Fun Stuff > Legends and Oddities > Texas Longhorns Legends And Oddities

TEXAS LONGHORNS LEGENDS AND ODDITIES

Texas Longhorn Country
By Joyce

No history of the cattle industry can be told without beginning with Texas and the Texas Longhorn. Texas was the original home of ranching and became the major blending pot for the evolution of the history-making Texas Longhorn breed of cattle.

The Spanish brought the first longhorn cattle to America in 1493. Descendants of these longhorns formed the first cattle population in North America.

The first Anglo-American settlers of Texas came to raise cotton. However, they brought with them a few cows, mostly of northern European breeds. These cows mixed with the Spanish breeds already in Texas and soon grew into considerable herds. Most of the cattle for the first stocking of the central and northern plains came from these herds.

The climate and range conditions were ideal for cattle raising in Texas. In addition, the liberal land system made it easy to acquire large blocks of acreage.

However, the size of farms does not tell the whole story.

As the number of cattle increased in Texas, small acreage owners ranged their cattle primarily upon unoccupied public lands. In fact, some cattle owners with thousands of head of cattle did not even own one acre of land.

Other men who moved to Texas invested all their capital in cattle and then depended on the open range for pasture. Some of those with no capital got their start by branding calves "on share" for others. At that time men were employed to brand calves and received one calf out of every four branded "on share."

During the Civil War, some Texas cattle were used to feed the Confederate troops. However, due to the isolation of Texas, that number was small.

Mostly, cattle continued to multiple, mature, and grow fat wandering the ranges of Texas while able-bodied men fought. It is estimated there were approximately five million longhorns in Texas by the end of the Civil War.

These Texas cattle had long legs, lanky bodies, with legs and feet built for speed. It took a good horse with a good rider to outrun a Texas Longhorn. Their narrow faces, sullen expressions, and horns that swept out horizontally, gave these cattle a sinister look. And indeed, they could be mean.

A century or so of running wild had make the longhorns tough and hardy enough to withstand blizzards, droughts, dust storms, attacks by other animals, and Indians. They did not require great amounts of water to survive. Their horns served for attack and defense. A strong sense of smell made it easy for the cow to find her calf and she would ferociously defend this calf.

And the bulls... There was probably no meaner creature in Texas than a Longhorn bull. The slightest provocation would turn him into an aggressive and dangerous enemy. The bull's horns usually measured six feet or less from tip-to-tip, but could measure over eight feet long. In addition, the sharpness of horns of any length, the speed and muscle power of the bull, and the ease with which he could be aroused and enraged, made him a dangerous and uncontrollable animal. When two bulls met, there was sure to be a fight, often to death. And only a very well-armed cowboy had a chance against a Longhorn bull.

This abundance of cattle at the end of the Civil War had depressed the Texas market. However, the prices of cattle and beef were still high in the north and east. So despite the danger involved in a round-up, the hardy Texas cattle began flowing north. They continued on the Chisholm, Loving-Goodnight, and Dodge City trails until that market was saited and the ranges of the central and northern plains were fully stocked.

J. Frank Dobie, great teller of Texas tales, wrote in the Fort Worth Press in 1936, "There is a widespread idea, even among people who should know better, that trail driving originated after the Civil War, when a lone Texas herd headed for some vague point 'north of 36.' As a matter of fact, on the very day the Texans whipped the Mexicans at San Jacinto, in 1836, a herd of Texas longhorns from Taylor White's ranch west of the Neches River was trailing for New Orleans. Cattle had been trailed out of Texas before that. Through the 'forties they were trailed north into Missouri and also to Louisiana markets. There is a record of one herd's trailing to New York, about 1850, and through the 'fifties thousands of steers were driven across the continent to California. The trailing business attained volume and became well organized when in 1867 Abilene, Kansas, opened as a market."

The cattle conditions at the end of the Civil War are also given credit for the beginning of cattle rustling. George W. Saunders, president of the Old Time Trail Drivers of Texas explained, "During the war we boys and a few old men tried to keep the cattle branded up, and we always branded for absent soldiers and widows. Of course the range was only loosely worked and vast numbers of cattle went unbranded. The scuffle for these mavericks, that began after the war was over, started cow-thieving."

The toughness and endurance of the Longhorns made them well-equipped for the long trail. They usually lost very little weight on the drive.

