kennedy is thinking, what is my big public works thing? he picked the right number -- technology. the computer chip as we think of it today gets developed in the late 1950's. aviation starts kicking in. when jack kennedy runs in 1960, there are no computer science classes at universities. by the time he is killed in dallas, there are computer science classes everywhere. air travel is replacing automobile and train travel in many ways. airports are being developed across the country. so the space age, candy grabbed onto it and made that the cornerstone -- kennedy grabbed onto it meant that the cornerstone. the chisholm trail was a route used after the civil war to her texas cattle north. it stretched from southern texas

to the city of abilene, kansas. next kansas state university , history professor james sherow talks about his book, "the chisholm trail: joseph mccoy's great gamble." mr. sherow chronicles entrepreneur joseph mccoy's success in national and international cattle trading. that sparked the growth of the u.s. beef industry. the watkins museum of history hosted this event. it is about 90 minutes. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to our latest raven book chat. i will hickox amcoordinator here at watkins museum of history . i welcome you. these days, when there are so many options to do with our free time, even to sit on your couch every evening, it is very encouraging and exciting for us at the museum to have folks come

in for our events. we really appreciate it. i know the staff at the raven bookstore appreciates it as well. now i will introduce to night's guest. james sherow in researching and teaching environmental history, kansas history, north american indian history and the history of the american west. has writtenerow numerous articles. he wrote a familiar resource for the staff and volunteers at the watkins. we have the book on our shelves and we have used it. and the grasslands of united states, another book. tonight, the professor will discuss his latest work, and copies will be available for purchase and signing thanks to

our partners at the raven bookstore or in lawrence, kansas. do, theserther a erow.me james sh [applause] sheerow: thank you for the introduction. i am honored to be here. questionart with a that came to my mind as i started researching this book because why would anybody want to do another book on the chisholm trail? it has been written about so many times and in movies and novels. my approach to this was to take it and ask some different questions and do this within an environmental historical

context. i looked at -- i wanted to follow joseph mccoy's because his life encompasses everything this trail system was about. when i looked at his life in the opening of the chisholm trail, i asked myself why was this important in the first place and why was the trail done at this particular moment in time? mccoymportant, why joseph -- why this particular individual and what was his legacy? is akin to an overarching conclusion, it all had to do with one word -- connections. in the brief two decades the trail system was in place, you see a remarkable transformation

of the american grasslands. it is an ecological trail was made possible. two individuals understood that transformation. one was james mead, a first trapper and in the in traitor and later helped put together wichita. he was involved in the cattle trade. he saw and experienced a lot. the other is colonel john hatch, a veteran and commander. these witness the disruption of the bison that he helped create because he was a for trader. he lamented that later in his life. acrossle came into place the grasslands replacing bison, he longed for that older grasslands, that older prairie system of wild animals.

throughout his life, he lamented that transformation, which he was a part of in the first place. hatch, the commander at fort sill, was there working, and he was also observing what was happening as a result of the disappearance of bison, the grazing of cattle, and the influx of farming. how that was transforming the ecology of the grasslands around going from a mixed grass and tall grass, down to a sparse short grass system covered by brush. what caused that ecological transformation? hatch is important as well because he was there in his life hunting,hem go from raising cattle, and eventually reaching the higher realm of

civilization as he thought about it becoming farmers. these two individuals really saw what was going on. people who always seem to be on the losing end of this whole grand story where the indian people who occupied the grasslands prior to the cattle trades. some of these individuals were in part responsible for it, and some of them wanted to be involved in it. black beaver, very interesting delaware was involved in the for trade in the west but when he came back to present-day oklahoma and indian territory at the time, he took up ranching. he was a wealthy individual and had a sizable farm. a very interesting and eventual who also did trading. he did -- he went up and down

what later became the chisholm trail. beaverd call this a lack trail as easily as we call it the chisholm trail. the principal chief of the bushyhead wasnis trying to control the cattle trade in the cherokee strip. he wanted to tax the cattlemen who were grazing their herds on indian land. he had his own heard. herd. this -- territory prior to the civil war, the five nations had one than 250,000 cattle, some of the ranchers -- indian ranchers -- had as many as 20,000 in their herds.

