In Denver he met John G. Adair , an English aristocrat who was interested in going into the cattle business himself. As a result of their meeting, Adair agreed to furnish the capital Goodnight needed to build up the ranch. In May the Goodnights and Adair, along with four cowboys, arrived at the Home Ranch with Durham bulls and four wagons loaded with provisions. On June 18, before the Adairs left for Ireland, the partners drew up a five-year contract under which two-thirds of the property and profits were to go to Adair and one-third to Goodnight.
There were to be as many as 1, cattle and 2, acres of land. At Goodnight's suggestion the ranch was named Adair's initials. The letters of the JA brand at first were separated; three years later the present connected design was adopted.
After the money was made available, Goodnight bought the first 12, acres from Jot Gunter and William B. Munson, Sr. Over the next two years he continued buying choice pieces of property crazy-quilt fashion in and around a seventy-five-mile stretch of Palo Duro Canyon, carefully selecting areas with good grazing land and water, until the ranch was solidified.
In , desiring a more central location for the ranch headquarters, Goodnight moved it to a choice site at the foot of the Caprock , twenty-five miles east of the old Home Ranch. There he built a new four-room house of cedar logs and supervised the construction of several other buildings, including a bunkhouse, a bookkeeper's house, a wagon boss's house, a blacksmith shop, a wagonyard, and an ingenious milk and meat cooler.
Later on, the two-story, nineteen-room main house was added. The old Home Ranch house was used as a line camp until it burned down on Christmas Eve, As manager of the JA, Goodnight allowed no gambling, whiskey, or fighting, and would not take anyone who had been fired elsewhere for drunkenness or theft. Even so, he usually was able to hire the men he needed.
Cape Caleb B. Christian , Frank Mitchell, J. Goodnight's brothers-in-law, Walter and Leigh R. Dyer , also worked off and on for the JA, particularly during traildrives and roundups. Almost from the start, Goodnight had sought to improve the quality of the JA cattle by bringing in blooded stock. In he built what is thought to have been the Panhandle's first barbed wire drift fence across a canyon bed above the Home Ranch to separate the purebred cattle, on which he used a JJ brand, from the main JA herd.
He also kept a buffalo herd which he sought to cross with cattle to produce the "cattalo. By the time their contract expired in , Goodnight and Adair had bought 93, acres and were looking for more. After many years, money, he was thoroughly convinced of their value, but abortion became so prevalent, and the expense so great, that he sold them.
In spite of his desire to be alone, people gravitated to the ranch from far and near, particularly the ubiquitous sight-seer, scaring or shooting his game and invading the privacy of his home. For forty years people came to hear his stories and write his experiences. Freeman, another old friend, implored him to dictate his reminiscences, or let someone write them for him. I still have a horror of such. However, I am always willing and have been always willing to put any facts in print that could do the present or future generations any good.
It has been my aim through life to try to have the world a little better because I lived in it…. One amusing feature of his extended correspondence with Seymour was the development of a warm controversy with Buffalo Jones, widely publicized Westerner, with Seymour in the inadvertent role of intermediary. At first Goodnight answered patiently, pointing out, however, his doubts as to whether Jones had ever produced a catalo. It has been escaping from him ever since — mostly from the wrong end.
Poe, one of the posse that trailed the kid to his death, wrote his account of the killing to keep the record straight, and thus gave to the public one of the most stirring accounts of that interesting episode.
Special thanks to the author, By J. Evetts Haley and OUPress for allowing me to share. There have been several attempts to protect the buffalo. In the Texas legislature considered a measure to protect the animals from wholesale slaughter, but Gen.
Philip H. Sheridan protested the bill, contending that peace with the Indians could be maintained only if their food supply was eliminated; the bill failed to pass. Preservation of a few animals was due to the efforts of such men as Charles Goodnight and others who preserved small herds on their ranches. Brenham Weekly Banner June 7 , The Fort Worth Standard says the trade in buffalo hides is falling off. The price of hides is so much reduced that it does not pay to haul them from the range and hunters are now killing buffalo for their meat, leaving hides on the plains to rot.
