Today in U.S. History: May 14, 1856 - Military camels set foot on Texas soil by Kaye Spencer #westernfictioneers #OldWestHistory

 

The Great U. S. Military Camel Experiment unfolds, briefly, this way:

By the 1830s, American westward expansion was going nowhere fast. Difficult terrain and often inhospitable climates made traveling a daunting challenge at best, especially in the southwest.

But in 1836, an outside-of-the-box thinker had a bold plan. The then Lieutenant, and later Major, George H. Crosman proposed to the U.S. War Department:

For strength in carrying burdens, for patient endurance of labor, and privation of food, water & rest, and in some respects speed also, the camel and dromedary (as the Arabian camel is called) are unrivaled among animals.  The ordinary loads for camels are from seven to nine hundred pounds each, and with these they can travel from thirty to forty miles a day, for many days in succession.  They will go without water, and with but little food, for six or eight days, or it is said even longer.  Their feet are alike well suited for traversing grassy or sandy plains, or rough, rocky hills and paths, and they require no shoeing...¹

The War Department ignored the report.

However, the War Department's attitude did an about-face in 1847 when the right people were in the right place at the right time. Crosman met Major Henry C. Wayne, who shared his camel enthusiasm. Together, they submitted another report to the War Department and Congress. At this point, Senator Jefferson Davis took up their cause.

There wasn’t a western railroad system at this time, and horses and mules needed water in a water-scarce environment. All three men reasoned that since camels thrived in deserts elsewhere in the world, they would also thrive in the American southwest. Congress listened and appropriated $30,000 for “...the purchase and importation of camels and dromedaries to be employed for military purposes.”¹

The task of sailing to the Middle East and North Africa to bring back camels fell, willingly, to Major Wayne. It took Wayne about a year to gather up camels for the voyage back to America. While the ship carrying the camels, “Supply”, arrived at the port in Indianola, Texas on April 29, rough ocean waters prevented unloading the camels. It wasn’t until May 14 that the ocean calmed enough to safely move the camels into small boats and deliver them to shore. From the Texas coast, the camels moved out under Army control for Camp Verde. Not too long after that, another group of 41 camels also made their home at Camp Verde.

 State Historical Marker - Indianola, Texas

Image by Larry D. Moore (citing below) -

As a side note, a civilian, Mrs. J. J. Watson, attempted to bring camels to America as a cover for her slave trade, but she wasn’t allowed to unload them. So she dumped them out in Galveston and sailed for the slave markets in Cuba.²  Two private shipments of camels arrived not long after but, like Mrs. Watson's camels, these camels were turned loose on the Galveston shore and were doomed to wander in neglect.

The military used the camels for the next ten years for hauling supplies to different locations as well as using them for the in-camp tasks. The camels were also important during cross-country military expeditions. One expedition involved surveying what is now the historic Route 66. Another was a scouting mission to identify possible fortifications in southwest Texas. While the soldiers brought feed and water for the horses and mules, the camels were content to forage off the land and drink when water was naturally available. Despite being naturally adapted to the American Southwest’s climate and terrain, realistically, camels had a terrible smell, horses were terrified of them, and handlers detested them because of their surly temperaments.

The War Between the States brought the camel corps to an end in 1866 through lack of funding and general neglect. The camels were auctioned to private owners. Some camels ended up on supply trains as pack animals, others went to miners and prospectors, and some went to circuses. A few ended their days on private ranches. However, many camels escaped. Camel sightings continued for decades. “For years, travelers in the Southwest told tales of camels looming up in the flickering light of campfires.”³

From that comment, an idea sparked, and I wrote a scene involving camels in my novel, The Comanchero's Bride. Here is a teaser from the camel encounter:

A horse snorted.

