USA > Kansas > Reno County > History of Reno County, Kansas; its people, industries and institutions, Vol I > Part 5
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It is, of course, impossible to tell how long the buffalo occupied the land of the great Southwest. He was driven west of the Mississippi after the white man landed on the eastern shores of the United States. His existence east of the Mississippi doubtless extended over a long period of time. The vastness of the numbers that were found even a half century ago, after he had been reduced to a range less than one-tenth of what he once grazed on. would indicate that for centuries he had thrived. Various estimates have been made of the number of buffalo that occupied the range. They were only estimates, and the wide variance in the figures indicate this more than anything else. R. M. Wright, an old settler and hunter, author of "Dodge City in Cowboy Days," quotes a conversation between General Sheridan and Major Inman. Both of them had traveled through the buffalo country many
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times and both were close observers and men of good judgment. The two had made the trip from Ft. Supply to Ft. Dodge during the days following the Civil War. Inman placed the number of buffalo in the country through which they had passed at ten billion and General Sheridan objected to this as too high .an estimate. After outlining how he arrived at that number, namely, by so many buffalo to the acre, stretched out over the long distance they had traveled, Inman reduced his estimate to one billion. General Sheri- dan objected again as too large an estimate and, after various methods of estimation were considered. they both agreed that there were at least one hundred million buffalo on the range at that time, in a radius of one hun- dred miles from Dodge City. At a later date, Horace Greeley made the trip overland in a stage coach, through the buffalo range, and placed the number of buffalo he had seen along the line through which the stagecoach traveled, at four million buffalo. Mr. Wright quotes Brick Pond, an old experienced hunter, a man of good judgment and thoroughly reliable, as placing the number of buffalo on the range within a hundred miles of Dodge City at twelve million. Mr. Wright's own figures, made at a later date, when the vividness of this sight had somewhat faded from his memory, was twenty-four million. He adds, "However, I think Pond was more nearly correct in his estimate than I was in mine, when it is remembered that the buffalo lived from twenty-five to forty years, that he was a powerful animal and capable of self-defense against all his natural enemies." The immensity of these figures make the estimates of these men more credible. All of the estimates of the vastness of these herds, indicates at once the fertility of a soil that would support so many animals, whose sole subsistence was the grass that grew on the prairies, and of the abundance of streams that would water so many animals. These considerations are heightened when it is remembered that the buffalo lived through the rigors of winter on the plains with no shelter except the ravines and small canyons that marked the course of some of the streams. Into this range have come in later days the cowmen with their herds, and they, in turn, have given way to the settlers who have broken up the range and cultivated the soil. Out of the immensity of the herds of buffalo and of the untold centuries these animals lived in this land. . grew a condition of soil that made possible a peculiar grass that was named for the animal, which lived and thrived on it. How closely associated is this fact: how the grass and the buffalo grew together and disappeared together : how the habits of the one produced a condition of soil that made possible the grass; how it was that the vast areas of country that the buffalo browsed over, grew this humble grass, which was followed, on the disappear-
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ance of the buffalo, by the innumerable varieties of other grasses ; how nature adapted the product of the soil to the necessity of the animal, are perhaps some of the most interesting facts in natural history. This grass is so nutritious that on it alone the buffalo grew and fattened. This grass was green in the spring, like other grasses. It never grew more than six or seven inches long and hung so close to the ground that it was impossible to cut it with a mowing machine. In the summer and fall it would turn brown, but if the outside layer of the grass was peeled off, it would still be found green and fresh on the inside. This condition existed even in the late fall and winter. It "cured" itself, even while growing. It needed not the mower and rake of the farmer to save it for the winter. All the nutrition the heat of summer stored in its silky form was wrapped under the brown covering. It was prepared for winter feed in nature's "silo." All the buffalo had to do to get as good feed in winter as in summer, was to push aside the snow and there was his food, as nutritious, as juicy, as palatable as when he ate it in the spring or fattened on it in the fall-the most wonderful grass that ever grew.