we need to rethink how we think about indian peoples in the cattle trade. , he was a general in the civil war with the .onfederacy some of the indian peoples did fight with the confederacy, and he was one. after the war, he took up aboutng and was concerned whose right it was to control leasing of the land. they were well known for being cattle raisers. was it going to be the federal government who controlled how they did the leasing, or were indians actually sovereign nations? he said by treaty we sovereign nations and not to be able to control what we do. they weren't able to. eventually, all individuals lose out completely, and they bore the brunt of this, as well as

the landscapes they once occupied and maintained. well, when i think about this, then i am thinking, how do i tell the story? individual, joseph mccoy is a good person to follow in doing this. the story can be told by following his life and what he did. his great gamble on the chisholm trail and the legacy of that gamble. attending thes second annual meeting of the national livestock association in the opera house in denver, colorado. and we needtockmen, to understand the distinction between stockmen and cowboys. stockman owned herds and the land and were the ones who control the trade from top to

bottom. setting on this stage, mccoy is going to be honored and given a lifetime membership in this organization for what he meant to developing the modern cattle trade that was on the cusp of beginning in the 20th century. when they talked about him, they talked about his work being a -- now that is an interesting statement to say in the apple trade i am pursuing a mission -- and the cattle trade i am pursuing a mission. mccoy wanted to produce enough beef to be the working-class people of the united states, before this time were unable to afford it. they also talked about ecological changes coming about as well. to make the wilderness to bloom

and blossom as the rose -- that is how he was introduced as being a person who did this. mccoy, when he thought about himself and when he thought about stockman altogether, it is interesting to note how he frames this. he said, "they are the best of fathers, the most ardent of , affectionate husband, the best men." here is where he goes in a different direction than we think a lot of other people might go. .hey are god's nobleman he is using that word nobleman very precisely. stockman thought of themselves errants, nobleman.

they were not the jeffersonian farmer just doing a little patch of 160 acres of wheat. these were men on a grand scale who lived in very large homes and large ranches and employed and ins of individuals, some cases had herds may be up to 100,000 animals. these were men who thought on a larger scale. in this respect, when they talk about being god's chosen, this doesn't kind of fit into that american ideal of the landowning farmer being the backbone of the republic, does it? these are men of a different cast, and they are pursuing something quite grand, as he did.

so, where do i want to begin the story? well, where everyone would begin trail -- begin a cattle story, particularly in texas, you begin in new york city. this is where i began this work. in the post-civil war era, new york city was the largest city in the united states, over a million people. there were people coming into it constantly. when you think after the civil war, some cities were incomplete run. new york city was growing -- .omplete ruin new york city was growing and amassing riches and people and lots of hungry people. imagine what new york city was like in 1866, but i tried to explain it a little bit. not only whether people crowded

in the streets, but horses and draft animals constantly running through the streets, and we all know what those animals sleep behind. not only were the streets covered with the newer of draft animals, but there were wild hogs running through the streets as well as domestic hogs shepherded to the various butchers very then there were -- butchers. then there were dogs running the streets. there were herds of sheep driven through the streets of the city every day. but more interestingly, from my perspective, and this came out as illustrated, there were cattle driven down the streets of new york city every single day. -- itnds of cattle

boggles my mind cattle being driven up fifth animal -- 5th avenue, but that was the case at this time. if you look at the island of manhattan, from 40th street to battery park to the southern tip of the island, that is called the slaughterhouse district. 200e were in this area slaughterhouses working daily, taking the animals and doing live slaughtering in that district and throwing 55% of the animal back into these barrels that the wild hogs would come and eat out of. amazinghave been an scene altogether. this is where the large markets were, this is the new jersey shore here. the quarters of the beef would be butchered and someone be hung

. people at the time -- reporters talked about crimson curtains lining the aisles of the market. those were the quarters of beef hanging for people to come and buy. in 1866, there was an individual walking the streets also selling cattle from illinois. his name was william mccoy. he had an office and had two younger brothers back in springfield, joseph and james. was going to be their understanding of the new york market that would drive them into eventually creating what we know now as the chisholm trail. inre were changing tastes dining at this time, particularly motivated by monico's.ts like dell monaco'

there was a 20 else -- a 20 ounce cut of sirloin. it amazes me reagan could it that and not -- it amazes me lincoln could eat that and not put on much weight. there were very elaborate courses but beef was starting to replace others like lamb and seafood as beef became more popular. noticed that with the poor people that this was a potential market for cheap meat if you could get it into that market. stock trains came into the

city on a daily basis, bringing cattle from particularly one state altogether, and that was illinois. cattle where most of the , well into the trail driving years, those 20 years. most of the cattle coming into new york city was from the state of illinois. very seldom were texas cattle driven directly to new york city. this would've been a disastrous thing for anyone involved in the trade, financially, that is. these were the trains bringing the cattle in on a daily basis. cattle were coming from all over the place -- kentucky, ohio, coming down from canada, in the province of ontario which

supplied a lot of cattle to the new york markets. there was no way the farmers in the state of new york could supply enough food to feed all the food -- people just simply in new york city. that is not saying anything else about all of the cities along the east coast that are growing large at the same time here if you wonder how strong the markets are and what prompted the mccoy brothers to think maybe we can make a killing in , if business so to speak you look at this, i have traced the cattle trade from 1866 through 1884. the blue line is the cattle driven north out of texas beach season. the orange line here is the cattle that was received into new york city.

