Our family didn’t get a television set until I was 12 years old. We depended on the radio to provide us with entertainment.
We loved to hear the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. There were many stars on the show. Each one had 30 minutes to sing or play their favorite songs. Sometimes a quartet would perform.
One of my favorite groups was the Chuck Wagon Gang. They sang one of my favorite songs called: The Old Chisholm Trail. At the time, I had no idea what the song and words meant. Recently I read a book about the Chisholm Trail that made the words of the song come alive.
You can see from the above map where the Chisholm Trail started and where it ended. Actually, as you can see from the map, the trail had several starting places and several ending places. The whole idea of the Chisholm Trail was to herd cows from off the western prairies to railroad heads in Kansas. From Kansas, all cattle were shipped by rail to Chicago for butchering.
The Chisholm trail started at Brownsville, Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas, San Antonio, Texas, Victoria, Texas and Houston, Texas. All of these trails met at the Red River crossing in Kansas. Yes, the Red River shown on the map is the same Red River that flows through Alexandria, Louisiana today.
Several Kansas locations received cattle from the Chisholm drive including Caldwell, Wichita, Newton and Dodge City.
The people who drove the cows on the Trail were called cowboys. The had to be rough and tough and ready to face danger, bad weather, poor health, Indian threats, dust storms, extreme heat and other perils that made a cowboy’s life one of constant need.
There was a song about the cowboys on the Trail. Here are a few lines from the song: “Come along boys, let me tell you my tale, Tell you all about the troubles on the Old Chisholm Trail, Come a tie ya whippy yea, whippy yea, come a tie ya whippy yea.
My feet in the stirrups, and my hand on the horn, I’m the best darn cowboy ever was born, Come a tie yah whippy yea, whippy yah, come tie ya whippy yea.
There was a sick cow, and the boss said “kill it,”So I shot it in the rump with the handle of a skilled.
Come a tie ya whippy yea, whippy yea, come a tie ya whippy yea.
Clouds in the west, and it looks like rain, But I left my slicker suit in the wagon again.
Come tie ya whippy yea, whippy yea, come tie ya whippy yea.”
There are other words to the song, but you get the idea that a cowboy was always ready for whatever came his way. It took about 25 or more cowboys to move a herd from Texas to Kansas. The pay was not so good. There was no vacation time, no holiday pay, no sick pay, no funeral leave, no health insurance and no other benefits; but, cowboys wouldn’t trade that life for any other. They loved to work on the open prairie, where the wind blows free and there were sunsets that defied description.
The size of the herd varied with each drive, but the number of cowboys needed to push the herds was usually about the same each year. There was about four to six cowboys up front guiding the herd, about four to six on each side of the herd to keep any from straying and about five or more at the back of the herd to keep cows from straying away from the main heard.
Cowboys didn’t get rich, but some others did. Men like Murdo Mackenzie, owners of the Prairie Cattle Company and Charlie Goodnight.
This article could go on for pages and pages, but you’ve read enough to know that working on a cattle drive was for young men full of grit and stamina.
Once the railroads reached parts of Texas, the Chisholm Trail became history.
(Narrative and photo provided by Jena native Gale Trussell)
