handsome. The phrase is original Americana and is best defined as: a person feeling carefree and acting on top of the world. The first printed reference appears in The Bucks County Gazette, Bristol, Pennsylvania, November 1881.

Margaret Heffernan Borland is thought by many historians to be the only woman to have led a cattle drive. Margaret was born in Ireland in 1824 and with her parents, John and Julia Heffernan, arrived in Texas in 1829. The Heffernans settled in Coastal Bend area of Texas - where the Texas Ranching Industry had its roots. Margaret was married three times. Her first husband was killed after an argument. The second husband, Milton Hardy, died of cholera. She then married Alexander Borland, who was considered the wealthiest rancher of the area. Borland died of yellow fever in 1867. After his death, Margaret assumed control of the cattle operation and took on the role of selling and purchasing cattle. By 1873, she had amassed a herd of 10,000 head. In the spring of 1873, she took on the task of driving 2500 Longhorn to Wichita, Kansas. Accompanying her on the drive were her remaining 3 children, her granddaughter, and a few trailers. She reached Wichita with the herd, but succumbed to illness on July before seeing the cattle sold. Her illness was described as "trail fever" by some and "congestation of the brain" by others. (Edgar Allen Poe's fatal illness was also described as "congestation of the brain." The term seems to have covered everything from rabies to malaria. Photo- Margaret Heffernan Borland

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 7

2011-05-30T20:39:00.000-05:00

The first town marshall in Abilene was Thomas James Smith. Smith proved his grit early on the job by disarming two bold cowboy / outlaws with his bare fists, first, a ruffian known as Big Hank, and a day later, Wyoming Frank. However, 5 months into the job Smith was killed by a local farmer Andrew McConnell and a neighbor, Moses Miles. After Smith was buried, now town mayor, Joseph McCoy determined that Abilene needed a "name" lawman to keep the peace in the cow town. In April of 1871, the town council hired James B. (Wild Bill) Hickok. Hickok a pistoleer of some renown, was hired at $150.00 a month plus 1/4 of any fines collected. Almost immediately, Hickok made enemies in part to his exerted control around town and partly due to his charm with the ladies. One such desperado was John Wesley Hardin. Two others were Ben Thompson and Phil Coe. The latter tried to push Hardin into a fight with Wild Bill. Hardin ignored the plodding and instead told Coe, "If Wild Bill needs killing, why don't you do it yourself?" Some historians believe that the Hickok, Coe dust-up was the result of competition over a woman. Others relate that the matter was due to the fact that Coe was mouthy drunk. Regardless, the trouble between the two inevitably came to a head on October 5, 1871. Before returning to Texas at season's end, Coe and several of his group decided to have "a little" fun before their departure. The group moved up and down the Abilene thoroughfare, forcing "victims" into the Alamo to buy drinks. Near dark, a shot was discharged in the street. Hickok, who spent a good deal of his time in the Alamo, rushed outside and demanded to know who had fired a weapon. Coe obliged that it was him. Standing within 10 feet of one another, both men suddenly fired. Coe's shots missed their mark, whereas Hickok's struck Coe in the stomach. In the fading light, another man rushed to the scene, flashing a pistol. Hickok didn't hesitate and shot the man dead. Later, he discovered that the dead man was his friend, Mike Williams. Coe died 3 days later, and in December Hickok was dismissed from his job.

In February 1872, Abilene Mayor, Theodore Henry circulated a notice in Abilene and Texas that read: "We, the undersigned members of Dickinson County, Kansas, most respectfully request all who have contemplated driving Texas cattle to Abilene the coming season to seek some other point for shipment, as the inhabitants of Dickinson County will no longer submit to the evils of the trade." And Texans being who they are, responded by trailing their cattle to Wichita and Ellsworth. Less than 3 months later, Abilene, after enjoying cattle money for 4 1/2 years suddenly took on the look of a ghost town. Wichita enjoyed the enviable position of being the first market Texas drovers reached upon entering Kansas. Joseph McCoy left Abilene in the spring and visited Wichita where he observed the building of a spur line of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe RR. McCoy, ever the astute businessman, realized that with a shipping yard, Wichita would soon compete with any Kansas cow town. By April, Wichita employed McCoy to travel north and persuade cattle buyers to come to Wichita. By June, with the spur line completed, 18 carloads of Longhorns left Wichita for Chicago and by early fall, over 20 herds grazed within shouting distance of town.

E.C. Abbott - Abbott, better known as Teddy Blue, recalled his trailing experiences to Helena Huntington Smith in 1938. At the time Abbott was 78 years in age. His book - We Pointed Them North is filled with many colorful insights to the trailing business. One of his recollections was that Sam Bass worked as his father's wagon boss be...fore he came an outlaw. Another recounted how the "poorest" hands were relegated to riding drag on a herd. Abbott wrote of those cowboys: "They would go to the water barrel at the end of the day and rinse their mouths and cough and spit and bring up that black stuff out of their throats. But you couldn't get it up out of your lungs." On watering a herd, Abbott said, "You bring them up and spread them out along the bank, with the lead cattle headed downstream. The leads get there first, and of course they drink clear water, and as the drags keep coming they get clear water, too, because they are upstream." Another interesting recollection of Abbott's involved borrowing .50 from Calamity Jane at the Belly-Ups train station on the Miles-Deadwood stage line. (It was named Belly-Ups to honor all the buffalo hunters who went belly-up in the winter of 1883.) Abbott was broke and borrowed the money to buy a meal. He promised to pay her back one day whereas Jane replied, "I don't give a damn if you ever pay me." Abbott relates that he saw her again in 1907 standing on a street corner. Abbott approached and asked, "Don't you know me?" and promptly repaid the .50. He recalls that Jane replied, "I told you, Blue that I don't give a damn if you never paid me." "And," Abbott remembers, "after that we both went into a local saloon and drank it up.

In May of 1872, Ellsworth, Kansas was determined to become the "new" Abilene for Texas trailers. William Cox, liverstock agent for the Kansas Pacific RR, had cut out a new trail which shortened the trailer's drive by about 20 miles. The new trail, although still considered to be a part of the Chisholm Trail, was known by most as the Cox Trail. Ellsworth boasted of a bank for merchants and stock dealers, 3 hotels, and 13 saloons, and of course there were many "Prairie Nymphs" or what many called "Ladies of easy virtue." That summer, the Topeka Newspaper wrote of Ellsworth - "The authorities consider that as long as mankind is depraved and Texas cattle herders exist, there will be a demand and necessity for prostitutes." By August, Ellsworth, known as "the wickedest city in Kansas, accomplished its goal of replacing Abilene as the cattle capital. It was estimated that Ellsworth held a 177,000 head of Longhorns compared to 56,000 for Wichita. Wayne Gard writes in the Chisholm Trail that the biggest sale that year went to L.B. Harris of San Antonio, who was paid $210,000. for 7,000 steers. Even though fewer cattle were trailed to Kansas in 1872, the prices were higher, and Texas drovers were excited about 1873's prospects. Little could they know that world economic events would unravel in such an extreme fashion that 1873 was going to be anything but a prosperous year for Texas cattle drivers.

From the end of the Civil War until 1873, the railroad industry was the second largest employer in the United States. The industry enjoyed infusions of cash from speculators who soon realized that investments were putting too much money into projects that showed little return. (Think dot.com bust) In addition, in 1871, the German government had decided to cease minting silver thaler coins. The effect was felt in the U.S. where much of the world's silver was then mined. As a result of Germany's decision, the U.S. passed the Coinage Act of 1873. The act made Gold the standard currency in the country. The new law immediately reduced the U.S. money supply, which caused an increase in interest rates, which hurt anyone carrying large loans. (Farmers, Ranchers, and Industry) By September of 1873, the U.S. economy hit the "wall." The result was due to several years of economic misfortune, the Panic of 1869, the Chicago Fire (1871), equine influenza (1872) and finally the U.S. decision to no longer convert silver into coins. The first domino to fall was Jay Cooke & Co., a bank heavily invested in the RR's, was unable to market two million dollars in RR bonds. President Grant's response was to contract the money supply. And once again interest rates soared. The Jay Cooke failure was followed by a chain reaction of bank closures, factory lay-offs, closing of the Stock Exchange for 10 days, and 89 RR's going bankrupt. To Texas drovers, the effect was chilling. Thousands of cattle were killed just for hide and tallow, and many trailers who arrived in Kansas in the fall were lucky to break even.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 6

2011-05-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

By 1870 almost every Texas cowman had developed a bad case of Kansas fever. The contagion spread unabated due to the fact that a Longhorn steer caught and branded in the South Texas scrub for as little as $4.00 a head would bring $31.00 in the St Louis market and $55.00 in New York. Soon the trails to the Kansas shipping yards were clogged with herds. Many of the herds actually mixed or joined together at river crossings or during a stompede. To combat thievery among the herds, Texas established the Office of Hide and Cattle Inspection. Inspectors were established in any county where cattle might pass. The job usually went to local sheriffs. By the end of 1870, the expanding service of the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe RR, the South Pacific RR, which later became the Atlantic and Pacific, Leavenworth RR, the Lawrence, and Galveston RR, and the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas RR resulted in a price bidding war that only increased the profits in the cowman's pocket. Yet despite the prosperity for the cowmen and the Abilene businesses, a cooling to Texas cattle and Texas cowboys was gaining steam by the ever-growing Abilene population. And if the citizen farmers had their way, Ellsworth, Kansas, 64 miles to the West, could have all of the Texans and their vices, and of course all of their cattle as well.

In the spring of 1871 Harriet (Standerfer) Cluck, wife of George W. Cluck became the first woman to ride up the Chisolm Trail. The Clucks ranched in Williamson County, Texas near the town of Running Brushy (present day Cedar Park, Texas). In March, George had put together a herd of 1000 Longhorns for an April drive. Harriet, who had three small children and was expecting a fourth, decided she would not stay at home while her husband was gone and shockingly announced: "She was heading north with the herd." Along the way, the herd was roused by a group of rustlers demanding a large cut of steers. Harriet, who had helped load guns during the encounter was said to have told some of the younger trailers, "If any one of you boys doesn't want to fight, come back here and drive the hack and give me your gun!" When the herd reached Abilene, Harriet who had turned 25 on the trail, gave birth to Euell Standerfer Cluck. In 1874, the first Post Office was established in Running Brushy, where Harriet became postmaster at the pay of 3-4 dollars a month.(Her salary was dependent upon the number of stamps cancelled)
By most accounts, Black cowboys were active on the trails from 1867-1885. Some historians figure that 25% of working cowboys were Black. Ben Kinchlow, who at 19, rode with Capt. Leander McNelly's Special Force, trailed cattle north for the Sol West Ranch. Neptune Holmes, who worked for Shanghai Pierce, was often called the guardian of Shanghai's "sea-lions". It was said that when a Pierce herd would reach Kansas, Shanghai would announced, "Here are my sea-lions, straight out of the Gulf of Mexico." One of the best-known Black cowboys was Bose Ikard, Charles Goodnight's trusted trail-boss. Goodnight remembered his friend later in life by saying, "...he was the most skilled and trustworthy man I had." Perhaps, the most dangerous Black cowboy trailing cattle was Jim Kelly. Kelly, who worked for the Olive Ranch in Williamson County, Texas was known as the ebony gun and was a loyal gun hand to boss, Print Olive. In 1876, Kelly followed Print to Custer County, Nebraska where Print became the first president of the Custer County Livestock Assn. Jim Kelly became the organization's "gunslinger." Print also used Kelly to negotiate with homesteaders who would charge fees for having cattle cross their land. "Teddy Blue" Abbott, who chronicled his trailing adventures in the book, We Pointed Them North, said of Kelly, "That big black boy with his gun would sure tell them punkin rollers (farmers) where to head in at."

By October 1871, Abilene would boast of 11 saloons. Like ports at the end of a long ocean journey, the bars provided low-brow entertainment for road weary cowboys who had watched the hind-end of a 1200 pound steer for the better part of a 1000 miles. Abilene's gin mills included the Alamo, the Bull's Head, the Elkhorn, the Pearl, the Old Fruit, Jim Flynn's, Tom Downey's, the Applejack, the Lone Star, the Longhorn, and the Trail. The most popular and most luxuriant was the Alamo. (Wild Bill Hickok killed Phil Coe outside of the Alamo Saloon in 1871) The saloon featured a 40 foot front with three double glass doors. The bar itself ran almost the length of the building and featured polished rails and fixtures. The walls showcased large paintings of nudes reminescent of Renaissance paintings. And the Alamo even had a small orchestra which played morning, afternoon, and night. But for all of their attractiveness, the saloons, like modern day Las Vegas, had only one intention - that was to separate a cowboy from his cash. And even though trailers knew this, still they came, as some have put it: riding straight into an ambush. The Texas cowboys even had a song to celebrate this indisputable fact. "You strap on your chaps, your spurs, and your gun - You're going into town to have a little fun. You play with a gambler who's got a marked pack; Then you walk back to camp with your saddle on your back."

