Briscoe County Biographies

GOODNIGHT, CHARLES (1836-1929)
COMANCHEROS
PASTORES

GOODNIGHT, CHARLES
(1836-1929)

Charles Goodnight, rancher, the third of four children of Charles and Charlotte (Collier) Goodnight, was born on March 5, 1836, on the family farm in Macoupin County, Illinois. His father died of pneumonia in 1841 when Charles was five, and shortly thereafter his mother married Hiram Daugherty, a neighboring farmer. In all, Charles had only six months of formal schooling. Late in 1845 he accompanied his family on the 800-mile trek south to a site in Milam County, Texas, near Nashville-on-the-Brazos, riding bareback on a white-faced mare named Blaze. He later took pride in the fact that he was born at the same time as the Republic of Texas and that he "joined" Texas the year it joined the Union. Growing up in the Brazos bottoms, the boy learned to hunt and track from an old Indian named Caddo Jake.

At age eleven Charles began hiring out to neighboring farms, and at fifteen he rode as a jockey for a racing outfit at Port Sullivan. Not satisfied with that occupation, he returned to his widowed mother and younger siblings, continued at various farm and plantation jobs, including supervision of black slave crews, and for two years freighted with ox teams. In 1853 his mother married Rev. Adam Sheek, a Methodist preacher; that led to the formation of the partnership three years later between Charles and his step-brother, John Wesley Sheek. Although they considered going to California, they were dissuaded by Sheek's brother-in-law, Claiborne Varner, who induced them to run about 400 head of cattle on shares along the Brazos valley for a ten-year period.

In 1857 the young partners trailed their herd up the Brazos to the Keechi valley in Palo Pinto County. At Black Springs they built a log cabin buttressed with stone chimneys, to which they brought their parents in 1858. Goodnight continued freighting cotton and provisions to Houston and back for a time until Wes Sheek married, then assumed the bulk of responsibility of looking after the growing herd of scrawny, wild Texas cattle. With his acquired hunting and trailing skills, he quickly mastered the modes of survival in the wilderness. During this time he became acquainted with Oliver Loving, who was also running cattle in the Western Cross Timbers. When the gold rush to Colorado began, Goodnight helped Loving send a herd through the Indian Territory and Kansas to the Rocky Mountain mining camps.

As Indian troubles in Northwest Texas increased, concurrent with heated conflict over the reservations on the upper Brazos and Clear Fork, Goodnight and his neighbors joined forces with Capt. Jack (J. J.) Cureton's rangers, with whom he served as a scout and guide. It was Goodnight who found the trail leading to Peta Nocona's Comanche encampment on the Pease River in December 1860 and brought word of it back to Cureton and Capt. Lawrence Sullivan (Sul) Ross. He guided the rangers to the Indian camp and took part in the attack on December 18 in which Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Cureton's rangers, including Goodnight, were attached to the Frontier Regiment. Goodnight spent most of the war chasing marauding Indians and border toughs while ranging from the Canadian to the Colorado and Brazos headwaters with the likes of James E. McCord, James B. (Buck) Barry,q and A. T. Obenchain. The intimate knowledge he gained of the vast rolling prairies and Llano Estacado later proved useful.

At the expiration of his term of service in 1864, Goodnight returned to Palo Pinto County, where he and other cowmen spent the next year trying to recoup their cattle business from the chaos that characterized the frontier during that era. He sought out a new range along Elm Creek, in Throckmorton County, where Indians ran off nearly 2,000 head of his cattle in September 1865. Since cattle markets in Texas were poor at that time, Goodnight looked for a higher price at the Indian agencies and army posts in New Mexico, where beef was in demand. In the spring of 1866 he and Loving organized a drive from Fort Belknap southwest to the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossing and up that stream to Fort Sumner, where they sold their steers to feed the Indians beef at eight cents a pound.

Eighteen cowhands, including Bose Ikard, Robert Clay Allison, and "One-Armed" Bill Wilson, participated in the venture, for which Goodnight assembled and utilized the first chuckwagon. The route they laid off became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail, later one of the Southwest's most heavily used cattle trails. At the end of their third trip to Fort Sumner in 1867, Loving died from wounds he received in a fight with Indians, but Goodnight continued to divide the trail earnings with his old partner's family in Weatherford and later had his body taken back there for burial. Throughout the late 1860s Goodnight contracted for delivery of herds on the Pecos, usually at Bosque Grande, below Fort Sumner. He also received herds from John S. Chisum and other Texas cowmen, drove thousands of cattle into Colorado and Wyoming, and sold them to such ranchers as John Wesley Iliff and the Thatcher brothers for the purpose of stocking northern ranges.