there are only a couple of years that even all the cattle driven out of texas would have supplied the city of new york, only two years. that is how strong just one city's market was for beef. , if you could just start getting your cattle into that, especially if they are cheap cattle in texas, then you can make a lot of money by the time it gets into the market in new york city. that is the whole goal. one of the people who realize this early on was a man named samuel allerton. he realized that city streets were really getting messy no matter where you went in the united states. chicago was a mess for the same reasons that new york city streets were. st. louis had the same problems.

allerton -- pittsburgh had the same problem. so allerton decided, i will put together what our union stockyards. he was the first to do this and the first one was in pittsburgh. a union stockyards takes railroad lines and kenexa to stockyards and slaughterhouses thend connects it to stockyards and slaughterhouses and maybe to some of the hotels of the people who stopped -- worked in the stockyards. then you get the mess out of the streets. that is something people were looking forward to in a big way. was thend venture chicago union stockyards, which are famous for being the meat market hub of the world. december 25,s

1865, a very big gift to the city of chicago. great one one was the in jersey. here is the whole thing being done in jersey. they would take the slaughter meet to the new york shore. the trends would arrive in the stockyards into the holding pins and into the slaughterhouse, and all the businesses and hotel were conducted here. ,ll of this in one great union where everything is brought together in one sitting. this was a great advance in this . the start of the mccoy brothers thinking, 80 we can put together -- maybe we can put something together like this in kansas and capture the trade from texas.

john tracy alexander was an who theal in illinois mccoy brothers knew very well. operation of 80,000 , and, where he raise corn over the winter cattle put weight on and he put them in the new york markets. he was the largest operator in illinois. the mccoy brothers wanted to channel texas cattle, which were very cheap because they had nowhere to go during the civil war, and get them to a transportation system and take them to buyers like alexander in illinois who would buy them and fatten them up. the mccoy's were interested in being middlemen in the system. they were interested in being cowboys themselves -- they were

interested in the buying and selling of livestock. alexander kept them over the winter to get them fat on a hay and corn and get them into the new york market. each extra pound is more money that you make. so this is the result of that wonderful thriving metropolis of abilene in 1867. by an two huts, one ran interesting fellow, just cited -- josiahjust sigh a jones, who had a prohibition shop and had a stage route that ran through. he would give people whiskey to

help them get on their way to denver. he was also known as the mayor of curry downtown -- prairie dogtown because he would capture them and sell them. they had enough to drink, presumably. that was a thriving business in appling b -- abilene before the mccoy brothers got there. the mccoy brothers put together what they called the great western stockyards. when i think about the stockyards in chicago, i think about the stockyards in new jersey, and something is lacking in the word great. but you can't see it really , who but alexander gardner took this photograph in 1867, put the sign up here, great

western stockyards, right above their. -- there. i think that may have been joseph mccoy standing bear taking this all in. this --ing bear taking standing bear bank taking this there taking this all in. eventually they are going to put , where the businessman came in and the main stockmen, not the cowboys, and that is where they did their is this. they had a billiard hall and saloon, and things were comfortably set up for them. this is where the cattle were loaded. why in the world abilene? this, thatreason for

it had to do with something called "texas fever." the texas cattlemen finally got their act together from the civil war to drive cattle into illinois. what happened when they started doing this is it happened as early as 1860 in kansas. whenever the texas cattle that close to any domestic short horns, the short horns died. think about this if you are a kansas farmer, and you have a couple of dairy cows, and that is basically what you have. and this have a calf --as her goes by and a later a week later your dead. statestern part of the was settled by farmers like this, and they were tough on the texas cattlemen.

they killed the herds if they could, stampeded them back into indian territory. take, on some occasions -- they actually took one tied to a tree and be it until it was bloody and they -- bloody. westerns were always as the vicious texas cattlemen and cowboys who raised terror with the defenseless farmers. it was the opposite way. mccoy had to find someplace out of range where he could drive cattle and not interfere with those farmers, because that was creating havoc. it was serendipitous that you had the building of the railroads across the state. by 1867, it is reaching and

building farther west. this creates the first link into the eastern markets. the texas cattlemen could drive cattle up to hear and do their business here and then the cattle would be put onto the stock cars, and eventually reach illinois. overwinter, they put on additional weight and maybe get into the new york or east coast cities. this all looked very good on paper. willing, ande than he and his brothers were more than willing to invest in getting that going. there were other routes that were very important at this time. time . there were other markets pulling cattle out of texas and into other places. as far away as savannah it also london. live on cattle were put

transatlantic votes and taken to london. london,e new york city, the population far exceeded the ability for even english farmers to supply the city. eventually there were changes in technology, like this steamship victoria that had refrigerated holds. so now you could pass more carcasses in this and get them into london than you could shipping live cattle. obviously, shipping live cattle like this, you will have a few problems. they will be beaten up by the time they get there. this, it does not matter because they are packed tight and refrigerated holds an very low loss on the shipments over. everybody was pretty happy once that technology was finally put together. taken up thelso mississippi river.

