The westward migration from the Atlantic Coast resulted in the establishment of numerous trails which were established and became the interstate highways of the 18th and 19th centuries. A combination of factors including the terrain and location of waterways, the attraction of the desired destination, along with the location of America’s first inhabitants helped the earliest explorers and adventurers determine a route west.
As a result of these factors, many travelers converged at Independence, Missouri and organized groups who traveled westward on the Oregon and Santa Fe trails. In 1843 a caravan was organized and the wagon was first introduced on the Plains at the beginning of the Oregon and Santa Fe trade.
The first two days on the way west from Independence, travelers on the Oregon and Santa Fe trails followed the same route. Forty miles out was a crude sign pointed the way to the “Road to Oregon.”
Those first travelers destined for Oregon or Santa Fe quickly learned that baggage and supplies must be kept to a minimum. The eastern portion of both trails was strewn with heavy and sometimes valuable furniture and equipment which was discarded because of being too burdensome.
They discovered that the wagons needed to be rugged and durable, and that oxen were preferable to horses as draft animals and less attractive to the Indians. Cattle from Illinois and Missouri were best because they were accustomed to feeding on prairie grass.
Too few tools and the wrong type of clothes embarrassed many, especially the women. The result was bare, bruised, and bloody feet. The fine fabrics were ruined by the dirt, dust, and alkali of the desert. The older women adapted themselves to the requirements of the journey more readily than the younger ones. Some shortened their skirts to the danger point.
While explorers and adventurers were migrating to the west on the Santa Fe and Oregon trails, cowboys from Texas were driving large herds of cattle to markets as far north as Canada. The largest trail, the Great Western Trail, started in south Texas and went north parallel to the Chisholm Trail but about 100 miles further west. It was sometimes referred to as the Texas Trail.
A typical drive of 3,500 head of cattle, there were drives of many more head, would require eighteen cowboys. Also needed was a cook and his chuck wagon and a horse wrangler who was responsible for the “remuda.” The remuda was a herd of tame riding horses which the cowboys chose to use.
The cattle would be left to graze in the morning and then slowly led down the trail. This system of grazing and driving would be employed for the purpose of getting the cattle used to the drive. After some time, the herd would be accustomed to the routine and automatically began to follow the lead critter who would be led by the point cowboys.
Most accounts of the old western cowboys on cattle drives say very little about relaxing. For all intents and purposes there was very little relaxing. The trail drive was a tough and dangerous business.
In 1876, a herd of about two thousand five-hundred head of cattle was driven from near San Antonio, Texas, to the “Whetstone Bottom” on the Missouri River. The cattle had been purchased by men who had contracted with the United States Interior Department to supply a number of Indian Agencies with beef.
The herd, composed entirely of strong cattle, made good time and led the drive that season from Southern Texas. It was the first great herd of cattle to be driven through Western Nebraska into Dakota.
Their getting as far as the North Platte River in Western Nebraska was the one common event which those driving the herds north desired. For those who “drove the trail” in those days – high water, stormy weather, stampedes of both cattle and saddle horses, hunger at times and great thirst, as well as a few other discomforts which aided the cowboy in roughing out his full measure of whatever he might choose to call it – misery or joy.
Up till the late 1880s the main trail for the steady stream of cattle from Texas to the Dakota range and up through eastern Montana to Canada ran northwest from Ogallala, Nebraska, along the western edge of the Great Sioux Reservation. Locally, it was commonly called the Black Hills and Canadian trail. It entered the state east of Oelrichs and crossed the streams draining into the Cheyenne and Belle Fourche rivers and continued on to Slim Buttes. From there it touched the Little Missouri Valley and eastern Montana and continued northward into Canada.
Over time, the practice of driving cattle emerged as a means to move large numbers of livestock over vast distances. It was originally used to supply troops with food during the Revolutionary War in the 1770s. These early drives saw herds, as many as two-thousand head of Texas cattle in a herd, driven to the east and northeast.
During the peak years of the cattle drives, from 1865 to the mid-1890s, an estimated five million cattle were herded from Texas to markets in the North.
Author Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on October 30, 2024