Goodnight's herds were not immune from attacks by bandits and Indians, especially during the height of the illicit trade with Comancheros. In the winter of 1869 he established his Rock Canon Ranch on the Arkansas River five miles west of Pueblo, Colorado, and registered a PAT brand for his cattle. It was around that time that people started calling him "Colonel."

On July 26, 1870, Goodnight married Molly Dyer, his longtime sweetheart, who had taught school at Weatherford. After the wedding at the home of relatives in Hickman, Kentucky, the newlyweds returned to the Rock Canon, which was their home for the next six years. Goodnight continued driving cattle and in 1871 worked with John Chisum to clear a profit of $17,000. In addition he farmed with irrigation, planted an apple orchard, and invested heavily in farmlands and city lots in Pueblo. Among other services he helped found the Stock Growers' Bank of Pueblo and was part owner of the opera house, a meat-packing facility at Las Animas, and other businesses in the area.

Along with neighboring cattlemen such as Henry W. (Hank) Cresswell and the Thatchers, he formed Colorado's first stock raisers' association in November 1871 and in 1875 laid out the Goodnight Trail from Alamogordo Creek in New Mexico to Granada, Colorado. However, overstocked ranges, coupled with the panic of 1873, resulted in the loss of his holdings. To alleviate the financial crisis Goodnight sought a virgin grassland.

After sending his wife to relatives in California until he could settle his affairs, in the fall of 1875 he gathered the remnant of his longhorn cattle, some 1,600 head, and moved them to a campsite on the upper Canadian River at Rincón de las Piedras, New Mexico, for the winter. With a Mexican cowhand named Panchito (Little Frank), he investigated the vast Panhandle of Texas, recently cleared of hostile Indians, and decided on Palo Duro Canyon as the ideal spot for a ranch. After returning to Pueblo to borrow money, he remained with his men at the New Mexico campsite through the calving season before moving down the Canadian to its junction with Alamocitos Creek, near the future site of Tascosa, where they spent most of the summer.

Before leaving, Goodnight made a pact with Casimero Romero in which the pastores of New Mexico agreed to limit their operations to the Canadian and its tributaries, while Goodnight would have exclusive use of the headwaters and canyons of the Red River. After securing the services of Nicolás Martínez, a one-time Comanchero who knew all of the old Indian trails, the Goodnight outfit moved east to Tecovas Springs before turning southeast across the tableland to Palo Duro Canyon.

On October 23, 1876, they reached the edge of the canyon in Randall County and set up camp. Among the members of this first cattle outfit in the Panhandle were James T. Hughes, son of the English author Thomas Hughes; J. C. Johnston, later a director of the Matador Ranch; Leigh Richmond Dyer, Goodnight's brother-in-law; an Irishman named Dave McCormick; and Panchito. They remained on the rim with the cattle while Goodnight and Martínez located a route into the canyon and a site for the ranch headquarters. Since buffalo were still fairly plentiful below the canyon walls, the cowboys were kept busy driving them back for about fifteen miles to make room for the cattle.

They spent two days portaging supplies by muleback and herding the cattle down the steep, rugged trail. Within the bounds of the present Palo Duro Canyon State Scenic Park, Goodnight constructed his first temporary living quarters, a dugout topped with cottonwood and cedar logs, with abandoned Comanche lodge poles as rafters. Subsequently, farther to the southeast in Armstrong County, where the canyon floor widened out for ten miles or more, the colonel built a comfortable three-room ranchhouse from native timber without using any nails. He also built corrals and a picket smokehouse at the site, which he affectionately dubbed the Home Ranch.

Leaving Leigh Dyer in charge of the outfit, Goodnight went with Martínez to Las Animas to purchase more needed supplies and provisions. In February 1877 he returned via Camp Supply and Fort Elliott to check up on his men. On Commission Creek, near Fort Elliott, he met with the outlaw gang of "Dutch" Henry Born and struck up a bargain, sealed with a drink, in which their leader promised to keep his activities north of the Salt Fork of the Red River. After finding things satisfactory at the Home Ranch, Goodnight returned to Colorado to secure more capital and arrange to bring his wife out to the new homestead.

In Denver he met with John G. Adair at the latter's brokerage firm, from which the colonel had borrowed $30,000 in March 1876. Adair agreed to help expand the ranch into a large-scale operation, and in May 1877 the Goodnights and Adairs, along with four cowboys, arrived at the Home Ranch with 100 Durham bulls and four wagons loaded with provisions. On June 18 they drew up the five-year contract that launched the JA Ranch, with Goodnight retaining one-third interest and an annual salary of $2,500 as resident manager. During his eleven years with the JA, Goodnight devoted his time and energy to expanding the range, building up the herd, and establishing law and order in the Panhandle.