This grass grew only in hard land and was the only kind of grass found on the plains in the early days. The ground had been pounded for thousands of years by the hoofs of the innumerable herds that lived in this range and was as hard as the traveled road. The roots of this grass were very fine, and when the ground was broken up and the air allowed to get to the roots, the buffalo grass disappeared and in its place grew, the first year, the tall blue stem, that grew as high as a horse's back, and this was followed by a large number of other varieties of grasses.
The buffalo grass and the hardened soil afford, perhaps, the best idea of the extent and time the buffalo lived on the range. that it is possible now to form, not as counted by thousands, or tens of thousands, but in a manner that shows vividly the extent of the herds.
The vast numbers given of the size of the herds, are meaningless. The soil condition indicates more clearly to us the numbers and extent of time the buffalo lived here on the prairies than the statement of those numbers in concrete figures. How long the buffalo lived here and fed on these plains, how long a period must have passed to make possible the hardened soil and how much longer still must have been the time it would take to develop a grass so peculiarly adapted to the needs and conditions of the life that it sustained-the grass and the soil tell more vividly than figures of the life of this, the earliest inhabitant of the great Southwest.
The hardened soil produced a condition in all the streams that drain the
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plains. In order to carry off the water of the streams in flood times, that would run off the ground as it would off a roof, it was necessary for the streams to have much wider channels than was required in later days, after the settlers had broken up the soil, which allowed the rains to seep into the soil, instead of rushing off in torrents to the streams. Consequently, as soon as the land was broken, the Arkansas river, the ultimate drainage canal of this territory, began to decrease in width. Islands began to form in what formerly was the channel. The necessity for a wide channel had disappeared. In 1874. when the first bridge was built over the Arkansas river at Hutchin- son, it was sixteen hundred and twenty-five feet long. The bridge that now spans the river at the same point is but five hundred and forty feet long.
The buffalo varied in height from four to five and a half feet and differed from the domestic ox in being longer-legged and shorter-bodied and in having a large hump on its back, a long mane and much longer hair on its back and shoulders. Its greatest girth was just back of the forelegs, from which its body gradually tapered and also diminished in height. Its head and eyes were small. Its whole structure was calculated for speed and its general aspect was fierce and terrible, although it was not so unless it was closely pressed. Under ordinary circumstances, it was harmless and timid. Its sense of smell was exceedingly acute and it depended largely on this faculty for its safety. It was a migratory animal, although a few buffalo could be found in the northern climates at all seasons of the year.
When the buffalo moved, it was in immense herds, but the larger herds would break up into smaller bands of a few thousand each. The buffalo never was alone except by accident. The males and females herded sepa- rately, except in the breeding season, which was in June and July. This was the time when the bulls contended for mastery. Old hunters tell of seeing hundreds of these animals fighting at the same time. When one of the old bulls was defeated by one of the younger and stronger ones, the defeated bull never again got in with the successful ones. He was out and he stayed out. The result was that the older and defeated bulls kept to themselves. The cows brought forth their young in March and April. They were notable for their attention to their young. At night the cows would form a circle. with the calves in the center. The cows would lie down, with their heads outward, forming a barricade against the wolves and coyotes that infested the plains and that hung around every sick or wounded animal, ready to fall on and devour it. The helpless calves were eagerly sought by the hungry wolves and the care and attention the cows gave their young, until they were able to care for themselves, was one of the characteristics of the buffalo.
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The calves were of a very light color, but they would turn a rich brown color by winter. The young buffalo's hair would shed from its flank and sides the second summer and in the fall of its second year its hair would grow darker and thicker than it was the first year. After a buffalo had passed the prime of life the hair became a rusty-brown color. The buffalo would always face a storm instead of turning from it, as a domestic animal does. It was more thinly clad behind than in front and coukl best protect itself by facing the storm.
