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.

Chapter 15Chapter 15The Cattle Frontier in TexasThe Cattle Frontier in Texas

"This frontier society was in transition, to be sure, but even as more modern trends "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 came to predominate by the 1890s and early twentieth century, Texans continued to honor the old heritage.” (p. 175)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 Modernity1. Towns2. Railroads3. Labor Unions4. Education

Ties to Frontier Roots1. Rural2. Towns small and

agrarian3. Primitive

transportation4. Population young and

male5. Horse and gun

culture

Texas Population:Texas Population:

1860:1860: 604,215604,215

1900:1900: 3,048,7103,048,710

Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html

Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a fresh start, and Texas seemed to be the best place to find it.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, 1848-1896Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html

Going to Texas

YearYear TotalTotal UrbanUrban Rural (%)Rural (%) Blacks (%)Blacks (%)

18601860 604,215604,215 26,61526,615 577,600 577,600 (96.4)(96.4)

182,921 182,921 (30.0)(30.0)

18701870 818,579818,579 59,52159,521 764,058 764,058 (95.6)(95.6)

253,475 253,475 (31.9)(31.9)

18801880 1,591,7491,591,749 146,795146,795 1,444,954 1,444,954 (93.7)(93.7)

393,384 393,384 (25.0)(25.0)

18901890 2,235,5212,235,521 349,511349,511 1,886,016 1,886,016 (90.5)(90.5)

488,171 488,171 (21.8)(21.8)

19001900 3,048,7103,048,710 520,759520,759 2,527,951 2,527,951 (84.5)(84.5)

650,722 650,722 (20.0)(20.0)

Table 7.1 Makeup of the Texas Table 7.1 Makeup of the Texas PopulationPopulation

Calvert, Calvert, DeLeónDeLeón, Cantrell, p. 177., Cantrell, p. 177.While Texas cities did experience some growth, the state, overall, remained overwhelming rural and agricultural.

In South Texas, many Mexicans lost their land:

1. Fraud2. Taxes3. Declining price of beef and droughts4. Reluctance of independent ranchers to commercialize

Pictures by King, Edward, 1848-1896Source 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. Warrior tradition2. Military tactics3. Westering Texans stopped short of Comanche and Kiowa territory.4. 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 Roundup on Texas RanchTexas 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 Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880's. This cowboy name for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's." neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's." Photograph by F. M. Steele.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. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

1882 Texas-Herders Driving Their Sheep, Menaced by a Prairie Fire, To a Place of Safety. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas

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.

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 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 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 hauled into the yard, so her family portrait would not reveal that the Hilton's still lived in a sod house.house.

While preserving some traditions of their homeland, settlers on the Texas frontier were transformed by their experiences, becoming "westerners."

Fenced in RanchFenced in Ranch

Frederic Remington’s The Fall of the Cowboy

A winter cattle drive photographed by Charles Belden.

(Library of Congress.)

In the mid-1880s, Texas cattlemen confronted calamitous freezes and droughts.

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 the 1880s, the cattle boom waned:In the 1880s, the cattle boom waned:1. Cattle lost too much weight on the trail.2. Costs for provisioning the cowboys rose.3. Kansas passed laws banning Texas cattle.4. Pastures grew thinner on the trail.5. 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 War2.Indian warfare3.Banditry4.Conflicts resulting from the cattle

industry5.Agrarian discontent6.Political conflicts7.Tensions caused by modernization8.Racial conflicts9.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.

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.

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.

(Calvert, De León, (Calvert, De León, Cantrell, p. 160.)Cantrell, p. 160.)

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.

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 nineteenth-century Texas, the most numerous were the Germans.

Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896Source 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

Guadalupe Salt Lakes

The Salt War (p. 190.)

The Salt War of 1877 was a conflict between Mexican Americans and Anglos.

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.

Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html

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.com/texas/

1888 Pictures of Dallas, Texas. Hand colored engraved images titled, " Texas.-The City if Dallas, Its Progress and Its Prospects-Views 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/