Charles Goodnight, Texas cowman who is credited with inventing the chuck wagon and who was one of the originators of the Loving-Goodnight trail, said of Longhorn cattle, "As trail cattle, their equal never has been known. Their hoofs are superior to those of any other cattle. In stampedes, they hold together better, are easier to circle during a run, and rarely split off when you commence to turn the front. No animal of the cow kind will shift and take care of itself under all conditions as will the Longhorns. They can go farther without water and endure more suffering than others."

Even in a stampede, the lead Longhorn steers often earned their salt. On the Shawnee trail in 1873, a heard of over 1000 Longhorns stampeded within the town of Dallas. The Dallas Herald , September 12, 1873, reported, "The two that didn't take fright had led the drove from the time the owners started out with them. During the alarm for the rest of the drove, they stood motionless. The drivers had the satisfaction of seeing the frightened cattle eventually return and gather 'round the more composed leaders."

The longhorns did harbor ticks and certain diseases, however. Terry Jordan, author of North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, wrote, "From the very first, a strong northern prejudice against longhorns, based partly in the diseases they bore, was encountered, and through the 1870s and early 1880s the amount of longhorn blood on the ranges of Texas Extended was systematically reduced by crossbreeding, castration, and culling."

Regardless, Longhorns are a great part of the history and the influence of Texas and the state of Texas maintains a herd of Longhorns in select state parks.

Click "Bevo" Cartoon to view Funny Texas Longhorns Cartoons!

More Texas Longhorns
By Mike P. Mackessy

Texas Longhorns and the long drives northward to market made such an imprint on the 19th-century Western landscape that for many Americans today nothing else better defines the Old West. In his classic 1941 book The Longhorns , J. Frank Dobie writes that the Chisholm Trail, from Texas to Kansas, "initiated.. the most fantastic and fabulous migration of animals controlled by man that the world has ever known or can ever know" Between 1866 and 1890, some 10 million cattle were driven on the Chisholm and other trails out of Texas. "Without the Longhorns and the long drives," writes Don Worcester in The Texas Longhorn , "it is unlikely that the cowboy would have become such a universal folk hero."

The roots of the Texas Longhorn go back to the late 1400s. Cattle were not indigenous to North America, but were introduced by gold-seeking Spanish conquistadors. The first Spanish explorers turned their dark, thin-legged, wiry Moorish-Andalusian cattle loose on the Caribbean Islands. These Andalusians, known as "black cattle," also produced Spanish fighting bulls. Left on their own, the cattle strayed, grew larger and soon turned wild. In the wild they thrived, growing heavy-boned, skinny and swift. Their long legs and long horns provided offensive weapons and defensive protection. They also developed a fiery temper and a malicious cleverness.

In 1521, Spanish sea captain Gregorio de Villalobos, defying a law prohibiting cattle trading in Mexico, left Santo Domingo with six cows and a bull and set sail to Veracruz, Mexico. The explorer Hernando Cortes also set sail with Criollo, or Spanish, cattle to have beef while on his expeditions. He branded his herds with three crosses-the first brand recorded in North America.

As more Spanish explorers headed north, their crippled and exhausted cows were left behind, loose on the trail, to fend for themselves. These Spanish explorers held to the Castilian tradition that grass was a gift of nature. Spanish cattlemen did not fence in their fields or their herds, and cattle easily wandered off to join the wild population. In the 1820s, settlers in Texas, then part of Mexico, primarily raised European breeds of cattle. The Texas Longhorn is the result of the accidental crossbreeding of escaped descendants of the Criollo cattle and the cows of early American settlers, including English Longhorns.

The easily identifiable result is a wild, slab-sided, ornery, multicolored bovine weighing between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds and having a horn spread of 4 to 7 feet. A Longhorn was considered mature at 10 years, and by then averaged 1,200 pounds. The combination of these characteristics made Longhorns hearty and self-reliant. One of their drawbacks was their meat. It was known to be lean, stringy and tough, but was still better than beef from Criollo cattle. The New York Tribune , on July 4, 1854, described Longhorn beef: "The meat is fine-grained and close, somewhat like venison. It is apt to be a little tough." These feral cattle, being excellent swimmers, easily crossed

the sluggish Rio Grande, but generally were stopped by the more turbulent Red River. By the Mexican War, 1846-1848, the Texas Longhorn had become a recognizable type. Worcester, however, points out that the real Texas Longhorn was "a fairly distinct type that appeared in South Texas in large numbers only after the Civil War."