Mingo came wide awake with a revolver already in his hand. A glance without looking directly at the diminished fire told him he’d slept for two or three hours. The sound of heavy breathing and grunting drew his attention beyond their lean-to. Peering into the darkness, he ran through his mental catalog of sounds to identify the source while simultaneously planning a defense against whatever—or whoever—was out there. He separated the soft whisper of drizzle from the normal night noises, ruled-out humans, while sensing a vague familiarity that wasn’t horse, but he was certain it had four legs. And there was more than one.

Careful in his movements, he eased his arm along his thigh and down his leg to grasp the handle of his knife tucked in the sheath on the inside of his tall boot shaft. Shifting his position, he waited. In the glow of the orange embers of the fire, he could make out hulking, ghoulish shadows hovering just at the edge of camp. When a whiff of breeze swirled around their shelter, stirring up ashes at the edge of the fire, Mingo picked up a pungent odor of urine and manure mixed with the tang of wet, dead carcass. There was no mistaking the visitors now, and he relaxed, chuckling softly.

Slipping from under the blankets with slow, deliberate care, he placed a light touch on Isabel’s shoulder. Her eyes popped open, and he spoke in a low tone. “I must calm the horses. Do not make a sudden move or noise, and keep your voice quiet. Build up the fire and stay close without looking into it.”

She rolled to her knees, grabbing Mingo’s arm as she whispered, “Eww, what’s out there? The stench is horrid.”

Speaking close to her ear, he replied, “Camellos.”

Isabel jerked her head around. “Wha— Camellos? Camels?” She looked across the coals into the darkness. “Here? In Texas?”

Mingo’s grin widened at her bewilderment, and he handed her a piece of firewood. “At least two of them. I do not think they will come closer, but it is also not wise to startle them. The horses are already frightened, and we do not want them to bolt. Trying to catch a camel to ride it to our ranch is not how I want to finish this journey...”

The Comanchero's Bride

available on Amazon.com

Print | Kindle | KindleUnlimited

See you next month on the 2nd Monday for another episode of ‘Today in U.S. History’,

Kaye Spencer

Website/Blog- https://www.kayespencer.com
Instagram - kayespencer
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/kayespencer
Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/kayespencer
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kayespencer23
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/author/kayespencer
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayespence
Prairie Rose Publications - http://prairierosepublications.com/
YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/kayespencer0203

References and Resources:

I would direct you HERE for an excellent article about the camel corps.

1. National Museum-United States Army. Vince Hawkins, “The U.S. Army's ‘Camel Corps’ Experiment”, accessed May 12, 2018, https://armyhistory.org/the-u-s-armys-camel-corps-experiment/

2. Handbook of Texas Online, Chris Emmett and Odie B. Faulk, “Camels”, accessed May 12, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quc01.

3. Smithsonian Magazine. Owen Edwards, “Camelot”, accessed May 12, 2018. Smithsonian.com. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/camelot-121505856/

*Larry D. Moore, US Camel Corps State Historical Marker, CC BY-SA 4.0

*Texas Highways. The Travel Magazine of Texas. The Great Camel Experiment.
http://www.texashighways.com/history/item/7475-the-great-camel-experiment-texas-camel-corps. July 2014. Accessed: May 12, 2018.

‘You Take that Back!’ — Texas Feuds

By Kathleen Rice Adams

The notorious Hatfield clan, 1897

Although lesser known than the notorious Hatfield-McCoy fracas that claimed about a dozen lives along the West Virginia-Kentucky state line between 1865 and 1888, six and a half of the ten bloodiest American feuds took place in Texas.

Yes, six and a half. Just hold your horses and I’ll explain.

Two of Texas’s feuds were deadlier than the quarrel between the Hatfields and McCoys, and most of them erupted over a bigger insult than laying claim to a wayward pig.

