Trail Drives of the 1800's- Cowboys, Horses, Longhorns, hardships, and stories

Trail Drives of the 1800's-
Cowboys, Horses, Longhorns, hardships, and stories

The trail drives of the 1800s were necessary to move the longhorn cattle from Texas to the north. In Texas a 4 year old longhorn was worth about $3 or $4. Up north, though, the same animal was worth $40. There were no railroads leading to Texas so the cattle had to be driven up on the trail.

The drive took 2 or 3 months from Texas to railroad shipping points in Kansas. It also took 6 months to drive the cattle to ranches in Wyoming, Montana, or the Dakotas where the cattle would fatten on the rich grasses of the northern plains before being sent to the slaughterhouse.

The Texas longhorns required more men than some of the other tamer breeds. There were 8-20 cowboys to trail a herd of 2,000 to 3,000 cattle. All trail drives included a cook, the trail boss, some even added an assistant called the foreman, and a horse wrangler (generally a young boy).

The trail boss is the man in charge of the outfit and was hired by the owner of the cattle to drive the herd to market. The trail boss had to make sure the longhorns got enough grass and water and did not lose weight during the drive. He decided how far the outfit would travel each day and where it would stop to bed down for the night. He also negotiated with the Indians and with the white settlers who objected to the herds crossing their land. A trail boss earned about $100 a month.

The horse wrangler was in charge of the remuda ( from the Spanish word "remudar" meaning to exchange or change). The remuda was a band of saddle ponies. As mentioned above, the horse wrangler usually was the youngest member of the outfit. He was a boy who was old enough to do a man's work. The wrangler handled the 6-8 mounts needed for each cowboy, between 60-70 horses. He drove the horses by day, found a pasture for them at night and rounded them up several times a day so the cowboys could change mounts. The wrangler also worked as the cook's helper and clean up boy. The wrangler earned $25 a month.


The cowboys on the trail drives had very specific jobs. The 2 men or "pointers" at the
head of the herd pointed the steers in the right direction and set the pace of the drive.

In the middle of the herd were the "swing" and "flank" riders. These cowboys watched the middle of the herd.














The swing and flank riders rode on either side of the herd and patrolled the line to keep the cattle from wandering too far out from the herd. At the back of the herd was the hardest position- the "drag" riders. These cowboys rode at the end of the line and they caught all the dust from the whole herd. They also kept the slowest of the cattle from straggling to far behind. The trail boss would rotate this position because of all the dust-

" I have seen drag riders come off herd with the dust half an inch deep on their hats and thick as fur in their eyebrows" said Teddy Blue Abbott


The trail boss would move a herd 12 to 16 miles a day. If the animals were permitted to graze and gain some weight en-route, the pace would be 10 to 12 miles per day. The drive would cost the owner of the herd about $500 per month, so there was no dawdling.

The cowboys would supply their own gear and earned $25 to $40 dollars per month.

There were many dangers on the trail, stampedes, rivers, bad weather, and Indians.

The cowboys feared river crossings because they generally could not swim. Swollen rivers would also delay a herd for days and result in injured and lost animals.

Stampedes were dangerous to both the cattle, horses and the cowboy. A witness to an Idaho stampede in 1889 reported the grisly details.

"The stampede killed 341-cattle, 2 horses, and 1 cowboy. Several men suffered broken legs. The dead cowboy was literally mangled to sausage meat. His horse was little better."

Another danger was gopher holes. Horses could step into the holes and throw their riders. A foot tangled in a stirrup meant death or injury as the cowboy was dragged across the ground.

Information for this blog cam from the book "Cowboy's of the America's by Richard Slatta and from the book "Cowboys of the Wild West" by Russell Freedman




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The Code of the West..........a living Code of Cowboys

The Code of the West, an unwritten law know and obeyed by all Cowboys in the Old West survives today. The Cowboys of today, working the ranches and cattle still live the Code of the West. Below are some of the rules and examples of the Code of the West.........

The Code of the West

Although ranchers and cowboys were individuals, they nevertheless behaved, or pretended to behave, by an unwritten set of rules that came to be known collectively as the code of the West.