In the summer of 1878 he took the first JA trail herd, led by his famous lead steer Old Blue, north to Dodge City, Kansas, then the nearest railhead. The Palo Duro-Dodge City Trail, which he blazed, was well-used in subsequent years by many Panhandle ranchers. Late that fall, when destitute Indians from the reservations came to hunt the now-scarce buffalo, Goodnight made his famous treaty with Quanah Parker in which he promised two beeves every other day for Parker's followers provided they did not disturb the JA herd. In 1879 Goodnight moved the JA headquarters to its present location. Although he strictly enforced his rules against gambling, drinking, and fighting, he usually was able to hire the cowboys he needed. In 1880 Goodnight helped organize and served as first president of the Panhandle Stock Association in Mobeetie.

Two years later he bought the Quitaque (Lazy F) Ranch and reportedly became the first Panhandle rancher to build fences of barbed wire. Though John Adair's arrogant mannerisms sometimes tried the Colonel's patience, he maintained a warm relationship with Mrs. Adair, and in 1882 the partnership was renewed and Goodnight's annual salary was increased to $7,500. By the time of Adair's death in 1885, the JA had reached its maximum of 1,325,000 acres, on which grazed more than 100,000 head of Goodnight's carefully bred cattle. In addition, Goodnight was a pioneer in the use of artificial watering facilities and the ownership of permanent ranges in fee. As an early believer in improvement through breeding, he developed one of the nation's finest herds through the introduction of Hereford bulls. He often spent weeks at a time at the stockyards of Kansas City, buying and selling cattle to upgrade his herds. With his wife's encouragement, he also started a domestic buffalo herd, sired by a bull he named Old Sikes, from which he developed the "cattalo" by crossing bison with polled Angus cattle. He also invented the first practical sidesaddle, with an additional horn to rest the left knee, for his wife.

In 1886 Goodnight, with two big-city partners, began investing in the Inter-State Land Company, for which he sold shares in land along the Texas-New Mexico border purchased from the Beales-Royuela grant, an old Spanish land grant. At the same time he became involved in the Grass Lease Fight, from which he emerged as a leader for the big cattlemen's interests. For his efforts in that controversy, Goodnight was severely censured by the press and accused of robbing money from the schoolchildren of Texas. What was more, he felt pressured to reduce his holdings to cope better with the rapid changes that were being imposed on the cattle industry from the recent drought, falling beef prices, and the advent of railroads and farmers to the Panhandle.

For these reasons, along with a stomach ailment that almost proved fatal, Goodnight decided to sell out his interest in the JA after the second contract expired in 1887 and limit his ranching activities. In the division of the properties, he retained interest in the Quitaque Ranch, half of which he sold to L. R. Moore of Kansas City. Even so, Mrs. Adair retained his services as manager of the JA until 1888, when John C. Farrington succeeded him. Soon after his exit from the JA ownership, Goodnight bought 160 sections in Armstrong County near the Fort Worth and Denver City line, including the Sacra-Sugg Ranch on the Salt Fork and some school land. Near the town that bears his name he built his spacious, two-story ranchhouse, into which he and his wife moved on December 27, 1887.

This small ranch, to which he relocated his buffalo herd of 250 head, was formally organized as the Goodnight-Thayer Cattle Company, with J. W. (Johnnie) Martin as foreman and later as a junior partner. After selling his remaining interest in the Quitaque to Moore in 1890, Goodnight, in association with William McCamey and Avery L. Matlock, invested heavily in a Mexican gold and silver mining venture deep in the mountains of southern Chihuahua; that enterprise proved a failure. Furthermore, his investments in the Inter-State Land Company reduced his fortune considerably after federal courts declared the Beales-Royuela grant invalid.

In 1893 he was among the cowmen compensated in part for losses they suffered to the Comanchero trade during the 1860s. As civic leaders and promoters of the higher education he was denied, the colonel and his wife opened Goodnight College at Goodnight in 1898. After selling out his interest in the Goodnight-Thayer Company in 1900, Goodnight limited his ranching activities to sixty sections surrounding his house and near the railroad. There he continued his experiments with buffalo and also kept elk, antelope, and various other animals in zoo-like enclosures, as well as different species of fowl.

