04/22/2024
The legendary Charles Goodnight's bison herd in the Texas Panhandle, 1903. I'm pairing this photo with the text of an article I found in the Galveston News. The article was written 10 years earlier, in 1893:
"Col. Charles Goodnight was in the city recently and entertained a number of friends and others who gathered around the stove in the hotel office, for a long time with stories when the Indians were here when the fastest means of transportation was by a schooner and of Llano Estacado. After talking until he grew almost weary the Colonel stopped to get his breath and Uncle Bill Hiltson asked if he still had his buffalo up there.
“Of course I have,” he said, “I have twenty-four head of buffalo and they are increasing slowly. Also, have seventeen elk and I don’t know just how many deer, antelope, and such. The park comprises about 640 acres and has a wire fence of about fifteen wires and ten feet high around it. It’s almost worth a stranger’s life to go inside, but the buffalo and elk know who belongs there and you don’t and only make war on strangers and dogs. The railroad is nearby and the tramp decided one day to call on me, and being rather averse to going around, climbed the fence and came across the park, or rather partly. But an old buffalo bull helped him get out and didn’t do it very gently either. Another time a wagonload of people, mostly women, were driving through. A dog was following along behind; the buffalo thought his dogship was a Wolf and wanted to kill him. They surrounded the wagon and stopped the procession. When the men from the ranch got out to them the buffalo were about to tear the wagon to pieces in trying to get at the dog, which had taken refuge beneath it. I’ve had some of these animals for fifteen years and would not sell them at all. Buffalo Bill would have given me $1000 each for the buffalo, but I didn’t sell them and won’t.”
I read this and just marveled at the number of iconic characters Texas history has produced!
