Connections: The Cowboy Legend, the Georgia Coastal Plain, and the Way to Texas

Our drive to Houston, Goliad and San Antonio took us through cattle country, reminding me that not only were many Georgians involved in the Texas Revolution, but Georgians were also pioneers in the cattle industry as far back as the colonial period. The lower sixty or so per cent of Georgia, the Coastal Plain, was mostly covered in pine forests and these forests provided a remarkably good place to raise cattle. Georgia’s initial settlement was Savannah. Georgia’s founder, General James Oglethorpe granted a patent to Muskogee (Creek) translator, Mary Musgrove, to set up a cow pen (a cattle station) just upriver from Savannah.

Cow pens were enclosed holding places where free range cattle herders, after rounding up their cattle, could bring them to trade or sell. This became an important source of income-one of several-enjoyed by Mary. The so-called “piney woods” that surrounded Savannah were actually part of an enormous and unique longleaf pine forest that stretched on for millions of acres westward, covering the backcountry from Georgia to what would become Texas.

It is very likely that black cowboys worked the cattle stations and participated in the “droving” to market. I say this because they were very active both as slaves and as freemen in the Indian trade. A major trader, George Galphin situated at Silver Bluff on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, used African Americans in his sawmill and in his trade caravans into the backcountry of Georgia. Galphin had Black children in an affectionate relationship and provided for his Black children in his will. He also permitted his slaves to form what was apparently the first Black Baptist Church in America. Keep in mind that slavery was illegal in Georgia, but this injunction was widely ignored in the upcountry (i.e. the backcountry).

The cotton plantation system had not taken hold as yet and both free and slave Blacks worked at many occupations meeting the demand for labor in a labor-starved colony. Black rangers undoubtedly enjoyed a measure of freedom from white eyes and white supervision in “Indian Country.” Likely, slaves skilled in cattle ranging would have been valued by their owners and used for this purpose on larger plantations where specialization was profitable for the owner. It is notable that on the eve of the Civil War, twenty percent of Augusta’s population was made up of ” free persons color.” Recent scholarship has uncovered the fact that a growing number of whites were also enslaved by the outbreak of the Civil War-a startling discovery. Perhaps some reflection on the readers part will suggest why this was true. A touch of Black blood made a person legally Black, whereas a touch of white blood did not have a comparable effect on their legal status.

Over the decades, travelers from the north would categorize southerners as poor and lazy. In fact, the heat and humidity likely made cattle ranging preferable to farming, unless of course one were wealthy enough to buy slaves to work the land. Economic census records confirm that even after the plantation system came to dominate the southern economy, cattle ranching was prolific. We think of plantations as growing mostly cotton. In fact, the heavy souls on which cotton could be grown successfully usually amounted to only a fraction of the acreage under cultivation. Food crops were essential to feed the owner’s family and his slaves. Some land was likely to be swampy or too sandy for cotton.

Most settlers in Georgia came from farming areas in other seaboard colonies. They had learned to look to the types of trees growing to make an accurate guess as to how fertile the land would be for cotton. Pines generally grew on sandy ridges and those lands were less often planted in cotton. Hardwood stands of hickory and oak suggested heavier soil that would hold the moisture through the long growing period of cotton-which was usually harvested in the mid to late fall. Think how enormous is the task of clearing land of stands of giant pines. Burning was of course one tool for accomplishing this quickly, but old-growth longleaf sucks the nutrients from the sandy ridges on which it grows, creating well-spaced stands, not so easily cleared by burning as one might think,

In the early days of the colony, the interior of the state remained under the control of the native entities who were united in the Creek Confederacy. Colonial accounts of conflicts between the European settlers and the Creeks over cattle are common. The Creeks objected to cattle ranging on their lands, rangers complained of Creek hunters killing the cattle just as they might kill and slaughter a whitetail deer-a ready and immediate food supply for hunting parties.

Very little capital was required to begin cattle ranging. Land titles were sometimes imprecise and law enforcement was often far removed. Magistrates were flooded with legal contests over land ownership; and, speculation at times was rampant with the same grants being issued by the same or a different officials to more than one recipient -a way to increase their fees. Cattle rangers could simply move to unoccupied land to settle legal challenges. This of course foreshadows the contest over open range pasturage that persists in the west -especially on and adjacent to federal lands.

Though categorized as domestic animals, cattle can fair pretty well left unsupervised. Where horses and mules might might well starve, cattle (and pigs) are able to forage on many different kinds of foods, plant tubers for example. A supply of salt placed strategically helps keep the herd localized. In contrast to modern, planted pine forests, the trees were widely spaced in longleaf stands. And, seasonally, wiregrass grew in the dappled sunlight of longleaf stands.

Two men could watch over a herd of about five hundred head. So far as I know, no historian has calculated how many cow hides were processed in Savannah for shipment to England, but a devastating epidemic among herds in Wales, Scotland and Ireland had created a desperate sellers market in Great Britain.

I am occasionally asked to speak or write about the deerskin trade, in which native peoples harvested and processed whitetail deer hides. These were processed by native women and stockpiled often in a resident white trader’s store house. Hunting was accomplished in cooler weather when the “hair-on” hides were thicker and the hardwood “mast” (seeds) on which deer fed had fallen to the ground in the familiar form of acorns, beechnuts and other nut bearing trees. Deer eat a great variety but mast is often the only food source in the depths of winter.