this shows the cattle being loaded onto a steamboat probably at the red river where the red river enters the mississippi, that was a popular place for cattlemen to drive cattle. they were packed so tightly on the decks of these boats that the cattle could not move. they would have to stand there for as long as it took for the steamboat to get up to illinois and offload there. joseph mccoy talked about the conditions of the cattle. packed so tightly that the crew with row hey on their backs and the cattle with the h -- would eat the hay off the other cattle. fed by hose to get the water that they needed. this was pretty brutal transportation system altogether. it shows you the dynamics of the trade.

here is the thing that shaped the trade more than anything else altogether. a lovely little creature. harvard a three protozoan, a tiny critter, inside the belly of ick., the southern portions of texas, mississippi, louisiana, georgia, florida. what this tick would do, it latches onto the cattle, it would latch onto deer and horses .s well, almost any undulate it would release this protozoan into the bloodstream. longhorns andthe

cherokee cattle developed immunities. the mother's milk gave the cavs enough community where they could survive. they would be touched by this disease but they would survive and grow into adulthood. this protozoan, when it got into the bloodstream of an animal that was not protected by the antibodies its mother had given , it would directly attack red blood cells and drill through them and utterly destroyed them. this was a pretty gruesome death for any of those animals. tick dies in this the winter. the shorthorn herds in the north never had any encounter with this tick, not until texas cattle were driven up during the summers and then the texas cattle often times there hides

would be covered with these tics to the point where sometimes the hides looked gray from being cks.red with the ti the tics would drop off and anytime they got near the latchic herds they would onto domestic animals. these animals had no immunity and within a week or two they were dead. this caused havoc throughout the industry. and nobody understood or figured untilw to treat this 1890. they're about. well after all the cattle trail driving was over in the united was a player in the whole game of those market. -- mccoy gets his cattle operation really going caller: in 1967, the first time cattle

the firstd -- 1867, time cattle are shipped out of his place. he thinks 68 is going to even better. this is what happened. the fever broke out everywhere all across the east. it broke out in canada because cattle were shipped through canada. it broke out in new york, new .ersey, ohio, missouri shorthorn cattle across the nation were dying. the governors of these states . the governors of these states conference in springfield,

illinois where they worked out arrangements where any cattle that were over wintered, because they knew for some reason any cattle that were over wintered were safe to put with short horns. the ticks would die. they did not understand why this was happening. any of them that were certified to be over wintered had to be put into the market the following year. mccoy noted with a nice bribe a lot of cattle could get certified for being overwintered but that was the compromise that everybody had to make. all of these delegates from across the united states and canada met in springfield to work out this situation to keep this cattle business alive. that was one aspect of this i was looking at that had an environmental context in terms of disease, how climate shaped

where these tics could live, what effect it had on the markets, policies, governors and then consumers. consumers did not want to eat any of these animals that died from a disease like this so all of these things were coming together. it was the connections here that i was looking for in trying to .nderstand you can see other connections as well. try to give this a lighter touch . rainfall. not only was rainfall a dangerous situation for , you did on the trail not want to be caught out like this but often times you were. i can't imagine what it was like for the herds to be caught in these rainstorms. and lightning and then stampeding and you have to go out there and bring those cattle

back into the herd and it is hailing. if you have been in a hailstorm without any coverage you know that is not a fun event. these were the kinds of conditions these people endured. there were other things that were interesting to me about more than just these rainstorms. what were theas rainfall amounts during growing season. so i tracked this down each year. this happens to be the growing 1867, donefall in and recorded by different army post across the grasslands. so the blue line is from fort lived in texas, for our buckle is in the southern portion of present-day oklahoma. for riley and fort lord are up in kansas. , here is the fort

riley line. the one that is probably closest to abilene. for some reason in that particular year you have an extraordinary amount of rainfall in september but also in july. particularly in june. conditionss grass and creates something that a lot .f cattlemen called washy grass grass that does not put on a whole lot of weight to the cattle. they can eat lots of it. it looks green and healthy but yet is not going to produce the kind of beef cattle that fetch a good market price. these kinds of variations in terms of rainfall affect market conditions across the united states. what are the connections? -- and the connections

