Cowboy speaker Jim Gray speaks to Sumner County Historical Society last week.

by Amber Schmitz, Sumner Newscow — Cowboys still exist. This will be evident during the 2017 Texas Longhorn Cattle Drive in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Chisholm Trail.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray, executive director of the National Drovers Hall of Fame, from Ellsworth, was guest speaker for the Sumner County Historical Society’s monthly meeting last week. He spoke of the history of cattle drovers to a crowd of 45 at the Good Taste Chinese Restaurant.

Jim Gray

Gray will be the trail boss during the cattle drive that will pass through the area next year. A group of eight “through” drovers (going the whole distance), six weekly drovers, and two chuckwagons will drive 400 head of Texas Longhorn cattle from San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kan., along the original Chisholm Trail in a time frame of 14 weeks. They will begin driving the cattle April 1, 2017, and arrive in Caldwell in September, where they will be driven right down Main Street. Gray was a drover in the cattle drive that went through Caldwell in 2011. At the end of the trail, just like in original times, the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association will hold a cattle auction.

Since the beginning, Gray said that the term drovers comes from England. It refers to driving anything, from ducks to horses, from one point to another. Eventually, the drover economy moved to the United States, along with the livestock industry.

Along what was referred to as the “drover road,” drovers would pay farmers for what they could provide for them, whether it be food or spending the night in their barn. As the drovers peddled their cattle herds, they sent the stock dogs home. Farmers along the drover road would watch for them and provide them with food and water. When the drovers returned home, their dogs were waiting for them.

Gray said that the term cowboy is a hybrid term between English stockman and vaquero, which is Spanish for horse mounted livestock herder.

In the 1840s, Texas searched for livestock markets outside their own area. There were cattle trails in Texas and Louisiana that had earlier cattle markets. There was a market up the Texas road for fat cattle and cattle who could be fattened. During this time, drovers went through Indian territory along the Shawnee Trail, which was well known before the Chisholm Trail came into existence.

Local cattle began dying off mysteriously in the 1850s after passing through Texas. They had many theories, such as Texas cattle having poisoned saliva that other cattle touched when they grazed on grass. It was given the name of Texas Cattle Fever.

Quarantine lines were put up, and Abilene was behind the quarantine. By 1875, the quarantine was in place. Wichita bought out farmers’ interests, and the trail went through Caldwell, which was well established on the Chisholm Trail, so that drovers could still get to the stockyards. Eventually, the whole state of Kansas was quarantined.

Entrepreneur Joseph McCoy knew that it was ticks causing the cattle to become ill, and came up with creosote dip, which is a crude oil mixture that kills ticks when cattle are dipped into it.

During the Civil War, the north market disappeared. Most cattle traffic shut down until the war was over, although some stole cattle to support their armies.

There was much out of control violence on the border of the Shawnee Trail in southeast Kansas, even after the war was over. Former Buckwackers and Jayhawkers could attack drovers, or your entire herd could be confiscated by the sheriff.

Drovers from Texas discovered that Kansas grass, especially along the Flint Hills, made their cattle thrive, and began bringing them through.

There were millions of heads of cattle roaming the Texas range by 1867, and no economical way to get them to the eastern markets. Joseph McCoy came up with the idea of building stockyards along the Kansas Pacific Railroad. After being turned down by other towns, the small village of Abilene was convinced that he had a great idea. At this time, Abilene was just a small whistle stop village. McCoy began building the stockyards in June, and was shipping cattle by September. He sent runners to the south to intercept drovers and convince them to ship their cattle by rails. McCoy was never paid for his efforts and endeavors, and eventually went broke, Gray said.

McCoy was the first historian of the Chisholm Trail, and wrote a book about his experiences in 1874, which included an original picture of a cook wagon, which was drawn by oxen. In the early 1870’s, Charles Goodnight is credited with having built the first chuckwagon, using a military wagon, chest of drawers and pull down table.

Buffalo Bill Mathewson, an Indian trader from Kansas, did lots of slave trafficking, as their were many Indian slaves and young white slaves that Indians had captured. He stopped in Fort Arbuckle on his way to California to free some slaves and met up with trader Jesse Chisholm. He told Chisholm that rather than taking his route along the Arkansas River, that a new market had opened in Abilene. Chisholm established a trading post near present day Wichita. His Indian ancestry enabled him to blaze a trail south to Mexico through Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. Chisholm used the trail as a trade route, which opened up the existence of the Chisholm Trail to railheads and Kansas, the eastern markets, and for the great herds of Texas longhorns. In 1868, Chisholm died, never knowing of the great cattle trail or his association with the route. In 1867, feeder routes joined the main route through the Chisholm Trail to Abilene.

A man named Jim Cook from back east decided one day that he wanted to be a cowboy, Gray said. He ended up in South Texas real cattle country in south San Antonio, where longhorns were wild in the mesquite brush. In January, drovers started gathering cattle by going on a wild cow hunt. Cook, being an inexperienced cowboy, was told to follow a group of guys into the mesquite brush. They started out int he moonlight, moving into the brush, and sang a Texas lullaby that was a soft tune, so that everyone could keep track of each other, and they could also hear the cattle.

The group pushed the cattle into the open prairie and into a pasture. In those days, pastures had split rail fencing, and one pasture could be two sections in size. The drovers would spend their time settling down and branding the cattle, working them to prepare for the trail.

While on the trail, horses were lost. The ranch foreman typically kept the best horses on the ranch. Everyone on the ranch had to help move the herd, who by then was trained for trail and not to stampede. Sometimes, drovers would take turns and continue moving the herd through day and night, so that by the time the camp was reached, the cattle were so tired, all they wanted to do was sleep. Usually, the trail boss chose a high spot for the camp, as cattle liked looking over the prairies. Typically, 12 cowboys, a cook and one rangler moved the herd across the trail.

They would spend the night on the bed ground, and during morning breakfast, would graze the cattle on prairie grass, then throw them onto the trail.

Gray said that driving cattle down township roads is really no different than driving them on well beaten paths. The groups would usually drive them 10-12 miles a day, in intervals of 5-6 miles, then take a two hour noon break for dinner and grazing the cattle. After going an additional 5-6 miles, they would find a camp. This helped the cattle gain weight along the trail.

When they reached the end of the trail, they would find a prairie location about a day’s ride from the stockyards and set up a cow camp. The drovers might have started driving the herd in March, and would arrive at their destination toward the end of August or early September. When they got into a town, they would market their cattle, then everyone would go by buggy out to the herd. Sometimes the buyers would hire the same drovers to drive the cattle to their own properties.

Gray said that you couldn’t drive a cow and calf, because the mother cow would be pre-occupied with the calf, so most of the time, calves were killed. If homesteaders were nearby, they would often give the calves to them.

One man, Gray said, told a story of watching a Texas Longhorn bull taking on a grizzly bear and winning. That’s how big longhorns are.

Gray is a sixth generation Kansan, whose family migrated during the territorial days. His great grandfather handled Texas cattle. In 1996, he co-founded the C.O.W.B.O.Y. (Cockeyed Old West Band of Yahoos) Society to promote and preserve Kansas cowboy heritage, and also produces a bi-monthly newspaper, Kansas Cowboy. He writes a weekly column “The Way West” for several Kansas newspapers. Gray writes in a style that puts flesh and blood into the bones of stories that are buried, but not forgotten. Gray and his fiancee, Fontella Knowlton, have been intrumental in organizing the 2017 Chisholm Trail Cattle Drive.

Gray is the author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier.

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