The buffalo was the chief source of the living of the Indian, affording him the principal part of his food. The Indians did very little in the way of cultivating the soil, in raising grain or vegetables. Occasionally the squaws had small patches of corn, a few watermelons and pumpkins. They also gathered some of the wild grapes and plums when they found them along the streams, but beyond this they ate few vegetables. The bucks were too lazy and indolent to work and all that was raised was done by the squaws. They had only the rudest sort of farm implements with which to tend their crops. So the buffalo was their chief reliance for food. While they had other kinds of meat occasionally, deer, antelope, wild geese and wild turkey, yet they relied mainly on the buffalo for the greatest part of their living.
The hides of the buffalo furnished the Indian with their clothing, their saddles and their tents. The sinews of the buffalo were used for bowstrings. There was not any part of the carcass that did not find some use. Without the buffalo, the savage could not have lived. The squaws would dry strips of buffalo meat by hanging them up in the sun. They would then grind this dried meat up, mix it with choke berry, add to it some of the fat of the buffalo they had fried out of his hump, put the mixture in a leather bag and it became the food of the tribe when they were on the march or when they were where they could not get fresh meat. This was exceedingly nutritious and enabled the Indians to carry their sustenance in a very condensed form.
The disappearance of the buffalo was the cause of the breaking up of the tribal relations of the Indians, the first step that was necessary to pre- pare this land of the buffalo range for settlement. While the mere slaughter of the buffalo for its hide and meat cannot be looked upon with any great degree of approval, there is another side to the controversy that must not be overlooked. If the vast territory the buffalo ranged over was to be left for a range, if the interests of the settler were to be subordinated to that of the Indian, then there was no justification in the slaughter of the buffalo. If, on the other hand, the demands of civilization, the pushing onward of the
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pioneer, were to be considered, then the view as expressed by General Sheri- dan was the proper one. The only thing that led to the settling of the Indian on his allotment was the fact that he could no longer live by the chase. The Indian resented the encroachments of the white man and made raids into his camps: along the traveled routes, in companies or alone, the Indian murdered the pioneer. There was no such thing as settlement until the Indian raids were things of the past. Their depredations must be stopped. A bill was introduced in the Texas Legislature, shortly after the Civil War, that was intended to protect the buffalo from the hunters. Against this bill General Sheridan made a vigorous protest. The General knew the Indians, perhaps better than any other of the regular army officers of those times. He knew also of the futility of trying to defend the whole frontier of the nation against the attacks of the savages and, referring to the proposed Texas law, he said: "Instead of stopping the hunters, you ought to encourage them by a unanimous vote of thanks, and add a medal of bronze, with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged Indian on the other. Those men have done more to settle the vexed 'Indian question' than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indian's commissary, and it is a well-known fact in military tactics that an army cut off from its base of supplies is in a precarious condition. Send the hunters powder and lead, if you will, and for the sake of peace let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with cattle and cowboys, who will follow the hunter as the fore- runners of civilization."
What General Sheridan predicted has come true. After the buffalo and the Indian disappeared, after the hunters were gone, the pioneers came and with them came the long-horned cattle. The latter have likewise passed on and in Reno county, particularly, the longhorn was replaced by the shorthorn. The buffalo grass has been turned under and has rotted, and the alfalfa, the greatest forage food ever known, has taken the place of the humble buffalo grass. One acre now renders more service than a quarter section did under the old "cow" system, and more than a whole township did when the buffalo roamed over it. It is but a half century from bison to shorthorn, from the untamed herds on the plains to the silos of modern farming. But back of it all was the displacing of the tenants of the soil of a thousand years, to make place for those of today. While the process of making the change seemed harsh, the justification comes in rendering the earth more productive, paving the way for the growth of a country of contented and prosperous people.
OLD SANTA FE STATION AT STERLING, SHOWING PILE OF BUFFALO BONES.
FRST WHITE MAN'S DWELLING IN RENO COUNTY.