i'm sure texas cowboys around the campfire never thought about i wonder how strong el niño's are this way, jake. i don't know it could be a messy summer for us if they are strong. line, ifnd this blue we look at 1877 this is a particularly strong el niño. what el niño's produce across the grasslands is the higher rate of rainfall. this,1877, if you look at fort riley, you have very high rainfall. the cattle trade business is connected to more than simply the markets. it is connected to what's happening with pacific currents driven by changes in solar radiation. i don't know that how boys thought about that kind of

connection to what was happening to them on the trail. to me, this was fascinating to chart over time. those years where if you have a strong one rainfall dips. what you can see often times are, these orange lines you can see a dip in rainfall. all of these connections, far out of sight, affecting what happens to the cattle trade. the most interesting thing is overwintering. something that has not been given a lot of attention as far as i'm concerned. if you think about overwintering , remember if the cattle were certified as overwinter and they into the eastern markets. if you drive your cattle up to abilene, take them out onto the

uped grass prairies and set a nice operation. by springtime they are ready to go. you feed them quickly on the intoing grass and get them the markets as soon as they put on a little weight. drives of texas get up to this point. how does overwintering work? it must have been a delightful experience for cowboys because they got to live in a dugout usually by a live stream. it got to be by water all the time for cattle. -- it has to be living water. and cowboys also got to spend their spare time putting up a cattles of hay for each that they were milling out here on the prairies. so eachses are dormant day that they graze off that grass the herd has to go a little further out and they got

to bring it back to the water. living in a dugout through the winter in kansas, think about this winter. how many of you would have liked to have spent a cozy winter in a dugout by the creek? it would not have been pleasant. this particular winter was really bad. the markets were full in the east coast. so a lot of stockman said overwinter but they had to go further west because in this ofticular year, in the fall 1871, the prairies were burned off and so the only place where they had grass was on the shorter grass further out. they take the cattle out and

november is looking not too bad. these temperatures are derived from army post surgeons. fort riley and fort hays, though surgeons took the readings three times a day. in the morning, the afternoon and early evening. that is what the graph shows, those combined readings through the month of november. i think any of you can see what happens by about the 17th. 3, highs in the day, 1, 2, three days to the highs get above freezing. if you are one of those cowboys, stuck with the herd around hayes or between salina and hayes, you're starting to get anxious about how this winter is starting to turn out. this is december.

it does not get much better. freezing.cross here, christmas was not worth celebrating much because the high on christmas day in fort riley got up to about five degrees below zero. during that particular winter this was accompanied by high wind and snow. not only freezing temperatures. i may actually think this last february was pretty mild. and then this was january. and it just does not get much better. by the time spring came the texas cattlemen who had herds out there had lost anywhere from 70% to 90% of their herds.

about the only thing they were able to harvest for the hides. the newspaper accounts and lawrence record shipments of cars filled with cattle hides going back to the tanneries. that was all that was left that the cattlemen could salvage out of this winter. so once again, what are the connections between ticks, , these are ther kinds of things i was trying to figure out and how that affected markets. geography also affected all of this. the way the cattle were being driven. there were often times driven on the trails. they had to be driven up a place where you have grass and this territorial survey map this is no -- there's no indication of trees. you are on a ridge here so you can see what is coming at you

from either side. always close to water and grass. that is the key component in making that work. the thing that is going to finally disturb all of this is getting back to that jeffersonian idea of the agrarian republic. chopping up the land into sections, quarter sections and so forth. this is the federal surveying outfit in present-day sedgwick county, starting to cordon off the land into neat little squares. this is something that will put an end to texas cattle driving because the two systems cannot coexist. once this is put into squares and that becomes my property and i'm drawing week on it and having this in the next grass that you see here, i don't want texas cattle coming up through

it. this represents that transformation from this grassland system you see here to a full-fledged agricultural system and the ecological changes that accompany that. when you look at this from photographs from 1867 this was a gardener's photograph that john charlton, who lived here in town, a former photographer for the kansas geological survey. he studied these photos from alexander gardner there were eight -- ever taken in 1867. a little bit to the west of hays, kansas. you can see this short grass prairie bear sides of the hill here. no trees and here you see prairie grass, cropland, trees,

streets, elevators, homes, a completely different landscape in place here by 2000. did, it cattle trade created a pathway for this to .ome into play, replacing this that is one of the connections i look at. how did that transformation occur? and what were the ecological forces that made this possible? you can have different kinds of ecosystems in the same place. think about this as wild grassland system and this one being a domesticated grassland system. that is what corn is, it is a grass. alfalfa. it is just not buffalo grass. so they both thrive there. they both do ok there most of the time.