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 5

2011-05-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

Charles Goodnight said of the Texas Longhorn - "As trail cattle, their equal has never been known. Their hoofs are superior to those of any other cattle. In stampedes, they hold together better, are easier circled in a run, and rarely split off when you commence to turn the front. No animal of the cow kind will shift and take care of itself under all conditions as will the Longhorns. They can farther without water and endure more suffering than others." Goodnight is credited as the inventor of the chuck wagon and the calf wagon or 'blattin' cart.' He was also well-known on the trail for his famous lead steer, Old Blue. Lead steers were invaluable animals on the trail, not only keeping the herd moving at a 10-12 mile pace per day, but also for tasks such as starting a herd swimming or entering pens at the sale yards. Old Blue led Goodnight herds to market for 8 years. Stories tell that the old steer refused to associate with the herd at night, often bedding with the horses and even coming into camp to beg for food. After his death, Goodnight mounted Old Blue's horns at his ranch. Today they are on display at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.

The Texas Chuck Wagon or "Wagon" was always an open-air affair. As one cowboy said, "Putting a cover on is too much trouble for getting things in and out." In the wagon bed, the cook loaded kegs of molasses, and boxes of bacon, sugar. Built into the back-end was a chuck box or pantry. The chuck box sloped outward and the lower end hinged, so it could be lowered to act as a work or eating table. This table was held by rope or chains or sometimes a stick prop beneath it. Inside, out of the elements, utensils, flour, sourdough, salt, tomatoes, beans, dried fruit, onions, and potatoes were stored. Usually the chuck box also contain one drawer that held medicinal products such as liniment, quinine, and a laxative. Sitting below the chuck box was a smaller box that held the skillets and the Dutch ovens. On one side of the wagon, a water barrel would be mounted. On the other side, a tool box was mounted. The tool box contained branding irons, horseshoeing equipment, and possibly an axe and shovel. All chuck wagons had a leather hammock stretched underneath the bed where spare wood was carried. This hammock was also called the cooney, from the Spanish word cuna. (cradle) Cowboys also called it the "possum belly." During many a stormy night on the trail, a smart cowboy could nestle into the cooney and stay dry and warm during the night. Chuck wagons were normally pulled by oxen, mules or horses.

Hot coffee was the staple for cowboys trailing Longhorns to Kansas and Arbuckle's was the brand of choice. Self-respecting cowboys drank it black without sugar or evaporated milk. The coffee was called six-shooter coffee as it was said to be able to float a cowboy's pistol. The rest of breakfast included bacon, sourdough biscuits,and dried fruit. Lunch was called dinner in that time and was always a light meal consisting usually of coffee and beef. (There was always plenty of beef on the drive) Most times, the cowboys of a particular herd would kill another drive's stray for steaks so as not to kill one of their own steers. If that option was not present, they would kill an animal from their herd that either was a problem to drive or had poor markings. For several days after the killing of a steer, the camp would endure daily portions of "son-of-a-gun" stew. The stew consisted of everything that needed to be eaten quickly before spoiling. This would include tongue, heart, liver, etc... Once the stew was portioned out, the cowboys would enjoy steak cooked in a Dutch oven. The rest of a steak meal would consist of onion, potatoes, and dried beans known by trailers as "Pecos strawberries."

Trailing cattle was never the daring, thrill-seeking adventure portrayed in the Dime Novels of the time. In fact, it was downright dangerous on a daily basis. In the Chisolm Trail by Wayne Gard, the author tells of a herd that found a grave on the North Canadian that simply read: Killed by Indians. Besides the dangers of hostile Indians, there were rattlesnakes, prairie dog burrows, cholera, and deadly spring thunderstorms. Many a cowboy used his saddle for protection during a hailstorm which in severe cases had the potential to kill horses and cattle. In addition to hail, there were also the hazards associated with lightning, flooded river crossings, and tornado-like wind. And even upon reaching Kansas, there was always trouble with the locals. Bill Poage, a vetern of the trail commented in 1874 that - "There was scarcely a day went by that we didn't have a row with some settler." And Kansas farmers used Kansas law to their advantage. One enterprising ploy was to plow a furrow around a claim, by Kansas law this was considered a fence and any herds crossing the furrow were trespassing and the claimant could collect damages from the trespassing Texas herd.

The one danger that all trailers feared to a man was the stampede or "stompede" as most cowboys called it. A stompede could be caused by something as small as a flock of quail or as large as a bolt of lightning thrown down from the heavens. But whatever the cause, the panicked Longhorns might run a few miles or a hundred. Smart trailers immediately turned the stampede into a circle, allowing the cattle to "mill." Milling cattle soon exhausted themselves and often quieted, but once a herd stampeded, they had to be watched closely the rest of the day or night. Milling was not without its drawbacks. A milling herd could work off more pounds in a half-hour mill as running a couple miles. One of the worst recorded stampedes occured on the South Bosque River, Texas where trailers could not mill a panicked herd. The herd rushed headlong over a wide gully where 2,700 steers ended up dying in the rush.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 4

2011-05-17T07:18:00.000-05:00

By 1867, six states had laws enacted or strenghtened laws prohibiting the movement of Texas and Indian cattle across their borders. Missouri's law was the harshest, as it gave inspectors the right to condemn and destroy any inspected cattle thought to be carrying Texas fever. Kansas law now expanded its ban on trailing from March to December, but carried one loophole...the southwestern boundry of the state, west of McPherson, was still open to drovers. The law also carried an important provision that would allow exploitation by a forward-thinking cowman: if a drover would post a $10,000. guarantee against damages to local farmers and towns, his herd could be moved north to the now expanding Union Pacific Railroad ship points. Once loaded on the rail, the cattle had to be moved outside of the state. Suddenly, the Texas cowmen had hope again. The question was - could anyone open up a new buying market in the geographic loophole so that cattle could be trailed north in 1867?

As 1867 progressed, Southern drovers still found themselves buffeted in Southeastern, Kansas and Southwestern Missouri by armed mobs acting under the guise of a fear of Texas fever. The border instability caused Northern buyers to avoid carrying cash to purchase stock worsening the woes of the cowmen as a new gambit emerged from an unscrupulous ...segment of society. Con men were now offering worthless paper, (drafts) to unwary Texas drovers. As more and more cowmen were stung by this ploy, the continuance of the trailing industry seemed bleak until a young Illinois businessman, Joseph G. McCoy, formulated a plan by which Northern buyers and Texas drovers could meet undisturbed by outside influences to buy and sell cattle. McCoy's vision for a meeting location included a shipping yard, hotels, offices, and stock pens that could hold as many as 3000 Texas cattle. McCoy soon found his dream location in Abilene, Kansas. Abilene at the time consisted of 11 log cabins and two small businesses - but held two crucial ingredients that would aid in McCoy's success: ample prairie and good water. There was a problem however - Abilene lay 60 miles inside the Kansas legislature's ban boundry. McCoy proceeded nonetheless, sensing that Abilene's sparse population might hold little interest in enforcing the law, especially when they would be afforded the opportunity to sell goods and services at outrageous prices to the drovers from Texas. McCoy purchased 250 acres in Abilene on June 18th. By September 24th, the hotel and shipping yard were completed. And before the end of 1867, 35,000 cattle were trailed to Abilene.

In the spring of 1868, the outlook for Texas cowmen had improved considerably. The new trail to Abilene, although not free of dangers, was most decidedly free of angry locals. The trail also offered drovers a more direct route as its path cut due North of its Red River crossing. (The Abilene trail was 150 miles West of the old Shawnee... Trail) In its infancy, the route to Abilene was called the Kansas Trail, the Abilene Trail, McCoy's Trail, the Great Cattle Trail, the Great Texas Cattle Trail, or the Wichita Trail. Around 1870, a letter in a Kansas newspaper stated: ...Osage Indians out on their spring hunt, had camped on the Chisolm Trail. Jesse Chisolm was a trader and guide who had operated at the mouth of The Little River in Arkansas and later on the North Fork of the Canadian River and on the Arkansas River. In 1865, Chisolm had trailed a herd of cattle over the Kansas prairies. Soon others began traveling what some called Chisolm's Trail. Chisolm died in March of 1868 never realizing that his name would achieve a place in American history. His route soon became part of the larger trail that was used to trail Texas cattle to Kansas markets.

Once the Chisolm Trail became the "trail" to Abilene - Fort Worth, Texas suddenly became the outfitting point for trailers. There a cowman could buy spare saddles, guns, rope, and food staples. At Fort Worth, a trail boss would cross his herd on the West Fork of the Trinity River, on to the village of Decatur, and then to Denton Creek... before arriving at the Northern boundry of the state. Most trailers crossed into to Indian Territory at Red River Station. Swimming the herds across the Red River was one of the most dangerous legs of the journey. The river could be flooded in the spring and featured whirlpools and quicksand. Once inside Indian Territory the herd might spend the first night on one of the branches of Beaver Creek. From there, the trail crossed the Washita River, Walnut Creek, the Red Fork of the Arkansas River, Turkey Creek, Skeleton Creek, the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River, Polecat Creek, and finally to the Kansas border. If all went well, the herd could cross Indian Territory in a month.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 3

2011-05-13T13:31:00.001-05:00

In 1858, amidst the historic Lincoln - Douglas debates, Oliver Loving, from Palo Pinto County, Texas and a neighbor, John Durkee, drove their herds to Illinois and sold the stock at a considerable profit. However other Texas drovers would not fare so well that year. A new outbreak of Texas fever left thousand of local cattle dead in Missouri and once again the Missouri farmers took it upon themselves to turn back Texas cattle using force when needed. The Missouri situation caused many Texas drovers to take a new route skirting the eastern edge of Kansas to reach Kansas City or other points north. But the Kansas reprieve was short-lived as thousands of Kansas cattle soon became stricken with Texas fever. In 1859, the Kansas Territorial Legislature passed a protective act that prohibited cattle from Texas, Arkansas, and Indian stock from entering specific counties from June to November. Some Texas drovers treated the law with contempt thus forcing Kansas farmers to organize rifle companies to deal with the Texans and their cattle.

By August of 1861, Pres. Lincoln forbade any trade with the South. Coupled with the number of Texans fighting for the Confederacy, (almost all outside of Texas), the state of the cattle business fell into a steep decline. Neglected herds now roamed over large portions of the state and calves would go unbranded for the ensuing war years. And for the trailing that did go on during the war, the majority of herds were driven to the East Coast to feed Confederate soldiers. A few notable Texas cowmen who supplied cattle for the south were John S. Chisum, Oliver Loving, and Jesse L. Driskill. But for a the majority of trailers , the war exacted a heavy toll as the profitable northern markets were now unavailable. But at war's end, a few forward-thinking men would see a fortune on the horizon. Those unbranded calves, now called mavericks, were seen to be a source of profit to the cowman who caught and branded them.

J. Frank Dobie always said the word had only two syllables and that a genuine Texan pronounced it: mav-rick. One legend has it that the word originated by the fact that Samuel Maverick would not brand or earmark any of his herd. His neighbors, however took to branding not only their cattle but his as well. This did not prevent Samuel from claiming any slick eared animal belonged to his herd. Over time, when observing a slick-ear, folks would say, "There goes one of Mr. Maverick's animals. Later, when observing any unbranded animal anywhere, the saying became: "There goes a Mav-rick." Another legend holds that the word comes from the name of a drover who lost his herd in a snowstorm. The cattle became so scattered that regrouping the animals became impossible. The off-spring of the scattered herd became known as Maverick's cattle.