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In the early days of the pioneers, buffalo bone hauling was the chief occupation and the principal source of revenue. Indeed, it was about the only thing the early settlers could do, to make money. At that time there was but little work to do in the country, little or no building being done, no fac- tories or shops to furnish work. The farmer did all of his own work in the field, and had plenty of time on his hands, and his greatest occupation was that of hauling buffalo bones to town. There was but little money in the country. By gathering up these bones, that lay strewn for hundreds of miles, the early settlers were not only able to make a living, but lay aside a little for later use. "Buffalo bones" were legal tender in those days. These bones were hauled to the railroad, to be shipped from this part of the buffalo range. Carloads of bones were shipped East to be transformed into fer- tilizer. In this city the "bone yard" was in the exact spot where the Bisonte hotel now stands. It would have been impossible to have chosen a more appropriate name for this hotel, as the word "bisonte" is the Spanish for "bull buffalo." But no more striking is the change that has transformed a bone yard into a magnificent hotel, than that which has occurred in other lines of industry in Reno county.
The hide hunters were also numerous, though they did not do much in Reno county, for the buffalo had moved farther West before the early set- tler came to this county. There was a trail that ran across the southern part of the country called the "Northup Trail," that was used by hunters going farther west to secure not only the hides, but the buffalo meat. This meat was hauled to the nearest railroad station and shipped east, where it was considered a great delicacy. In the winter, they hauled the raw meat, frozen by exposure, to the cars. In the summer the meat was dried. Part of the business of the Northup trail was hauling buffalo hides from the hunting ground. These hides were dried and baled and their skins were sold to two firms, Charles Bales, of St. Louis, and a man by the name of Durfree, of Leavenworth. Buffalo robes were sold in St. Louis from sixteen dollars a piece for the big, fine, full-haired bull buffalo, to eight dollars and fifty cents for the smaller skins, of older animals that did not have so much hair on them. It is estimated by a writer of that time that Bales did at least a half million dollars worth of business annually for several years, while Durfree did half that much in the sale of hides at Leavenworth.
The early settler found some peculiar markings on the creek banks and some peculiar round depressions in the ground. The marks on the creek banks were V shaped and were cuts in the higher banks of the stream. These
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were made by the buffalo going down to the stream for water. They did not hunt the low lands, but clambered out over the higher banks, urged on by the buffalo behind, and this caused the peculiar V shapes in the banks. The round depressions were "wallows," made by buffalo pawing up the ground for the salt in the alkali soil, and also for the buffalo to "wallow." in. to loosen up the old hair. But the erosion of streams has washed out all the \' shaped cuts in the creek banks and the rains have filled up the wallows with the washings of the soil, so that nothing now remains of grass or bone or depression to show that the buffalo ever lived in this country.
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY TRAILS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.
The Texas cattle business was not a profitable one to those engaged in it before the Civil War. But after that struggle ended, the tide of emi- gration started westward and as one of the results of that shifting of the population of the country the cattle industry was greatly stimulated. The cattle men of the country explained this increased activity by saying that before the war their industry was a business, after the war it became a craze. The settlement of the Northern and Central states called for more cattle. To supply the demand, numerous herds of the Texas range stock were driven northward every year. In the early days before the wagon train of the "Forty-niner," before the laying out of the Santa Fe trail, there were millions of buffalo on the range from Texas northward. Literally, these millions of "crooked backed oxen" were supplanted by the Texas long-horn range cattle, and millions of them were driven north to market.
The driving might more properly be called "drifting." The cattle were not forced along except to reach a watering place and were allowed to graze. The cattle men started them northward in Texas early in April and as the grass grew long enough in the north to sustain the stock they crowded the cattle.
