During the Civil War, the unattended Longhorns proliferated. By 1865, about 5 to 6 million Longhorns resided in Texas, and most were unbranded. Many Confederate Army veterans returning from the war built up herds by claiming unmarked cattle and branding them. At that time a steer was worth about $4 in Texas-that was if you could find anyone with the $4. In Chicago, Cincinnati and other meat-packing and market towns up North, that same steer sold for about $40. The problem was getting the steers to market. More than 250,000 steers were driven toward Kansas and Missouri in 1866, but many didn’t make it because farmers, worried about tick fever, would turn them back, and thieves would strike the herds. In 1867, Abilene, Kan., at the railhead of the Kansas & Pacific, opened up as a major market and became the first of the cow towns. For the next two decades, Longhorns hit the trails on long but generally profitable drives. There had actually been long drives earlier-such as to New Orleans in the 1830s and to California during the gold rush-but the era of the great trail drives did not begin until after the Civil War.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

To build up herds, cattlemen often hired young ‘brush poppers.’ For $10 a month plus board, they combed the sage brush, popping out cattle as they went. After the spring roundup, the cattle herd was driven north. For this dangerous work a cowboy would earn $30 a month. A drive often covered 1,500 miles and took four to six months. The hours were long, the conditions brutal and the dangers very real. The outdoor work, mostly in the saddle, appealed to a certain breed of men-the American cowboy.

Unpredictable weather and swollen streams would break up the routine on the trails, and no single word could shake up a cow camp quicker than ‘Stampede!’ Every cowboy that ever trailed a herd was concerned about the threat and hazards of a stampede. It wouldn’t take much to get the Longhorns to run -a yelp from a coyote, the rattling of the chuck wagon’s pans, the hiss of a rattlesnake, a cowhand’s sneeze, the flair of a match. In Frederic Remington’s The Stampede the cause was lightning. ‘Stompede was the old Texian word, and no other cattle known to history had such a disposition to stampede as the Longhorns,’ writes Dobie.

In an instant, a calm herd could become a solid wave of nearly unstoppable alarm and panic. Normally a Longhorn steer would not target a man on horseback, but neither man nor horse was safe during a stampede. The steers themselves usually were at great risk. In Idaho, an 1889 stampede led to the deaths of one cowboy and 341 Longhorns. In Nebraska, in 1876, four cowboys tried to head off 500 stampeding steers. Only three of the men made it; all that was found of their friend was the handle to his revolver Another herd took to running when a tobacco shred from a cowboy’s pouch stuck in a steer’s eye. That unfortunate crew lost two cowboys, and a score were injured. Out of their herd of 4,000 head, 400 cattle were killed. One of the worst stampedes occurred in July 1876 near the Brazos River in Texas. Almost the entire herd plunged into a gully; more than 2,000 head were killed or missing.

When cattle stampeded they did not utter a sound, but a cacophony was raised by the clashing of horns and the crashing of hooves. The heat that the massed herd emitted was phenomenal.

Charles Goodnight, one of the 19th century’s most famous cattlemen, once described how the heat ‘almost blistered the faces’ of the men on the lee side of the herd. On a hot night, a steer that ran 10 miles might lose up to 40 pounds. There was only one thing, agreed most cowboys, that could be done to gain control of a runaway herd. That was to ride hellbent for leather toward the head of the herd and get the leaders milling, so that the herd would circle around into itself. The cowboys hoped the cattle would exhaust themselves during the process. The men would wave hats or slickers, beat ropes against chaps and sometimes fire pistols into the ground to try and keep the animals from running. A herd in flight could spread out over a vast area. If the herd ran for 25 miles, the cowboys might have to ride 200 miles rounding up the strays. Working alone, each man fanned out and began riding toward the herd’s new bedding ground. Sometimes small groups of cattle would be found and started back, but finding and driving singles was more often the case.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to