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THE OUTLET
By Andy Adams
PREFACE
At the close of the civil war the need for a market for the surplus cattle ofTexas was as urgent as it was general. There had been numerous experiments inseeking an outlet, and there is authority for the statement that in 1857 Texascattle were driven to Illinois. Eleven years later forty thousand head weresent to the mouth of Red River in Louisiana, shipped by boat to Cairo,Illinois, and thence inland by rail. Fever resulted, and the experiment wasnever repeated. To the west of Texas stretched a forbidding desert, while onthe other hand, nearly every drive to Louisiana resulted in financial disasterto the drover. The republic of Mexico, on the south, afforded no relief, as itwas likewise overrun with a surplus of its own breeding. Immediately before andjust after the war, a slight trade had sprung up in cattle between easternpoints on Red River and Baxter Springs, in the southeast corner of Kansas. Theroute was perfectly feasible, being short and entirely within the reservationsof the Choctaws and Cherokees, civilized Indians. This was the only route tothe north; for farther to the westward was the home of the buffalo and theunconquered, nomadic tribes. A writer on that day, Mr. Emerson Hough, anacceptable authority, says: “The civil war stopped almost all plans to marketthe range cattle, and the close of that war found the vast grazing lands ofTexas fairly covered with millions of cattle which had no actual or determinatevalue. They were sorted and branded and herded after a fashion, but neitherthey nor their increase could be converted into anything but more cattle. Thedemand for a market became imperative.”
This was the situation at the close of the ’50’s and meanwhile there had beenno cessation in trying to find an outlet for the constantly increasing herds.Civilization was sweeping westward by leaps and bounds, and during the latterpart of the ’60’s and early ’70’s, a market for a very small percentage of thesurplus was established at Abilene, Ellsworth, and Wichita, being confinedalmost exclusively to the state of Kansas. But this outlet, slight as it was,developed the fact that the transplanted Texas steer, after a winter in thenorth, took on flesh like a native, and by being double-wintered became amarketable beef. It should be understood in this connection that Texas, owingto climatic conditions, did not mature an animal into marketable form, readyfor the butcher’s block. Yet it was an exceptional country for breeding, thepercentage of increase in good years reaching the phenomenal figures ofninety-five calves to the hundred cows. At this time all eyes were turned tothe new Northwest, which was then looked upon as the country that would at lastafford the proper market. Railroads were pushing into the domain of the buffaloand Indian; the rush of emigration was westward, and the Texan was clamoringfor an outlet for his cattle. It was written in the stars that the Indian andbuffalo would have to stand aside.
Philanthropists may deplore the destruction of the American bison, yet it wasinevitable. Possibly it is not commonly known that the general government hadunder consideration the sending of its own troops to destroy the buffalo. Yetit is a fact, for the army in the West fully realized the futility ofsubjugating the Indians while they could draw subsistence from the bison. Thewell-mounted aborigines hung on the flanks of the great buffalo herds,migrating with them, spurning all treaty obligations, and when opportunit