By 1866, the push to trail cattle north resumed in Texas. Estimates from the time suggest as many as 300,000 head were trailed for northern markets that spring. But two cowmen decided they would follow a westward direction out of the state. The two, Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, combined their herds along the upper reaches of the Brazos River with the intent on moving them to the Rockies. However, there was one problem...Comanche lands blocked a direct route to Colorado. The two solved the problem by following the old Butterfield Stage Line through Buffalo Gap and then down to present day San Angelo.
From there they headed for Horsehead Crossing and the Pecos River. The cowmen then drove for Fort Sumner, NM. Of the 1000 steers they started with, 300 were lost by the time they reached Fort Sumner, but the NM market was willing to pay .08 a pound on foot. After selling all of their steers, 700 cows and calves remained. Loving trailed these north to Denver, while Goodnight rode back to Texas to gather another herd. In 1867, Loving followed the route and was attacked by Indians. The wounds he received eventually resulted in his death at Fort Sumner in September of that year.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 2

2011-05-10T13:18:00.000-05:00

Texas' oldest and least known cattle trail was the Opelousas Trail. Some called this trail the Beef Trail and there is some confusion as to its route. Most historians credit the confusion to the fact that the trail was more than likely a network of trails crisscrossing East Texas. Historian W.T. Block wrote that ...the trail ran parallel to the Old San Antonio Road (Present day Interstate 10) following New Orleans, Opelousas, Beaumont, and on to San Antonio. During its peak, the Chisolm Trail would see 400,000 cattle driven to Kansas rail heads each year. The Opelousas Trail, on the other hand, never saw more than 75,000 animals per year, but lasted 90 years longer than the Chisolm. James Taylor White, who settled on Turtle Bayou near Anahuac in 1818, trailed cattle to New Orleans beginning in the 1820s. One of the Louisiana buyers purchasing White's cattle was Captain Arsene LeBleu de Comarsac, who had been one of Jean Lafitte's pirates in 1820. During White's peak years, he was trailing 2,500 cattle on the Opelousas Trail annually, for which he was paid $12 in gold per head. White died in 1851 leaving $150,000 in his bank at New Orleans. A tidy sum for the time.

The first recorded Northern drive out of Texas is credited to Edward Piper in 1846. Piper drove 1000 head to Ohio where he lost money at market, but Northward drives continued in size and scope during 1849 & 1850. The trail used by drovers during this time was an established route used by Native-Americans and traders.... Settlers called it, the Texas Road. Later, men who trailed cattle on this route referred to it as the Shawnee Trail. (Named for the Shawnee Hills) The Shawnee Trail would, in time, be referred to as the Cattle Trail, the Kansas Trail, or simply, The Trail. The Texas Road crossed into Oklahoma in present day Grayson County, Texas, where the herds swam the Red River at Rock Bluff Crossing.

One branch of the Shawnee Trail ran through downtown Dallas, Texas and was known as the Preston Road. After pushing through Dallas, the trail crossed the Red, Canadian, Arkansas, and Grand Rivers before arriving just below the Southeastern corner of Kansas. There the trail split to the Northeast and Kansas City or East and St. Louis. In 1854, the first Longhorns arrived in St. Louis where the buyers viewed the cattle with some indignation, paying only $15-20 per head. A St. Louis newspaper reported that buffalo were more civilized than the Texas cattle.

By 1853, amid outbreaks of Texas fever in Missouri, the ranchers and farmers in the Western part of the state turned back a herd of Longhorns, steadfastly barring their entry. Texas fever, also known as Spanish fever or Mexican fever in Texas was spread by ticks, but in 1853, this was not understood by the gener...al public. The fact that the Texas cattle seemed immune to the disease and Midwestern cattle fell ill caused many states along the trails to enact quarantine laws restricting passage of Texas cattle to the winter months or routing cattle away from settled areas. Modern research has shown that the Longhorns were born with a partial immunity to the disease. This resistance lasted a few months after birth giving the animal just enough immunity to fight the pathogen during a widespread infection. From that point, the Longhorn could live in reasonable good health while still carrying the disease. In 1893, Theobald Smith & Fred Kilborne isolated the pathogen of Texas fever, a microscopic protozoan they named Pyrosoma bigeminium.

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011

Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 1

2011-05-06T06:34:00.001-05:00

In 1521, 28 years after Christopher Columbus landed the first Spanish cattle on Hispaniola. Gregorio de Villalobos transported a number of generational offspring from the original Hispaniola herd to New Spain. (Current day Mexico) In 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján gathered 500 of Villalobos' original herd to supply food for his grandiose expedition in search of the Seven Cities of Cíbola. Along the way, Coronado left cattle in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.

In 1690, General Alonso De León helped establish San Francisco de los Tejas, the first Spanish mission in East Texas. In doing so, he led four expeditions using what would become known as the Old San Antonio Road. During these explorations he crossed and named the Guadalupe River, the Medina River, the Nueces River, and the Trinity River. At each river crossing, De León left a bull and a cow. Left to propagate at will, these self-dependent, prolific breeders soon were as numerous as buffalo on the Southern Plains and throughout the South Texas brush. These cattle, were called Criollo by the Spanish. The Criollo had their roots in the desert country of Andulusia, Spain, and they flourished in the South Texas climate.

The secret Treaty of Velasco (May 1836) granted Texas the land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River as a part of the new republic. This disputed piece of real estate would become the stronghold of some 1.5 million cattle. In this vast stretch of no-man's land, a nursery if you will, a new cross-bred animal began to appear. This animal, a mixture of Cirollo and European introduced cattle, was highly adaptable to its environ. It did well in brush or swamp, with plentiful grass or rustling during drought. The animal, the Longhorn, evolved to run through the brush like an antelope, swim wide rivers, fight off wolves or coyotes, and although Spanish by origin, it became unmistakeably Texan. Texas Historian, J. Frank Dobie, said of this animal, "It is the peer of the bison and grizzly bear." By 1837, between the Rio Grande and the Nueces, the hunting of wild cattle by both Mexican and Texans became a regular business.

Many people believe that trailing cattle (as it was called in its infancy) originated after the Civil War, when a lone Texas herd headed for some vague point north of the 36th parallel. But as a matter of record, on April 21, 1836, the same day that Sam Houston and a bunch of Texans whipped the Mexican army, a herd of Texas longhorns from Taylor White's ranch west of the Neches River was trailing for New Orleans. And cattle had been trailed out of Texas even before that. Through the 'forties Texans trailed cattle north into Missouri and also to Louisiana markets. Beginning in 1850, thousands of steers were driven across the continent to California.

Ranger James B. Gillett & Onofrio Baca

2011-02-09T08:06:00.000-06:00

Photo James B Gillett

During a Christmas church festival in 1881, in Socorro, New Mexico, two Mexican brothers, Abran and Onofrio Baca got into an argument with the local newspaper editor, A.M. Conklin. After the services ended, as Conklin exited the church, Onofrio shot and killed the newspaperman.

The Baca brothers fled to Mexico but were soon hounded by a proclamation issued by the governor of the state for $500.00 for their capture. The citizenry of Socorro issued a similar proclamation with the exception that the reward would be paid for the Baca's delivered dead or alive. The proclamations became widely known throughout the territory. The Texas Ranger station in Ysleta, Texas, also received the circulars with the Baca's descriptions. One Ranger, James B. Gillett, began watching the home of the county judge, Jose Baca, the boy's uncle. Two months later, Gillett received information that the Baca's were staying at the judge's home. Gillett and a detail of four other Rangers captured the two men and hauled them to Socorro. Upon arrival in Socorro, Gillett learned one of the men was Abran, but the other was a cousin, Massias.

A month after Abran's capture, Gillett learned that Onofrio was in Saragosa, Mexico, four miles southwest of Ysleta. The Rangers never let international borders stop their pursuit of a criminal and Gillett, accompanied by George Lloyd, rode into the Mexican town and spirited Onofrio back to Texas.

Once back on American soil, Gillett took Onofrio by train to Socorro. Along the way, Gillett received a telegraph from the governor of New Mexico. Fearing mob violence in Socorro, the governor warned Gillett not to come off the train in Socorro.

The train reached Socorro late in the evening and upon its stop was immediately boarded by twenty-five armed men. Gillett told the men that he could not collect his reward for Baca if he did not deliver the man inside the jail. The mob agreed and allowed Baca's delivery to Deputy Sheriff Eaton at the Socorro jail. The next morning, a vigilante mob took Baca from his jail cell, escorted him to a nearby corral and hanged him.

Gillett's commander in Ysleta, Captain Baylor received an order after the Baca affair to never again allow his Rangers to follow fugitives into Mexico.

In 1921, Gillett wrote his memoirs, Six years with the Texas Rangers. It has remained in print ever since. The book was used as a school textbook for several years in as many as seventeen states. Gillett died on June 11, 1937 and is buried in Marfa, Texas.

The Man inside the Alamo

2010-06-10T09:43:00.005-05:00

Author’s note – How did David Crockett die at the battle of the Alamo? This question has been the catalyst for much rancor among historians, Americans, Mexicans, Texans, and history aficionados. The story below while fictional, offers a plausible explanation of what could have happened that Sunday morning in San Antonio and might well satisfy both sides of the Crockett question. Illustration- by Mack White / Austin, Texas.

The man from Tennessee, tall and well-poised, marched across the Alamo courtyard with long, lively strides. Poet, teacher, attorney, and merchant, a noticeable agitation furrowed his brow this day, and his mouth twisted in brooding expectation as to the reason behind his summoning. He gripped a Kentucky flintlock in his right hand with such force that his knuckles whitened around the walnut stock. Upon each stride, the eight-pound rifle swung forward in such perfect rhythm that man and gun appeared to be one. Beside him, a fellow Tennessean, although considerably shorter, and rounder, matched the man’s brisk stride step-for-step.
As the two men crossed in front of the officers’ quarters, the shorter man inhaled. “Can you believe it?” he said effusively.
The man from Tennessee remained silent.
The two skirted the low wall in front of the chapel and then angled right for the palisade. Behind the breastwork, a parapet rose diagonally to the southeast. Gathered on either side of the parapet were a group of Tennesseans, volunteers to the Texas auxiliary corps. The men urged him forward with frantic hand movements.
“Hurry,” one of the Tennesseans gushed.
“You won’t believe your eyes,” whispered another and pointed at a loophole in the vertical timbers.
The air of the February early afternoon still held the chill of the previous day’s cold front and both men’s breaths frosted in spite of the afternoon sun.
The man ignored the good-natured banter and positioned himself so that he could look through the porthole.
To his left, standing on an earthen footstep, the bear hunter gazed out over the field through a long glass and chuckled. “It be a fair shot, but one well worth the ball and powder.”
The man nodded and slipped the flintlock through the cut out. “We’ll see.”
From behind, one of the volunteers snorted under his breath. “Does he have the steadiness?”
The man turned and looked back at the snorter.
The snorter lifted his shoulders and tightened his lips. “Was only a question.”
The man stared down the hand-blued barrel of his long rifle. “Sounded more like nay-saying skepticism to me.”
A chorus, arising from the others, was directed at the snorter, “Close your pie-hole and let the man work.”
The man hesitated, curled the corners of his mouth down, and then pulled the fox-fur cap from off his head. “That seems to be the best piece of advice I’ve heard since arriving at this place.”
The old bear hunter glanced down at the man. “By the eternal,” he laughed. “Fire that pea shooter, man.”
A crooked smile broke from the corner of the man’s mouth as he placed his cap on one of the vertical timbers. “At your pleasure, Colonel.”
The bear hunter put his eye to the long glass once again and remarked, “Show his Excellency over there just how well a Kentuckian flintlock fires.”
The man pulled the flint-striker to full-cock and looked down the barrel.
“Make him flutter,” the others sang.
The man, inhaled, closed his left eye, and squeezed the trigger. The flint rolled forward and contacted the frizzen.
Sparks flew.
Gunpowder erupted.
The gun bore into the man’s shoulder.
The Tennesseans waited in quiet anticipation.
Two hundred yards away, a foot in front of the Mexican leader, a spate of dust puffed skyward. The general with a titled name longer than the flintlock’s barrel, Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón—his Excellency, stepped back at the dulled detonation—untouched.
The man made a face and marveled at his missed shot.
Santa Anna took a short glance at the raised powdery earth a foot in front of him, shook his head, and then slowly dissolved back into his reconnoitering trooper line.
“Huzzah!” shouted the man’s friends. They slapped the man on his back. Much whooping and hollering followed.
“That seemed to addle his Excellency a’ bit!”
The man lowered the flintlock and scratched at his side-whiskers. “Air’s a ‘might thick this afternoon,” he offered weakly as excuse.
“Maybe,” the bear hunter rejoined, and then added as an afterthought, “Anyhow, I figure you’ve chased him into the thickets for now.”
The man shook his head. “Maybe,” he said and stared out across the palisade toward the massed force of soldados.
“Did you see his Excellency dance?” one volunteer asked.
“Stepped like he was born in Eastern Tennessee,” another uttered.
“He thought he’d gone coon for sure,” still another chortled.
But the man from Tennessee just fixated on the spot where the Mexican general had stood. He recalculated the distance between his gun and his Excellency, and wondered briefly what might have been.