In ascending order of body count, the feuds were…

Early vs. Hasley, 1865-69

Sam Hasley did not take it well when he returned from fighting for the Confederacy to discover his elderly father had been roughed up by a member of the Union occupation force sent to keep order in Texas during Reconstruction. Hasley vowed vengeance not only upon the culprit, John Early, but also on every other Federal in Bell County. He and the friends and family who gathered around him openly defied the authorities, leading the Early faction to accuse Hasley’s group of any crime of any kind anywhere in the vicinity. Yankee soldiers ambushed and killed one of the Hasley contingent in mid-1869, effectively disbanding the gang. One rogue member, however, pursued one of Early’s friends into Arkansas and killed him later that year. Sam Hasley went on to become a deputy sheriff. In 1889, drunk on duty, he was shot and killed by a deputy city marshal while resisting arrest in Temple, Texas. Body count: two.

Reese vs. Townsend, 1898-1907

A plantation house in Columbus, Texas, ca. 1840

The Reeses and the Townsends got crossways over politics. U.S. Senator Mark Townsend, the Boss Tweed of Columbus, Texas, withdrew his support from incumbent sheriff Sam Reese and threw his considerable political clout behind former deputy Larkin Hope instead. When Hope ended up on the wrong end of a broad daylight assassination in downtown Columbus, Reese was the most likely suspect, though no evidence surfaced. Townsend’s handpicked replacement won the election. Perturbed by the unanticipated turn of events, Reese picked a gunfight with a Townsend supporter, thereby moving out of politics and into a casket. The former sheriff’s family vowed to avenge him, provoking five shootouts in Columbus over the following six years. Four combatants died, including Sam Reese’s brother Dick. Body count: six.

Horrell vs. Higgins, 1874-1877

Lampasas, Texas, ca. 1882

When the five Horrell brothers—Ben, Mart, Tom, Merritt, and Sam—took it on the lam to Lincoln County, New Mexico, in order to avoid a murder rap in Texas, they probably didn’t plan to leave one of their number under six feet of dirt before scrambling back to Lampasas barely ahead of a posse. They fared no better in their hometown, running afoul of former friend and neighbor John “Pink” Higgins right away. Higgins accused the high-spirited Horrell boys of rustling cattle…and that’s when the trouble started. A jury acquitted the Horrells of all charges, but continuing ill will led to Merritt Horrell’s death at Higgins’s hand during a saloon fight. Folks lined up behind both families, swore to wipe the opposing faction from the face of the planet, and set about their task with admirable devotion. By the time the Texas Rangers put an end to the running gun battles in June 1877, four men were dead, dozens more were injured, and the three remaining Horrell brothers were behind bars. Although they were released in short order, two of the three were arrested on suspicion of murdering a shopkeeper less than a year later. A vigilante gang shot them to death in their jail cells. The feud ended when both sides signed a written promise to leave one another alone. Amazingly, they kept their word. Body count: seven.

Boyce vs. Sneed, 1911-1912

1912 New York Times report
about the Boyce-Sneed
disagreement. (Click to read.)

Wealthy ranchers John Beal Sneed and Albert Boyce, Jr. came to blows over Sneed’s wife. After more than a decade of marriage and two children, in 1911 Lena Sneed admitted to having an affair with Boyce and asked for a divorce. Sneed straightaway had her committed to an asylum. Boyce rescued the damsel in distress, and the couple ran off to Canada. Incensed when kidnapping charges were dropped, Sneed upped the ante: In early 1912, he murdered Boyce’s unarmed father in the lobby of a Fort Worth hotel. Widely publicized court proceedings ended in a mistrial, spurring a mob of Boyce supporters to storm the courthouse and kill four men. Sneed’s father was the next to go, in an alleged murder-suicide. Although John and Lena Sneed reconciled in mid-1912, he could not let the insult go: Wearing a disguise, he shot and killed Boyce in broad daylight on a Fort Worth street and then surrendered at the county courthouse. Juries later acquitted Sneed of all charges, calling the killings justifiable homicide. Body count: eight.