Texas has a role in this story. The Comanche, the Apache, and the Kiowa roamed vast parts of this state. Fort Griffin in Albany, an early military outpost built to protect settlers from the Indians, became a clearing house in the late s for buffalo hides and meat.
Hide hunters brought wagon loads of hides through Weatherford to ship east to markets. From the s to the early s hide hunters virtually exterminated the buffalo population in the United States and Canada. Charles and Molly Goodnight notably saved the remnants of a buffalo herd which became the source for new managed herds on private lands and protected refuges in the 20th century. Read more :. Indians and whites alike were killing off the migratory herds and he conceived the idea of saving some for preservation and future propagation.
So he caught a few young ones, which were the beginning of the herd, he is now willing to place in a national preserve. The story goes, Mary Ann found out they had been killing calves that were left behind by their mothers because the calves could not climb some of the canyon walls. When Mrs. Goodnight realized the inevitable wiping out of the buffalo she urged her husband to endeavor to preserve them.
He set aside at her request acres from his great ranch of 60, acres for buffalo park. In a letter telling of his start as a buffalo raiser, Mr. The month following W. From this start we have now a herd of forty-five purebred buffaloes. In I began to cross them with Polled Angus and Galloway cattle, and have a herd of sixty of these cross-breeds.
This year we have been fortunate in getting fifteen buffalo calves. It seems incomprehensible that they should have grown into such an enormous herds as there were when I came to this country, and which, in fact, covered all the western plains.
The Dakota Territorial Legislature enacted a law to protect bison; it was not enforced. In Oklahoma, the McCoy brothers and J.
Summers caught a pair of bison calves, 2 of very few left on the southern plains. Tick Fever Reinterpreting The Bison Collapse Texas tick fever is caused by a protozoan and spread by a tick native to southern Texas.
The protozoa destroy blood cells. The few emaciated survivors are easy prey for a harsh winter or predators. Some survivors achieve limited immunity. They can carry ticks to infect healthy herds. If a herd loses contact with the disease for a time, it loses its immunity and is again subject to the high death rate.
The dead buffaloes, which extended for a hundred miles or more, were so thick they resembled a pumpkin field. They would not have been noticeably sick, just too anemic to walk 30 miles to fresh grass until they dropped dead. Goodnight eventually settled in the Texas panhandle. His cattle lost contact with the fever-carrying tick and their immunity and died like pumpkins when herds of South Texas cattle passed through.
His frustrated anguish is clear from a letter published in the Fort Griffin Echo November, 18, Late s: Establishment of private captive herds. Jones are source of most surviving bison. Jones purchased a few bison from Charles Goodnight, along with capturing 13 bison from southern Texas, starting his own private herd. He will also try the effect of crossing them with the Polled Angus breed of cattle, hoping to infuse vigor and strength into the latter. Goodnight established his own ranch near the JA.
Those few herds provided the founding stock that produced nearly all plains bison in existence today. Most U. There were bison in private herds. The Yellowstone herd was estimated at 23 animals. Hunt was staged for Edison film crew.
Dizzy Thomas-Texas History. Fourteen years ago Charles Goodnight, a Texas ranchman, at the request of his wife, caught three buffalo calves from which they have raised the largest herd of buffaloes now in this country. As the herd increased in size Mrs. Goodnight sold some of the animals to zoological gardens, and with the money she started a little college for the children of other ranch people who were without schools or the means of education.
Goodnight are growing old. The herds of buffaloes and elks owned by Mrs. Mary A. Goodnight, of Goodnight, Texas, besides being one of the most interestings sights to later-day tourist in the Southwest, is the only herd in the world owned wholly by a woman.
She was much interested in the little waifs of the plain, was greatly delighted at the alacrity with which they learned to drink milk, and surprised at their appetites, which seemed to be insatiable, one of her pets taking as much as three gallons daily. Under such care they grew rapidly, but the one with the voracious thirst for milk acquired the knack of breaking down fences with great dexterity and committing other and similar depredations, and he was turned into beef — nearly a ton of it.
