Trailing Cattle - A Short History Part 7

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

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."

 

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011