***

Six days later, the rocket illuminations, soft across the early morning March sky, coalesced and fell gently upon the Alamo. Sleeping soundly below the palisade wall for the first night since the Mexican Army’s arrival, the man slapped at his ear to dislodge the annoyance and squinted to remove the flicker of red dancing in front of his closed eyelid.
From above him, a familiar voice sounded, though distant and faint, “Wake up, sirs, the fights begun.”
The man blinked his eyes open and dragged a rough tongue around the inside of his mouth. The charcoal shadow of the bear hunter lingered over him.
“The Mexicans are on the walls,” the bear hunter said. His rifle rested in a loophole.
The man rubbed at his eyes. “Whaa…?”
The bear hunter looked south from the palisade and pulled his flint to full-cock. “I’d consider arising quick now if you want to be in the fight.”
Somewhere, on the other side of mission, the shouts and screams of men under attack caused the man to spring to his feet. He grabbed his flintlock with his right hand and patted the pistol in his waistbelt with his left. “You must not have slept,” he said.
There was no reply, only the sound of powder flash.
Across the courtyard, an eight-pounder boomed. The man threw a quick glance at the northwest corner just as the second eight-pounder exploded and exposed the wall in an eerie light.
The other volunteers were on their feet now. The man could feel them around him. He pushed the barrel of his long rifle through a cut out and fired.
The screams and curses of the desperately determined issued from every corner of the fortress.
The man yelled out encouragement to his companions, but the noise and smoke and darkness simply drowned his words away.
And in that instant, in this place, Texas, a soul-rattling revelation shook the man—that in the dark-veiled chaos of the Alamo, no matter the numbers of men struggling beside him; every man was left to his own fighting and his own dying.
The man shook the thoughts from his head and pressed his shoulder back into the rifle. And then, methodically began the process of firing and reloading. After four rounds were expended, the attackers backed away.
“They’re foundering,” the man yelled, relieved.
“Don’t be sure!” the bear hunter screamed. “Behind us!”
The man turned, and though he could not see individual enemy combatants, he saw the black surge filling the main plaza. A brief, paralyzing fear held him in a cold grip and prickled his spine. Movement flashed beside him.
The bear hunter was up and running. “To the low wall!” he screamed. “We have to keep them from the chapel, boys!”
The man watched in fascination at the quickness of the fifty-year-old.
“Well, come on, now!” the bear hunter shouted.
The man blinked, shook off his palsy, and ran crouched-over for the wall directly in front of the church.
The battle’s closeness nudged against the man. They were all now fighting under a thick cloud of gunpowder smoke. A companion backed into him, screamed, and then pitched forward, slashing at the fume with a butcher knife.
Some defenders coughed in the suffocating cloud.
Some screamed in both fear and anger.
Others just cursed, both Mexicans and God.
The man lowered the flintlock and fumbled to reload amidst the confusion and death.
Out of the chaos, the bear hunter shouted orders again, “Fall back to the chapel!” And then turned to point at the church. “We’ll be able to reload behind the doors!”
“Yes!” the man screamed. “And the powder’s there, too!”
The bear hunter nodded and lowering his shoulders, began to back up toward the safety of the chapel while firing into the plaza beyond the low wall.
The remaining six Tennesseans huddled tight and followed en masse.
The man, his back to the church door, shuddered at the fast approaching carnage. The screams of desperate men choked the air in two languages. The man glanced over his shoulder. The bear hunter was gone. “Colonel?” he shouted.
No answer followed.
Then suddenly, the man stumbled and fell over a lump of darkness. He rolled on the ground before righting himself on all fours. Beneath him, on the hard soil, the bear hunter lay on his back, eyes opened.
Shot.
Dead.
And then the man’s fear fought its way forward again.
The bear hunter was dead?
He looked away, panicked and scared. He fumbled the pistol from his waistbelt and fired without aim into the surging dark snarl.
“Come on, man!” the others pleaded. “For here they come!”
The man ignored his companions’ pleas and glanced back into the bear hunter’s face. The once gentle visage was blackened beyond recognition with the soot and grease of battle. The sounds of the attack lapsed away.
“We’re shuttin’ the doors!”
The man swallowed and rolled the bear hunter’s familiar leather-billed round cap from his head. He rose, cap in hand, and watched in dismay as the chapel doors swung shut.
Then the battle returned, and with it, all of the loudness and disorder of conflicted struggle. He grimaced at the chapel doors, looked left, and in the bedlam, raced untouched for the long barracks.
Inside, the man joined a small group of defenders, but he couldn’t dismiss the thought that if such a man as the bear hunter could die so effortlessly, what possible hope could any of the rest of them expect?

***

Near sunrise, a Mexican General stood in front of a raised mattress covering the doorway to one of the barracks rooms. He spoke reassuringly to the six men hidden behind the pad. One of the men stuck his long rifle over the top of the cover. A dirty sock was tied around the gun’s barrel.
From behind the mattress, a tired voice asked, “How do we know you can be trusted?”
The general stiffened and smoothed his jacket. “I am General Manuel Fernandez de Castrillón. I am a career soldier and an officer of the Mexican Army. As such, I offer you my word and my protection.”

***

General Castrillón marched the six across the main plaza of the Alamo and secured the men in a small cannonade structure on the north end of the west wall. “Please remain here,” he said. “His Excellency will arrive from the north battery soon, and when he does, I will intercede on your behalf.” The general then turned to exit the small enclosure.
The man from Tennessee, his face darkened and blued with gunpowder, pushed the bear hunter’s cap toward the back of his head and cleared his throat.
Castrillón paused and looked back at the tall man. “Yes, Colonel Crockett?”
“I…that is, we…” The man’s voice faltered.
Castrillón raised his brow. “Yes, Colonel?”
The man looked at the five standing with him and bowed his head. “Just want to thank you.”
Castrillón nodded, started to leave again, slowed, and with pause, pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.
The man from Tennessee waited, uncertain.
“Colonel?” the general finally asked. “Is it true that you have killed close to a hundred bears in your lifetime?”
The man cast his tired eyes in the direction of the chapel—to where the bear hunter lay dead—to Tennessee and its mountains, and its rivers and fertile valleys, and of a wife
and three children. The absurdity of the morn struck him. Here were two men from different lands in a small fort carrying on a civil conversation as if the carnage and destruction that permeated every foot of earth around them did not exist.
“Colonel?”
The man turned his attention back to Castrillón and after a reflective pause exhaled a short breath before answering, “I reckon the figure to be closer to a hundred and twenty-five, General.”

Texas Rock Art in The Taken

2010-05-10T13:37:00.006-05:00

Texas holds many well preserved examples of Indian rock art. Some of the most notable rock art sites are found in Val Verde County (Lower Pecos River style rock art), in El Paso County, (Hueco Tanks pictographs), and in Concho County, near Paint Rock. The Paint Rock site holds thousands of pictographs painted on the limestone cliffs above the Concho River. The Paint Rock pictographs date back 6000 years. One of the Paint Rock pictographs is said to describe the abduction of 13 year-old, Alice Todd in 1865. (Photo- From Pecos River Rock Art, Jim Zintgraff, Solveig A. Turpin)

In The Taken, (Release Date November 2010 Dorchester Publishing), a pictograph legend serves as the impetus for the abduction of William Barret Kensing, age 5 from his Texas home.

The novel opens:

- In an older, darker time, a great prophet of the People journeyed to the sacred cliff home of the Day Father. There he wove together branches of oak and cedar and burned them as offering to the Great Spirit. And when the wood transformed to ash, the prophet threw himself into the blistering residue. Refusing to cry out, even as his flesh melted into hot grease, the great prophet prayed for a messiah. One who would battle the People's great enemy, an evil spirit known as the tai-vo-tovt.

The Day Father heard the prophet's prayer and was pleased by the shaman's strength and humility and being a just and benevolent spirit, he granted the prophet a brief glimpse of the saviour he would one day send down to earth. After the Great Spirit's vision departed, the prophet gathered up the melted grease of his flesh and forever preserved the People's saviour onto the sacred cliff wall.

And when he had completed his painting, he looked upon the image and proclaimed, "Behold, this is the avenger of the People. This is the tai-vo-tovt killer."

- A legend of the People

The Last Comanche Raid into Texas

2010-05-04T09:02:00.004-05:00

On December 15, 1876, a band of Kwahadi Comanche, under the war chief, Black Horse, left the Fort Sill reservation to hunt buffalo on the staked plains. Black Horse's party soon began making war on any white hunters they found on the trail, stealing horses from Skelton Glenn and Pat Garrett, and killing and scalping Marshall Sewell. Garrett later earned notoriety as the killer of Billy the Kid. (Photo- Black Horse - Fort Marion, Florida)

White revenge followed quickly as a group of forty-six hunters operating out of Rath City, Texas tracked the Comanche raiding party to Yellow House Canyon. The ensuing battle, fueled by a barrel of whiskey, lasted all day before the hunters retreated to nearby Buffalo Spring. One hunter and thirty-five Comanche died during the fight. The battle and ensuing engagements were know as The Staked Plains War or The Buffalo Hunters' War.

In early May, the Tenth Cavalry buffalo soldiers, under Captain P.L. Lee overtook the Black Horse's band near Quemado Lake in Cochran County and returned them to the Fort Sill reservation thus ending the last Comanche raid into Texas.

Herman Lehmann, a notable white captive, who later authored a book about his captivity, Nine Years Among the Indians, was wounded during the battle.

The Comanche leader, Black Horse, died at Cache, Oklahoma around 1900.

Blood Feuds

2010-04-19T13:41:00.006-05:00

In my upcoming novel, A Hundred Miles to Water, a blood feud between Texas ranching families serves as the catalyst for all of the book's conflict. And fittingly, both protagonist and antagonist families arrive in Texas from Kentucky.

Kentucky is well recognized as the home to some of the bloodiest feuds in the United States. One of the better-known feuds, the Hatfields and McCoys, began when Floyd Hatfield penned a number of wild hogs he captured in the forest. Sometime later, Randolph McCoy passed the pen and claimed the hogs as his. Other well known feuds in the state were the Tolliver-Martin-Logan vendetta, the French-Eversole war, the Howard-Turner feud, and Bloody Breathitt, which included the Little-Strong and the Hargis-Marcum feuds. (Photo- The Hatfields circa 1897)

Clay County, Kentucky, is located in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. In late 1775, the county’s first settler, James Collins, tracked game to a large salt lick located on Goose Creek, a tributary of the south fork of the Kentucky River. The value of salt in frontier America soon became apparent as settlers who followed Collins into the area began to sink salt wells up and down "Goose Creek".

One of the longest running feuds in Clay County began in 1844 when Abner Baker, a man thought to have suffered from mental illness, shot his friend, Daniel Bates in the back. Baker and his wife, Susan (White) Baker lived in the Bates home. It is thought that Abner believed his wife and Bates were engaged in an affair.

Before he died, Bates dictated his last will and testament, in which he instructed his son to take revenge on his killer. A local magistrate, T.T. Garrard, joined sides when he refused to turn over the unstable Baker to the sheriff or the Bates.

Enraged, both the Whites and the Bates joined forces and persuaded the Commonwealth to indict Baker for murder. A jury found Baker guilty. He was hanged in 1845. Baker’s hanging caused lines to be drawn among the families with the Bates and Whites on one side and the Bakers and Garrards on the other.

The feud lasted fifty-plus years and by some estimates took over one hundred lives.

Some well known Texas feuds were: The Horrell-Higgins feud in Lampasas County in 1877, the Hoodoo War or Mason County War of 1875, and the Jaybird-Woodpecker War of 1889 in Fort Bend County.

The Kwahadi and The Battle of Adobe Walls

2010-04-07T11:20:00.003-05:00

In the spring of 1874, A.C. "Charlie" Myers packed up his mercantile business in Kansas and followed buffalo hunters, such as Josiah Wright Mooar, Billy Dixon and William Barclay "Bat" Masterson to the Texas Panhandle. The move was one of financial necessity as there were few buffalo remaining in Kansas by late 1873. A seasoned businessman, Myers understood the need for a supply post that could solve the hunter's problems of traversing the 150 mile trek between Texas and Kansas to re-supply their camps and also dispose of their hides. Myers built one of four "soddies" that eventually comprised Adobe Walls. (A soddie was a line of timber logs placed upright in a trench and then packed with sod.)

The "new" Adobe Walls was located about a mile from the Adobe Wall's ruins where Kit Carson and three hundred men battled a thousand Indians in 1864.

The June 1874 battle of Adobe Walls was a motivating factor in General Phillip H. Sheridan's July 27, 1874 "solution" sent to President Ulysses Simpson Grant. Sheridan's plan gave the Southern Plains bands seven days to enroll at their respective agencies, declare themselves friendly, and answer unannounced roll calls. Any members who did not present themselves to the agencies by August 3, 1874 would be considered as hostile and hunted down and killed.