you have two very distinct ecosystems occupying the same space. i think this was the importance of the cattle trade. it made this transformation possible. when i look at how mccoy was 1915,ed on his death in october, marshall murdoch, the murdoch, the wichita eagle, had this to say -- the prairies went long ago that joseph mccoy went on dreaming of them and of their tomorrow. and what was that dream? marshall murdoch said it was prairies for love glistening cities crisscrossing it with giant highways. peopling it with teeming

millions. -- the we think about legacy of mccoy, how much of that did murdoch get right? what we have here is an ecologically transformed grassland that is the result of the cattle trade. we have an industrial transformation of the cattle trade, the creation of the union stockyards, refrigeration, the creation of different forms of transportation to get cattle into these markets. indian peoples hunting cultures and their roles in the cattle trade were completely destroyed. they never had a place in it. by 1890, they lost control of all of their leasing ability. most of them were unable to maintain their own herds. experiment came to

complete disaster. the same with the southern cheyenne and this is because texas cattlemen have kind of a habit of going onto the reservations and stealing cattle from the kia -- stealing cattle and going home again. the army was charged with going back and getting these cattle which was never a fun experience for them. think about the texas men who were stealing these cattle, a lot of them were former confederates. the soldiers who were stationed in other places, they were former union veterans. to complicate matters sometimes the seventh calvary was put into place. the buffalo soldiers, the african-american cavalrymen. always, that created a rather rough time when they met with former confederates.

peoples did not have a lot of resources to combat that. they were unable to protect their cattle trade. eventually lost their ability to control leases. they had all their land sold off in allotments. and that completely destroyed their ability to even do ranching on the large scale that they would have once done. the rise of a new western mythology. in mccoy's eyes he gave us the myth of the stockmen. we often time think of him giving us the myth of the cowboy. remember, mccoy did not have much truck with cowboys. they were just the workers. in fact when newspapers talked about cowboys early on in the cattle trade business, the new york times, new york herald

tribune referred to them as herders, did not even refer to them as cowboys. that was the place of the cowboy at the beginning. the real people working in for stockmen. stockmen. have come to understand about the trade that kind of opened my eyes to see it in a different kind of way in looking at a whole different set of connections that made it work are in some cases not made it work. thank you for your time and i would be happy to take any questions you might have.

[applause] >> does anyone have a question? yes? professor, sherow, i think about how americans bodies have changed in the 21st centuries -- the 20th century and 20% three because of our diet drastically. it sounds like beef became a staple of the american diet after the civil war thanks to people like mccoy. in your research have you uncovered any indicators or evidence that american culture or americans health, way of life, changed in that time. because of beef consumption. >> it did. the texas cattle coming up always fetched lower prices than the short horns raised in canada

or illinois or kentucky or ohio. mccoy understood this. very poor people went to buy their food. a great meal for them was when they could afford to buy beef and beef became more prominent in their diets especially after thences in creating slaughterhouses like our tended, able to mass-produce more beef than had ever been done before like those 200 butcher shops the one time that populated the slaughterhouse district of manhattan. the poor, working-class people

started eating able to buy beef on a more regular basis. the cuts were cheaper. texas longhorn beef was never served in domenico restaurant. that never would have happened. longhorn, at best, seldom weighed over 900 pounds. it was a pretty small animal. the cuts were leaner. even though the illinois stockmen tried to put on a little more fat and weight on them by overwintering before putting them into the eastern markets. yes, sir? was 1867ade to abilene to 1871? herds -- of those

which years of those herds were over wintered as a result of this conference in springfield in 1968? did that result in a two phased drive? we think of the drive eating where they went straight through, etc. >> if at all possible they were over wintered in illinois because you had better grasp conditions, corn, so the idea was to get them to a transfer spot like abilene and get them into the railcars and get them to illinois as quickly as possible. that's where those people like alexander were so important in this trade. they kind of bundled everything. after the winter -- after hopefully getting -- moved them into those new york markets. the overwintering was done there. >> none along the trail?

>> none along the trail. if the markets became glutted. if you were one of the drovers who took his herd of last in the season, your possibilities of selling cattle were pretty slim. you would go west. .erds were over wintered they were -- once the rail heads were shipped to places like wichita they were over wintered around great bend. there were places in kansas where they were over wintered. >> i have two historical questions. one is about where the trail was. maps of wherefied the trail went through kansas? where do we find them and how wide was it question mark it was not like 50 feet.

was it does go miles wide? the cows of varied on the past. surveys are housed in the historical society. i think one of the earlier the complete layout and the historical archives there, very similar map of the trail. this a lot of questions about .here the trail ran just give you an idea with the trail is. so there am on the trail. we went out tracing looking for

spots on the old trail not too long ago. itself, never imagine it's a narrow ribbon. you had to be grazing cattle. if you're one of the first hurts going up, yourds are fine. if you're the second or third, you have to go further out when you get to the grazing grounds and sometimes that can be miles and miles. sometimes it would take shortcuts or side counts because you always had to be close to the water, you always had to be close to the grass. those are two conditions you can never waiver from. they would graze three times a day in the morning in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening.

