Cattle Trails
The Butterfield Trail
The Dona Ana link
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
At sunup, the
small caravan departed Ft.
Mason on what today is
the Corralitos Ranch in Dona Ana County, New Mexico.
They
pointed their team on the trail that led to the ridgeline to the west. In that clear
New Mexico Territory morning air, the clarity of
the features of the ridge stood out as if it was hundreds of yards ahead rather
than miles. The family had not yet become accustomed to an almost surreal
atmospheric condition that illuminated this big strange land. It was nothing
like they had experienced in their native Switzerland.
Before they
reached the ridge, a rider appeared. The dust in his wake preceded his arrival
for a greater part of an hour before his distinct features could be made out.
He stopped only long enough to scream a warning.
“Indians!”
Indians are killing people over the ridge”, he
yelled from astride his lathered horse. “Turn back to Ft. Mason!”
Without
hesitation, the family turned and followed the rider who quickly outdistanced
them.
They were on their own when dust
from numerous riders appeared in their wake.
Indians!
Before Ft. Mason
was reached a pitched, running battle commenced between the wagon occupants and
the Indians. The family diary describes how a horse was shot and was down in
the traces before the patriarch of the family cut the harness loose, and, with
the other horse, helped pull the wagon through the open gates of Ft. Mason.
The doors were slammed shut and the little band stood and sat unbelieving at
what had just transpired. Scattered gunfire discouraged more conflict.
The Indians departed, and …the
pioneering family was safe.
The Butterfield Trail
The trail the family had been
following that day was the Butterfield Trail. They had been on it for weeks
coming out of Texas.
The
improved trail was the result of actions starting with a Buchanan presidential
order to his Postmaster General, Aaron Brown. Many things had changed in the
West between 1845 and 1850. California
had become a state and Texas
was the nearest state to the east. A huge swath of wild country lay between the
two land masses. The federal government was committed to establishing a
defensible mail route connecting the continent.
John
Butterfield competed for and secured the contract for the overland stage route.
Although the distance was greater than the more northern routes, the southern
route was selected because of the better winter travel conditions.
The route
would connect St. Louis
to San Francisco
with an adjoining leg commencing at Memphis.
That routing funneled travelers and mail from the east, joined at Little Rock, and continued
west to San Francisco.
The leg from St. Louis
to San Francisco
was a horrendous 2,785 mile marathon.
It was a
huge undertaking.
Securing
funding required stockholders, and, among others, Butterfield enlisted Wells
Fargo. The Overland Mail Corporation was cobbled together and was ready for
business in 1858. It operated until 1860 under Butterfield. At that point, it
was passed to Wells Fargo which was more capable of running the venture.
That era of
service was short lived, too, when it was all curtailed at the onset of the
Civil War. Wells Fargo survived only because of parallel enterprises and the
burgeoning economy of the West following the conflict.
While in
operation, the company employed 800 people, built and operated 139 stations,
acquired and ran 250 Concord
stages, and fed and maintained a herd of horses that numbered between 1800 and
2500.
Indeed, it was a huge undertaking.
Ormsby
As a
passenger, Waterman L. (Lily) Ormsby chronicled the first east to west run from
St. Louis in
1858.
Notwithstanding
the endless thrill of crossing Texas,
it was the El Paso
to Tucson run that
really captured Ormsby’s attention. That was the blood and guts alley that
attracted the continuing fascination of novelists and, eventually, screen
writers. Outlaws, renegades, Indians, cactus, scorpions, and frijoles with a
rattlesnake or two made good pulp scribbling, and, in that stretch of 382 miles,
all of it was found in abundance.
Lily was
not much taken with Franklin
City which today we know
as El Paso.
Cavalry was garrisoned at Ft.
Bliss, but interestingly,
it was the agriculture that was arguably more interesting to him. He described
the viticulture in some detail. His description of frost control concepts at that
time was excellent.
The grapes,
of course, led to the products of trade that were included in his account.