The Goodnight Ranch became a major Panhandle tourist attraction and featured buffalo meat on its menus. Buffalo from the Goodnight herd were shipped to zoos in New York and other eastern cities, Yellowstone National Park, and even to Europe, and Goodnight's wildlife-preservation efforts gained the attention of such naturalists as William T. Hornaday, Edmund Seymour, and Ernest Thompson Seton. As a friend of Quanah Parker and other Plains Indian leaders in Oklahoma, Goodnight staged occasional buffalo hunts for former braves. He also exchanged visits with the Pueblo tribes in New Mexico, endorsed their causes in Congress, and gave one tribe a foundation buffalo herd. In addition, he grew Armstrong County's first wheat crop and conducted other agricultural experiments with the encouragement of the pioneer botanist Luther Burbank; indeed, the colonel was often called the "Burbank of the Range."

Though the Goodnights had no children of their own, they often boarded college students, whom they hired to do secretarial work and other chores. They employed a woman as a housekeeper in 1905 and subsequently reared her son, Cleo Hubbard, as their own. After his wife's death in April 1926, Goodnight fell seriously ill but was soon nursed back to health by Corinne Goodnight, a young nurse and telegraph operator from Butte, Montana, with whom he had been corresponding because of their mutual surnames. On March 5, 1927, the Colonel celebrated his ninety-first birthday by marrying the twenty-six-year-old Corinne at the home of Mayor Henry W. Taylor, Goodnight's nephew, in Clarendon.

Shortly afterward they sold the ranch, with the stipulation that he could live there for the rest of his life, and bought a summer house in Clarendon. Goodnight spent his last winters in Phoenix, Arizona, because of his delicate condition. As a living frontier legend, he was often interviewed by Western authors and journalists, as well as such scholar-historians as Lester F. Sheffy, Harley T. Burton, and J. Evetts Haley. Not until July 1929 did he officially join a church, even though he had helped found churches at Goodnight years before. On the morning of December 12, 1929, Goodnight died at his winter home in Phoenix at the age of ninety-three. He was buried next to his first wife in the Goodnight community cemetery.

Laura V. Hamner published a biographical novel of Goodnight, The No-Gun Man of Texas, in 1935, but J. Evetts Haley's monumental publication, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, which first appeared in 1936, remains the standard scholarly work on the man. His papers are housed in the Research Center of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, where several Goodnight artifacts donated by Cleo Hubbard and his family are on display. Streets in several Panhandle towns bear his name, as do the Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail and the highway to Palo Duro Canyon State Scenic Park, which includes a restored dugout thought to have been his first 1876 quarters. The Goodnight ranchhouse, owned since 1933 by the Mattie Hedgecoke estate of Amarillo, still stands near U.S. Highway 287. In 1958 Goodnight was one of the original five voted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harley True Burton, A History of the JA Ranch (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1928; rpt., New York: Argonaut, 1966). Dorothy Abbott McCoy, Texas Ranchmen (Austin: Eakin Press, 1987).

H. Allen Anderson

COMANCHEROS

The Comancheros were natives of northern and central New Mexico who conducted trade for a living with the nomadic plains tribes, often at designated areas in the Llano Estacado. They cut trails followed by traders and later ranchers and settlers. They were so named because the Comanches, in whose territory they traded, were considered their best customers. The term, unknown in Spanish documents, was popularized during the 1840s by Josiah Gregg and subsequently applied by United States Army officers who were familiar with Gregg's accounts. Initially, the Comancheros' lucrative practices were considered legitimate, and trade grew slowly. Increased demand for cattle in New Mexico, however, led to become "rustlers by proxy" who traded stolen cattle to the Indians. The resulting hostility between Indians and settlers led to army intervention in 1874 and the Comancheros' eventual demise.

Comancheros ranged east to the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma, southeast as far as the Davis Mountains in Texas, and north to the Dakotas. The distinctive form of trade associated with them began with a treaty of 1786 between the Spanish governor of New Mexico, Juan Baptista de Anza, and the Comanche Indians of the plains, allowing trade between New Mexico and the Indians in return for Indian protection of Texas against intruders on Spanish territory.

At first many Comancheros cached their oxcarts or carretas and loaded their merchandise on burros before venturing into the trackless Comanchería. But by the 1840s Josiah Gregg, James W. Abert, and other American mapmakers found evidences of broad cart trails leading into the Canadian River valley. Randolph B. Marcy described the "old Mexican cartroad" in his 1849 survey. Lieutenant Abert, while at Bent's tradinghouse on the Canadian in September 1845, parleyed with a small group of Comancheros, and in 1853 some New Mexico traders helped guide Lt. Amiel W. Whipple across the Panhandle. During the first decades of the Comancheros' trade, their merchandise consisted largely of beads, knives, paints, tobacco, pots and pans, and calico and other cloth, as well as the metal spikes that Indians came to prefer over flint points for their arrows. Foodstuffs such as coffee, flour, and bread were also bartered. The majority of their excursions were to the Comanche and Kiowa villages on the Llano Estacado. Such expeditions, poorly organized and often risky, depended on the nature of relations with different tribes.