that was a very serious consideration. if the grazing grounds write a water source were grazed off in cattle had to go far out. they graze far out and then lose the weight they may have gained by coming back in. early orp the trail finding those side paths to get beand sometimes those could many miles apart. question was about the lay of the land in new york city. i discovered a relative owned something called the -- tavern which i believe is on chatham square. is that close to the markets? >> it is north of it as i understand. that was one of the favorite

spots. >> thanks. >> two questions, did the trail exist prior to this for any reasonable commerce? name chisholmthe trail, where did that come from? >> all start with the last one first. i think they have to do with jesse chisholm. war, theree civil were trade routes radiating through the grassland. you had to be able to find water and grass all the time. grass as i discussed in my book as stored solar

energy. and that's what powers them. just like storing solar energy. it's just a different form. that's the key to making it work. that.'ve got to have that was very important. in the name chisholm. these people knew this route. from the trading tot the osage is would go many times around. people knew this area. to go from there to the red river south or any other rivers through present indian territory , there were certain rats people talk. black beaver knew this --

certain routes people talk. union officers were vacating very quickly and they needed, they cannot go south or they could not go east into arkansas. that was a silly move. it was too far to go to california. they want to get back up to the north. there -- black beaver wouldhem up what later become the chisholm trail. it was already a well-known route to a great many people. black beaver led these officers and their families to this trading post area around where wichita is today. they went farther north, caught the santa fe trail and got themselves up to kansas city and beyond.

when black beaver came back to his ranch, it had all been destroyed by texas confederates. so he lost everything and had to move back. was operating his operation in present-day indian territory and he was part chair -- charity. cherokee. he moved up to the same spot where wichita is today. present-day el reno and the trading post there. these people all new age other and worked on a trade with each other. that was the connection to the

east. they knew this route. jesse chisholm was following that same route where he died early on. for some time the trail in kansas created from present-day wichita to present-day abilene. at that point it was called matrox -- mccoys trail. debate whether road be called that are not and eventually the whole trail system landed on the name chisholm trail. and probably because of the death of jesse chisholm. it just as easily could have been called black beaver's trail. any other questions? >> when you refer to the cowboy mythology, what exactly do you

mean by that? cowboysre were many that were different characters. >> they were characters. cowboys mccoy talks ,bout were former confederates when he talked about them coming into abilene he said they were still wearing their gray shirts from their time being in the confederacy. >> the reason i ask that is my 's familyat grandfather stories he was a drover on the chisholm trail. and drovers were different than cowboys. cowboys worked for drovers.

maybe you wanted to be a drover. >> -- maybe he wanted to be a drover. there were a lot of young men, primarily young men, if you were , you were a well respected individual. you were in charge of herd putng a heard -- together by who knows how many ranchers. each rancher had his own branch wasthen when the herd that good to be driven north was a combination of different ones so they were given a trail brand. , one were two brands identifying the owner and one that wasng the herd driven north. there were times when the stampede's and other things the

cattle would get messed up and the cowboys had the unenviable task of separating those out and getting them back on the trail. different lots of herds combing gold in a single one. that's a lot of responsibility. cattle were being driven up by the trail, they were going through native american territory, can you talk about the interactions between the cowboys, the drovers and the native people. understood it was akin to owning a lot of filling stations of the interstate and nobody paying for the gas. they had the filling stations. they wanted the grass for their , they wanted for the

animals they hunted. they want tolls paid. some of the tribes demanded others wouldd and waltz in and say i would like this one, this one and this one, we are going to have a barbecue. a good texas cattlemen would say fine, here. those, butw about you can have this one and this one. they would make these arrangements. well, we swimmingly get a misconception about sometimes the interaction come one of my favorite stories is one herd it's crossing one of

the rivers in indian territory. the comanches come on the scene. decide willthey help you drive the herd across the river. they knew they were going to get a couple of beasts out of the whole thing. they help these cattlemen drive the herd across the river. than they thought we still haven't stopped having fun, i don't know how much fun there is, but they did. the speeding of warrior. a comanche brave would ride his horse in front of the texas cattlemen who had a lasso and the idea was to rope the brave

off of his horse. in his right mind thought he was going to get roped, but one unfortunate fella got roped off his horse. and fell flat on his back. going all myre god, we are in trouble now. what is going to happen to us. so they all raced to him and the rope was tied around his chest slowly the rope and then the brave comes back to life and sets up and i think everybody cheered. own comanche cohort who was with him just broke out in laughter, they thought it was the funniest thing they have ever seen.

