The Chisholm Trail and Its Role In The Cattle Industry - Research Paper Example

HERE] THE CHISHOLM TRAIL AND ITS ROLE IN THE CATTLE INDUSTRY BY: HERE] The of Texas was, in the time of the 1800s, a land of desolate desert, where longhorn cattle roamed freely and in large numbers, cattle that would bring fame and fortune to both Texas and the newfound, large-scale cattle industry. Believed to be brought by the Spanish with their earliest expeditions and left behind, longhorn cattle had swelled, intermingled, and roamed wild until their herds covered the land of Texas1.. The price that the steers could fetch at the market, however, would be well worth it, for there were cities awaiting beef, and cattle that were purchased for $4.00 a head in Texas would be worth $40.00 at market2. As cowpuncher E.C. “Teddy Blue” Abbot wrote, “Here was all these cheap long-horned steers running all over Texas; here was the rest of the country crying for beef”3. Money in the late 1860s was a powerful motivator, especially for those just back from the Civil War and looking to become prosperous4. Somehow, the animals had to be taken from the wild frontier of Texas to civilized cattle markets in Kansas, without aid of mass transportation such as railways5. Thus, cattle trade began its heyday along trails and routes, one of which was the legendary Chisholm Trail. The Chisholm Trail soon became a major route used by cattle drives. It was used from 1867 to 1884, starting when Joseph G. McCoy convinced Kansas Pacific Railroad to build a station and lay tracks in Abilene, Kansas6. The settlers in Abilene were not happy to have a cattle market at first and organized “a company to stampede every drove of cattle that came into the county”7. However, McCoy, being a man of reason, sought to inform the settlers of the good that having a cattle market in Abilene would bring; at a meeting between the two sides, cowboys present bartered with the settlers from Abilene, trading for all manner of foodstuffs that they could use in their camps8. Soon, settlers saw the value of having a cattle market in their settlement. As McCoy would later write, “Many others who, at the time the cattle trade was first established at Abilene, were living in mere hovels constructed of poles and dirt, were soon enabled to provide other comforts that they could not have afforded, had it not been for the money expended annually by the stock men in their midst.”9. Abilene, Kansas, thus became the first ending point for the Chisholm Trail, though that would change in later years. The trail itself was named for Jesse Chisholm, a half-Cherokee and half white man, known to be modest and unremarkable, yet having “a commanding presence and character”10. He was comfortable on the frontier and had an adventuresome spirit, only visiting his wife at home for a week or two, usually once or twice a year, before he would be off again riding the land11. When he died, he was buried by Comanche Chief Ten Bears and a retinue of Comanche, with the peace medal that had been given to the Chief by Abraham Lincoln12. Chisholm, however, never drove a herd of cattle over the trail which bears his name. The trail is named for him only because of the trading post that he built near what is the present-day city of Wichita, Kansas, along the Little Arkansas River13. It was more properly known at the time as “Chisholm’s Trail”, and it was from there that Chisholm guided traders to the north, using routes that had been established by the military and by the Native Americans years earlier14. Though Chisholm traveled these routes many times, he did not specifically lay out the trail for cattle drives, nor did he ever intend to trade steers15. The trail now known as the Chisholm Trail became known for him because he was known in the area. The Chisholm Trail soon became a fine ground for shipping cattle to the market established by McCoy. It followed, at a more westerly distance, what had become known as the old Shawnee Trail; it was described as “an upside-down tree trunk with many branches”16. Trails from all sides fed into the Chisholm, and though the starting and ending points were usually the same, the distance traveled in between could vary greatly17. All trails led north, which was the biggest commonality. Some passed through parts of Texas such as San Antonio, while others led straight north, past ranches and towns such as Beeville, Gonzales, and Lockhart, to Austin18. Another, more commonly used route led through Fort Worth, Texas, and made it a principal stop along the way; there were no further stores between it and the Kansas railways19. Records point to 75,000 head of cattle passing through Fort Worth in 1866, with numbers in 1871 leaning towards 360,000 head of cattle altogether in that year20. McCoy did his part to help the establishment of the Chisholm Trail as well, by publishing maps letting trail drivers know of the way to reach Abilene and the markets21 (GARD 85). Soon the Chisholm Trail was doing a brisk business in cattle trading, with cattle passing through in herds almost endlessly from south to north. Life on a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail was not pretty, nor was it pleasant. The top distance that could be traveled was twenty-five to thirty miles in the first three or four days, dropping back to fifteen miles a day afterwards22. Dangers existed along the route, from Native Americans that loved beef and would raid the herds to bison that would scatter the herds, to outlaws that would take what they wanted and felt that the loss of a few cowboys negligible23. Also to be dealt with were thunderstorms, which could cause a