But there were two or three calves left, and visitors to Goodnight Ranch shared their owners admiration for the pretty, odd-looking baby bisons, and as it was becoming apparent that the buffalo would soon become extinct unless steps were taken to prevent the extermination, Mrs. Goodnight determined to collect a herd and protect them from the hunter. Two years later a neighbor ranchman captured two full-grown buffaloes and presented them to Mrs.
Three calves were also added to her little group- the present of a brother. From that time on the herd had grown and multiplied.
The cataloes have the same hump as the buffaloes, and shaggy hair, but their color varies from jet black to light brown, and they are most readily distinguished from the pure bred by their horns, which are longer. But the full-blood buffaloes of the Goodnight herd, at least — never repose full confidence in man.
Big and powerful as they are they are timid and run away at the slightest alarm, although they have taken food from their owners hand from the opposite side if the fence; nor will they attack unless wounded or driven into close quarters. Even with this reputation for timidity Mrs. Goodnight does not regard the pure-bred buffaloes as trustworthy, and does not consider is safe to go among them on foot. We started with one, and in a year bought three more.
We have deer and antelopes, and did have wolves, taming the later with idea that we might employ them to decoy their wild brethren within gunshot: but the domesticated ones became such a nuisance that we killed them. Like the elks, the deer do not thrive well, and the antelopes generally die before they are a year old. Captivity is fatal to them. I have never known one to be domesticated. Even the pure-blood buffalo looks with a royal contempt upon his plebeian half brother, the catalo, and the two keep wide apart in separate and distant groups.
To see the herd of buffaloes assembling at their accustomed drinking place in the morning is to have an experience that is met with in very few places in the country. From every section they come, the old bulls hulking along like so many elephants, stopping now and again to paw up the earth and wallow, or to bellow defiance at some rival in the herd.
Power of the Past Patriarch of the Goodnight herd The canyon is a chasm in Palo Duro creek, one of the headwaters of Red river, and is about 50 miles long by five to 10 wide. It begins with a series of precipices, by which it falls about feet and thence by sharp declivities until its greatest depth is 1, or 1, feet. Through the entire distance the little stream traverses a narrow valley, and all the way on both sides the walls are almost perpendicular.
The valley is fertile land and is covered with a growth of large forest trees, which, wherever it is possible for them to take root, even climb the rocky bluffs. These trees are the pecan, the elm, the hackberry, the walnut, the sycamore, the cottonwood and the cedar. The cedar attains an enormous growth and is claimed by scientific men who have visited the canyon to be the same as the cedar of Lebanon of scriptural fame.
The trees of the canyon and the bases of the bluffs which confine it are covered with wild grapevine, poison ivy, Virginia creeper and other climbing vegetation. Beneath it all, the creek meanders, sometimes flowing peacefully, but more often brawling its way over rocky precipices. In the bluffs nature has mare caves where bear, wolves, wildcat and panther live, and in crevices smaller fur animals make their homes. In the depths of the forest deer and antelope abound. In the trees song birds build their nests, and high up in crags of the bluffs eagles have their eyries.
In the deeper waters of the creek game fish abound, beaver build their dams and muskrats burrow in the yielding soil. Goodnight is willing to head a movement to collect them in pairs or herds and place them in the canyon for future preservation.
If the two governments will do their part Mr. Goodnight offers to give outright to the association a herd of more than a hundred buffalo which he has preserved on his ranch. This is the only herd of the American bison in the southwest, where it formerly found winter pasture in herds of countless thousands, and Mr.
Goodnight thinks it ought to be preserved by government here on its native heath. Goodnight would corral the buffalo and the catalo on the prairie adjacent to the rim of the canyon. The other animals he would confine in separate corrals in the depths of the canyon.
They will eat other food, but they prefer the native pasture, and in no other part of America are these grasses so nutritious as here in the midst of the Staked plain, or El Llano Estacado, as the early Spanish adventurers named it three centuries and a half ago.
The land is not public domain but enough, including the canyon, may be purchased for the use Mr. Goodnight proposes. Indeed, many large holders have offered for a nominal price to convey to the proposed association lands which they own in the canyon and bordering it. Must Be Done at Early Day. Goodnight and his associates naturally are desirous, of pressing negotiations to an early conclusion.