the guy who what got roped off the horse thought. how he got along with everybody after that. the texans were very happy to get back on the trail again having this sport with the comanches. there were all these kinds of stories. peoples were treated fairly, things went smoothly. when they were not, things went poorly. many were probably too stories of things going poorly than things going well. >> three questions in one. what was the average size of the herd on a drive and how many cowboys does not require and how many days does it take? >> all of those were variables. the dish they could be as small as several hundred to a herd

size of several hundred. it on how many crew you needed. thousand youcouple probably need a few people and then there was no income you have to find a job of eating dust in the back. there was always the person who had to go in front, scout of the water sources. they knew where they were was most but where it advantageous to grays. -- in the was the back a few miles back. large herd of horses. wagonen you also have the with all the supplies becoming a

chuckwagon. these were pretty large average waged the was probably $15 a month for the cattle -- for the cowboys. and then the idea was to bring the money back and distributed to the ranchers. >> if the driving conditions were good you could get up in a couple months. , pork racingr conditions are rainfall, storms, stampede's, it could take a lot longer. of the the stories stampede's are just incredible. on one occasion, the cattle were drovers, whene thetrail hands got to

watering hole, there wasn't any water. indian andere wasn't the cattle smelled the water and they broke into a stampede and ran right through the village and so all of the indian horses and everything and the lodges were all runover, the cattle were going everywhere. you can imagine what kind of mayhem that was. >> if someone died along the trail, where they paid to get back to texas? >> i don't think they got back to texas. i don't know how the pay work. -- probably the drover knew who the family was. maybe some of them didn't even

have families. that pointrover at said that saved me some money. -- there wasn't much tolerance on those trail drives. are sent -- and our sentimentality. it was hard grueling work every single day. i note about this. drinking whileht being on the trail, you are fired immediately. there was no toleration for a drunk cowboy on the trail because they cause more trouble than they were worth. no matter where they were, they were sent packing. that could be a very dangerous situation when you are a lone individual in the middle of indian territory and they say

good luck buddy. >> how do we even know what happened? did the cowboys sit there and write a journal? mccoyple like mccoy did, wrote about his experiences. 1920's with the passing of a great many of these cowboys , there was a group of individuals who put together interviews of all the cowboys who had gone up the trail. and those stories are fascinating. you have to be careful about reading them because your reading people's memories that happen 20 or 30 years earlier. potentially you detect some -- but some ofnd

the stories check out very well in terms of you can cross-reference them when they say we were driving this way up through indian territory and we ad all of this trouble with storm coming out of the north. we can look at the post records and they said they were here on this day, what was happening at the post and you can look at the notes and all at once they correlate. maybe the one about the drivers .ho came to abilene in 68 so they sent most of the crew saidto texas and mccoy

when she helped some bison. abileneing to advertise by advertising bison in the cities of st. louis, chicago and then to the bronx zoo. they were going to go into these stadiums and rope antelope and bison to show people what the wild west was about. they didn't get any farther than chicago. it was a debacle. the bison already were pretty crippled up by the time they got and the cowboys were pretty rough on the bison in the stadium. anti-report on the viciousness of them all. canceled,howings were

mccoy did not do so well with that. those are interesting side things. is there an estimate on how many had traversed the trail during this activity? become theicago slaughterhouse world? you talk about the cattle going directly to new jersey, was chicago developing the same time and did it depend upon refrigeration cars? i don't have a good firm answer for you on the first. i don't know how many individuals went up and down the trail. just be a wild guess on

my part. to your second question, chicago starts dominating the stockyard trade by 1900. they were in kansas city, omaha, colorado. refrigeration helped. the consolidating of the slaughterhouse and shipping and the stockyards altogether is what led the chicago people to really come to dominate it and when you get the stories like the jungle about the conditions of working in the slaughterhouse's. chicago came to dominated by 1900, but that was through a series of ruthless consolidation.

those stockyard facilities like the one from new jersey are closed now. essentially those eastern cities got close down. we see that happening across kansas over the last 50 years, there are no stockyards in wichita anymore or in kansas city. the slaughterhouse are moved primarily to the western portion of the state. occurringis shifting even during this time, it was just different technology. [applause] >> i want to thank you all, you have been attentive audience.

thanks for coming out tonight. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> every weekend, american history tv brings you 48 hours of unique programming exploring our nation's past. to view our schedule and archives of all of our programs, visit c-span.org/history. this weekend, american history tv is joining our spectrum cable partners to showcase the history of san luis obispo california. see more video from the city and others, visit c-span.org/citiestour. we continue our look at the history of san luis obispo. just over 47,000 folks here and there's a lot going on. on of our main economic drivers are