Brandy and wine were front and center, and it was apparent he imbibed. Wine was
a particular interest.
Leaving
dusty Franklin City, its vineyards, saloons, and 400 mixed residents, he
described, in succession, stage stops northward at Fronteras, La Tuna,
Cottonwoods, Ft. Fillmore, and then La Mesilla. The modern counterparts became
Canutillo, La Tuna (the area of the prison), Anthony and, of course, Mesilla.
Alcohol was still on his mind when he noted New Mexicans knew the Franklin City brandy as “Pass Whiskey”. That
referenced the sourcing of Franklin City brandy and the El Paso del Norte name which
was the area traversing the narrows of the Rio Grande north from Franklin City
(which also applied to what we now know as Juarez).
Ormsby’s
description of the village
of Mesilla was not becoming.
He described its agriculture with interest but he wasn’t taken by the town. He
found the residents “squalid, dirty, and indolent”.
“I never saw such a miserable set of
people in my life,” he wrote.
Beyond
Mesilla they watered and changed teams at Picacho. It was from there to Tucson his western
adventure escalated.
His description of the trip beyond Tucson was surprisingly
subdued. The roads were better, the stops were consistent, and the rate of
progress was excellent.
He liked California.
In 23 days and 23½ hours he reached
his destination of San Francisco.
Asked if he would board the stage for the trip back east, he suggested he
might, but, on second thought, he wasn’t so sure.
“I know what hell is like,” he
admitted.
The continuing cow trail
Congress decommissioned its involvement
in the Trail in 1861, but that didn’t halt traffic. The Trail became the
primary access route into southwestern New
Mexico and on to Arizona for generations of pioneers.
I, for one, believe the Trail
should be elevated as one of the most important cattle trails in the nation’s network
due to the abundance of mixed herds trailed by settlers into the area. The
difference in those herds and the better known counterparts in Texas was the nature of
the enterprise. The cow trails of Texas
were commercial farm to market corridors whereas, on the Butterfield Trail, privately
owned foundation herds were trailed. Their ownership was seeking homes that
existed in their hopes, imaginations, and hearts. At the time, they simply
fought for existence. They knew nothing of the immensity that must now be
assigned to their endeavors. Their efforts and sacrifices were gigantic.
The reference to mixed herds was
the fact cows and calves were trailed whereas most of the commercial trailing
of cattle consisted largely of adult steer cattle. Trailing mix herds was much
more difficult, and that segment of the harshness of the lives of those
pioneers has never been adequately described. That story and others like it are
components of the immeasurably important history value that is not taught in
schools today and exists only in enclaves of diminishing oral history.
Fewer and fewer direct lines of
descendents know the immensity of their own family history.
Safety
at Ft. Mason
In the leg west from Picacho, the
stage was pulled by mules. The need for mules was the result of distance between
water sources and the grades. Ormsby described the stops following Picacho as
“Rough and Ready, Goodsight, Ft.
Cummins, and Cooke
Springs”.
The name Ft. Mason
did not yet exist in 1858 but it was the referenced “Rough and Ready”. Through
a series of transactions, title was secured by one Kit Mason in 1877. He ran a
mercantile and forage business catering to Trail traffic. It was Mason who was
proprietor of the establishment on the day of the massacre in 1879. It was
probably Mason who slammed the gate shut behind the wagon being pulled by the
unlikely team of Christian Flury and his horse escaping from Indians intent on
killing him and his family.
A question must now be asked. After
he unharnessed himself and his horse and caught his breath was it in Swiss,
English, or … in tongues that Mr. Flury finally spoke?
Stephen
L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New
Mexico. “Flury became the patriarch who gave rise to
ranching families whose names still exist in Grant and Luna Counties.
Members of the Benedict, Burris, Delk, Franks, Gunter, Harrington, and Johnson families
have direct linage to Mr. Flury. They are part of our valued ranching heritage tied to the Butterfield Trail.”
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