For El Llano Estacado, once feared and shunned by travelers of the plain, has become, by the, discovery of shallow water, by increased annual rainfall, and by scientific farming, a land of cotton, of fruit, of garden, of wheat, of corn, and of alfalfa, and other forage crops, unsurpassed by any other region in the great west.
It especially is the domain of beef, as nature intended it to be when it made it the pasture of the buffalo and population is crowding in to continue the work of nature, only substituting for the buffalo the Herford, the Shorthorn and the Polled Angus. It marks the end of vast ranges, cut it means many cattle growers instead of few, and more cattle and better beef. The most interesting part, of Mr.
The cross, by years of breeding, is a success, and Mr. Goodnight, who is an honorable man of wide reputation, gives his word that it is a better beef animal than the best known domestic strains have yet produced. The domestic animal is a better show animal and will take the premiums; but Mr. Goodnight does not claim that his cross-breed, has reached perfection yet, but he says that even now it is better beef than the domestic.
The cross mixture, he says, is too much is its infancy yet for any one to foretell the ultimate result, but he has gone far enough to know that buffalo blood can be introduced into common cattle, and, properly mixed, it will make a great difference in the value of beef cattle.
So far as he can see now, it is a matter only of patience and money to obtain any strain one may choose; that is, to get any proportion of buffalo blood into domestic cattle that may prove to be the best.
Goodnight established his buffalo herd in Indians and whites alike were killing off the migratory herds, and he conceived the idea of saving some for preservation and future propagation. So he caught a few young ones, which were the beginning of the herd he now is willing to place in a national preserve. Four years afterward the idea of crossbreeding the buffalo with the domestic animal occurred to him, and now he has a herd of that strain also.
Goodnight is not willing to give the public his process of cross-breeding not until the government will consent to take up the work. However, he makes no secret of the character of animal he has produced. How to Provide More Sirloin He crosses the buffalo with the Polled Angus, and by certain and proved processes he has made a larger animal than the domestic and better beef.
The buffalo has 14 ribs instead of the 13 of the domestic, and it has been only a matter of perseverance for Mr. Goodnight to perpetuate the extra rib in the catalo. This gives length of sirloin and back to the new animal, thereby adding or more pounds to the most valuable meat.
He also has preserved in the cross the hardihood and the instincts of the buffalo. The mixed bloods, as the buffalo, do not eat the poisonous loco weed; they do not run from heel flies and thereby take off fat; they are immune from blackleg and all other diseases of domestic cattle; they never lie with their backs downhill they keep their heads to storms and do not drift; they do not kill out the range, and more of them graze on a given quantity of pasture; they put on more flesh to the quantity of fool consumed; their digestion is better than any other domestic animal, they have a greater windpipe and stronger lung power; their intestines and stomach are very small and their flesh thick.
It is Mr. They also have a better memory, and thereby they never wander from home ranges. Their brain is protected better, having a double skull and a muscular formation between. The mixed bloods are more easily handled than the original domestic animal; and they rarely ever fight and do not want to run. They take life easy, and their longevity is 25 per cent greater than the domestic. When they rise from the ground they get up fore feet first, and they have more strength in sickness to get up than other animals, they never venture into mires.
They will eat waste that other cattle refuse. They are animals. They use little water, and they never muddy the pond. They are fond of salt, but they do not gorge themselves with it.
Since the buffalo never have been used for beasts of burden, the collular tissues of their fat is characteristic of all wild cattle and this the catalo inherit. For instance, the meat is better marbled than the best domestic breeds; there are no muscular streaks of lean and fat, and while they carry plenty of flesh, their tallow is less by pounds than that of the domestic.
The hump of the buffalo contains a nutrient from which in times of hunger or thirst the system draws sustenance, and thereby they can take more steps and go longer than any other cattle without suffering. The average natural life of the buffalo is at least 40 years. Goodnight has on his ranch a buffalo cow 27 years old. Jones has been working on this cross breed the past 15 years. He finds greater value in the quality of the robe.
Collecting and propagating this herd of buffalo and breeding the catalo have cost Mr. Goodnight much time, patience and money, and although it has been and still is a labor of love for him, he is willing for the government to take the work over. For he now is 70 or more years old, past the age of active usefulness, and since he has nobody to hand it down to, he wants to make sure that what he has so well undertaken will not be suspended or abandoned.
