The first authenticated northern drive came in 1846 when Edward Piper drove one thousand Texas steers to Ohio. By 1865 Texas boasted one-eighth of all the cattle in America, as against a local population of less than half a million people. Somehow these cattle had to be gotten to market.
Returning Confederate veterans, broke but adventurous, saw the challenge of the open range and seized it. Loose, wild stock and “mavericks” were soon in the clutches of men and mustangs as wild as they. The first cowboys to make the long drive had need to be tough. There were many hazards menacing their way—non-treaty Indians, white thieves, floods, cyclones, and ever threatening stampedes. Sometimes the distance between water was more than a day’s travel.
Cattle kings were men of great energy and enterprise. They took big risks, sometimes winning large profits and occasionally losing just as handsomely. Chisum, Hittson, Kennedy, O’Connor, and King were charmed names in the cattle fraternity. They nurtured their stock on hundred-thousand-acre ranches and then sent them forth to forage upon the public domain. It is estimated that six million head grazed their way to market over the Chisholm, Great Western, Shawnee, and other trails.
This wealth of the cloven hoof was entrusted to young athletes equally adept in forking a hoss, shooting a gun, and hurling a lariat. Cowboys were capable of both long, patient application to duty and vigorous relaxation when opportunity afforded. As a class they were steady and dependable. They delivered their charges in good condition at such shipping points as Sedalia, Abilene, Wichita, Ogallala, Glendive, and Miles City. This migration of cowmen and their herds was a strong, tremendous movement. It came with a rush and a surge, and in ten years it had subsided.
Even as the iron horse gave birth to the long drive, just so surely did it eventually destroy the big cattle business itself. Homesteaders came with the advance in transportation. There was a gradual, but irresistible, invasion of the open range. The “nesters” enclosed public domains. Thus, as the Indian gave way before the soldier and the hunter, so the cowboy yielded to the farmer. Ranches soon absorbed the eight million acres formerly overrun by bison and cattle.
There were still several regions ideally suited for stock raising—Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Toward these remote areas men looking for new, free grassland, timber, and water headed their cattle. The quest led them into the several great valley approaches to the Yellowstone Plateau. On both slopes of the great divide plants and grass grow steadily during summer, and the dry atmosphere cures and ripens them as they mature. This type of feed is highly nutritious and conducive to the development or perfection of form and strength of bone and muscle.
Among the pioneer ranchmen of the Rockies was Nelson Story. He netted more than ten thousand dollars in the placer mines of Alder Gulch. This sum he invested in a thousand Texas longhorns in 1866. With twenty-seven trail-hardened cowboys he brought the cattle to Montana. It was a tremendous undertaking to get them through a veritable gauntlet of hostile Indians and desperate white thieves. Three of his men were killed before they reached the end of Bozeman Trail.[178] Gold dust in exchange for beef proved more profitable than taking it from the placers themselves. Even the poorest ox would bring a hundred dollars, and so the traffic increased.
At this time the able Sioux chief, Red Cloud, served notice upon the government that he would kill every white man who traveled along that trail. It was not an idle boast; the record shows nearly two hundred casualties in the last six months of 1866. In fact, the Bozeman Trail became one long battleground, scene of such Sioux victories as the Fetterman and Wagon Box massacres. However, the military persisted, and with constant operations stemming from Forts Kearney and Smith the trail was kept open.[179]
In 1870 more than 40,000 Texas cattle reached Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Six years later the mountain Indians were largely liquidated. The removal of Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull opened the way for new cattle commonwealths. By 1880 the federal census reported 428,279 head in Montana and 521,213, in Wyoming. Soon the stockmen evolved a considerable network of mountain trails. The main artery went up the Yellowstone to Fort Custer and thence into Wyoming via Forts McKinney, Reno, and Fetterman to Cheyenne for shipping.
New names entered the stage with the growth of the cattle business such as Granville Stuart, James Fergus, A. J. Davis, John Ming, John Grant, Conrad Kohrs, R. S. Ford, Ancenny, Poindexter, Iliff, Flowerree, and George Searight.[180] Then there were the famous companies, The Union Cattle Company, The Swan Land and Cattle Company, North American, Powder River, Prairie, and Horseshoe being among the major names. Professor Dan E. Clark states that twenty Wyoming companies were organized in 1883, with individual capitalization from ten thousand to three million and a combined value of twelve million dollars.[181] In Montana, though, the Stock Growers Association represented an ownership of half a million head of cattle in 1884. The Eastern Montana Stock Growers Association of the same state claimed a capital investment of thirty-five million dollars.[182]