From about 1840 on, Comanches realized the commercial value of horses and raided the frontiers of both Texas and northern Mexico to secure animals not only for themselves but for trade to the Comancheros. The rising demand for cattle in New Mexico led to further raiding. Between 1850 and 1870 thousands of animals stolen by Indians were traded by Comancheros to merchants in New Mexico and Arizona who had contacts with government beef contractors. The addition of firearms, ammunition, and whiskey to the list of trade items from New Mexico likewise added to the trade's worsening reputation. Although the territorial governors of New Mexico attempted to regulate the trade by requiring licenses, Comancheros mainly neglected the law. Many American officials, particularly federal Indian agents, believed that trading was merely a cover-up for the New Mexicans' real purpose of inciting resentment and resistance against Anglo Texans. Certainly the traders and their Comanche customers shared a common dislike of Anglos, and as far as the victims of raids and thefts were concerned, the feeling was mutual.

As the sordid commerce in stolen property increased, the Comancheros began arranging specific meeting times and places with their Indian customers to conduct business away from any settlements. The remote Panhandle-South Plains area thus became an ideal trading ground for these transactions. Horses, mules, and cattle bearing Texas brands were exchanged for such items as tobacco, coffee, and whiskey at popular rendezvous sites like Mulberry Creek, on what became the JA Ranch range; Tecovas Springs, on the future Frying Pan Ranch northwest of the site of Amarillo; Sweetwater Creek, near the site of Mobeetie; Atascosa Creek, at the site of Old Tascosa (now Cal Farley's Boys Ranch); and Yellow House Canyon near the site of present-day Lubbock, known to the Comancheros as Cañón del Rescate (Canyon of Ransom). Another familiar trading site was at Las Lenguas (or Los Lingos) Creek near the future site of Quitaque. From a typical rendezvous, during which bargaining might last as long as three weeks, a shrewd Comanchero could take back with him a mule for five pounds of tobacco or a keg of whiskey, a good pack horse for ten pounds of coffee, or a buffalo robe for little or nothing.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the Comancheros' operations was the ransoming of captives, a practice dating back centuries. At first enterprising New Mexicans had bought only captive Indians for use as mine workers or servants, but as time went on they began accepting Mexican prisoners as well. Many traders reportedly made large profits from highborn captives they had ransomed from Comanches by holding them for a suitable "reward" from relatives in the settlements of Texas or northern Mexico or from American government officials.

The Civil War momentarily left the Texas frontier practically defenseless and allowed the Indian raiders free access to livestock grazing in the Cross Timbers and Hill Countryq of central West Texas. Comancheros profited handsomely from this stock, much of it left unbranded as well as unattended, which they frequently traded to army posts, government Indian reservations, and ranchers for guns, ammunition, and whiskey to trade to the Indians. Noted traders like José P. Tafoya maintained crude rock and adobe shelters at places like Las Lenguas or Tecovas Springs during the 1860s.

Comancheros often accompanied Comanches on cattle raids into Coleman County and environs in the 1870s. The days of the Comancheros were numbered, however, as Texas Rangers and United States Army patrols mounted increasing pressure on their Indian customers. Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie and other army commanders often enlisted, or perhaps conscripted, Comancheros to guide them to the camps of the Indians with whom they had traded. The final defeat of the Comanches and their allies in the Red River War, along with the extermination of the buffalo by hunters, ended the Comanchero trade. In the late 1870s Casimero Romero, José P. Tafoya,q Juan Trujillo, and others who had sometime engaged in the Comanchero trade settled for a time in the western Panhandle as peaceful pastores.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Evetts Haley, "The Comanchero Trade," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 38 (January 1935). Charles Leroy Kenner, A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969). Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas Panhandle Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973).

H. Allen Anderson

PASTORES

The pastores were sheepmen, usually of Hispanic origin from New Mexico, who settled with their flocks along the Canadian River and its tributaries during the 1870s and early 1880s. Although they stayed only for a brief period, they made a significant impact on both the society and agriculture of the Texas Panhandle. Since numerous flocks of sheep had practically overrun available ranges in New Mexico by 1874, the pastores began looking toward the Llano Estacado with its lush river valleys and seemingly endless grasslands. Even prior to 1874 a few daring Indian and Mexican sheepmen probably herded their flocks on a seasonal basis along the upper Canadian as far east as the area of present Oldham County. Sometimes they utilized the old cibolero and Comanchero campsites on which they erected crude rock shelters.