The Longhorn did not have many enemies. Native Indians did not hunt the wild cattle; they preferred the meat of the tamer and easier to kill buffalo. The Indians also found more uses for buffalo hides and bones than they did for Longhorn leather. Wolves that followed the migrating buffalo herds remained shy and wary of the mean and often deadly Longhorn cattle. With the waning of the buffalo herds, the prairie grasses from Mexico to Canada became fodder for this new, more marketable animal. Most non-Indian Americans never developed a taste for buffalo, and more and more people were taking a liking to beef. A single Longhorn cow needed 10 acres of good plains grass a year for feed, 15 if the ground was dry and scrubby, and there were millions of acres available. Living on the rich Texas plains, a cow would normally have 12 calves in her lifetime, ensuring a steady supply for the new market.

During the Civil War, the unattended Longhorns proliferated. By 1865, about 5 to 6 million Longhorns resided in Texas, and most were unbranded. Many Confederate Army veterans returning from the war built up herds by claiming unmarked cattle and branding them. At that time a steer was worth about $4 in Texas-that was if you could find anyone with the $4. In Chicago, Cincinnati and other meat-packing and market towns up North, that same steer sold for about $40. The problem was getting the steers to market. More than 250,000 steers were driven toward Kansas and Missouri in 1866, but many didn't make it because farmers, worried about tick fever, would turn them back, and thieves would strike the herds. In 1867, Abilene, Kansas, at the railhead of the Kansas & Pacific, opened up as a major market and became the first of the cow towns. For the next two decades, Longhorns hit the trails on long but generally profitable drives. There had actually been long drives earlier-such as to New Orleans in the 1830s and to California during the gold rush-but the era of the great trail drives did not begin until after the Civil War.

To build up herds, cattlemen often hired young "brush poppers." For $10 a month plus board, they combed the sage brush, popping out cattle as they went. After the spring roundup, the cattle herd was driven north. For this dangerous work a cowboy would earn $30 a month. A drive often covered 1,500 miles and took four to six months. The hours were long, the conditions brutal and the dangers very real. The outdoor work, mostly in the saddle, appealed to a certain breed of men-the American cowboy.

Unpredictable weather and swollen streams would break up the routine on the trails, and no single word could shake up a cow camp quicker than "Stampede!" Every cowboy that ever trailed a herd was concerned about the threat and hazards of a stampede. It wouldn't take much to get the Longhorns to run -a yelp from a coyote, the rattling of the chuck wagon's pans, the hiss of a rattlesnake, a cowhand's sneeze, the flair of a match. In Frederic Remington's The Stampede the cause was lightning. "Stampede was the old Texian word, and no other cattle known to history had such a disposition to stampede as the Longhorns," writes Dobie.

In an instant, a calm herd could become a solid wave of nearly unstoppable alarm and panic. Normally a Longhorn steer would not target a man on horseback, but neither man nor horse was safe during a stampede. The steers themselves usually were at great risk. In Idaho, an 1889 stampede led to the deaths of one cowboy and 341 Longhorns. In Nebraska, in 1876, four cowboys tried to head off 500 stampeding steers. Only three of the men made it; all that was found of their friend was the handle to his revolver Another herd took to running when a tobacco shred from a cowboy's pouch stuck in a steer's eye. That unfortunate crew lost two cowboys, and a score were injured. Out of their herd of 4,000 head, 400 cattle were killed. One of the worst stampedes occurred in July 1876 near the Brazos River in Texas. Almost the entire herd plunged into a gully; more than 2,000 head were killed or missing.

When cattle stampeded they did not utter a sound, but a cacophony was raised by the clashing of horns and the crashing of hooves. The heat that the massed herd emitted was phenomenal.

Charles Goodnight, one of the 19th century's most famous cattlemen, once described how the heat "almost blistered the faces" of the men on the lee side of the herd. On a hot night, a steer that ran 10 miles might lose up to 40 pounds. There was only one thing, agreed most cowboys, that could be done to gain control of a runaway herd. That was to ride hell bent for leather toward the head of the herd and get the leaders milling, so that the herd would circle around into itself. The cowboys hoped the cattle would exhaust themselves during the process. The men would wave hats or slickers, beat ropes against chaps and sometimes fire pistols into the ground to try and keep the animals from running. A herd in flight could spread out over a vast area. If the herd ran for 25 miles, the cowboys might have to ride 200 miles rounding up the strays. Working alone, each man fanned out and began riding toward the herd's new bedding ground. Sometimes small groups of cattle would be found and started back, but finding and driving singles was more often the case.

