| Much
has been written over the years about the Texas cowboy. And in 1923, The Gonzales
Inquirer put out a special edition celebrating the paper's 70th anniversary.
In that edition they included an Old Trail Drivers section honoring those men
who drove cattle up the trail from Gonzales County. During
a reunion of the Texas Trail Drivers Association, held in Gonzales in 1923,
more light was shed on the life of the cowboy.
Mr. George B. Saunders, president of the TTDA, spoke at the meeting. He said the
average person did not conceive of the volume of business done through the work
of the old trail drivers. He claimed that the trail drivers deserved the most
credit for the development of Texas after the Civil War.
Another speaker at the meeting, J.B. Wells, gave his account of life on the trail.
Wells said he had driven cattle in years when practically every stream was dry.
And other years when every stream was flowing with so much water that the men
had to swim across with the cattle. Wells
described another exciting event on a drive through Indian country: One day a
band of Indians swooped down on us and rode around the edge of the herd, shouting,
in an effort to stampede our cattle. Mr. Wells was quick to point out that they
offered the Indians all their supplies to take the savages' minds off their cattle.
We very generously turned over to them all the beans, bacon, coffee, sugar and
other eatables we had, he said. They
were left in uninhabited country without food for several days until they reached
a place where they could buy supplies. They had no money and had to trade cattle
for provisions.
On one of his drives, J.B. Wells spoke of seeing a man named Hardin kill three
men in a drunken brawl on the trail. He didn't give the man's first name, so one
can only speculate as to if it was John Wesley who did the killing. One
old cowboy, L.D. Taylor, gave an account of his adventures on the trail. He spoke
of being in the saddle for 24 hours without food or sleep. Taylor told of trying
to hold the herd in check during blinding thunder and hail storms. "You never
knew when you would be run over and killed," he said. But
despite the pain and hardships, the trail drivers continued to send large numbers
of cattle up the trail to the northern markets. According to The Gonzales Inquirer,
the following herds were driven from Gonzales County in 1878. G.W. Littlefield,
6,000 head; Littlefield and J.D. Houston, 8,000; Lewis & Dilworth and R.A. Houston,
4,000; Lewis & Dilworth and Parramore, 2,500; Lee Kokernot, 2,000; Jesse McCoy
and R.H. Floyd, 2,500. At
the time these herds went up the trail, prices for cattle varied from six to fifteen
dollars per head. That was big money back then and it was those dollars that put
Texas back on solid financial ground. The
old trail drivers drove their last herds and secured a place in history years
ago. But the tradition of the cowboy way of life in Texas will live forever. Lone
Star Diary >
February,
2001
Published with author's permission. | 