In their search for the best grass and water itinerant pastores are thought to have made large circuits and followed old Indian trade routes as far east as Palo Duro Canyon or beyond on occasion. Often several large flocks would travel simultaneously over the circuit under the watchful eye of a mayordomo, who, with the aid of well-trained sheep dogs, directed the movement of the sheep as he rode from one flock to another. Although poorly armed and thus easy targets for nomadic warriors, the pastores usually enjoyed fairly peaceful relations with the Plains tribes.

Even so, they stayed wary of any Indians who might have resented their intrusion. During the 1860s a small group of families from New Mexico established a settlement on the Canadian below Parker Creek at a site now in Oldham County, but they only stayed briefly. Soon after the Civil War a sheepman named Antonio Baca reportedly ran 30,000 head in the area of the present Oklahoma Panhandle, but because of the potential Indian danger these transient pastores never remained for long. After the Red River War, when the nomadic Indians were confined to their reservations, pastores began infiltrating the Panhandle more frequently.

Some of them carried on trade with hunting parties of Indians who, with permits from the federal government agents, sought out the few remaining buffalo in the area. The pastores exchanged cattle and trade goods from Las Vegas and other New Mexico towns for horses and whatever items the Indians had to offer. This trade gradually diminished as hide hunters exterminated the once-numerous buffalo herds.

Probably the first significant party of pastores to settle in the Panhandle was led by the brothers Ventural and Justo Borrego, who may have settled the area as early as 1874 but then abandoned it momentarily when the Red River War broke out. Sometime early in the spring of 1876, the Borregos brought several families from Taos to a site near the south bank of the Canadian about a mile south of Atascosa Springs. There they constructed a plaza, that is, a single line of rock and adobe houses, and erected stone sheepfolds around two small buttes near the riverbank 100 yards away. Shortly thereafter Juan Dominquez and his family built their adobes next door to the Borrego plaza.

From the foothills above Las Vegas came a caravan of carretas led by Jesús Marie Trujillo. His plaza was erected on the creek that bears his name eight miles upstream from its junction with the Canadian. The largest group of pastores came with the caravan of Casimero Romero from Mora County in November 1876. After camping for the winter in a cottonwood grove at a bend in the Canadian near its confluence with Rica Creek, Romero constructed his adobe home near Atascosa Creek. Several well-watered springs and a broad vega (meadow) protected by sheltering hills lay near this spot, which became the town of Tascosa.

Agapito Sandoval selected a site on Consiño Creek, on the north bank of the Canadian eight miles downstream from the Romeros. Eugenio Romero, a brother of Casimero, and his two sons picked a spot on Rita Blanca Creek, in present Hartley County northwest of Tascosa, and started the Romero Springs community. In the spring of 1877, as word of the abundant grass, flowing springs, and clear creeks in the Canadian breaks reached New Mexico, other pastores, including Isidro Sierna and Miguel Garcia, brought in their families. By 1878 Mariano Montoya had located his plaza at the junction of Punta de Agua and Rita Blanca creeks and was soon joined by the family of José Piedad Tafoya, the onetime dean of Comancheros.

In addition to the plazas in the Tascosa area, others were erected elsewhere along the Canadian breaks. Salinas Plaza, named for a nearby salt lake that had long been a valuable source of the mineral for both Indians and New Mexicans, was the westernmost, located in a sandy area in present Oldham County near the New Mexico line; at one time it was home to about twenty-five Mexican families. Juan Chavez, a former cibolero, established another plaza at the mouth of a picturesque canyon near the Canadian's north bank a few miles northeast of Salinas. The Chavez group raised their own vegetables, melons, and grain in addition to livestock, and later Narcisco Gallegos opened a store there.

A third plaza, Tecolote, was also located near the New Mexico line across the Canadian from Chavez. There was also a plaza established on the old Comanchero campsite at Tecovas Springs in Potter County southeast of Tascosa, and a smaller one at Joaquin Spring, on the west bank of a small tributary, later became noted for its saloon. In all, over a dozen plazas dotted the Canadian Valley, most of them in the area of Oldham County. These settlements usually consisted of several houses, all built out of thin, flat native sandstone held together by adobe mortar, with walls around eighteen inches thick and containing beehive-shaped adobe hearths. Irrigation ditches, or acequias, were dug to divert water from nearby creeks and springs to cultivated gardens. Sheep corrals, also of sandstone, were erected nearby, and many empleados of various pastores resided in crude dugout shelters.

Along with the Hispanics, a few Anglo-American pioneers moved into the Canadian Valley. Back in 1874 Henry Kimball and Theodore Briggs had been among a party of soldiers from Fort Union who participated in a buffalo hunt on the Canadian. Finding the area to their liking, the two men, both of whom had married native Hispanic women, vowed to settle there as soon as their enlistments had expired. Accordingly, Kimball and his family followed the Romeros to Atascosa Creek, where he built a one-room house near its junction with the Canadian.

