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.printsoldandr
are.com/texas/
Kiowa and Cheyenne leaders pose in the White House conservatory with Mary Todd Lincoln
(standing far right) on March 27, 1863, during meetings with President Abraham Lincoln,
who hoped to prevent their lending aid to Confederate forces. The two Cheyenne chiefs
seated at the left front, War Bonnet and Standing In the Water, would be killed the next year
in the Sand Creek Massacre.
Southern
Plains Indian
tribes during
the Red River
War and
location of
reservations.
Map courtesy
of the Texas
Historical
Commission.
The threat of Indian raids was a constant source of anxiety for
settlers on the Texas frontier, particularly after U.S. troops left
Texas during the Civil War years. Painting by Nola Davis,
courtesy of Fort Richardson SHS, Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department.
U.S. Army columns of the
Red River War. Courtesy
of the Texas Historical
Commission.
A Kiowa ledger drawing possibly depicting the
Buffalo Wallow battle in 1874, one of several clashes
between Southern Plains Indians and the U.S. Army
during the Red River War.
Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000
buffalo hides baled for shipment. Dodge City, Kansas,
1878.
Kiowa brave. Tow-An-Kee, son
of Lone Wolf. Killed in Texas in
1873. Photo, ca. 1867-1874,
courtesy of the Center for
American History, Caldwell
Collection (#03962), The
University of Texas at Austin.
Kiowa camp, ca. 1867-1874.
Photograph courtesy of the
Center for American History,
Frank Caldwell Collection
(#10187), The University of
Texas at Austin.
Topin Tone-oneo, daughter of Kicking
Bird. The only one of the great Kiowa
chief's children to survive him, she was
with the first group sent to Carlisle
Indian School in 1879.
Source:
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html
Indians at Fort Marion. Indians of
various tribes who were captured in the
Texas Red River Wars and other Indian
battles of the late 19th century were
imprisoned at this Florida military fort.
Photo ca. 1860s-1930s, courtesy the
National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution (Lot 90-1 INV
09854500). Source:
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indi
ans.html
Pupils at Carlisle Indian school, Pennsylvania. Established in 1879 by
Richard Pratt, the school attempted to assimilate Indian children into the
"white man's world" through education and financial support. Among its
students were four of Comanche chief Quanah Parker's children and those
of others involved in the Texas Indian Wars.
Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html
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.
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 1880's.
(Courtesy Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University.)
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 chuckwagon,
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:
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
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.)
“The Land Grant Law of 1876 authorized the granting
of sixteen sections of land to railroad companies for
every mile of main-line track they completed.” p.
206.
Coming of the Steam Train in 1873 put Reagan,
Texas on the Map! The old Reagan Depot stood next
to the Train tracks until the 1960's.
This photo shows a "land train," bringing prospective investors to Texas, circa
1915. African-American porters stand on the far right. "Separate but equal"
segregation was the law in Texas and other Southern states from the 1880s
until segregation was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1950s.. Many
jobs were also segregated. The job of porter was considered a black man's job.
Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives.
From 1875 to 1900, lumber led all other freight in
tonnage transported by Texas railroads.
The first multi million-dollar firm in Texas was
a lumber company owned by John Henry
Kirby. John Henry Kirby, the "Prince of the
Pines," shown in a 1925 photo. With East
Coast investors, Kirby established land
companies with vast timber holdings in the
Pineywoods. In 1893, he built the Gulf,
Beaumont, and Kansas City Railroad and used
proceeds from its sale to finance more land
purchases. In 1901, he organized the Houston
Oil Company of Texas and the Kirby Lumber
Company. Although at one point the lumber
company controlled more than 300,000 acres
of land and operated 13 sawmills, business
reversals during the depression forced Kirby
into bankruptcy.
In the lumber industry, African-Americans workers
comprised about one-third of the labor force.
The attitude of the timber-company owners toward
organized labor could best be described as hostile
opposition.
The Great Southwest Strike of 1886 was a strike led by the Knights of
Labor against Jay Gould’s railroad lines. (See p. 219.)