He believes in the catalo he has made a beef animal superior to any other breed, and that the next generation will even improve upon it. President Roosevelt, it is said, has signified a willingness to recommend the project to congress, if Texas will cede jurisdiction of the canyon. Goodnight Ranch, Texas, Goodnight readily consented to give a pair of yearling buffaloes for the Montana Range, and a little later Mr.
Goodnight formally presented the animals in the following letter:. Goodnight, Texas, November 25, Ernest Harold Baynes, Meriden, N. My dear sir and friend : This is to assure you that any time during March and April, not later than May 1st, we will load you free for your National Park in Montana, and to go to no other preserve, one pair of choice buffalo yearlings, one bull and one heifer. Yours respectfully, C. The the Goodnights have plenty of healthy sentiment, this herd has not been perpetuated for sentimental reasons only.
Charles Goodnight is a practical ranchman, and he has treated the buffaloes as he has treated his cattle and sheep and hogs,—as a business proposition,—as a source of revenue. The Goodnight buffaloes and cattaloes roam over a range of about three thousand acres, half prairie and half broken country, the latter partly grown over with scrub trees and bushes. Natural springs supply the water, which is piped into iron tanks and into natural hollows in the ground. Twenty buffalo calves were born in this herd in Once again rang out the triumphant whoop of the Indian as he prodded his cayuse in pursuit of a buffalo: again a flint barbed arrow whistled through the air and sank deep into the flesh of the fleeing animal.
And the successful hunter raised his bow high in the air-the olden signal to the women of the camp that the slain game awaited their preparation for the feast. The year had come back into its own. Charles Goodnight, owner of the ranch and widely known as a stockman. One of his requirements was that the animal should be shot with bow and arrow.
And there the colonel met trouble. He discovered that few of the redskins of the present day could handle a bow. Finally, he found four among the Kiowas who were familiar with the old-time Indian weapons. George Hunt, the son of a chief, but who prefers to be known as the United States district farmer for the Kiowa agency, was one.
Despite their age all can ride a horse in the easy fashion of the plains Indian. All, too, can remember the days when the Indians roamed the plains in untrammeled freedom and when the buffalo afforded a daily part of the menu of the camps. The Goodnight ranch lies in what was once the Kiowa country, but from which the tribe has long been exiled. Hill and arroyo alike were familiar to the four hunters, who were given an opportunity to live over the days long gone. Horse Fired Fatal Arrow. Covered wagons jostled touring car, and spurred and booted cowboy rode alongside sputtering motorcycle.
The whole Panhandle country seem to have taken a day off. In an arena half a mile square was formed, bordered on three sides by motor cars packed as closely together as they could stand.
It was a six-year-old cow, one of the herd of on the Goodnight ranch. It was a pugnacious animal, as the Indians had found when they helped to corral it the day before. As a precautionary measure, lest the animal should get away from the hunters, a man with a loaded high-power rifle road with the Indians.
At a given signal the redskins rode into the arena. They wore nearly the garb of the old, free days as convention would permit. There were no saddles on their ponies. As they approached, almost simultaneously, they drew back their bows and discharged the arrows. One Pierce the buffaloes body, driving almost entirely through it.
The cows stumbled upon its knees, sought vainly to arise, then toppled over, dying. It was generally conceded the death-dealing arrow was shot by Horse, oldest of the hunters. Frontier Days Recalled. After the killing, a reception was held by Col. And Mrs. Goodnight, and many were the stories of frontier days were told. More than guest were present at the dinner. Goodnight settled in the Panhandle country in , he and his partner taking up half a million acres of land. In , noting the rapid extinction of the buffalo, Col.
Goodnight determined to save a few of the specimens. He captured three animals then, and his herd has slowly increased till it now numbers He has succeeded in crossing the buffalo with ordinary cattle and has a herd of what he terms cattalo, which he greatly prizes.