At a nearby spring Kimball set up a blacksmith shop, thus becoming the Panhandle's first resident farrier. Among other things he planted several cottonwood saplings he had collected on the Canadian. Briggs and his family arrived soon afterward and on Romero's suggestion chose a site protected by high bluffs on Rica Creek a mile and a half above the Canadian and six miles west of the Romero plaza. Sometime late in 1876 the Casper brothers from California brought their flocks to the upper waters of the Red River, and by 1878 the New Zealand Sheep Company, owned by James Campbell and A. B. Ledgard, had established its headquarters on Rita Blanca Creek northwest of Tascosa.

The Canadian Valley thus took on the aspects of a boom as sheepmen vied for the best pastures and watering places. Most of the sheep the pastores brought in were probably a cross between the Spanish chaurro and Merino breeds, which adapted well to the harsh Panhandle environment. At first the majority of pastores utilized the old Spanish transchumante system of moving flocks annually between summer and winter ranges. Early in the spring, the sheep were trailed out of the Canadian Valley onto the plains' pastures by lambing time and kept there until the later months, when they usually were trailed back to the valley by shearing time; larger blocks, however, were sheared while still on the range and the wool transported to market directly by wagon.

Since abundant grass and sufficient water were quite scarce during dry periods, sheep grazing circuits extended for miles into the Red River basin as far southeast as Tule and Quitaque canyons and beyond into the upper Brazos drainage area. Jesús Perea ran 30,000 sheep to Tahoka Lake and the Yellowhouse and Blanco canyons. Since he needed a tremendous amount of grazing land and water for such a large flock, Perea scattered them widely over much of the South Plains. Portions of the Panhandle region, particularly the northeastern area that was infested with locoweed and the dry, arid southwestern reaches, proved totally unsuitable for sheep raising. As more ranches crowded the region, grazing circuits became more fixed.

Some pastores erected crude stone pens on the open range to shelter themselves and their flocks, while others like Casimero Romero carried portable wooden sheepfolds with them. During the winter the sheep were bedded inside the stone and adobe corrals near the plazas; sometimes grassy areas protected by bluffs were fenced in. Sheep owners like Perea with larger flocks often divided labor among four types: the shepherd, or pastor, who watched over a flock of roughly 1,500 head was the lowest in rank; over him was a vaquero who picked out the watering places and grazing areas for the day.

A caporal supervised several vaqueros, while the mayordomo, who was in charge of the caporales, ran the entire operation. These large operations maintained their flocks in bands of 2,500 to 3,000 head, with two or three herders to each band. Hirelings, many of whom were Pueblo and Navajo Indians, were reportedly paid as high as $15.00 a month, with board around $4.75. Most of the sheep along the Canadian, however, were raised in smaller flocks for which the owner performed most of the tasks himself, including shearing and lambing.

Life in the Panhandle plazas was simple, unhurried, and little different from what the pastores had known in New Mexico. Shepherds and their dogs kept a sharp eye out for coyotes and wolves during the day and at night drove their flocks into the protection of the corrals. A few cattle, horses, goats, and chickens were also kept around the plazas. Fishing, hunting, trapping, cockfights, and rooster races were favorite pastimes; one favorite game was La Pelota, a crude form of field hockey.

Fiestas featuring lively, all-night bailes (dances) with Latin flavor also added zest for living and attracted everyone from miles around; visitors included cowboys from neighboring cattle spreads who anxiously sought chances to dance with lovely senoritas and freely indulge in their hosts' spicy foods and strong drinks. Indians from New Mexico and the Indian Territory who came by to trade also provided an occasional break from an otherwise monotonous existence. Since the plazas were largely isolated except for the military road between forts Elliott and Bascom, the pastores were initially ignored by the Texas state officials in Austin and thus had neither taxes to pay nor any urgent obligations to the outside world.

The pastores faithfully adhered to the Catholicism they had known in their homeland. Although there was no organized church in Tascosa prior to the late 1880s, Fr. Clemente Payron from New Mexico's Chaperito Mission made frequent visits to the Panhandle plazas, where he conducted masses and administered the sacraments. Usually the visiting priest stayed at the Romero home. Sometime in 1877 a shady Frenchman who called himself Padre Green came to the Panhandle and established a sheep ranch on Rita Blanca Creek twelve miles south of present Channing.