Throughout the late
nineteenth century,
the state financed its
prison system by
leasing out convict
labor. (See pages
223-224)
Table 8.1 Dollar Value of Texas Crops (See p. 221)
1870
Wheat
1880
1890
1900
$391,886
$2,441,918
$3,589,442
$7,592,852
Corn
10,153,941
11,509,808
34,940,748
39,259,415
Oats
297,439
1,761,609
5,334,496
6,241,192
21,212,994
39,458,916
63,263,400
107,510,010
Cotton
The Increasing Percentage of Tenant Farming
in Texas, 1880-1900
(See page 222)
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
49.7
41.9
37.6
1880
1890
1900
Public fund had subsidized the
railroads, and now that they had fallen
short of the promised economic
panacea, proponents of the New South
and the railroads themselves became
politically suspect. See p. 209.
The fixing of rates explains
the shippers’ charges of
railroad corruption, which
only increased in intensity as
southern farmers became less
prosperous.
Railroads proved a mix blessing as farmers became
tied to faraway markets and the vagaries of the
wider national and international economy. See page
209.
In 1875, Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, which returned the
nation to the gold standard by 1879. When the country returned to the
gold standard, the amount of money in circulation declined precipitously,
which caused interest rates to skyrocket. Farmers were particularly hard
hit by these developments.
The Greenbacks were an agrarian reform party that emerged in
the 1870s and 1880s favoring monetary inflation. They wanted to
reverse the Specie Resumption Act. (See pp. 228-229)
Granger Movement, agrarian movement in the United States, initiated shortly
after the American Civil War with the aim of improving the social, economic,
and political status of farmers. The movement constituted the initial stage in
the unrest among farmers in many areas of the U.S. that characterized the
latter part of the 19th century. Among the causes of the unrest were the
declining prices of farm products, the growing indebtedness of farmers to
merchants and banks, the discriminatory freight rates imposed on farmers by
the railroads, and the acquisition by the railroads of public lands that formerly
had served pioneer farmers as a source of new farmland.
In 1867, Oliver H. Kelley, an employee of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, founded the Patrons of Husbandry,
commonly called the Grange. He conceived of the Patrons
as a secret fraternal society that would offer social and
educational benefits to its membership. (p. 231)
Grangers exercised significant
influence over the constitutional
convention of 1876.
In the 1880s, the Farmers’ Alliance replaced the
Grange as the largest agrarian reform
organization in Texas.
A Farmers’ Alliance Convention.
The Populist Party advocated government ownership of railroads,
abolition of the national banking system, and establishment of the
subtreasury system. The Subtreasury Plan would have allowed
farmers to store staple crops in government warehouses and receive
loans against the market value of these crops in the form of
government notes that could circulate as currency. (pp. 236-237)
Historical cartoon of Populist Party as a snake with William Jennings
Bryan's head swallowing donkey of the Democratic Party.
Governor Oran M. Roberts and
the Fifty Cent Law of 1879.
See p. 210.
Texas' First Public Institute for Higher Education
(The Agricultural and Mechanical College -- 1876)
A&M's Earliest Campus. In its first year, the campus at the
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas consisted to just two
buildings: Steward's Hall (left) and Old Main. Two wooden barracks
were added behind Old Main for the second session (just visible through
the front porch of Steward's Hall).
In 1902, Texas voters approved of a poll tax that disenfranchised
many poor whites and blacks and further limited the possible thirdparty challenges to Democratic hegemony. The Texas legislature
passed many Jim Crow laws, mandating, for example, segregated
railroad facilities. Soon Texas, like many southern states, had
erected an elaborate legal code that racially segregated public and
private facilities. p. 240.
Guadalupe Salt Lakes
The Salt War (p. 190.)
The Texas Rangers in
the post-Civil War
period an effective
but often violent and
lawless fighting force.
(pp. 191-192.)
After the death of
Edmund J. Davis, the
Republican party of
Texas was led by the
African American
Norris Wright Cuney.
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/