It was upon the suggestion of Mrs. Goodnight that Colonel Goodnight began to save a stock of the original buffalo. This was in The race of bison had begun to lessen, by the murderous slaughter which the government permitted, and it occurred to Mrs. Goodnight that a herd of them should be saved for the benefit of science. Accordingly, Colonel Goodnight, thinking well of the idea, captured one male and three heifer calves, and from this stock sprang an important station for breeding wild buffalo and the cross of the wild and domestic.
They make a larger and hardier animal, require less feed, and longer lived, and will cut a greater percent of net meat than any breed of cattle. No one knows how long a buffalo will live.
I have had a buffalo cow more than twenty-eight years old which produced a calf. The cattaloes are a decided success. They will carry their young and make beef at any season of the year. They do well in the extreme south, or far north, and I believe it will only be a matter of time until they will be used on all the western ranges.
The buffalo has better manners than the domestic animal. For example, the buffalo does not muddy the water of a pool or stream when it drinks, stepping up to the edge of the water only, and never stepping in. Buffalo and domestic cattle will not mix in the same herd or be at all neighborly unless grown up together from calfhood. The cloth woven from this yarn has a fine appearance, and the strong quality of the wool makes it very desirable. Several blankets were woven for Col.
Goodnight, and one was presented to the President of the Bison Society. As far as known, these are the only blankets of this character in existence. They are seven feet long and six feet wide and weigh 4 lbs. It is claimed that there is more warmth in buffalo wool than any other kind, and certainly soldiers stationed at the frontier forts, and anyone who has lived in the northern climate and used buffalo overcoats, know that no other fur so successfully withstood the rigors of winter, and it is claimed, the early settlers affirm, that one buffalo robe was warmer than four ordinary woolen blankets.
The wool used was that shed by the animals in the springtime covering a period of several years. After the battle of the Wilderness, Ritchie crossed the Confederate lines and retrieved the body of this father-in-law General James Wadsworth and escorted it back to Geneseo.
Just a few months later, Ritchie was killed in battle. Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair. Erwin E. During the year , the Adairs journeyed west to Colorado, riding up the Platte River from Sidney, Nebraska, visiting Indian lodges as they went and protected by an escort of Cavalry. They spent the summer inspecting potential mining investments in Colorado. The highlight of their trip was a buffalo hunt on the plains of the Colorado guided by Charles Goodnight. Around the campfire at night, Goodnight told them of the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas and explained its unique properties for a cattle ranch where the cattle could roam as the buffalo did and thrive, grazing on the surrounding plains in the summer and wintering in the shelter of the canyons.
John himself sustained serious injury as a result of the fall. And Mrs. Just two years earlier, the Indians had been subdued on what was to become the ranch near Battle Creek. Finding it as Mr. Goodnight had represented, they formed a five year term partnership with Goodnight. Adair had been lending money at venture capital rates, and this was no exception. The first purchase was 12, acres purchased from surveyors Gunter and Munson for seventy-five cents per acre with an option to buy 12, additional acres of his choice.
Goodnight said, "I took all the good land and all the water I could get. We surveyed for four or five days and Gunter got to kicking and said, 'Why don't you take this land? And then he entered into a contract with me that he wouldn't sell to a cattleman unless he bought a ranch. Communication between the two men demonstrated that Goodnight was continuously wanting to expand and Adair desired to expand slowly and logically.
Adair understood the power of capital and subsequent acreage was purchased for twenty-five to thirty-five cents per acre. Construction on the present ranch house was started in At the time it was just a cabin built from cedar logs.
Adair on her 84th birthday. Herd improvement started in with the purchase of shorthorn bulls. These must not have proved satisfactory, as the JA purchased 25 Hereford bulls and Hereford cows in The ranch ran Herefords until In , they also fenced the Quitaque ranch.
At this time, they had 1,, acres and , cattle. They had just renewed their five year contract. John Adair died in prior to the expiration of the second term of the contract with Charles Goodnight. Adair continued all her life to take an intense personal interest in the growth and operation of the ranch.
She insisted on a remuda of all bay horses, and imported purebred Hereford cattle from England. Once, when she found a portion of the ranch stocked with spotted SanSimone cows, she was so outraged that she discharged the foreman who had been responsible for this aesthetic affront.
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