Claiming that he was a Catholic priest collecting for the church, Green began demanding a 10 percent tithe from the settlers, usually 100 sheep for each 1,000 a sheepman possessed. While he seldom performed any clerical functions and failed to deliver his tithes to the church, Green built up a vast flock and produced an abundance of wool, which he kept in a large adobe shed he had constructed on the Rita Blanca before carrying it to market. Prior to 1880 he sold his holdings and left the Canadian Valley in search of greater opportunities.

Even as the pastores were building their plazas, other forces were rapidly developing that would soon end their almost tranquil existence. The cold-blooded murder of the Casner brothers and their Navajo herdsman by Sostenes l'Archeveque in late 1876 and the wave of violence that followed caused several pastores and their families to flee back to New Mexico in terror of "those Californians," as they called the vengeful John and Lew Casner. The Gunter and Munson firm from Sherman surveyed the area in the late 1870s. What was more, by 1880 several wealthy New Mexico merchants and ranchers in Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and other places had begun drifting their large flocks onto the Panhandle.

Using the partido system of sharing profits from wool clip, these partidarios often crowded out the ranges of the smaller sheepmen. Although some pastores like Mariano Montoya and Antonio Baca found new markets in Kansas and Colorado, the influx of free range cattle outfits into the area brought a new and greater challenge to land ownership and use. While Charles Goodnight restricted his operations to the eastern Panhandle, other cattlemen like Ellsworth Torrey, Thomas S. Bugbee, David T. Beals, and W. H. Bates established their headquarters and grazed their herds along the Canadian breaks. As early as 1877, George W. Littlefield bought out Henry Kimball and turned the latter's home, along with his Cottonwood Springs, into the LIT Ranch headquarters. Coupled with the cattlemen's arrival, a period of drought caused others like Jesus Trujillo to abandon their plazas by 1878. Although nearly 400 pastores with roughly 108,000 sheep were reported in the Panhandle by the 1880 census, these numbers dropped drastically during the next decade, until by 1890 there were only 10,000 sheep in the entire area.

Laws restricting the movements of itinerant pastores to prevent the spread of scab and other diseases were passed by the Texas legislature during the 1870s and 1880s. With the organization of Oldham County in 1880, taxes were imposed on the sheepmen. While some of the New Mexican settlers, like Mariano Montoya and Juan Chavez, were elected to various offices in the new county government, the populace and culture of their Anglo neighbors soon came to dominate their environment. Tascosa quickly grew into a booming, rowdy cowtown as more businessmen like George J. Howard, James E. McMasters, Mickey McCormick, and the brothers John and Will Cone moved in. The abandoned Trujillo plaza was taken over by Charles and Frank Sperling and turned into a stage stop on the mail line between Mobeetie and Las Vegas.

The final blow to the pastores' plazas came with the advent of barbed wire fencing to the Panhandle in the early 1880s. When William M. D. Lee, who detested sheep, began buying up ranch land along the Canadian in 1882, he occasionally resorted to threats and bribery to coerce the sheepmen into moving their flocks back to New Mexico. By 1884 most of the plazas had been vacated and either had been cleared away or were being used as line camps by the LE and LS ranches. Casimero Romero, having lost many of his sheep to a blizzard, sold the remainder and operated his own freighting business from Tascosa to Dodge City, Kansas, until 1896. Antonio Trujillo switched to cattle after one cowman accused Trujillo's sheep of infecting his horses with mange. Agapito Sandoval remained at his plaza on Corsino Creek until 1887.

Throughout this period of rapid change there had been no open warfare between cattlemen and sheepmen in the Canadian valley. As the first group to actually settle the Texas Panhandle, the pastores had located valuable watering places, further developed the old trade routes previously used by Comancheros and hide hunters, and encouraged others to move permanently onto the isolated ranges. What was more, they proved that sheep could be raised successfully in the area and showed, though not to the cowmen's immediate satisfaction, that both sheep and cattle could share the same pastures. To this day many of the creeks, canyons, and other geographical features along the Canadian retain their Spanish names. Several stone ruins of plazas and sheep corrals still dot the sites, mostly on private ranch properties, along the breaks in Oldham County, and the old Frying Pan Ranch spring house in western Potter County is believed to be the last remnant of that plaza.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul H. Carlson, Texas Woolybacks: The Range Sheep and Goat Industry (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982). John L. McCarty, Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946; enlarged ed. 1968). Oldham County Historical Commission, Oldham County (Dallas: Taylor, 1981). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Panhandle Pilgrimage: Illustrated Tales Tracing History in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1976; 2d ed., Amarillo: Paramount, 1978). Edward M. Wentworth, America's Sheep Trails: History, Personalities (Ames: Iowa State College Press, 1948).

H. Allen Anderson

(information from The Handbook of Texas Online --
a multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture.)

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This page was last updated August 16, 2000.