The Kwahadi, "Antelopes," were also known by kwah-heeher kennuh, Kwahada, Quahadi, and by other bands as "Sun-shades-on-their-backs" for their habit of using buffalo-hide parasols when riding on the staked plains. The Kwahadi were the most remote and fierce of the Comanche bands. The Kwahadi avoided many of the epidemic disasters that befell other bands simply by their remoteness and refusal to have any dealings with whites.

Parra-O-Coom, "Bull Bear," was a Kwahadi leader of great celebrity. Parra-O-Coom was best known for never signing a treaty with whites and is said to have repeatedly proclaimed he would never do so until the horse soldiers came to the Staked Plains and "whooped him." Parra-O-Coom contracted pneumonia during the planning of the 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls. Due to the illness, Quanah Parker was then chosen to lead the war party on the buffalo hunters. Parra-O-Coom died while the fighting raged and was buried on the banks of Elk Creek in 1874.

Kobay, "Wild Horse," succeeded Parra-O-Coom as "token" head chief of the Kwahadi. Kobay was killed during the second charge on the buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls in 1874.

By 1874, the Kwahadi shaman, Esa-tai, "Coyote Droppings" or "Hind End of a Wolf," had become a much needed messiah figure to the oppressed Comanche. Esa-tai was also known as the Wolf Prophet. His keen observation skills allowed him to predict weather patterns and other solar occurrences. After he correctly predicted the occurrence of an 1873 comet that would appear in the skies for five days and then be followed by a drought, the bands began to believe his power would deliver them from their white enemies. Esa-tai assembled all of the bands in early June 1874 to perform the Sun Dance. This sacred ritual of the Kiowa and Cheyenne had never been performed by the Comanche in their entire history as a people. Esa-tai used the Sun Dance to proclaim that a "great spirit" had instructed him to attack the hide hunters at Adobe Walls. The Wolf Prophet proclaimed that the hide hunters would all be killed in their sleep and no Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho or Comanche warrior would be harmed because he would furnish them with magic paint that would deflect the copper bullets of the whites. After fifteen warriors were killed during the second charge, the assembled warriors realized that Esa-tai's "puha" was flawed. Wilbur Nye wrote in his book, Carbine and Lance, that sixty years after the battle, Esa-tai was simply known by the Comanche as "that comical fellow."

Women of the Texas Frontier

2010-03-31T07:55:00.003-05:00

Women of the Texas frontier, collectively portrayed by Sarah Kensing in my upcoming novel, The Taken, were unsung stalwarts of the new and expanding civilization.

It is typical of most warrior-based societies to portray women members as one-dimensional contributors to the band, tribe or family. A woman's contribution is invariably characterized in writing, song, and stories as that of "mother." This depiction was of course valued on the frontier as settlers were desirous of children, especially male children. It is, however, important to note that a woman's societal dictates went far beyond just producing children. Texas women were required to possess a multitude of desirable qualities that could be called upon and acted out no matter the circumstance.

As a result, a frontier woman was expected to not only be a mother, but also a pioneer, a homemaker, a warrior, a protector, a teacher, a preacher, a wife, a lover, a doctor, and a patriot. Therefore, the frontier woman had to at all times display the virtuous characteristics of strength, consideration, tolerance, forbearance, love, courage and faith.

In short, Texas women such as Margaret "Peggy" McCormick, Pamelia Mann, Francisca Panchita Alavez, Parmelia Parchman King, Susannah Wilkerson Dickinson, and Louis Cottle Jackson were just a few of many, who along with their frontier male companions, struggled mightily to afford future generations the luxury of an independent existence.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2010

Juan Nepomuceno Seguín

2010-03-16T09:46:00.002-05:00

Only one company of Houston's assembled troops at San Jacinto were composed of native Texians (Tejanos). These men were under the command of thirty-year-old, Captain Juan Seguín.

Seguín’s company participated in the ouster of General Cos from San Antonio in December 1835 and entered the Alamo with Travis and others in February 1836. Seguin left the Alamo as a courier on February 25 escaping the fate of seven of his men. ( Image - Juan Nepomuceno Seguín)

After the battle, it fell to Seguin to inter the ashes of the heroes of the Alamo.

At San Jacinto, Seguín and his company were attached to Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment and wore white pasteboard in their hats to distinguish themselves from enemy combatants during the battle.

Seguín served in the Second, Third, and Fourth Congress of the new republic as a senator, he was the only Tejano Texian in the legislature. In 1841, Seguin was elected Mayor of San Antonio. The city of Seguin in Guadalupe County, Texas is named after Juan Nepomuceno Seguín.

Enrique Esparza

2010-03-09T09:22:00.004-06:00

In the late afternoon of February 23, 1836, José María ‘Gregorio’ Esparza, a tejano soldier in the Plácido Benavides’ company, brought his wife, Ana Salazar Esparza, his step-daughter, María de Jesús Castro Esparza, his oldest son, Enrique, and two younger sons, Francisco and Manuel, to the Alamo for protection. Enrique was eight-years-old at the time of the siege. Sixty-six years later, as the only remaining living survivor of the Alamo, Enrique’s recollections were told for the first time in the San Antonio Light after being interviewed by Adina de Zavala, granddaughter of the first vice-president of the Republic of Texas, Lorenzo de Zavala. (Illustration -Mack White - Austin, Texas)

Enrique spent most of his time during the thirteen day siege in the church with his mother and siblings. One of Enrique’s recollections involved a young Anglo boy, about his age, that awoke during the storming of the church. As the boy rose to his feet, he gathered a blanket around his shoulders and was immediately shot and killed by advancing Mexican soldiers.

Enrique’s father, Gregorio, was killed during the battle. His uncle, Francisco, fought on the Centralist side. In the battle’s aftermath, Francisco obtained permission from Santa Anna to bury Gregorio’s body in the local cemetery, San Fernando Campo Santo. Gregorio was the only defender at the Alamo to avoid cremation in the funeral pyres that burned on either side of the Alameda.

Later, Enrique, Francisco, and Manuel moved to Atascosa County to farm and ranch on the land grant given the family for Gregorio’s service to the Republic. The brothers were responsible for the construction of the church in San Augustine, Texas.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2010

The Cowboy Code

2010-03-03T08:58:00.003-06:00

The cowboy "code" is a mixture of principle and honor that can be found in literature dating from medieval times. The “code” is a descendent of the chivalry practiced by the Knights of the Round Table which still stands as a standard for good behavior.

During the cattle drive period in American history, the “code” was a necessary and guiding rule for cowboys. These were men who more often than not worked in isolated and dangerous conditions. The “code” guaranteed help and protection to any cowboy riding for a brand who was of a need. Unfortunately, during the rise of the cowboy and those early cattle towns, the “code” also protected bad behavior. A cowboy’s first obligation was to his fellow cowboy, no matter that cowboy’s disposition to his own desires and no matter the rules of conventional society.

In 2005, authors, James P. Owen and David R. Stoecklein wrote, Cowboy Ethics: What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West. Some of the “code” rules to live by listed in the book are: (1) Be tough, but fair. (2) Ride for the brand. And (3) Do what has to be done.

Today, many ranches in the West still practice the “code”. Code cowboys of the twenty-first century still work cattle as their predecessors did in the nineteenth century, from rounding up cattle on horseback, to the use of lariats and branding irons in the field.

Nancy Hill's Hanging

2010-02-26T07:13:00.006-06:00

The Texas frontier, distantly removed from most societal institutions, became a refuge for people of 'suspect character'. As lawlessness grew on the frontier, secret groups formed with the express purpose of ridding their communities of these unwanted types. Lord Acton's words, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." rang true in his time, and certainly spoke true of most vigilante groups who more often than not degenerated over time to administering self-serving vengeance. In some Texas communities, counter-vigilante groups emerged to watch over the vigilance committees.

In 1873, a vigilante group operating in Parker County pursued and hanged horse thief, Nancy Hill in Montague County. Hill is notable as the only woman ever hanged in Montague County. After Hill's demise, vigilantes grabbed Nancy's sisters, Katherine and Martha and hung both three miles south of Springtown. The vigilantes then proceeded to burn the Hill farm and pursue the remaining family members. Nancy's mother, Dusky, and sisters, Adeline and Eliza, were captured, shot, and killed.

Due to the violence shown the Hill family, most historians believe their murders were the result of prejudices that labeled the family as "Yankee Sympathizers." Father, Allen Hill, was killed ten years earlier over the considered prejudices and eldest brother, Jack Hill, was killed in early 1873 after an argument with Aaron Bloomer.

Only the two youngest Hill children, Belle, (12) and Allen Jr. (11) were spared the mob's wrath. Belle and Allen Jr. were turned over to "Good Samaritan" citizens in Springtown, Texas. After that, both Belle and Allen Jr. become lost in history.

None of the murdered Hill women were buried as citizens feared the vigilante mobs who had hanged or shot the family. Sometime later, it was reported that former Texas Rangers, Al Thompson and Dock Maupin defied the watchmen and buried the decaying bodies of the women in Springtown.

Charles Stillman

2010-02-18T09:15:00.008-06:00

In 1849 Charles Stillman, a steamship magnate who founded Brownsville, challenged one south Texas ranchero, Rafael Garcia Cavazos, an heir to the 1781 Spanish grant, El Agostadero del Espiritu Santo, in court. Stillman claimed land title based on his purchase of squatter's land in the Espiritu Santo grant. After years of legal battles, Cavazos prevailed, but was forced to sell to Stillman's lawyers several months later after the attorneys threatened to appeal the court verdict. Cavazos relented, as he could not finance further legal battles. Stillman later purchased the disputed land from his attorneys.

The Espiritu Santo litigation was indicative of the struggles of many Hispanic landowners in south Texas. Most historians believe that Juan Nepomuceno Cortina's rise as a bandit was a direct result of the Espiritu Santo court battle. Cortina's mother was one of the heirs to the El Agostadero del Espiritu Santo grant. Cortina protested the loss of Mexican land to Anglos by rustling cattle from ranches in south Texas. Cortina, a common thief to Texans, and a hero to Mexicans, was also known as, "the Red Robber of the Rio Grande"

In 1850, the Bourland-Miller Commission was established to consider all claims in the Nueces Territory and establish procedures for claimants. By 1852, the legislature approved the majority of claims in favor of the Spanish and Mexican applicants.

Stillman's son, James, had two daughters, both of whom married into the William Rockefeller family.

The South Texas Plains

2010-02-07T16:39:00.004-06:00

The brush country of south Texas, also referred to as the brasada, is home to numerous and varied species of plant life, each equipped with its own armament of thorns and barbs. The brasada of 1878 was thick with prickly-pear, cats-claw, Spanish dagger, black chaparral, twisted acacia, all-thorn, wild currant, and mesquite. Photo- Longhorns in the South Texas Brasada

The brasada required that a brush cowboy’s equipment be suited to working in these dense and dogged thickets. Every brush hand’s armor included toe-fenders on his stirrups, leather leggins that covered his legs all the way to his waist, (no respectable brush cowboy ever referred to his leggins as chaps), gloves that extended past his wrists, and a wide-brimmed hat that could be tied around his chin.

J. Frank Dobie wrote in A Vaquero in the Brush Country, that, “In running in the brush a man rides not so much on the back of the horse as under and alongside. He just hangs on, dodging limbs as if he were dodging bullets, back, forward, over, under, half of the time trusting his horse to course right on this or that side of a bush or tree. If he shuts his eyes to dodge, he is lost. Whether he shuts them or not, he will, if he runs true to form, get his head rammed or raked. Patches of the brush hand’s bandana hanging on thorns and stobs sometimes mark his trail. The bandana of red is his emblem.”

The brasada was also home to Texas and Mexican bandits and desperadoes. In the parlance of the time, they were known as owl hoots, bad men who rustled, robbed, and murdered at their own will. Texas and Mexican bandits used the brasada as an exchange point. The Texas rustlers often had Mexican cattle to dispose of that carried no known state brand and contrariwise.

The First Caudillo

2010-01-31T09:04:00.006-06:00

The word, caudillo, as used in Mexico, came to mean a political-military leader. Caudillo, translated into English as “leader,” or “chief,” but as in most peasant societies, the word came to express a dictator or potentate. The Merrimam-Webster dictionary defines caudillo as “a Spanish or Latin-America military dictator.” Image -
Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Aramburu

One of the best known caudillos in Mexican history was José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, also known as Pancho Villa. Villa was a provisional governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua from 1913-1914.