Sutton vs. Taylor, 1866-1877

former Texas Ranger Creed Taylor, ca. 1880

Dewitt County Deputy Sheriff William Sutton set off the longest-lasting and most widespread feud in Texas history when, in three separate 1866 incidents, he shot and killed three members of former Texas Ranger Creed Taylor’s family. In 1867, two more Taylors died while Sutton was attempting to arrest them on a minor charge. After adopting the motto “Who sheds a Taylor’s blood, by a Taylor’s hand must fall,” the Taylors retaliated by killing two Sutton allies. Mob violence, ambushes, prison breaks, and lynchings ensued. Sutton himself was gunned down while attempting to board a steamboat and high-tail it out of the area. After numerous attempts at peacemaking failed, Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly and his Special Force put a stop to the violence. Body count: at least 35.

Lee vs. Peacock, 1866-1871

Fighting Over a Stolen Herd, Frederic Remington, 1895

Only Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War, which took the lives of twenty to fifty men between 1887 and 1892, outstripped the Lee-Peacock feud of northeast Texas. Like the Early-Hasley dustup, the Lee-Peacock fandango grew out of lingering animosity over the Civil War. Confederate veteran Bob Lee butted heads with an organization of Union supporters, leading Lewis Peacock, the leader of the Union bunch, to round up a posse and arrest Lee for alleged war crimes. To “settle the charges,” Peacock seized Lee’s valuables and exacted a promissory note for $2,000. Lee won a subsequent lawsuit, earning an assassination attempt along with the money. His doctor was murdered while Lee convalesced in the medic’s home. Thereafter, Northeast Texas fractured along Union-Confederacy lines and bands of armed men proceeded to track down and do away with their ideological opponents. The Fourth United States Cavalry’s arrival to end the fracas only made things worse: Although a house-to-house search failed to turn up Lee, it sparked several more gun battles. Lee was betrayed by one of his own men in 1869 and died during the cavalry’s attempt to arrest him. Fighting continued until Peacock’s shooting death in 1871. Body count: about fifty.

And now for the one-half Texas feud…

Brooks vs. McFarland, 1896-1902

Although most of the violence took place on Oklahoma land belonging the Creek Nation, a fatal attempt to rob a former Texas Ranger started the fight. After would-be robber Thomas Brooks was killed, family patriarch Willis Brooks accused neighbor Jim McFarland of planning the unsuccessful crime and then tipping off the Ranger. Not disposed to sit idly by and watch the family name besmirched, the McFarlands lined up behind Jim and faced off with the Brooks clan. Both sides vowed to shoot members of the other on sight. The conflict came to a head in a Spokogee, Oklahoma, gunfight in September 1902, when Willis Brooks and his son Clifton were killed along with a McFarland family ally. The survivors were arrested, but allowing them to make bail may have been a mistake: One month later, Jim McFarland died in an ambush at his home. McFarland’s death put an end to the feud.

A Texan to the bone, Kathleen Rice Adams spends her days chasing news stories and her nights and weekends shooting it out with Wild West desperados. Leave the upstanding, law-abiding heroes to other folks. In Kathleen’s stories, even the good guys wear black hats.

Her short story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” won the coveted 2015 Peacemaker Award for Best Western Short Fiction. Her novel Prodigal Gun received a 2015 Peacemaker nomination for Best First Western Novel.

Visit her hideout on the web at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

Taming the Nueces Strip

By Kathleen Rice Adams

Once again I find myself without a book review for my regularly scheduled post. I still occupy my free time with reading; sadly, my free time has dwindled to next to nothing lately. Contrary to what one might suppose, writing in-depth reviews is neither quick nor easy. I'll do my best to return to reviewing on Aug. 25.

In the meantime, I hope y’all will enjoy something a little different. A version of the post below appeared on the Prairie Rose Publications blog in January.


Texas always has been a rowdy place. In 1822, the original Anglo settlers began invading what was then Mexico at the invitation of the Mexican government, which hoped American immigrants would do away with the out-of-control Comanches. Texans dispensed with the Comanches in the 1870s, foisting them off on Oklahoma, but long before that, the Texans ran off the Mexican government.

