EARLY DAY COWBOY TELLS IT LIKE IT WAS

(an interview of Charles Day by Otto Hart, which was written for the Fort McKinney Chapter of the Daughter of the American Revolution in 1936. While all the events didn’t take place in JohnsonCounty, this is “ typical of the life of a cowboy before the turn of the century.”

When I was a kid (in Mount Home, Tex.) and they tried to lick me. I would run and they couldn’t catch me., so they name me General Sigel! My father started it and the name stuck as long as I stayed in that country. (General Sigel would get in a fight and run, but he usually saved his army).

Before the Civil War, Sis and Mother made all our clothes. Homespun jeans is what the men all wore. One pair of home knit stockings would last all winter. I remember the first pair of pants I ever wore.  I must have been five or six.  I know I fought and did not wanna give my dress up. I don’t remember when I quit wearing overalls, but it must have been soon after the war.

In 1876, I made my first trip with cattle on the Old Chisholm Trail to Sedalia, Missouri. From there they were shipped to St. Louis. At Jacksburrow town, a many hired our crew, together with some other men, and we went to the Panhandle of Texas to shoot buff. We used a Sharp’s rifle that weighted about 40 pounds and shot a lead bullet half as long as your finger. Fifty rounds of ammunition was about all a hunter could carry. The rifle did not kick but the old infield sure did!

The buffalo hides were taken to Galveston and their carcasses left to rot and their bones to bleach on the sand. The hides went to England

A BUFFALO EVERY THREE MINUTES

                                                       (a continuation)

 

A good hunter would average a buffalo every three minutes. You shoot and then walk forward while you are concealed in the smoke of your rifle, then  shoot again and walk forward. In that way, you are concealed most of the time, and the buffalo fall pretty close together so it is easy for the skinners and the teams that gather the hides.

The hides are salted and bundled singly. It was not uncommon for one of those freshly-salted hides to weigh 400 pounds so you see it took a crew of men to handle a loading job. The average man couldn’t not lift the head of a dead buffalo. They used a saddle horse to turn the carcass over when they had it half skinned.

Twenty men could shoot from the same herd. If you were fast, you could shoot two or three buffalo to the mute of time. You skin a buffalo the same as you skin a steer but they never skinned the head. Two or three men usually went together to skin them. They slit down the belly and skinned to the knees. A bull’s head was about  a heavy as a barrel of whiskey.

Sixty years ago, lots of the cattle were one half buffalo. They stayed with the cattle and were black and the hair was curly.  In 1875 Texas was a wild country but her wild buffalo and her long horned cattle, too are all gone now I guess.

When a bunch of buffalo is on the drift, nothing can stop them—the same with wild cattle. This tall park fence would not hold wild cattle, they would just pile up against it and begin to climb up on top of each other till they broke it down. I saw them tear down a log coral that was as high as this house. They just piled up against it and climber up over until it went down. There is plenty dead and crippled cattle after a big drift like that. Like a log jam or ice jam when it breaks, things move all at once for awhile.

In 1874, the Indians stampeded a herd of buffalo and headed them for the Missouri River in N.D.  The ice was not thick enough to support the herd so they were all drowned, 18,000 was the estimated number. This happened just before the Indians went to Canada.

 

 

 

 

 

The last Indian battle I was in happened in Northern Texas in 1875. We had stole about 600 of the Indian’s horses and they were after us to get them back. Six of us stopped in an adobe house as big as the high school with port holes in the side like a fort. There were 300 or 400 Kiowa’s and Apaches but they had and Six-shooters and we were shooting to kill to chance. We had 44 caliber Winchesters.

 

HORSE THIEVES AND CATTLE DRIVES

 

After the Rebellion, the outlaws, thieves and toughs from all over  the states drifted into

Texas and they were a pretty hard lot. Those horse and cattle thieves would join up with a herd going north, (they were good cowmen)and when the trip was over, they would have some money and be ready to do business.

When you went to call one of these outlaws to stand his guard, you had to be careful. If he was sound asleep, he might come out like a jack in  the box with his gun, for he knew the law was after him, I used to stop  eight or ten feet away and have my own gun handy.

Maybe they would go to Oregon and steal several hundred head of horses and bring them to Wyoming and turn them loose for a year00anywhere where the grass was good with someone left behind to keep an eye on them. The  next summer these same men would come  through with another trail herd, they would gather theses horses and trail them to Montana with some shipped to an Easter market and some in Canada. They stood in with the sheriffs lots of places. I know of one sheriff being hanged in Missoula County, Montana for being a horse thief.

 

I made seven trips with the Overland Trail herds, two trips over the Chisholm Trail and five  trips over the Western Trail and I want to (“the book North of 36) is a pretty accurate description. I personally knew many of the men mentioned in that book.

Many people have the idea that the Chisholm Trail was a cow trail but it wasn’t.  Chisholm

Was a half breed  Cree Indian who owned a big bull outfit during the Mexican War, and he scouted that trail as the most level trail to haul freight over into Texas and if you travel that trail as I did, you will see he picked a good one.

Many hours I have spent on night guard singing to the cattle “Lay Down Cattle, Lay Down.” You would sing them to sleep like a mother does her baby. When holding cattle at night, you had to sing to them. What is why so many cowboys are good singers. It seemed to satisfy and quiet them. They seemed to think all was well and they were protected as long as they could hear you singing.
If a cowboy would come silently and sagely, he would stampede a whole herd of wild cattle. If there was some unusual noise, we just sang a little louder. While it was storming, the cattle were not hard to hold but just as the storm was ending is when you get your stampede.

One night the cattle started to stampede and a kid shook his slicker to stop them. That caused a double stampede and killed 60 head right there. They spilled over a bank and tramped one another to death. We lost about three or four hundred head of cattle besides having our wagon torn up.

Day stampedes never amounted to much for you can see how to bend your cattle.

(more...continued soon)

 

 

 

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JOHNSON COUNTY, WYOMING