The earliest of these cattle men were the Bent Brothers. They built a trading post in eastern Colorado in 1829 and there they had a strong cor- ral to hold the stock, also a store. The price of cattle in that time was very low. One sale is spoken of as a sample of prices made in 1866. Out of a herd of thirty-five thousand head, the purchaser was allowed to take his choice. For the first six hundred head he paid six dollars per head, for the next six hundred head he paid three dollars a head. This bunch of twelve hundred head of cattle cost him on an average of four dollars and fifty cents a head, or about forty cents a hundred pounds gross weight.
In 1868 there were seventy-five thousand head of cattle marketed in Abilene. This supply was cleaned up so rapidly that the next year two hundred thousand head were sold on this same market. At the beginning there was great aversion to the Texas cattle because of the Texas fever, but
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this gradually was overcome and the shipping of Texas cattle northward was for many years a great industry.
In 1871 there were six hundred thousand head of cattle driven north- ward. As a result of this great increase in the supply, prices shrunk greatly and this was one of the bad years for the cattle drivers. A very large per cent, nearly half of the drive of this year, remained unsold and were driven to points in eastern Kansas and fed through the following fall and winter. They were largely yearling steers, thin cows and long, lanky steers that were fattened up in the corn fields of eastern Kansas. It was a mutually profitable business for both the owners of the stock and for the farmers. The latter found a ready market for his corn stalks and his hay, articles that before this year had produced but little revenue, and he also sold his grass in a home market to a fine advantage. The cattle men also profited, as their long, lanky steers fattened upon northern corn and hay, and his yearlings and "thin" cows showed big gains and were ready for the market long before the range cattle got onto the market.
The year 1874 was a year of disaster for stock men as well as everyone else. It was the grasshopper year. The "drive" that year was four hundred thousand head. They not only met the competition of the cattle left over the year before and which had been greatly improved by wintering in the eastern part of the state, but the shortage of feed because of the grass- hopper plague made the sale of cattle almost impossible. As a result of these conditions, over one hundred and fifty thousand head of stock sold for two dollars per head.
Among the most famous of the Texas cattle men was John Chisholm. Hle began the raising of cattle in 1854. Shortly after the war he laid out the long cattle trail from Texas to the North. That trail crossed Reno county and had various paths through the county. In the early days, before there were any settlers to bother, he drove across the eastern part of the county. Later, his cattle trail entered the county in the southeastern part. He would follow the Ninnescah river up till he reached a point about where Sylvia is now, then drive directly north. The plan of these cattle men was to reach a stream of water every day. After leaving the Ninnescah the drive was north to Cow creek, reaching it close to where Lyons is now. Sylvia was a camping spot. There was plenty of good grass and water and the stock were herded there over night and the drive the next day put them on Cow creek, where there was an abundance of water. It is said the cattle men gave this name to the stream because they never knew a time when there wasn't plenty of water for the cows. Some of the streams would go
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dry in the exceedingly long drouthy periods, but Cow creek always had plenty of water for the largest herds.
Another trail crossed the southern part of the county. It was called the Goodnight trail. Goodnight was a cattleman of Texas. He followed the Chisholmn trail part of the way, but was one of the later stock men to drive cattle north. When the Legislature of Kansas fixed the line over which cattle might be driven through the state, and that line was the western boundary of Reno county, this stopped the driving to Abilene and stock was shipped from Ellinwood when the Santa Fe reached that point. To reach this shipping point, Goodnight established a new trail that was along the southern border of Reno county, and thence in a northwesterly direction to Ellinwood.
There was another trail, called the "Northup" trail, along the northern border of the county. However, this was not a cattle trail, but a road established by a trader by the name of Northup. He had a government contract for buffalo meat, and also did a big business in buffalo hides. He had several camps along the line from Emporia, Northup's headquarters, to the buffalo range. Northup did a big business and had many teams haul- ing meat and hides. His teams made a good beaten track and it was so direct that it took the name of the "Northup trail." Very little is known of Northup. The old settlers remember his sleek, well-fed mules, his strong wagons, his big loads of hides and meat that he hauled, but of Northup him- self they know but little.
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