From 1836 to 1845, Texas looked something like the map above. The green parts became the Republic of Texas as the result of treaties signed by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana after Sam Houston and his ragtag-but-zealous army caught the general napping at San Jacinto. The treaties set the boundary between Texas and Mexico at the Rio Grande.

This caused a bit of a fuss in the Mexican capital, because Santa Ana did not possess the authority to dispose of large chunks of land with the swipe of a pen. Mexico eventually conceded Texas could have the dark-green part of the map, but the light-green part still belonged to Mexico. Arguments ensued.

While Texas and Mexico were carefully avoiding one another in the disputed territory, outlaws, rustlers, and other lawless types moved into a patch between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. After all, no respectable outlaw ever lets a perfectly good blind spot on the law-enforcement radar go to waste. The area, 150 miles wide by about 400 miles long, came to be known as the Nueces Strip.

In 1845, the United States annexed all of the land claimed by Texas, including the disputed territory, and came to military blows with Mexico over the insult. By the time the two countries signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 to settle once and for all (sort of) who owned what, the lawless element was firmly entrenched in the strip of cactus and scrub between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. For nearly thirty years, brigands raised havoc, robbing, looting, raping, rustling, and killing on both sides of the border before retreating to ranchos and other hideouts in the no-man’s land on the Texas side.

Leander H. McNelly, 1875

That began to change in 1875 when the Texas Rangers charged Captain Leander H. McNelly with bringing order to the Nueces Strip. Newly re-formed after being disbanded for about ten years during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Rangers were determined to clean up the cesspool harboring notorious toughs like King Fisher and Juan Cortina. With a company of forty handpicked men known as the Special Force, McNelly accomplished his task in two years…in some cases by behaving at least as badly as the outlaws. McNelly was known for brutal—sometimes downright illegal—tactics, including torturing information from some prisoners and hanging others. He and his men also made a number of unauthorized border crossings in pursuit of rustlers, nearly provoking international incidents.

Nevertheless, the “Little McNellys” got the job done. By the time McNelly was relieved of command and subsequently retired in 1876, the Nueces Strip was a safer place.

McNelly died of consumption about a year later, in September 1877. Although he remains controversial in some circles, the residents of South Texas raised funds and erected a monument in his honor.


Kathleen Rice Adams is an author, award-winning journalist, and all-around troublemaker. Like generations of ranchers, preachers, teachers, horse thieves, and moonshiners before her, she hides out in Texas. Find her online at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

Western Fictioneers Presents West of the Big River: The Bandit By Jerry Guin

Sam Bass was just a farm boy from Indiana, but he wound up in Texas and became one of the most notorious outlaws in the history of the Old West. Texas history has often referred to Bass as "Texas' Beloved Bandit" or "Robin Hood on a Fast Horse"  Jerry Guin's historical novel THE BANDIT takes an unflinching look at the life and times of Sam Bass, from his almost accidental incursion into a life of lawlessness to his ill-fated end, and provides a vivid portrait of this violent era. Western Fictioneers is proud to present the latest entry in the acclaimed West of the Big River series.

Jerry Guin is best known as a short story writer with 28 to his credit. His book, "Trail Dust" captures 12 of those stories.

Jerry has written "Matsutake Mushroom," a nature guide book. He wrote his first western novel, "Drover's Vendetta" in 2011. Followed by "Drover's Bounty," a Black Horse Western released by Robert Hale Ltd. August 2013.

Recently he had stories appear in the following anthologies, "Outlaws and Lawmen" by La Frontera publishing and "Six-Guns and Slay Bells, A Creepy Cowboy Christmas" by Western Fictioneers. Also through Western Fictioneers, Jerry wrote chapter one of "Wolf Creek, Dog Leg City, Book 3."

Jerry lives in the extreme Northern California community of Salyer with his wife Ginny.

Kindle                              Trade

   

Barnes & Noble Nook Link

Smashwords Link