Villa led a 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico, which resulted in a year-long expedition by General John J. Pershing to find the “bandit.” Pershing’s pursuit proved unsuccessful.
Pancho Villa was assassinated in 1920 by seven gunmen outside of Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Other historically famous Mexican caudillos were Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón, Agustín Cosme Damián de Iturbide y Aramburu, José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, and Álvaro Obregón Salido.

Iturbide marched troops into Mexico City on September 27, 1821. The following day, Mexico was declared an independent empire. Iturbide is known as Mexico’s first caudillo.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2010

The Marlow Brothers

2010-01-22T08:14:00.003-06:00

In 1888, Deputy Marshall Ed Johnson of Graham labeled five Young County men, the Marlow brothers, as rustlers and murderers. Many historians believe Johnson concocted the story against the brothers as a means of gaining favor with the powerful cattleman's association. Johnson's work for the association, had failed to apprehend any of the known rustlers working in the county.

Sheriff Marion Wallace of Graham tried to serve papers on the Marlow's at the behest of Johnson on December 17, 1888. Wallace was shot by Boone Marlow and died a week later. Boone Marlow claimed that Deputy Tom Collier, who accompanied Wallace that evening, fired the first shots inside his house and then fled outside. Boone said he pursued Collier and seeing a man approaching, gun in hand, shot and mistakenly killed Wallace. Boone took flight, but brothers, George, Epp, Alfred, and Charley were arrested and jailed in Graham.

On January 14, 1889, the captured brothers dug out of their jail cell, but were recaptured the next day outside of their ranch. Tom Collier, now sheriff, shackled the men together in pairs to prevent any further attempts at escape. A vigilante group mobbed
the jail on the night of January 17 in an attempt to extricate the Marlow's to a suitable place for lynching, but the brothers thwarted their assailants. George struck one vigilante, Robert Hill, so hard that the man died of his injuries two days later.

The next morning, a concocted story made its way through Graham saying that the jailhouse ruckus had been caused by Boone Marlow's attempt to free his brothers and only the jailer's bravery prevented such escape. A telegraph sent to United States Marshall, William Cabell in Dallas repeated the fabrication. Cabell immediately ordered his deputy, Ed Johnson, to move the brothers to Weatherford for safekeeping.

The day of the transport, outside of Graham, on Dry Creek, the vigilantes attacked the brothers once again. At the fight's conclusion, three vigilantes lay dead, as well as Alfred and Epp Marlow.
Boone Marlow was killed in Indian Territory on January 28, 1889.
In 1892, damage suits brought against their attackers awarded Charley Marlow $1950.00 and George Marlow $1000.00.

The movie, The Sons of Katie Elder, was based on the Marlow brother's story.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2010

The Dictator and Thomas Adams

2010-01-19T08:15:00.007-06:00

Thomas Adams (1818-1905) was the first person in the United States to manufacture chewing gum that had chicle as the base ingredient. Image - Thomas Adams.

Large quantities of chicle, which comes from the sapodilla tree in Central America, had been given Adams by friends of General Antonio López de Santa Anna. The former Mexican dictator was in exile at the time and spent time at Adams’ house on Staten Island. Santa Anna persuaded Adams that the inexpensive chicle could be compounded with the more expensive rubber to make an economical alternative for carriage tires.

Adams tried for a year but was unsuccessful at every attempt to accomplish the ex-dictator’s “get-rich” scheme. One day, after yet another rubber failure, Adams is reported to have popped a piece of chicle into his mouth. He remembered that Santa Anna enjoyed chewing chicle gum. Adams realized that the softer chicle gum was superior to the paraffin wax gum that was popular at the time in the United States.

Shortly after that, Adams and his oldest son, Thomas Jr., made up “penny sticks” of the gum and distributed them to a local drugstore. The chicle gum was an instant hit. Adams sold his chicle gum with the slogan "Adams' New York Gum No. 1 - Snapping and Stretching."

In 1888, Adams’ Tutti-Frutti flavored gum was the first gum to be sold in a vending machine. By 1899, Adams Sons and Company had become the largest and most profitable chewing gum company in the United States. In that same year, Adams and five other chewing gum companies joined forces as the American Chicle Company. Thomas Jr. was named chairman of the board of directors for the new company.

Thomas Adams Sr. died in 1905.

Cuerno Largo

2009-12-21T15:49:00.004-06:00

In early November of 1493, a fleet of seventeen Spanish ships carrying over one thousand men, including Christopher Columbus, landed on an island that Columbus named, Dominica. Also on-board the ships were domesticated pigs, horses, and of course, cattle.

Twenty-six years later, Hernán Cortés began his conquest of New Spain, (Mexico) with six hundred soldiers and fifteen horsemen. The horses were descendents of the original herd brought to Dominica in 1493. In 1521, Gregorio de Villalobos transported the first cattle, also descendents of the first herd, from Dominica to New Spain.

New world cattle soon became a form of currency for the Spanish. Owning a great herd provided men with disposable and liquid wealth. Cortés stocked his great estate in New Spain with significant numbers of the animal.

As the Spanish began their campaigns to conquer their new world, they took with them, horses and cattle. In 1540, one conquistador, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado set off in search of the famed Seven Cities of Cibola. He departed with thousands of sheep, goats, hogs, and, by most estimates, five-hundred head of cattle. Coronado’s ‘five-hundred’ were the first cattle to set ‘hoof’ in what is now the United States.

Over time, escaped, dispersed by Indian raids, abandoned, or left behind purposely, these strays or wild cattle propagated prolifically. Left to their own survival, Spanish cattle developed the traits necessary to survive and reproduce efficiently and providently in the new world environment. These traits included robustness, vitality, fertility, and most importantly browse-efficiency. By 1835, wild cattle, sometimes referred to as mustang cattle, and later, Texas cattle, could be found from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Some records of the same year put the total number of cattle and horses running wild inside this area as three million head.

These Texas cattle, what we today call longhorns, were, in the words of Captain Richard Ware, “…wilder than deer.”

Another chronicler, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge offered the following comment on wild Texas cattle. “…animals miscalled tame, fifty times more dangerous to footmen than the fiercest buffalo.”

After the Civil War, men returned home to Texas to find untended fields and millions of wild Texas cattle. A few far-thinking men looked at the vast cattle herds and saw a profitable future ahead. These far-thinking men began to round-up, brand, and then drive these wild Texas cattle toward railheads that serviced burgeoning northern markets, markets “hungry” for beef. We know these men by names such as cowboy, rannie, buckaroo, or cowpuncher, but they are all descendents, not by blood, but instead by the common love of their occupation from the Mexican vaquero.

The cattle drive era was short in duration but provided millions in gold to those few entrepreneurs who saw the potential of a rangy, long-legged animal that was shaped by Mother Nature for self-preservation. The Texas longhorn could live on a diet of browse that would kill other breeds. It was an animal that could go tremendous distances without a drink, swim the broadest rivers, and run, when needed, like a mustang pony. In short, the longhorn of that period was the right animal to accomplish what those far-thinking men had in mind. The longhorn, Cuerno Largo, was without peer.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2009

The McCormick League

2009-06-16T14:26:00.013-05:00

The San Jacinto battlefield, a prairie located eight miles north of New Washington, was situated within a league of land owned by Margaret (Peggy) McCormick. Buffalo Bayou bordered the league on the northwest, San Jacinto Bay on the northeast, and a large swamp known as Peggy's Lake on the southeast.

Eight miles to the southwest lay Vince's Bridge, which led to Harrisburg, the only escape route for the Texian and Mexican armies before the battle. Deaf Smith, and six volunteers, Peter Alsbury, Moses Lapham, Denmore Reaves, John Coker, E.R. Rainwater, and John Garner, burned the bridge on April 21 before the fighting began.

Photo- Henry McArdle's Battle of San Jacinto 1895

Peggy McCormick moved to Texas in 1824 with her husband, Arthur and sons, Mike and John. The McCormick's were members of Stephen F. Austin's first colony. Arthur McCormick drowned in Buffalo Bayou in 1824 leaving Peggy and her two young sons to work the land as best they could. The widow McCormick made ends meet by raising and selling cattle.

Peggy and her sons fled their ranch in late April as Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's troops approached. Days after the battle of San Jacinto, Peggy returned home to find her cattle pilfered by both armies and her land strewn with the bodies of Mexican soldiers. She confronted Sam Houston and Santa Anna demanding that one or both men bury the dead. Both refused. Peggy and her sons buried what bodies they could.

John J. Linn who arrived at San Jacinto with Vice-president Lorenzo de Zavala after the battle and later interviewed Santa Anna recalled the conversation between Peggy and Gen. Houston that day. Linn said Houston told Mrs. McCormick, "Madam, your land will be famed in history." To which Peggy replied, "To the devil with your glorious history!"

Peggy later petitioned the Republic of Texas for damages caused by the two armies to her property. The new government refused her request of one hundred forty head of cattle, seventy-five bushels of corn, and two horses. Later county surveyor, George M. Patrick re-surveyed the McCormick league and unbeknown to the family, moved almost half of the McCormick land east into the San Jacinto swamp. The "new" western land produced by the re-survey was assigned to a veteran of San Jacinto who quickly resold the land to Patrick.

Peggy died in a suspicious fire in her home in 1854. Speculation was that the widow, who had once owned one of the largest cattle herds in Harris County, had been robbed and possibly murdered before the fire was set.

Mike McCormick drowned in Buffalo Bayou in 1875 near the spot where his father had drowned in 1824. During the revolution, Mike, acting as a courier between Gen. Houston and Pres. Burnet, warned Burnet of the approaching Col. Almonte at New Washington thus saving the lives of Burnet, his wife, as well as other members of the provisional government…but that…well that's a whole 'nuther story...

Read more about Peggy McCormick at: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmcbs.html

The Tragedy of Post-Independence Texas

2009-05-07T08:08:00.010-05:00

After the Texian victory at San Jacinto in April 1836, a flood of animosity was unleashed first on Bejareños [1] and later on all Tejanos in the new Republic. Anglo-American volunteers who participated in the revolution were largely ignorant of Tejano culture and politics. This lack of knowledge led to a belief that all Mexicans were dubious in their intentions toward Anglos and held hidden loyalties to General Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's centralist government. (Image - Don Martín De León from the Sons of DeWitt Colony, http://www.tamu.edu/)

Under a swell of Anglos surging into Texas from the United States, Tejano families who had fought valiantly alongside Anglo-colonists and volunteers found themselves fighting once again, only this time for ancestral property and land. In a short period, Texas, a once-proud colony of Spanish acculturation, now embraced Anglo-American values and manners. The homogeneous tide of settlers into the Republic viewed Spanish culture and its caste mentality as mongrel and inferior. Moreover, those Tejanos who had rejected centralism became pariahs in both Mexican and Texan society.

Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies inflicted upon loyal Tejanos involved the aristocratic family of Empresario Don Martín De León, founder of De León Colony and Victoria, Texas. Don Martin died in 1833, but his wife, Madam Doña Patricia De León provided both sons and money to the Texas revolution. After San Jacinto, the family suffered the cruel prejudices and antipathy of the new Anglo citizenry. Victims of racial hatred, the De León family fled to New Orleans, where they lived in abject poverty for three years before returning to Mexico.

In 1844, Madam De León returned home to Victoria only to discover that her family's homes, property, and livestock were all gone, seized by ruthless and dishonest newcomers into the Republic. The De León family, who contributed much to the independence of Texas, found their repayment to be ostracism and banishment. Madam De León died in 1849 and was buried next to Don Martin in the Victoria churchyard.

Victor Rose concludes his History of Victoria (1883) with, "Alas, what a sad commentary upon the administration of human justice, to say nothing of its ingratitude, is that presented in the misfortunes of this most worthy family."

In 1971 the Don Martín De León Memorial Foundation was established and funds were raised and permission granted to establish State Historical Markers and a preserved site in the cemetery to honor members of the De León family and their contribution to Texas. Markers were established for Empresario Martín De León, wife Patricia De León, and sons Fernando, Silvestre, Felix and Agapito. On 8 April 1972, dedication services were held at Victoria City Hall and Evergreen Cemetery. It was attended by several hundred including dignitaries from Texas, the United States and Mexico. Present was the great grandson of first President of Mexico Guadalupe Victoria after which the city was named.[2]

[1] A citizen of San Antonio de Bexar
[2] From The Empresario by A.B.J. Hammett, 1973 – Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas Web Site

Read more about the De Leon family at: http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/deleon2.htm

Travis's Last Messenger

2009-03-30T15:09:00.007-05:00

On Saturday evening March 5, 1836, James L. Allen volunteered to deliver Col. William B. Travis's final plea for relief to Col. James Fannin at Goliad. The twenty-one year-old courier arrived in Goliad on March 8, but was unable to obtain any assistance from Fannin. Allen then rode to Gonzales where on March 11, he learned that the Bexar garrison had fallen. Image - Messenger James Butler Bonham Arrives Back at the Alamo on March 3.