Every trail herd had its dominant steer, which by instinct strode to the front of the bunch to lead the way. Good lead steers were particularly valuable when crossing a river because hesitant leaders would cause most of the others to stop. If a steer did the job well, it would not be sold; it would be brought home to lead the other herds north. Charles Goodnight owned such a valuable steer in Old Blue, whom he had bought from cattleman John Chisum. During eight seasons, more than 10,000 head followed Old Blue to Dodge City- a one-way trip for them but not for Blue. Goodnight put a bell around Old Blue's neck, and the other steers learned to follow the familiar ringing. Old Blue, according to range legend, "could find the best water, the best grass, and the easiest river crossings, and could even soothe a nervous herd during a storm with his reassuring bawl." After his last drive, he was retired to a permanent pasture and lived to be 20 years old. At his death his horns were mounted in a place of honor in the Goodnight ranch office. A good day's progress for a herd was about 10 miles. Under favorable conditions, Longhorns put on weight while on the trail. Water was the most important necessity during a drive. A Longhorn could drink up to 30 gallons of water a day. Without plenty of fresh water, the cattle became irritable and would stampede.

Click "Texas Longhorns" Picture to view Texas Longhorns Archives!

Texas Longhorn Cattle Jokes

• What kind of Texas cattle goes, "Beeeeep, Beeeeep!" - A longhorn!
• What magazine makes Texas longhorns stampede to the newsstand? - Cows-mopolitan!
• What newspaper do Texas longhorns read? - The Texas Daily Moos.
• What sound do you hear when you drop a big bomb on a Texas longhorn? - Cowboom!
• What two members of the Texas longhorn family go everywhere with you? - Your calves!
• What would you hear at a Texas longhorn Steer concert? - Texas Moo-sic!
• How did the Texas longhorn Cow feel when she couldn't give any milk? - Like an udder failure!
• How do Texas bulls drive their cars? - They steer them!
• How does a Texas longhorn do math? - With a cowculator!
• If a longhorn bull is chasing you, what steps should you take? - The longest ones I could!
• If you crossed a Texas longhorn with an insect, what would you get? - A Texas moosquito!
• If you had a gun and you were being chased by a Texas longhorn bull and a mountain lion, which one would you shoot first? - The mountain lion. You can always shoot the bull in Texas!
• If you see a whole field of Texas longhorns, what's a fast way to figure out how many cattle there are? - Count the hooves and divide by four!
• Is there big money in the Texas longhorn cattle business? - So I've herd!
• What do Texas longhorns get when they are sick? - Hay Fever!
• What do Texas longhorns like to listen to? - Texas Moo-sic!
• What do Texas longhorns read at the breakfast table? - A Texas moospaper!
• What do Texas longhorns wear when they're vacationing in Hawaii? - Texas Moo- Moos!
• What do you call a Texas longhorn that plays the guitar? - A Texas Moosician!
• What do you call a group of Texas longhorn cattle sent into orbit? - The first herd! shot round the world!
• What do you call a sleeping steer? - A Texas bull dozer!

University of Texas Steer (Bevo)
He's trekked coast to coast in an air-conditioned trailer, attended President George W. Bush's inauguration in 2000 and witnessed 191 UT football games. Longhorn fans world-wide guzzle beer and scream his name, giving him the Hook 'Em salute.

And now, old, with knobby knees and jutting hips, 20-year-old Bevo XIII is finally retiring to his pasture in Liberty Hill, northwest of Austin, and the new sleek-coated Bevo XIV will take his place in Daryl K Royal Memorial Stadium.

After 16 seasons of service - more than any other Bevo - Bevo XIII will appear for the last time this Saturday during UT's opening game against North Texas. Bevo XIV, just 2 years old, will join him, standing for the first time before 80,000 screaming fans. "Hook 'Em Horns" -Says, Old Bevo.

Click "Longhorn Hugging Armadillo" Cartoon to view Farm Animals Cards!

"Thank you to all who submitted Texas Longhorn's facts, legends and funny stories. Keep sending us Texas Longhorn's information and we'll keep putting 'em up on this Texas Longhorns Legends & Oddities page and give you all the credit!" -Says, Caddylak Maxy

Send Funny Texas Longhorns Cards to spread Texas Joy!

Be sure to visit our "Fan Mail" by viewing our Testimonials Page!

Texas Longhorns Legends And Oddities is constantly being updated.
Check back often for updated Texas Longhorns Legends And Oddities!
Last Updated: Tuesday June 19, 2007 1:47 P.M.

Visit Funny Texas Longhorns Cards!