Chapter 15
The Cattle Frontier in Texas
"This frontier society was in transition, to be sure, but even as more modern
trends came to predominate by the 1890s and early twentieth century, Texans
continued to honor the old heritage.” (p. 175)
Demographics: The population increased fivefold between 1860 and 1900.
Immigrants were mainly white southerners attracted by inexpensive land.
Signs of Modernity
1. Towns
2. Railroads
3. Labor Unions
4. Education
Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896
Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html
Texas Population:
1860:
604,215
1900:
3,048,710
Ties to Frontier Roots
1. Rural
2. Towns small and
agrarian
3. Primitive
transportation
4. Population young
and male
5. Horse and gun
culture
Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after
the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a
fresh start, and Texas seemed to be the best place to find it.
1874 Red River view.
Early immigrants make their way in
an overcrowded boat down the
swollen Texas river.
Source:
http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/
Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896
Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html
Going to Texas
Table 7.1 Makeup of the Texas Population
Year
Total
Urban
Rural (%)
Blacks (%)
1860
604,215
26,615
577,600
(96.4)
182,921
(30.0)
1870
818,579
59,521
764,058
(95.6)
253,475
(31.9)
1880
1,591,749
146,795
1,444,954
(93.7)
393,384
(25.0)
1890
2,235,521
349,511
1,886,016
(90.5)
488,171
(21.8)
1900
3,048,710
520,759
2,527,951
(84.5)
650,722
(20.0)
While Texas cities did experience some growth, the state, overall, remained overwhelming
rural and agricultural.
Calvert, DeLeón, Cantrell, p. 177.
In South Texas, many Mexicans lost their
land:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Fraud
Taxes
Declining price of beef and droughts
Reluctance of independent ranchers to
commercialize
Pictures by King, Edward, 1848-1896
Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html
Until the 1870s, the dominant powers on the plains
of West Texas were the Comanches and Kiowa.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Warrior tradition
Military tactics
Westering Texans stopped short of Comanche and Kiowa territory.
The nomadic lifestyle meant the Indians had no farms,
storehouses, or munition stock piles to attack.
Texas Cattle Trails
Before the Civil War,
the Shawnee Trail
(far right) led Texas
cattlemen to markets
in Kansas City and
St. Louis. Following
the war, increased
settlement closed
that route, and in
1866 Charles
Goodnight and
Oliver Loving blazed
a trail west to the
New Mexico and
Colorado markets,
called the
Goodnight-Loving
Trail (far left). Soon,
however, railheads in
Kansas led cowboys
up the Chisholm
Trail to Abilene, and
up the Western Trail
to Dodge City and
points north.
The earliest out-of-state destination for the great
long-distance cattle drives was Sedalia, Missouri.
Roundup on
Texas Ranch
Cover of The Beef Bonanza: How to
Get Rich on the Plains, by Gen.
James. S. Brisbin, one of the books
that helped fuel the cattle boom of the
early 1880s.
(Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University.)
The Matador Land and Cattle
Company and the Spur Ranch
were British-owned.
Bucking Broncos
Cowboys branding mavericks in the 1880's
"Second Guard." A cowboy camp at night in the 1880's, with some
cowboys bedding down while others prepare to head out for night
duty watching over the herd. Photograph by F. M. Steele.
Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880's. This cowboy name
for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel
Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his
neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's."
Photograph by F. M. Steele.
Cowboys eating dinner on the range. A typical chuck wagon,
like the one shown here, carried potatoes, beans, bacon, dried
fruit, cornmeal, coffee and canned goods.
(Library of Congress)
"Where we shine." Cowboys at the end of an 1897 roundup in Ward
County, Texas, pose with their herd of almost 2,000 cattle. By this
time, barbed wire had closed down the long cattle trails for nearly
two decades. Photographed by F. M. Steele.