The code was a sort of frontier version of the Golden Rule. A cattleman fed a visitor because he might himself be far from home next month. He asked no questions of strangers because in leaner days he might himself have preferred not to have his affairs pried into. He returned stray cattle because his own livestock might wander.

The Sunday-school aspect of this unwritten book of laws disappeared entirely when the cattleman felt himself threatened. The code gave him the right to set up vigilance committees whose members acted as sheriffs, prosecutors, judges and executioners, dispensing justice on the spot. If no vigilantes were available for the job, he took matters into his own hands. Since there was little or no law in the Old West, the cowboy made his own rules from the outset. In his unwritten code there were certain principles understood by nearly everyone, and stories of the range are filled with examples of their observance.

In Lavaca County, Texas, one February day in 1874, cattleman Willis McCutcheon sized up a spunky young lad named West and decided that despite his youth he'd do to drive the McCutcheon firm's first herd of the year to Ellsworth, Kansas. "You'll get half of whatever these cows bring over the price per head after expenses," McCutcheon promised. The boy said that would do.

The drive was halfway to Ellsworth when a five-hour blizzard killed the trail crew's remuda of 78 horses. Having promised to get the cattle through, West traded some cows-and with them part of his profits-for six horses and a mule. A month later he managed to get the cattle to the Kansas market. He sold them off a few at a time during the summer and fall.

When West finally returned to Lavaca County in December, McCutcheon's bookkeeper figured the profits, deducting the value of the lost horses (West made no objection). "Are you going to buy a herd of your own, or start a bank?" the bookkeeper joked as he handed over the young man's profit — 75 cents. West smiled and pocketed the coins without a complaint at the outcome of a deal that he had sealed with his word.

Two cowpunchers out looking for work rode up to a Texas ranch in time for dinner, expecting the customary offer of a free meal. The boss fed them, but afterward demanded 50 cents in payment. Outraged at this violation of Western hospitality, the men roped a three-year-old steer belonging to their host and used a saddle ring to brand on its flanks the message: "Meals—50 cts." The steer was left to roam the range and proclaim the owner's ignominy.

In its simplest form the code was merely a common ethic of fair play, and it worked reasonably well. At the N Bar Ranch in Montana, for example, the foreman fired a hand because he failed to pay a prostitute her promised fee. On the bank of the Colorado River in Texas a young puncher, asked to take the lead in swimming the herd across, said that while he was not a good swimmer and was afraid of the water "I am a hired hand and will not shirk my duty." He made it.

Some of the fine points of the code dictated horseman's etiquette. No one borrowed a horse from another man's string without his permission (which was rarely given). One did not whip or kick a borrowed horse. When two mounted cowboys approached each other on the trail both were supposed to keep course and perhaps pass a friendly word; to veer off was to suggest furtiveness —or even danger. But a wave of greeting was considered bad form —it might scare a horse. If one man dismounted, the other did too, so they would meet on equal terms. A man on foot did not grab the bridle of a mounted man's horse, for that could be taken as an intrusion on the rider's control.

Other rules of the code governed the practicalities of range land housekeeping. Cowboys were expected to close pasture and corral gates behind them, and to remove their sharp- roweled spurs when they entered another man's house. On roundup a cowboy did not wait for his fellow hands to arrive before beginning his meal; he helped himself and began eating at once so he would be out of the way when other punchers came to dip food from the common pots and pans.

In matters of money, most cowboys bound themselves to be trusting and trustworthy. One North Dakota hand gave back part of his wages for digging potholes because he realized later he had dug one of them too shallow. At payoff time on the range bosses might dump sacks of money on the ground and leave them there, unmolested, for days at a time until the boys came by to pick up their wages. On a handshake cattle buyers would take whole herds sight unseen. G. W. Rourke, a railroad agent at Dodge City, recalled, "I've seen many a transaction in steers, running as high as 5,000 head and involving more than $100,000, closed and carried out to the letter, with no semblance of a written contract." In the market crash of 1873 Texas cattlemen, stuck with notes totaling $1.5 million to Kansas banks, paid off the debts almost to the penny—at the price of personal ruin for a number of the ranchers.

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