 moving slowly, like a great brown sea. They move in an endless column, flowing across the grass of the prairie, the dust from thousands of hooves rising high in the sky. On either side of the herd cowboys mill around on fleet-footed ponies, shouting, cracking whips, whistling – anything to keep the steers on the move.
“North! North! Point ‘em North!”
North to the stockyards at Abilene, Kansas, by way of the Chisholm Trail.
Abilene exists today as a quietly prosperous country town, but the trail that brought it to life has long gone. It has vanished so thoroughly that even historians of America’s pioneer days cannot agree as to exactly where it ran. But that the Chisholm Trail existed is beyond question, for in a few short years it changed the whole pattern of the Wild West.
At the end of the Civil War, the Southern States were in ruins, yet thanks to the foresight of General Grant, the defeated Confederate soldiers were allowed to return home riding their horses and carrying their guns. This was not just a gesture of chivalry towards a gallant foe. So far as the president was concerned it was important to the country to remember that the Southerners were farmers and stockbreeders almost to a man. A horse and a gun were the tools of their trade, and without them it would take that much longer for one time rebels to become useful citizens again.
Few men of the Confederate army found that they could pick up their lives where they had left them at the outbreak of war in 1861. Towns had been shelled or burnt to the ground, and plantations had become overgrown. The State of Texas, too huge to be entirely overrun, posed very special problems. The homecoming Texans were not too concerned to find their ranches in a poor way, for they had built them in the first place and were prepared to do so again. What did cause alarm was the sight of thousand upon thousand of unbranded longhorn cattle running wild upon the open range.
The ranchers repaired their homes, then banded together to round up the tough, bad tempered cattle that were the descendants of the early herds imported from Britain and Ireland. Where a steer carried a brand there was no trouble: the owner took her back into his herd. But the bulk of the steers, born during the years of war, bore no distinguishing mark. Between them, the ranchers shared out the stock, and overnight found themselves owners of enormous herds.
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