stampede, and streams to be forded, which was no small ambition24. The usual practice was to water the cattle at dawn and drive the herd north, letting them eat as they went25. At night, the cowboys would keep watch over the herds, sometimes singing them to sleep26. The aim of the cattle drive was to get as many cattle that had been consigned to the market at the beginning to the end, for dead steers brought in no money. Cattle drives continued along the Chisholm Trail throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s, though the ending location of the markets would change. In 1871, Abilene was pressed by railroads that were growing both east and west; it was the last year that cattle business would be done there27. From Abilene, the end of the line for cattle would move west, to Newton, then to Wichita in 1872, Ellsworth and Caldwell in 1873, and finally to Dodge City28. It should be noted that moving the end markets did not change the location of the Chisholm Trail; instead, a branch trail came out of the Chisholm Trail at Elm Spring, which would run through to Dodge City29. The Chisholm Trail, though still beloved and used, was running out of time. There are many factors that point to why cattle drives grew few and far between, but the most prominent was the invention of barbed wire. Between November 1868 and November 1874, nine patents were granted to various people for the invention and improvements of wire fencing, with the last and most famous, belonging to Joseph Glidden30. Glidden, a farmer from De Kalb, Illinois, gained famed for not only patenting the invention of a single barb locked between twisting wires at regular intervals, but because he developed machinery that would mass-produce the wire easily and affordably31. Wooden fencing had, in the past, proved too expensive, as trees were few and far between on the open plains; rocks for stone walls were unavailable due to similar circumstances32. In addition, barbed wire caused serious injury to cattle. While it effectively kept cattle inside boundaries, any steer that ran against the barbs would be left with a vicious, open wound that was then prone to screwworm infestation33. Female screwworm flies would lay eggs in the open wounds of cattle, and when hatched, the worms would, quite literally, eat the animal alive34. The results of barbed wire were plain: cattle could be lost to injury, and there were no longer large, open spaces to roam. These two factors, among others, aided the large-herd cattle drive in becoming a thing of the past. The Chisholm Trail suffered as well. With barbed wire defining the boundaries of ranch lands, the trails were soon feeling cramped35. It received a temporary reprieve in 1880 from competition on the western trails that led more directly to Dodge City, when rail service was extended to Caldwell, Kansas, and once again there was a temporary boom36. However, it was apparent that the route was declining, and it would soon be silent forever. To the cattle industry, the Chisholm Trail was responsible for more than just driving the steers to market. Towns had been built and grown because of it. It had caused the upswing of meat-packing plants in Chicago and Kansas City, and had even caused rage in Europe when businessmen became irate that their markets were being flooded with American beef37. Though the Chisholm Trail had seen millions of head of cattle cross its path in the years it was in use, by 1884, the trail was closed, and the cowboy had learned to live on a farm, within a wire fence, just as the cattle had. By 1885, fenced-in ranching replaced the way of life that had been known on the open range and trails. Though the Chisholm Trail soon grew quiet, and it would never know again the thunderous sound of cattle at its crossings. The Chisholm Trail carries a legacy that has come to symbolize the heyday of the cattle industry and the era of the cowboy, and neither time, nor change, nor the invention of barbed wire can upset the place that it holds in the hearts of those descended from the cowboys, trail bosses, guides, and chuck wagon cooks that once rode along its routes. Bibliography Abbott, E.C., and Helena H. Smith. We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher. Farrar & Rhinehart, Inc., 1939. Barker, Eugene C., and Herbert E. Bolton. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume XIX. Austin, Texas: The Texas State Historical Association, 1916. http://books.google.com/books?id=eWxIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA392&dq=Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest&hl=en&ei=GQ_VTqT5NuHu0gHVz42DAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg (accessed November 27, 2011). Erlichman, Howard J. Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas. Texas A&M University, 2006. Gard, Wayne. The Chisholm Trail. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954. McCoy, Joseph G. Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest. Kansas City, MO: Ramsey, Millet & Hudson, 1874. http://www.kancoll.org/books/mccoy/index.html (accessed November 29, 2011). Hoig, Stan. Jesse Chisholm: Ambassador of the Plains. University Press of Colorado, 1991. Netz, Reviel. Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Ray, Emily, & Schamel, Wayne. "Gliddens Patent Application for Barbed Wire." Social Education, January1997, http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/barbed-wire/index.html (accessed November 28, 2011). Rossel, John. "The Chisholm Trail." Kansas Historical Quarterly 5 (1936), http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-the-chisholm-trail/12670 (accessed November 29, 2011). Read More