Alamo Legacy, author, Ron Jackson tells in his book of an interview with F.C. Proctor who claimed to have heard Allen's own account as a young boy. Proctor's account was later verified by Allen's daughter, Mary L. Cunningham.

" . . . Travis told Allen he would be the one to make the attempt to carry the message to Fannin because he had the fleetest mare. Shortly after nightfall, Allen grabbed the reins on the bridle of his horse and mounted bareback. A gate was opened and off he rode. Allen bent low and hugged the horse's neck, providing a lesser target as he dashed through the Mexican lines . . . "

After learning of the Alamo's fall, Allen realized he owed his life to his horse.

A month later, Allen served as a scout with Deaf Smith and helped burn bridges around San Jacinto dooming any thoughts of retreat by the Mexican army.

After San Jacinto, Allen rode with the Texas Rangers under Captains Ward and Bell.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Allen worked as a tax-assessor-collector for Calhoun County. Refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, Allen was arrested and detained on Saluria Island where he escaped and fled to Port Lavaca . . . but that . . . well that's a whole nuther story.

Read more about James L Allen at the handbook of Texas online:

www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/AA/fal20.html

Dilue Rose Harris

2009-03-04T05:19:00.000-06:00

In 1900, the recollections of Dilue Rose Harris were published in the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association. (Vol. IV, Southwestern Historical Quarterly) Dilue's reminiscences were combined with journal accounts kept by her father, Dr. Pleasant W. Rose. The journal dates, 1833 – 1837, offer readers an intense, vivid pictorial of the "Runaway Scrape," the scramble by Texas colonists to the Louisiana border and protection in the United States. Photo of the Runaway Scrape Oak, where Sam Houston camped during the first night of the Texian retreat from Gonzales.

The Rose family farm was located on the east bank of the Brazos River, (Fort Bend County), west of present day Houston. The Roses' were friends of Colonel William B. Travis and after hearing of the deaths of he and his men at the Alamo began making plans to flee Santa Anna's approaching Santanistas. Mrs. Rose's brother, James Wells, made preparation to join Houston's army and Dilue recounts how her mother sewed James two striped hickory shirts, while she (Dilue) melted lead in a pot to be used in the molding of bullets for her uncle. In Mid- March, the Rose family left home hauling their possessions on a sled pulled by a yoke of oxen. Upon reaching the San Jacinto River crossing, they became part of an exodus of five-thousand people. The ferry crossing took three days.

Dilue recalled how her mother reminded the children that a hundred-mile walk with thousands of people was not frightening compared to the family's other travails in Texas, shipwrecked on the coast, attacked by wolves, and a most unsettling visit to their farm by an escaped slave, known locally as The Wild Man of the Navidad. Dilue's account of the Trinity River crossing provides a powerful chronicle of the hardships placed on the fleeing farmers. A rising Trinity ran over its banks stranding the family for several hours. During their crossing, one of Dilue's young sisters, sick when their journey began, went into to convulsions and died later. The Roses' buried the child in Liberty, Texas.

On April 22, while proceeding to the Sabine, a courier named McDermot, arrived with a dispatch from Gen. Houston telling the colonists that Santa Anna's army had been defeated at San Jacinto and it was safe to return to their homes. McDermot, an actor, stayed in the Rose family camp that night relating the Battle of San Jacinto in great theatrical fashion . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . .

The Hypocrisy of Culture

2009-01-27T07:40:00.000-06:00

Twelve thousand years ago, small patriarchal bands of East Asians began an arduous trek across the Bering Strait and into the Americas. Over thousands of years, as these hunter and gatherers began to disperse throughout the Americas; new patterns of band behavior began to emerge. These patterns coalesced into what we now refer to as "culture." Although this East Asian migration was comprised of one people (most likely with one linguistic stock and belief system), after thousands of years in the new world, these bands were no longer able to communicate with one another. Both their language and culture splintered. Their adapted behavior patterns were simply societal imperatives that served to assure band survival.

(Photo - Courtesy of The Library of Congress)

The singular most devastating threat to these primitive bands was the death of a warrior, because a warrior's death meant less protection and less protein for the band. Therefore, the foremost band dictate for its warriors was – "Stay alive."

Each band's cultural identity formed independently; each borne of rules and beliefs that were intrinsically necessary for band preservation. Each band member's self-concept was deeply rooted in the learned behavior patterns or culture. Thus, for some North American bands, monogamy became the cultural dictate while in South American others embraced polygamy. A band that accepted polygamy might do so in order to remove unattached females from society as unattached females in estrus ultimately led to competition between males, which ultimately led to conflict between males.

In North America, for example, once bands such as the Comanche became "horsed", ¹ the cultural dictate – "Stay alive" placed no stigma on running from a fight. This cultural imperative was contradictory to Indo-European warrior society, which dictated that a soldier who fled the battlefield without a retreat order was a coward. Indo-European society dealt harshly with such cowards. The cultural dictate – "Stay alive" also meant that band members must not kill one another. While borne out of the prime dictate for all species – survive and reproduce, the fact that bands like the Comanche did not kill one another actually makes them quite civilized by world standards. There is great irony in the fact that Indo-Europeans during the time, who considered themselves thoroughly civilized, killed one another with little regard for human life.

Band members' unfaltering belief in their cultural dictates was accomplished by cultural indoctrination, beginning as early as age three in plains Indians. Each warrior was fully entrenched with the cultural imperative – "Stay alive." This was to provide protection and protein for the band. The "Stay alive" imperative also presented a cultural dichotomy to young warriors, as engaging and killing traditional enemies, often at great risk, were the only means of achieving status within the band. Cultural indoctrination instilled the deep belief that a warrior who could not provide protection and protein was not much of a warrior and thus not much of a man. Only after the Comanche and other Southern Plains Indians became imprisoned in the reservation system did the devastating effects of this indoctrination reveal themselves through depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Because warriors bound to the reservation could no longer provide protection or protein to the band, thus abandoning their cultural dictate, reservation males were no longer warriors or men.

While cultural beliefs varied from band-to-band, tribe-to-tribe, and country-to-country – one cultural component existed (and still exists) in all societies: "We are right and they are wrong." The "We are right and they are wrong" indoctrination was necessary to keep band members from abandoning cultural values when interacting with outside cultures. Examples of the "We are right and they are wrong" illustrates how early cultures referred to themselves. Many names translated to "people," "the people," or "human beings."²

The "We are right and they are wrong" indoctrination instructed all band members that the way we are organized is right, and what we believe in is right; thus all of our actions are always inherently right. This resulted in total inflexibility toward other cultures, which gave rise to cultural hypocrisy.

Representative of this cultural hypocrisy was the killing of women and children and non-combatants in Plains Indians and U.S. military conflicts. Each side engaged in the practice based on cultural beliefs and each side denounced the other's actions. However, neither side ever admitted they were wrong for committing the very atrocities that they condemned.

Just as the declaration that slaves were only two thirds human and thus not really men, kept the Founding Father's directive that "all men are created equal" culturally intact, the Anglos used this similar cultural justification to proclaim "Native People" as ignorant savages. After many broken treaties and promises by the United States, the Anglo culture was deemed "right" and the Native People were declared wards of the government. The only way for Native People and Anglos to "get along" (co-exist) was for Native People to assimilate Anglo culture. The cultural dictate by the United States was expressed succinctly to the reservation inhabitants - we want you to dress like us, speak like us, and believe the things we believe – in short, we want to strip you of your culture and your identity and thus your self-concept. The Library of Congress photograph above speaks volumes to this hypocrisy.

In 2008, cultural hypocrisy continues unabated. A recent example is the response by the U.S. State Department concerning Russia's occupation of Georgia's capital. Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated that Russia by "invading smaller neighbors, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreaking havoc and wanton destruction of this infrastructure," is isolating itself from the "community of nations." Her assertion totally disregarded the assertions by many in the Middle East and West that the United States occupation of Iraq in 2003 was "invading a smaller country, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreaking havoc and wanton destruction of the infrastructure," as isolating the U.S. from the "community of nations."

These opposing views on twenty-first century conflicts are direct descendents of the "We are right and they are wrong" indoctrination. The United States maintains its culture is right and Russia is wrong; therefore, the U.S. form of government is right and Russia's is wrong. Because the U.S. is right - all of its actions are inherently right. Conversely, Russia is wrong and all of its actions are inherently wrong.

History does repeat itself. The reasons why Comanche and Anglos did not get along in the nineteenth century are the very same reasons that Israelis and Palestinians do not get along today: culture and identity. In order to break free of the cultural cycle of hypocrisy twenty-first century peoples must begin a new indoctrination of future generations; one that allows for understanding lessons from the past and developing an understanding for other cultures. We do not have to believe what they believe, but we should educate ourselves as to why they believe what they believe. Then, and only then, we may come to understand other cultures and their actions. Failure to develop a level of understanding will result in us once again trying to impose our own cultural beliefs on another culture, and as history has shown, the consequences are dangerous. We are doomed to repeat history's lessons as long as "different" carries the labels of ignorant, savage, or less than human and require assimilation into the "right" culture.

Our very survival as a species may rest in the idea that in order for cultures to "get along" we do not all need to be the same.

_______________________________
¹The introduction of the horse to North America had a profound impact on the Comanche. Comanche are believed to be the first native people on the plains to use the horse for hunting and war.
² The Israelites called themselves "the chosen people".

The Angel of Goliad

2009-01-22T10:00:00.000-06:00

On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, fifteen year old, Benjamin Franklin Hughes was pulled from a group of Texas prisoners by an officer of the Mexican army. The prisoners, from James Walker Fannin's command at The Battle of Coleto, were unknowingly marching toward their executions. Hughes recalled years later that a young woman, Madame Captain Alavez (Francisca Panchita Alavez) spoke with General Urrea's wife moments before he was taken from the ranks.

(Photo -Bronze statue of The Angel of Goliad - Francisca Panchita Alavez in Goliad, Texas. Sculpture by Che Rickman)

Hughes was not the first Texan whose life was spared by Francisca's heroic actions. First hand narratives reveal she was responsible for saving Dr. Joseph H. Barnard and Dr. Jack Shackelford at La Bahia and Rueben R. Brown at San Patricio. Dr. Barnard later wrote, "During the time of the massacre (La Bahia) she stood in the street, her hair floating, speaking wildly, and abusing the Mexican officers, especially José Nicolás de la Portilla She appeared almost frantic." Alavez is also credited with nursing wounded Texans at Copano, Goliad, and Matamoras.

Famed Spanish author, Elena Zamora O'Shea, a King Ranch schoolteacher (1902-1903) wrote of Francisca in her memoirs, "-she died on the King Ranch and is buried there in an unmarked grave . . ." One of the ranch workers, (Los Kineños) Matias Alvarez related to O'Shea that his father was Telesforo Alavez, whose sweetheart, Francisca followed him throughout his military assignments on the northern frontier. After his father's death, Matias worked on several jobs north of the Rio Grande finally setting at the King Ranch where he was accompanied by his mother, Francisca.

A descendent of The Angel of Goliad, Dr. Lauro Cavazos, was the first Hispanic to serve in the United States Cabinet as Secretary of Education . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . .

Read more about Francisca Panchita Alavez on-line at:

http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/goliadangel.htm

http://www.angelofgoliadhp.com/about_francisca_alvarez.htm

George Campbell Childress

2009-01-07T06:28:00.000-06:00

In December 1835, the Texas provisional government (The General Council) called for the Independence convention to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Sixty-two delegates were elected from twenty-five Texas municipalities on February 1, 1836.

The convention was called to order on March 1, 1836 by George Childress. Forty-four delegates presented credentials the first day. Fifty-nine delegates ultimately attended the convention. Three delegates, James Kerr (Jackson), John Linn (Victoria), and Juan Antonio Padilla (Goliad) were unable to attend. (Photo - Statue of George Childress at Washington-on-the-Brazos)

Richard Ellis (Red River) was elected convention president. Ellis then appointed a Declaration of Independence committee. The committee consisted of five members - James Gaines (Sabine), Edward Conrad (Refugio), Collin McKinney (Red River), Bailey Hardeman (Matagorda), and was chaired by George Childress (Milam).

The Texas Declaration of Independence was written in one day. Most historians believe Childress arrived at the convention with an almost completed draft of the document. Childress is widely accepted as the author of the six page declaration.

