Chapter 7
A Frontier Society in Transition
"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
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.printsoldandr
are.com/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
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.
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.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Why were the buffalo exterminated?
Indians slaughtered more buffalo for sustenance
and for trade.
Domesticated animals exposed buffaloes to fatal
diseases.
Increased population and livestock reduced
timberland and grazing land.
Droughts reduced the number of buffaloes.
Whites slaughtered the buffalo.
Why
1.
2.
3.
4.
did whites slaughter the buffalo?
"Sportsmen"
Suppliers of meat for railroad crews
Traders in buffalo hides
To destroy the Plains Indians' economy
Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000 buffalo hides
baled for shipment. Dodge City, Kansas, 1878. The virtual
extermination of the buffalo aided the defeat of the Comanches
and Kiowas by destroying their economy and way of life.
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.
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.
After the Civil War, the U. S. Grant administration
attempted a peace policy toward the Plains tribes.
At the Salt Creek Massacre (1871), Satanta, a Kiowa
chief, and between 100 and 150 followers attacked a
supply train, killing and mutilating seven of the
twelve drivers. In response, the U. S. Army took the
offensive against the Plains Indians. Comanche raids
decreased.
Indian resistance failed:
1. defeat on the battlefield
2. no system of supply depots and
armories
3. no support network of factories, farms,
or efficient infrastructure
4. weapons ineffective in a conflict
against a well-armed and well-financed
opponent.
5. disease and alcoholism
6. elimination of the buffalo
In 1871, Salt Creek
Massacre resulted in a
new military offensive in
Texas against the
Indians by the U.S. army.
U.S. Army columns of the
Red River War. Courtesy
of the Texas Historical
Commission.
Satanta was a Kiowa chief who
fiercely resisted Anglo incursions,
and who carried out the Salt Creek
Massacre.
As a result of the Red River War in
the mid-1870s, most of the West
Texas Indians were killed or
forced onto reservations.
These are Kiowas waiting for their monthly
food ration from the reservation commissary
around 1900. It gives a little insight into what
life must have been like on the reservation.
(http://www.texasindians.com/kiowa.htm)
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.
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.
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.
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.
3.
Galveston: Continued to be an 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.
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/