The native village awaited the arrival of trade caravans from Augusta, Savannah and Charleston bringing mostly metal and woven goods, gunpowder and muskets. Without armed native hunters, the deerskin trade would not have been profitable. Only occasionally does some one inquire “What happened to the hides?” The answer is that cured hides were often used as a substitute for cowhide in leather-starved Britain. Gloves, jackets and trousers were durable but soft to the touch. Deerskin (or, “buckskin” as they are still called) trousers enjoyed a popularity for the same reasons that denim jeans have become everyday wear today. At the height of the deerskin trade on the Georgia frontier, 140,000 pounds of cured deer hides were shipped from Augusta every year. There seems to me little question that cow hides were being shipped in even greater quantity.

Clearly, the interests of cattle rangers and traders were antithetical. Cattle rangers upset Indians whose hunting grounds were disturbed by herders. Traders had a huge investment at stake. Rangers were at the bottom of the social ladder, opportunists who enjoyed an opportunity in the absence of authority. Rangers must also account for many of the incidents resulting in violence in the backcountry, whether by trading without license or plying native hunting parties with alcohol.

Evidence of the magnitude and importance of cattle ranging is evidenced by the the first “long drive” of cattle as the American Revolution wound down. Several drovers combined their herds and drove the cattle from Georgia up the to Philadelphia. But in the wake of the Revolution, the Georgia backcountry would be revolutionized by upland cotton cultivation and the proliferation of slavery. Cattle ranging persisted on the constantly moving frontier, one step ahead of settlement and sometimes one step ahead of the law.

Herding caused disputes between colonists and the Creeks. The colonial government in Augusta actually made it a crime to herd cattle on Indian lands. I have run across only one example of an arrest resulting from this law, but that incident is suggestive that townspeople were alarmed that cattle rangers might provoke an Indian attack.

In general, relations between the Georgia colonists and the Creeks were mutually advantageous. In fact, the British enjoyed a real advantage in the Indian trade because of their superior goods -and the competence and honesty of the men who conducted the trade through an elaborate web of partnerships including bankers and import companies back in England, agents, merchants, and traders who journeyed in seasonal caravans to the distant Creek towns. Unlicensed trading meant real trouble -as became self evident when the French were defeated in the French and Indian War. Britain ceased serious regulation of the licensing and the conduct of traders broke down, giving way to unprofessional and dishonest traders who cheated the Indians.

It is a generally forgotten fact that the cattle rangers were the precursors of westward expansion, as were the traders. The longleaf forests before them were vast but familiar as the rangers spread westward into the generally narrowing procession across what would become Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and east Texas. This free range cattle system had made headway into south Texas by the time of the American Civil War. Recall that Texas had become independent from Mexico in 1836 and after a few years was annexed by the United States. About the time Texas joined the confederacy, some estimates placed the number of feral cattle in Texas at two million head.

The ranger/cowboy tradition, brought from the edges of Britain and involving herding on horseback, lassos, long drives to markets and free ranging on often rough and undeveloped lands inspired legends, a legend that was foundational in our history of westward expansion. As immigrants-often without owning land and perhaps unwilling to submit to the confines of farming- the drovers and rangers carried the herding traditions of the British Isles and Ireland into the vastness of the Great Plains. Armed with a flintlock rifle, bull whip, a lasso, a saddle, a blanket and perhaps a broad brimmed hat, a ranger was capable of enduring much and accomplishing much. His reliance on his horse to do his work made him capable of feats men on foot could never accomplish, blazing trails over rough terrain that a man on foot might never dare.

So much of the legend of the American cowboy dates from the years following the Civil War. Roundups of herds on horseback, young men who had served in the Civil War finding employment as drovers, Indian attacks on the rangers and the gunfights and saloons in “Cow Towns” like Dodge City, have all become fixtures of the cowboy mythology. The rootless lives of the young drovers plays out in saloons and in the arms of prostitutes. In the legend, their destiny was to die in a saloon gunfight or range war. The films Red River, Monte Walsh and Lonesome Dove are themselves now part of the very legend that inspired them. Much of this mythology became cast in stone after the publication of Owen Wister’s “novel “The Virginian” (1902). Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders who fought at San Juan Hill as dismounted cavalry were mostly college boys who had drunk the magic potion; or, actual cowboys. Roosevelt himself had been a rancher. One might even say that the “cowboy image” helped make Ronald Reagan a very popular president.

The “Cowboy Kingdom” on the Texas frontier was short lived. The expanding rail system, widespread farming by homesteaders and the decimation of cattle herds in brutal winters, all combined to turn rangers into ranchers. After a few decades, drovers grew frustrated and cowmen were enraged over the use of barbed wire to protect farms, barbed wire ironically came to be used by cowmen to fence their herds. Rangers became ranchers and the Great Plains filled with claimants to land under the Homestead law. The film Open Range is my favorite fictional version of this period, involving rivalry between open rangers and fencers.

The “west” is a moveable thing, and in the south, it began with the colonization of Georgia. The cattle rangers existed on the edge in a land where the law was seldom an impediment to any kind of action. Nor was it often there to protect them or avenge their mistreatment. This predicament has fueled the legend of the American cowboy.