The document was approved without debate. Delegates began signing the document on March 3, 1836, officially establishing the Republic of Texas.

Before the convention adjourned on March 17, 1836, due to the advancing Mexican Army, Childress also made motions for the prevention of slave trading in the Republic and that the state emblem be "a single star of five points . . . "

George Childress was one of only two delegates who did not arrive in Texas until 1836. The other was Sam P. Carson (Red River) . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . .

Read more about George Campbell Childress at the Handbook of Texas Online

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/fch28.html

And at:

http://robertson-ancestry.com/122413-01.htm

The Youngest Alamo Defender

2008-11-25T09:31:00.000-06:00

William Philip King –
Oct. 8, 1820 – March 6, 1836

On February 27, 1836, fourteen men, known as the Gonzales Mounted Rangers, under the command of Lieutenant George C. Kimble rode for San Antonio with a relief force of eleven other Gonzales men under the command of Captain Albert Martin. Included in the mounted ranger corps were a trio of youthful defenders, Privates, John Gaston, 17, Galba Fugua, 16, and William Philip King, 15. King is regarded by most historians as the youngest of the Alamo defenders. William had pleaded with his father, John Gladden King, the original Kimble enlistee, to allow him to take his place in the relief column. John King reluctantly agreed, as illness required he remain in Gonzales with his family. (Alamo Battle Painting - Texas State Library & Archives.)

Between Gonzales and San Antonio, the Gonzales relief force added seven more volunteers to their ranks, and on the morning of March 1, 1836 at 3:00 a.m., the group worked their way past Santa Anna's troops and entered the Alamo. The thirty-two men of the Gonzales relief force are thought to have been the last full company to reinforce Lieutenant Colonel William Barrett Travis. All thirty-two men perished with the other Alamo defenders.

Susanna Dickinson recalled that one of the last defenders in the chapel was a man called "Wolff." Mrs. Dickinson recalled "Wolff" asking the Mexicans for clemency, but being killed along with his two sons.

There was an Alamo defender by the name of Anthony Wolf . Wolf was attached to William R. Carey's artillery company. Wolf's sons were listed as being, 11 and 12, which would make them the youngest members of the Alamo garrison to die that day . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . . .

Read more about William Philip King at the Handbook of Texas Online

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/KK/fki24.html

Read more about Anthony Wolf at the Handbook of Texas Online

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/WW/fwo44.html

Read more about the Gonzales Mounted Rangers at Texas Ranger Dispatch Magazine

http://www.texasranger.org/dispatch/13/pages/Alamo_Rangers.htm

"Remember the Alamo!"

2008-10-29T17:35:00.000-05:00

Who was the first to cry - "Remember the Alamo! Remember la Bahia!" - on the San Jacinto battlefield?

Mirabeau Lamar credited Colonel Sidney Jefferson Sherman. Sherman commanded the left wing of the Texan army that April afternoon and is said to have opened the attack on the Mexicans with, "Remember the Alamo!"

Frank X. Tolbert, in his book, The Day of San Jacinto, wrote that Houston, in his own official report, also credited Sherman as being the first to shout the battlefield war cry.

J. Frank Dobie, in his book, Coronado's Children, attributed the battle cry to Captain Jesse W. Billingsley, concuring with Harry Alexander Davis, who wrote, The Billingsley family in America.

But one thing is certain about the origin of the battle cry - Recollections and Memoirs written by veterans of the San Jacinto battlefield all agree that General Sam Houston was the first to remind his troops to, "Remember the Alamo."

"He said [Houston] when you engage the enemy, let your battle cry be - Remember the Alamo! Colonel Rusk followed with a short but stirring speech - he said let your battle cry be - The Alamo and La Bahia!" Issac Lafayette Hill. Recollections published in the Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, vol. 7.

"The Genl. [Houston] formed us in solid colm [sic] - rode into our midst, and delivered to us one of the best speeches - told us that when we got into battle to make the Mexicans remember the Alamo - Genl. Rusk followed him, telling us to also make the Mexicans remember the massacre of Fannins men." John Harvey. Memoirs in the veterans papers in the University of Texas Archives, about 1874.

" - he [Houston] closed his address by saying let your war cry be "Remember the Alamo!" Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath by Lucy Erath.

"He [Houston] told them that the battle cry should be "Remember the Alamo. General Rusk followed Houston eloquently, urging them to let the battle cry be "Remember the Alamo," "Remember Labadie." [sic] San Jacinto Veteran James Monroe Hill 1894.

So while we might never really know who was the first to shout the war cry on the field of battle, - we can be absolutely sure of two things: (1) that General Houston and General Rusk were the first to promote the use of the battle cry, and (2) that the Santanista's pleadings of, "Me no Alamo! Me no la Bahia!" show the terrifying effect the battle cry had on the retreating - fleeing - Mexican army.

And - while not generally known - there was yet another battle cry shouted that April afternoon - "Remember Wash Cottle!" Pvt. James Curtis, 64 and the oldest combantant at San Jacinto, had lost his son-in-law, Wash Cottle in the Alamo and was detertmined to make the Mexicans pay for his loss . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story.

Veteran Quotes from Sons of DeWitt Colony archives.
http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/archives.htm

Read about the Battle of San Jacinto at the Handbook of Texas On-Line.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/qes4.html

Copyright Mike Kearby 2008

The "Twin Sisters"

2008-10-07T15:57:00.000-05:00

During the 3rd quarter of the Cowboy - Bengal game a few Sundays back, a Bengal running back fumbled after his team had just recovered a crucial on-side kick. My wife commented that Cincinnati had just given the Texas lads a real "gift." I replied not as big as the gift the Ohioans had given a bunch of Texas boys in 1836. Photo -Twin Sister Replicas built by the University of Houston College of Technology.

For in 1836, during the Texas struggle for Independence, the citizens of Cincinnati , Ohio, furnished Sam Houston's army with two artillery pieces that later came to be known as the "Twin Sisters."

According to the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, [Volume 10, 1952 written by E.N. Clopper] on November 17, 1835, a group of Cincinnatians', Friends of Texas, met in the Court House to consider the reports of ward committees on giving aid to Texas insurgents. The Ohio gentleman who presided over this meeting was Nicholas Clopper, also the brother-in-law of David Burnet, who would later serve as president of the Republic of Texas.

Also present at the meeting was a former United States legislator, Robert T. Lytle, who offered several resolutions, one being, "-That we approve and recommend to the citizens of this meeting a plan by which the citizens of Texas, shall be supplied through their agent, Mr. Smith, (William Bryan) by our contributions with such an amount of hollow ware as he (Smith) may deem sufficient, to contain other provisions, by which they shall be filled, according to his judgement and sound discretion."

The resolution was unanimously accepted.

The cannon were manufactured at the Eagle Foundry [also referred to in some documents as Eagle Iron Works] in Cincinnati, and later shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans to Galveston to Harrisburg and finally to the Texian army at Groce's Plantation. The Eagle Foundry was owned by Miles Greenwood and Joseph Webb. The "Twins" were passed through customs as "hollow ware" which was the customs designation for glass ware and bottles. The fact that United States customs allowed the pieces through is indicative of Andrew Jackson's "neutrality" during the conflict.

Nicholas Clopper personally contributed half a ton of cannon-balls to the cause.

Greenwood's Iron Eagle Works burned to the ground in 1852. Later, after re-building his foundry, Greenwood put together Cincinnati's first fire department and the United States' first paid fire department complete with a horse-drawn steam engine water pumper.

In the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, [Volume 11, 1953, written by E. N. Clopper] Clopper offers a letter excerpt from Hugh C. Mitchell of Washington D.C., written by his grandmother, Elizabeth Rice. Elizabeth's father, Dr. Charles W. Rice, joined the Texas Navy in 1836. Elizabeth and her twin sister, Eleanor, were aboard the same steamboat as the cannon in April 1836. All arrived in Texas together. Legend has it that Elizabeth and Eleanor were taught a short presentation speech to formally present the cannon to Texas . . . and from that time on the cannon were referred to as the "Twin Sisters." Elizabeth also wrote, "I have not made much noise in this world, but my Namesake did."

And the "Twin Sisters?" Well as the Texian troops departed Groce's Plantation on April 14, 1836, businesswoman, Pamelia Dickinson Mann, agreed to allow the army use of a yoke of her oxen to pull the "Twin Sisters" through the mud and to the safety of Nacogdoches. Days later at the famous "fork-in-the-road", Houston's men marched toward Harrisburg, Santa Anna, and their victorious destiny.

But Mrs. Mann would have nothing of it, and when Wagon Master, Conrad Rohrer refused her request to take back her stock, Mrs. Mann let loose with a fit of swearing that made Houston throw up his hands in exasperation. Mrs. Mann jumped from her horse, cut her oxen loose, and headed up the road toward Nacogdoches. It's said that Captain Rohrer later gave pursuit of Pamelia to retrieve the oxen. . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story. . .

Read more about the Twin Sisters at The Handbook of Texas Online.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/qvt1.html

Copyright 2008 Mike Kearby

Alamo Defender, Robert Evans

2008-10-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

In the 1960 John Wayne production of the Alamo, the action ends with the "Duke" (as Davy Crockett) impaled to the door of the ordnance room in the Alamo. In dramatic Hollywood fashion, Wayne breaks the lance, frees himself, stumbles into the ordnance room, and blows himself and the gunpowder up. This is Hollywood at its worst.

(Photo United Artists, The Alamo, 1960)

For during the actual battle that March morning in 1836, it was Robert Evans, ordnance chief of the garrison, who attempted in the final moments of the battle to "fire" the Texans' powder magazine.

Susanna Dickinson, maybe the most noted Alamo survivor, tells that after the front door to the chapel was breached by the Mexican army, Evans raced for the ordnance which was stored in the rear of the chapel. Evans was gunned down as he attempted to torch the room.

Evans not Crockett made the heroic yet futile attempt to keep the remaining gunpowder supply out of Santa Anna's hands.

Not much is known of Evans. What we do know is that he was born in Ireland in 1800 and traveled to Texas from new York. He became master of ordnance of the Bexar garrison in 1835, after the December seige of the city led by Ben Milam.

Milam was killed during that siege, but after four days of fighting, Bexar and the Alamo were surrendered to his rebel force. The Texans hoped their victory would make Santa Anna re-think any further actions . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . .

Read more about Robert Evans at The Handbook of Texas OnLine.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/EE/fev22.html

The Elm Creek Raid, Young County, Texas 1864

2008-09-30T14:23:00.000-05:00

Last week, I was speaking at the Old Post Office Museum in Graham, Texas, when a gentleman came up and introduced himself as "Pooch" Williams. "Pooch" and his daughter, Teresa wanted to show me a relic that had been in their family for 144 years. "Pooch" then produced from his pocket, a medallion minted in 1817 featuring the likeness of James Monroe. Photo - Back of Monroe Peace Medal

The Monroe Medals were minted by Moritz Furst in Philadelphia in 1817 and distributed to various Native American chiefs beginning in 1820.

"Pooch's" medal was discovered by his grandfather's brother, Sam Williams, a day after the raid occurred on the William's property. In 1932, "Pooch's" grandfather, Henry C. Williams, recalled the events in an account entitled, The Indian Raid in Young County, Texas, October 13, 1864. Henry's account was published and distributed with compliments of The Union National Bank of Houston, Texas in 1935.

"Pooch" was kind enough to present me a copy of his grandfather's account. As a Texas History enthusiast, I found the recollection a wonderful read with information not normally found in other Elm Creek Raid accounts.

The Monroe Medals were minted in three sizes, 51 mm, 62 mm, and 76 mm. "Pooch's" medal was the large 76 mm version and by far the rarest minted version. ( only 32 struck )

The medal found on the Williams' property that morning in 1864 is thought to have been worn by the Comanche Chief, Little Buffalo or the Kiowa Chief, Santanta, also known as White Bear. (Set-tainte). Since no records exist that document who the U.S. government gave these medals to, the true owner's identity will probably never be known. But it is a fact that Little Buffalo was killed during the raid and many believe the medal belonged to him.

One last note . . . where was Henry C. William's father that morning in 1864? He was picking up supplies in Weatherford, Texas with Britt Johnson. Britt, also known as Negro Britt, lived on the Fitzpatrick ranch along Elm Creek and is famous for his efforts to rescue his wife and two daughters, as well as Mrs. Fitzpatrick and her two granddaughters, who were all captured that morning . . . but that . . . well that's a whole 'nuther story . . .

Read more about the Elm Creek Raid at the Handbook of Texas OnLine.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/EE/bte1.html