1871 Kansas-Transport of Texas Beef on the Kansas-Pacific
Railway-Scene at a Cattle-shoot in Abilene, Kansas. This
beautiful, hand colored engraving is from the August 19, 1871
issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Source:
http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/
1882 Picture of a capture of a Texas Town by cowboys.
http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/
Source:
In 1877, George Wilkins Kendall first attempted to make sheep
raising a viable concern. The Rio Grande Valley (known as the
Wild Horse Desert) became the state’s leading sheep and goat
raising region. Sheepmen and cattlemen frequently came into
violent conflict over grazing rights.
1882 Texas-Herders Driving Their Sheep, Menaced by a Prairie Fire, To
a Place of Safety. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas
Dignitaries and railworkers gather to drive the "golden
spike" and join the tracks of the transcontinental railroad at
Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869. The Central
Pacific's wood-burning locomotive, Jupiter, stands to the left,
the Union Pacific's coal-burning No. 119 to the right.
The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land
Rush, April 22, 1889.
Homesteaders photographed in the 1880's by Solomon
Butcher in Custer County, Nebraska.
Exodusters waiting for a steamboat to carry them
westward in the late 1870's.
(Library of Congress.)
Homesteader Omer Yern and family photographed by Solomon
Butcher in Custer Country, Nebraska, 1886.
(Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society.)
David Hilton and family pose for homestead photographer Solomon Butcher, showing off
their prize possession, a pump organ. Butcher noted that Mrs. Hilton insisted on having
the organ hauled into the yard, so her family portrait would not reveal that the Hilton's
still lived in a sod house.
While preserving some traditions of their homeland, settlers on
the Texas frontier were transformed by their experiences,
becoming "westerners."
Fenced in Ranch
Frederic Remington’s The Fall of the Cowboy
In the mid-1880s, Texas cattlemen
confronted calamitous freezes and
droughts.
A winter cattle drive photographed by Charles Belden.
(Library of Congress.)
Theodore Roosevelt on horseback in the Dakota Territory in the
1880's, when he had moved west to live as a cattle rancher.
(Library of Congress.)
In
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
the 1880s, the cattle boom waned:
Cattle lost too much weight on the trail.
Costs for provisioning the cowboys rose.
Kansas passed laws banning Texas cattle.
Pastures grew thinner on the trail.
The introduction of barbed wire fenced off the
cattle trails.
6. In the mid-1880s, Texas cattlemen confronted
calamitous freezes and droughts.
Violence and lawlessness: Why?
1.Bitterness from the Civil War
2.Indian warfare
3.Banditry
4.Conflicts resulting from the cattle
industry
5.Agrarian discontent
6.Political conflicts
7.Tensions caused by modernization
8.Racial conflicts
9.The determination of some to bring
law and order to the frontier
Lawlessness:
• Vigilantes: Between 1865 and 1900, East Texas had 50-60
incidents of vigilantisms.
• Feuds: Historians have identified about eight major feuds. The
most notorious was the Sutton-Taylor feud arose out of the
bitterness of the Civil War.
• Gunfighters: The most prominent gunfighter was John Wesley
Hardin, a defender of the Confederate cause and a hateful racist,
who killed more than twenty men.
• Lynching: Between 1870 and 1900, white Texans lynched about
500 blacks, a number exceeded only by Georgia and Mississippi.
In 1897, the legislature passed an anti- lynching law, but it was
ineffective.
The most prominent and dangerous Texan gunfighter was John
Wesley Hardin. Hardin slew more than twenty men, and he is
acknowledged to have sent more rival to their grave in one-on-on
shootouts than any other western desperado.
As a hateful racist, he terrorized blacks, as an unrelenting supporter of the Confederate cause, he
vented his anti-northern rage on the state police (that Governor Davis had organized), as a
rancher, he had countless clashes with rustlers and competing cattlemen, and as a hired gun, he
shot down many a man, as he did on behalf of the Taylor in the Sutton-Taylor feud. The legal
system in 1878 sent Hardin to prison for murdering a deputy sheriff. In 1895, only a year after
his release from prison, another Texas gunman named John Selman shot and killed Harden in El
Paso.
Bill Longley became known as “the nigger killer” for his arbitrary
murder of blacks. But Longley amassed a record of killings that
included men of every color and persuasion: by the time the law hanged
him in 1878, his list of crimes included thirty-two murders.
VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACKS: In the “Black Belt” counties
(among them Washington, Matagorda, Fort Bend, Brazoria, and
Wharton) white men in the 1880s used a variety of pretexts—among
them the desire to dilute the strength of the black vote or drive black
office holders from power—to persecute blacks. Lynching or a threat of
it by “white cappers” (white racist vigilantes) and loyalists to the defunct
Ku Klux Klan was common practice.
(Calvert, De León, Cantrell, p. 160.)
Thousands gathered in Paris, Texas, for the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
Between 1870 and 1900, Texas exceeded all but two other southern states in
the number of blacks lynched.
The “buffalo soldiers” were black U.S. army troops.
Among European ethnic
groups in late nineteenthcentury Texas, the most
numerous were the
Germans.
Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896
Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html
Violence Against Tejanos
• When whites moved into South and West Texas, they lynched Tejanos
suspected of crimes or collusion with raiders from Mexico.
• In 1891-92, Catarino Garza used South Texas as a base for launching
a revolution against the Mexican government.
• In the 1870s, the Salt War was a conflict between Anglos and
Mexican Americans over salt deposits in the El Paso Valley.
San Elizario Chapel
The Salt War of 1877 was a conflict between Mexican Americans and Anglos.
Guadalupe Salt Lakes
The Salt War (p. 190.)
In 1874, the state
government re-established
the Texas Rangers. They
carried out their duties
effectively, but frequently
used unjustified violence
and overstepped the laws
they were supposed to
enforce. (pp. 191-192.)
Cities:
1.
San Antonio: Its population of 12,256 in 1870 grew to 50,000 in 1900. It
continued to be a military center and a point of departure for western
expeditions.
2.
Houston: In 1869, the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company began
dredging Buffalo Bayou. Houston was the major port for the exporting of
cotton.
Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896
3.
Galveston: Continued to be an
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html
important port until a hurricane in 1900
devastated the city.
4.
Dallas: Became an important
transportation center for farmers and
ranchers when railroads reached the
town in the 1870s. Dallas was the
leading industrial center in Texas in
1905, with flour and grist milling and
printing as its major industries.
5.
Fort Worth: In the 1860s-70s, the cattle
trade energized Fort Worth. Cattle en
route to Kansas passed through the city
and the arrival of the railroad in 1876
made Fort Worth a major shipping point
for the cattle industry.
Source of picture:
A majority of Texas
women in the late 19th
century did not work
outside the home.
The teaching profession
in the 1870s was
dominated by men
1890 Views In Texarkana,
Arkansas and Texas. This
engraving is from the May 3,
1890 edition of Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper. It
shows scenes of the
following: Office of J.
Duetschman, Broad Street,
residence of W.A. Kelsey,
Union Depot, Cosmopolitan
Hotel, Texarkana Ice Co.,
Water Works, Kizer Lumber,
Benefield Hotel, O.P. Taylor
Real Estate, and Huckins
House. Source:
http://www.printsoldandrare.c
om/texas/
1888 Pictures of Dallas, Texas. Hand colored engraved images titled, " Texas.-The City if Dallas, Its Progress and Its ProspectsViews of Its Public Buildings, Streets, Etc., City Hall Buildings, in course of Construction, view on Commerce Street, View on
Elm Street, Alliance Exchange Building, Private Residences, Corner of Commerce and Elm Streets, Merchant's Exchange, Bird's
Eye View of the Texas State Fair Grounds and Dallas Club House," from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Shows scenes of
Dallas, Texas and its landmarks and buildings. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/